What Books Are You Reading Right Now?
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I've just finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, which I liked ok, tho found a bit unsettling. Reading bad things about mad people you already don't like, who seem to be all around you, is a bit dumb.
Right now I'm reading Stenger's Failed Hypothesis. I like Stenger. Given I'm just at the beginning, the thing I like about this book is the flat observation that god is a human concept and the god model can only be proved if supported by data.
The idea of god as a model that must be proved like any other hypothesis is obvious but as we know, almost no theist will accept this. They'll revert to their proof by design or demand some 'beginning' that happens to be their loving heavenly father, a model that is completely undefined, never detected and yet invested with a blend of human and supernatural qualities.
I have Homer's Iliad one third-read on the bedside table but there's something about men constantly falling down with gouts of blood spraying and clashing armour as the light fades from their eyes that's repetitive and annoying. And so many, many gods.
What about you folks - any recommendations?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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The locals here use Eskimo to describe themselves. A lot of other Inuit find the term offensive.
We don't have roads connecting any of the villages here. The closest roads are 500 miles south unless there are some on the Chukotka coast 150 miles West of us. We can get things in by barge about 2 months out of the year, and a 737 can land on the airfield if weather conditions are good. For the most part we rely on bush pilots. One of the air cargo services got their hands on an old Spanish military Casa transport plane that is good for landing cargo here, but most things come in on a Piper Navajo whose cargo space is behind the props in the wings.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Just re-reading George RR Martins "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. One of the greatest fantasy series I've ever read, a must for any fans of the genre.
There is a little town in Washington State, Stehekin. You can get there on the ferry up Lake Chelan, or you can go in by Dehavilland or by Beaver float planes. Some days, it is pretty tricky getting out of Stehekin by air - as I understand. I haven't been there, but my husband used to have to take regular day trips.
http://www.chelanairways.com/
There are some links to some interesting photos from this site. Spectacular scenery but I'm rather too fond of creature comforts to live somewhere like Stehekin. I would have to think a long time before I moved anywhere as remote as you are.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Nice looking place. I've considered moving to Washington, Vermont, or Maine if the states start seeing some political sanity. Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, or Canada if it keeps on the path it is on now.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Oh yeah, I started reading that a few years ago but at the time he had only written the first three books. Is he finished with it yet?
I kind of gave up reading those really long fantasy series before they are finished ever since Robert Jordan died before finishing his. It is a pain to reread a whole series because it takes a few years for the next book to come out and you forget.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
+1 for, well anything by George R. R. Martin.
Sadly, no he is not finished with the series. Volume 4 turned out to be so big that he decided to split it into two books. We have been waiting for volume 5 for a couple of years now and the most recent news is that it has turned into two books as well.
Now if you like him, I would suggest that you find the “Haviland Tuf” stories. They were originally published as short stories in the pulps but there is an anthology volume “Tuf Voyaging”.
As far as the long stories go, you need to know that just because Robert Jordan is dead does not mean that WOT is over. He knew that he was going to die several years before he did and he put his efforts into working on the outline that another author would use to finish the series. The first WOT book by Brian Sanderson has been out for months now and it is, well, not RJ but still fucking good. According to the author's note, he has the documents he needs to finish the series.
If you like that, you might want to try Stephen Donaldson.
He has either 3 or five worlds depending on how you count them.
World 1 is a trilogy of a man from our world thrust beyond his control into a fantasy world.
World 1b is a trilogy in the world 1 universe but two thousand years later. The main guy from 1a is the main guy here because time moves faster in the fantasy world.
World 2 is another fantasy world with a different character from the real world forced into that setting.
World 3 is hard sci fi.
World 1c is currently at the second of a planned five books.again, a few thousand years later.
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Yeah I know. I read the new one when it came out. My big problem with long series is the last few books Jordan wrote took so damn long to come out (for obvious reasons) that by the time it came out I felt like I needed to reread the whole damn series. Which, while entertaining, it seems rather inefficient to reread several thousand pages every few years because a new book came out. So I will wait until the series is finished then become anti-social and read the whole thing. I just think you lose a lot in a series when you let it sit for a year or two before reading the next book.
You have to give Sanderson credit. It can't be easy for a young writer to attempt to fill in the shoes of Jordan. I read his mistborn trilogy and that was a well written and entertaining read so I am hopeful that he will be able to juggle all of Jordan's plots and tie them all together.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
And if we're delving into "I read this book a while back...." then I have to offer up JJ Savarin's 'Lemmus: A Time Odyssey', The Magus by John Fowles and anything by that Pratchett chap.
Thanks to all those who responded to the CISSP post.
Congratulations CJ, but what are you actually doing now you have the cert?
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
I'm still unemployed -
Employers who want CISSP's seem to want a specific concentration - yes, but what experience do you have in business continuity? Have I managed it? No. Am I going to lie about that? No. Have I participated? Sure. And I know enough to pass the test. Not the same. Same for the rest of the concentrations - I have lots of experience doing it, but darn little documented management. So I am over qualified for sys admin positions now, and under qualified for the CISSP positions.
I'm going to go back to college and get a master's - in IT security or software engr. Hell, I'll just be over qualified for everything - and then, I'll retire.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Boy did that trigger some memories. I think the Tuf stories were in Analog. An obese vegetarian, an oxymoron if ever there were one, and cat lover acquires an ancient ecological engineering corp starship and proceeds to show the galaxy just how obnoxious a vegetarian animal lover can be. At least that is how I remember the series.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
i currently have way too many books on my plate, as usual.
arthur c. clarke and gentry lee's the garden of rama. clarke wrote all three sequels to rendezvous with rama with gentry lee and so far they've all suffered for it. they're all about three times longer than a typical clarke book, and much of it is irritating philosophical fluff and over-detailed character background stories which end up leading nowhere and have no relevance to the main plot. i'm slogging through them just because i'm committed to the story, but it's rough. i miss clarke's leanness and no-nonsense style.
john le carre's the spy who came in from the cold, a wonderfully cliched cold war spy novel written in the '60s, taking place in berlin.
upton sinclair's the jungle (the so-called "uncensored" version), a really wonderful book that i just never got around to reading until now.
victor serge's from lenin to stalin, a short piece of anti-stalinist narrative detailing the soviet union from the october revolution through to the beginning of the spanish civil war and stalin's disastrous diplomacy in spain. serge was an old-school bolshevik who escaped stalin's purges and wrote prolifically against stalin for the rest of his life. he was sympathetic to trotsky but quarrelled with him because serge was convinced that the soviet union had degenerated into a new form of capitalist state with a new bourgeoisie, while trotsky still maintained that the soviet union was a still basically a "workers' state" held captive by a top-heavy bureaucracy.
finally, macauley's history of england, a very old classic which needs no explanation.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
In addition to the books I mentioned in my previous message, I'm now also reading Life, an autobiography from the apparently immortal (so far) Keith Richards (with help from a writer named James Fox). So far, it's a compelling read. He begins with a very funny story of a completely bungled attempted drug bust during a U.S. tour by the Stones in the '60s. What fun!
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
Yes, it was Analog. I had forgotten which pulp it was but I read them in the original magazine back in the 70's. Looking at the wikipedia entry, I also am reminded that part of the story arc was a series of three stories centered on fixing the issues with a planet that had a religion that was so opposed to birth control that they were starving themselves.
Every time he fixed them up, they would just breed more until they needed him again. Finally, they were on the verge of interstellar war to gain new resources. So he gave them the ultimate food source but with the side effect of irreversible sterility for 95% of the people who ate it.
If you like those stories, you may also want to look for the Proteus novels by Charles Sheffield.
Basically, he posits a medical technology called a regeneration tank that can heal any injury, up to and including severed limbs. However, it only works on humans. Animals cannot be regenerated. So humans who cannot regenerate are considered as genetically inferior.
On top of that, the tanks are being used to modify human bodies to survive in hostile environments such as the surface of Mars and the Oort comet cloud. I will leave the rest of the story out so that you can find out where it goes but it is basically a detective story about what happens with certain aspects of the technology.
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I share your pain. I was out for 8 months and did two Certs (Network + and Security +) in the last 3 months just to add something new to my resume. As I landed a job with the JPL/NASA team in the Mojave I can say it worked. Next I'll be trying to insinuate myself into JPL Security in Pasadena, god willing.
Oh, what a giveaway!
I hope you click with someone who appreciates your talents.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
Good for you. I hate job hunting. Thanks, and something will turn up.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.