A Year of Reading

Since I began working at Borders I've kept a log of all the books I've read. Mind you, this log is only from November 19th 2007-- I've read probably triple if not more books in the course of my life-- so it’s rather short. Hopefully I'll keep this log up to date for the rest of my life, then when I'm 40 I'll be able to be like whoa! It'll also help with the nasty problem of not knowing if I've read a book or not. I've found this extremely irritating of late, I'll pick up a book, think it looks pretty good, buy it, only to get like a chapter in and realize I've read it. It’s not a huge hassle but when I'm the reading zone its shitty to go back and find another book. Anyway here it is, I figured posting it a year from when I started would be kinda neat.

• A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card
• Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
• Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
• Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
• Next by Michael Crichton
• Monster by Frank Peretti
• Empire by Orson Scott Card
• Paranoia by Joseph Finder
• Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Heor
• Stiff by Mary Roach
• Anthem by Ayn Rand
• Brimstone by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Dance of Death by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
• Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
• God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
• A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
• Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert
• Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• Robota by Orson Scott Card
• Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
• Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Innocent Mage by Karen Miller
• Lamb by Christopher Moore
• Awakened Mage by Karen Miller
• Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• Feed by M.T. Anderson
• Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds
• Click by Bill Tancer
• Final Theory by Mark Alpert
• The J-Curve by Ian Bremmer
• The Sword by Deborah Chester
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Ring by Deborah Chester
• The Chalice by Deborah Chester
• Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds
• The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks
• Sway by Rom Brafman
• Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
• Shadows Edge by Brent Weeks
• Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist
• Servant of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist
• Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

Total: 55

Note: The books in bold I own, the non-bolded books I read at work or borrowed from a friend. In my personal list I have each of the books rated from 1 to 10 but I decided to hold off on that simply because I'm probably pretty biased. Plus how can you rate a Fantasy against a Mystery or a Fiction?

Here in America reading has become one of those things that everyone wants to do but is "too busy" to do. Back in 2007 the Associated Press did a poll concerning just that, what they found is honestly saddening to me. "One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday [August 21, 2007]" This quote was taken from a Washington Post article that was written on the day the Ipsos poll was released. I don't know the details of the poll exactly but even if its somewhat true this country is in trouble. I did a little snooping around recently after I found the aforementioned article and found a somewhat 'better' set of figures. These numbers came from the Harris Poll:

TABLE 1

BOOKS READ PER YEAR

"How many books do you typically read in the average year?"

Base: All adults

	Total	Generation				Gender		Political Party
		Echo Boomers (18-31)	Gen X (32-43)	Baby Boomers (44-62)	Matures (63+)	Men	Women	Rep.	Dem.	Ind.
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
None	9	6	7	9	12	11	7	10	8	7
1-3	23	28	24	23	15	27	18	23	24	18
4-6	19	18	22	20	15	22	17	22	17	20
7-10	13	12	11	14	11	11	14	13	15	11
More than 10	37	36	36	33	47	29	44	33	35	44

Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding.

As you can see roughly 1/3 of Americans read more than 10 books a year, which is good. It’s hard to say which of the two polls is more accurate and indeed from what I found both seem fairly legit. In any case, I'd say that we should be reading more. Granted my opinion is a bit biased seeing as I've read 55 books this year but even still. 10 books aren’t really that many if you think of the amount of time Americans sit in front of the tv or even the computer. Sure some people really don't enjoy reading at all and sure many find a movie or a reality tv show more entertaining than their imagination.. still.. the human mind is a great thing. When I read it feels like I'm watching a movie with actors that put real people to shame, with views and imagery that an HD tv can only dream of making. If you think about it television and movies are just dumbed down books, and if ANYONE thinks there's a movie based on a book that’s better than said book they have a poor imagination indeed. Why would you settle for someone else's imagination? What you can do with your mind is so wonderful that it’s sad to think some people go their lives without reading. Authors not only give you all the tools to create a world in your head but they can also give you meaning. What are you gonna learn about the world by watching American Idol? Pick up 1984, A Red Sky at Morning, Dante's Inferno, East of Eden, or any other number of classics out there and you'll discover not only a fantastic story but symbolism, satire, and a touch of politics. All of which with such intensity that there's no way a tv show or even a 2 hour movie could put it all in. Hell, if you're not into the "dry" classic stuff they forced you to read in high school pick up Alastair Reynolds or Neal Stevenson and you'll learn something.

Well I suppose I'll stop preaching now, I hope this possibly interested some of you into reading or at least picking up one of the books I've mentioned. If not, well, all the power to you it’s your life after all. If there are any questions about the books above or any sort of recommendations I can make, feel free to hit me up.

Who Am I?

This is a question that’s been haunting humans since the dawn of time. How it has been answered has varied over the years and though I am far from well educated in what people have said I have some ideas of my own. Perhaps they can’t even be called ideas so much as a response to a certain viewpoint I’ve encountered. Really I don’t know what the “I” is or even how I would respond if someone asked “who are you?”. Perhaps there is no answer, but I think there are things that dictate just who we are.

The psychological idea of “roles” has always seemed natural to me, even before I knew the term “roles” or what the idea behind it was. I guess I always had this sort of thought in my head. I am a son, a friend, a lover, a student, a worker, a stranger, a boy, a citizen--both of the world and my country -- a human, and a million other things that I can’t name right this moment. The thing I’m responding to I’ve encountered twice so far, it’s the thought that says “There are no roles. I’m the exact same person to everyone, everywhere.” Now I can almost understand not wanting to admit your personality is dictated by those around you, but this form of egotism is ridiculous to me. I realize that many of the roles that we live each day are almost one in the same, but even yet there are enough differences between any two that it’s impossible to say you’re the same person around everyone. For example, you chat and laugh and joke around with your friends, sure you can do all those things with your parents, but it’s significantly different. You won’t go telling your mom about the crazy sex you had with your girlfriend last night or your dad about how much you drank the previous night. Even the way you act around people changes depending on the role you’re in. It’s a happy little thought that you control how you act in any circumstances, but to those egotists out there, you don’t control your actions nearly as much as you so pompously think. The very nature of roles are so deeply ingrained in our heads that it’s just not something you can control. Sure you can have a certain degree of freedom in your actions, you can whisper sweet nothings into your friend’s ears if you wish, but you’ll be criticized for it. Now from what I understand of egotism, albeit not much, they take great offence to the above example. “You’re actions should be done for you and no one else” is the main idea I gather. I agree, what you do should be entirely on your own personal set of morals, but as much as you despise it the fact is humans are social creatures.

The worst form of punishment, no not death, but the form of punishment that will break anyone no matter their philosophy, their nationality, their race, their age, nor their gender is isolation. The human brain has evolved in such a way that it thrives on interaction; it works its best being presented with new ideas, new viewpoints, and new people. The very act of speaking to another human being stimulates the brain in many ways. To think that any human can be so self assured, so self centered, to bypass millions of years of evolutionary hardwiring is idiotic. Granted, there are social hermits out there, people that despise all form of interaction, but sadly for those egotists, it’s not them. I’ll even be generous and say that even if you’re the exception and treat everyone the exact same way in every situation you wouldn’t be looked on with any bit of admiration. Like it or not, even if you’re so all mighty and great, the rest of us aren’t. Being a functioning member of society means you have a certain set of obligations to people, those obligations dictate how you should act in certain instances. So if you go telling your parents how hard you fucked some girl last night, or tell your boss to go screw off like you would one of your friends, you’re going to be an outcast. Sure you’ll be self righteous and almighty knowing that you broke social code, but what will your life be like? A year of that and what job would you have? What friends? What lovers?

Now, even if you can accomplish this feat and keep any sort of social contact outside of yourself, you’re going to be one bland, wretchedly boring person. Perhaps you’ve read this far and said “I don’t tell my friends about the crazy sex I have, or any of the examples you’ve given Ryan. I’m confident in who I am and I don’t do anything to hurt anyone’s feelings.” Okay, perhaps you have accomplished this, but what kind of personality is that? Humans are meant to be different, are meant to have a will. There’s two ways the above can be accomplished. You can be a complete arrogant ass and truly say whatever you want to say to whoever you want, but keep it toned down enough that it doesn’t get you in trouble. Or you’re the most boring person in the world because if you treat a three year old the exact same way you treat your boss, your friends, and your lover, you have no personality. MacIntyre said our lives are the stories that we tell, what kind of story is going to be told that has not differences, no interactions. Part of what makes us human is all the characters we play, all slightly different, yet all wrapped up in this indivisible thing called “I”.

Who I am depends greatly on who I’m with, but yet I feel that there is indeed some deep down thing that links all of the different roles. Maybe they’re just fleeting similarities or even just something my human-ness needs in order to try and understand the world around me. Either way, to me, being the exact same person around everyone is impossible, no matter if you like it or not situation dictates who you are. Perhaps only in such a small way that you think you’re being the exact same, but really there’s something different. The vocabulary you use, the emotion you show—or don’t show for that matter—your body language, any number of things. It isn’t a bad thing, it’s a wonderful thing in my opinion. On the flip side, there is some truth to the egotistical argument. To be completely and utterly different solely based on who your with is hypocritical. To be a devout catholic in church and a horrible person on the street is just wrong. There exists, at least in my opinion, a balance of the two that make humans great.

Non-Fiction

I've been keeping a list of books that I've read since November, to date I've read a lot. Just how much? That's classified for now, I have a list going that will be published on November 19th 2008. I know curiosity is just killing you all but as the old cliche goes "patience is a virtue". In any case, the majority of what I read falls under the Sci-fi/Fantasy realm with dashes of Mystery and Fiction. Very rarely do I read non-fiction stuff, in fact, I think there's only been one or two full books that I've read that's non-fiction just for fun. This brings me to the peculiar quandary I find myself in right now. So instead of doing my lovely philosophy homework I'm going to talk about reading.

When I started working at Borders back in November I began to realize just how much I read, I've always loved reading and, in fact, its the one thing I think I'm decent at. Actually aside from a certain person reading is about the only thing that makes me happy, I'm just lucky enough to have someone and not just my silly little books. So I started at Borders and naturally because its a bookstore my reading levels jumped! I now have access to millions more books and it definitely showed in my list. Perhaps I've always read a lot of books but it seemed to me that because I had more access to books suddenly I was reading even more, just how much will be shown come November. As I expected sci-fi/fantasy are the majority of my reads but I was surprised to see a few non-fictions creeping into my list. I'm thinking that because I'm now exposed to so many more non-fiction books I've slowly stopped thinking of them as super boring and lame and gradually began picking them up. I'm not sure where my bias came from exactly, but its been enough to keep me from reading a lot of excellent reads. Not only that, though, but I've actually learned a lot from the non-fictions I've read. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure everyone out there is thinking "no freaking duh Ry, they're based on reality" but come on my experience up til November was with text books.

In any case, I updated "what I'm reading" thing on a forum I participate on and to my surprise I'm reading not just one but two non-fiction books right now. This past year I've read non-fiction but its always been accompanied by a fiction of some sort. Now not only am I reading two, but they're fairly out of character for me. One of them is a fairly intense political book, alas not about either of our dear candidates or our current political situation cause those are all slander right now, and the other is a business-ish book. Indeed a mere two books ago I read another non-fiction book! This probably is rather boring to anyone that bothers to read this, but its rather fascinating to me. As a side note I just re-read this and good freaking god I'm not writing well at all! Oh well, this is far less formal than my usual stuff and because its not super controversial I don't have my usual flame. Another possible reason that I've come up with is rather weak: I've matured! Wow, it looks a whole hell of a lot worse in writing! I'm not gonna lie, I still love fantasy and space and not real stuff, but finally at almost twenty years old I can appreciate 'adult' things. Part of that is my own curiosity, I want to know more about the world around us. Once again I sound like an ass saying shit like that but oh well. There's actually a lot of really interesting stuff out there, you just gotta be able to find it I guess. It took me working at a bookstore to find some, but hell I know so many people that only read non-fiction which absolutely boggles my mind. I don't know about everyone else but one of the reasons I love to read is to escape and relax and give my head a break from the stresses of every day life non-fiction is a workout for the mind. It's nice every once and a while, but seriously? All the time? Nu-uh!

While I still don't think that non-fiction is worth more than the occasional read, it's nice to know there's some well written stuff out there. As for my reading list, like I said that'll be posted 12:01am November, 19th 2008 (thank you blogger for scheduled posting) if you're interested it should be kinda neat to see. Well Descartes calls.

First Impressions of Chrome

So I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as I heard about it and after two days of messing around with it I have a couple thoughts I figured I'd share.

First off its a very pretty browser, I must say, neat layout and such. It'll take some time to get used to the tabs being at the very top of the page but I think I like it more than where the tabs are in FireFox. It was really nice to install it and have it import all my info, bookmarks, search history, and such, to Chrome and damn it's fast. I figured that it was just my computer that was rather slow on the net, or even my net connection but the first time I loaded up Chrome it was noticeably faster than both IE 7 and FF 3.0.1. It lags a bit, as is expected, when loading a new page, but when it gets the cookies its loads the pages lightning fast. I've also noticed that it doesn't use as much CPU as either IE or FF which, from what little I know, is really good. I haven't really run any other applications in the background other than aim so I haven't seen a noticeable difference in app speed as some people have. Also combining the search bar and the web-address bar is absolutely brilliant, even more so you can customize which search engine you want to use. I set it up for Wiki because I use it to reference a lot but there's tons of options which show that google isn't too much of a whore XD. Even with all its positives there's some annoyances I have with it.

First let me say this: I'm a complete FireFox whore. I admit it. I love the add-ons, themes, and all the customization FF provides. I have 4 different themes I switch out depending on my mood, addons like WeatherFox, FoxyTunes, YahooMailNotifier just make my life easier. If I only used those things though I wouldn't have such a problem with Chrome. I've been using FF now for 3 or 4 years and for pretty much the entire time I've had AdBlockPlus installed. I guess I didn't realize just how, hmm, pampered I am. I seriously cannot stand ads on pages anymore, it honestly bothers me! Just recently I installed NoScript as well, which got rid of some of the other annoying crap that AdBlock misses. Seriously though, I can't even check my email on Chrome because yahoo is an ad whore, some of my favorite sites have god awful ads that until I opened them in Chrome I didn't even know existed. It's quite depressing I must say. Perhaps I can reacquaint myself with the annoying ads IE users face every time they open the net but it'll be hard. I did some finger work (har har) and found out that most likely google will roll out add-ons in the future but not for a little while, seeing as they need to make a mac and linux Chrome. The other major issue I have with chrome is the scrolling. On my laptop there's a little scroll bar on the touch pad that you can go up and down with but Chrome only lets you go down. You don't realize just how much you use something until you can no longer use it. Honestly, I scroll on like every page and its infuriating going too far down but not being able to go up without actually clicking the bar thing. I can wait but Chrome will have to deal with not being my default browser for a while. I'm sure I'll use it more and more but yeah.. those will keep it from being my first choice for a while. I'm sure they'll fix the scroll problem soon enough and they'll add the extensions eventually til then I'll only play with it now and then. Maybe I'll post from here on it since blogger is clean of annoying adds and I like the speed for the blog.

If you use IE switch. Just do it, you'll only gain from doing it. If you use FireFox heavily give Chrome some time. Its definitely worth downloading and checking out though.

Questions of Colonization

I've been toying around with the idea of colonization for a while now and I think its high time for me to focus my thoughts and actually write something down. Granted I'm a mere second semester freshmen in a non-science major but someone needs to be thinking of it. The most likely reason, I think, that I'm so curious about space is from all my sci-fi reading. Yeah, yeah I know that many, if not all, of the ideas, designs, theories, and so forth are fantasy but that doesn't mean there's a real way to achieve some of this. Recently I've gotten into an author name Alastair Reynolds who writes something called hard science fiction which stresses scientific accuracy. Though Reynolds world is much more advanced and, like most sci-fi, set in the distant future he has some interesting views of how space is colonized. One of the planets in his books is a recently colonized planet which may shed some ideas on how we may be able to make that jump. One of his ideas is terraforming, which, by definition, is the modification of another celestial body to make it similar to earth. Its still hypothetical, of course, but in my opinion its definitely feasible.

Mainly this post is meant to organize some of my thoughts and help me critically look at the whole concept of colonization. I'm no expert but I know I'm not the only person out there that has questions about this sort of thing so by asking I have a basis to start my search. Obviously wikipedia is one of my favorite things to use but I'd like to expand from there and if I have narrower more specific questions that will help me look at more "credible" sites like NASA and such. Mars is going to be my focus but I realize that the more probable place to start out is our very own moon, seeing as I don't know shit about vacuums or gravity or any of the main problems with the moon I'm just gonna avoid it for now.

How much time and fuel would it take to transport a manned ship to Mars?

Do we have the technology to even make a manned trip to Mars?

Is a closed ecosystem a possibility on Mars?

How many people, if any, would it take to maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars?

How much water would be needed to create a closed ecosystem on Mars?

What kind of engineering problems are associated with creating domes?

How violent are the storms on Mars?

What kind of materials would be needed to create a dome capable of withstanding dust storms on Mars?

What is the soil made up of on Mars?

How much less sunlight does Mars receive than Earth?

What is the temperature on Mars?
Around the equator during the summer Mars can reach 20 degrees Celsius (70 degrees F)

Does Mars have an atmosphere?
"Mars has a very thin atmosphere composed mostly of the tiny amount of remaining carbon dioxide (95.3%) plus nitrogen (2.7%), argon (1.6%) and traces of oxygen (0.15%) and water (0.03%). The average pressure on the surface of Mars is only about 7 millibars (less than 1% of Earth's)..." (NinePlanets.org) 1013 millibars is 1 atmosphere so 7 millibars is roughly 0.006908463 atm. The altitude that one would experience such a low pressure is 159,013 ft. or 30 miles up, if you go that far up you'll enter the Mesosphere (ace).

What does low pressure do to the human body?

Is it possible to depressurize slowly and safely?

Is it possible to increase the pressure of a planet?
Essentially what needs to be done here is injecting large amounts of gases into the atmosphere. This will serve a duel role of both increasing the surface temperature on Mars as well as the pressure. This is one of the many goals of terraforming.

What is the gravity on Mars?
Mars has approximately .38 the gravity of Earth (NASA) Essentially I weighing 130 pounds would be 49.4 pounds there. This is a whole lot less than I thought, and reading the article sited above gave some interesting questions I didn't have before. I'm gonna keep a close eye on the Mars Mice since they'll be able to answer questions I won't even be able to look into myself.

Would a human be able to function normally on Mars?

What is the escape velocity for Oxygen on Mars?

Does Mars even have the gravity to even hold onto Oxygen?

Some of these are very simple to find with google but I just want to put them down on paper, well in writing rather, to organize my thoughts. I'll edit this post as I find answers to some of these, others which are more speculative I'll just write up another post and link to it here. One thing I've learned from my academic career is the more questions you answer the more emerge, I'll most likely add to this list as I learn things but the point is not to find a solid answer but to critically look into such a feat. It will be years before we will even visit Mars but who's to say we can't start working on colonization now? Stephen Hawking recently stated "The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years, If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." He says that its possible to have a base on the moon in the next couple decades and a get to Mars by the middle of century (AIP). It's really great that we're just now trying to fix the climate but the climate isn't the only problem facing the future of humanity. Even if we completely clear up our massive carbon footprint there still remains the fact that we only have so much room, our population is growing exponentially. Nothing short of totalitarian rules on reproduction can we avoid outgrowing Earth in the next couple centuries, and still, eventually we'll grow out of it anyway. Of course, that is, if we don't all end up killing each other off. Nature may even do us that little favor by unleashing even more intense disasters and viruses . There's all sorts of horrible things that can happen that will kill off a couple billion people, but isn't that all the more reason we should spread out and increase our chances that much more? Lets face it, sooner or later some renegade asteroid will come along and not just prune our population but completely annihilate our species. Hop to it people, this is our future at stake.