Month: December 2011

Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by Douglas Kenrick (Audiobook)

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I should, before reviewing, disclaim that this was a free book from Librarything, which I got on the condition that I review it. Douglas Kenrick’s Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity Are Revolutionizing Our View of Human Nature was, on the whole, a very enjoyable audiobook. Generally, Kenrick does a good job of bringing together his personal experiences and the research he and others have done — both pointing towards very interesting insights into human nature. This is especially interesting given Kenrick’s unusual background (at least, unusual for an academic): his …

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Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews, ed. Chris de Vito

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Probably one of the last books I’ll read in 2011, I actually worked my way through this book slowly. Not because it’s not interesting — though, if you’ve done any research on Trane before, you’ve seen some of it already, and there is a certain amount of unavoidable repetition — but because I was busy, and wanted to take the book slow. The impression it gives of Coltrane as an adult is somewhat vague in some ways, but it’s a wonderful look at how others reacted to him… which I suppose is partly because of how Coltrane presented himself to …

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Happy Newtonmass

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So it’s Newtonmass. I hope it is (or was, depending on your time zone and when you read this) fun for you all. We had dinner last night with Miss Jiwaku’s cousin and her family, a gathering to which we brought a little of my beer, and cookies and smoked almonds we’d made that day. Today had a couple of friends over. The food included all kinds of wonderful things. (For my part, I made the caramelized carrot soup and smoked peppers stuffed with rice and cheese. Miss Jiwaku made braised spinach and maki — Japanese-styled sushi rolls. We collaborated …

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John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection

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Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up —  where he grew up, that is — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …

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Is it Too Much to Ask For…

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… that, despite the nonexistence of an afterlife, despite all odds, somewhere out there a bunch of recently-departed souls are caught in a lineup, the processing of the world’s dead being backlogged, and Christopher Hitchens has just looked back and noticed that, lo and behold, amid many bedraggled, starved people stands the ghost of Kim Jong Il, in full North Korean military-leisure suit regalia, and that Hitchens turns around and strides up to him confidently, and bitchslaps the unliving crap out of Kim until his ghostly body collapses in the pile of useless feces that the man always truly was? …

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Movetoamend

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I’ve been thinking a lot of these things since the early 90s: I’m obviously not the only one. This is salutary. I think there needs to be more than just this. I think we need to rein in corporations to the point where they’re in service to human beings. I think it should be illegal to run a company where a percentage share of the profit, and of the responsibility, goes to every employee. Maybe not a huge percentage, but a percentage. We like the idea of democracy: it’s time to apply it to corporate structure, too — that is, …

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Getting Pickled

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So, lately, I’ve had a few experimental fermentations going on. One of them is a simple revisiting of the sauerkaraut I made last year. It’s a much smaller batch, and made with non-iodized salt, but with one difference: Yeah, I used red cabbage. I salted it in exactly the way I had the white cabbage, but to my surprise, the cabbage didn’t sweat as much, and there wasn’t much brine. Probably it’s because I used only one small head of red cabbage, not two very large heads of green cabbage. In any case, the problem was easy to solve: I …

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One For the Morning Glory by John Barnes

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One For the Morning Glory book cover image

John Barnes is one of those genre writers I’d heard of, but never happened to read until now. Oddly enough, he’s more well known for his SF work, but the book I stumbled upon, and decided to read, was his foray into the realm of magical adventure. Not epic fantasy, mind: One For the Morning Glory was intended as the second in a trilogy (of which neither first nor third got written, from what I can tell) it is as far from epic fantasy as can be. Rather, it is a lot like a fairytale, or maybe an existentialist’s version …

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… Made With Real Hops

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Those of you out there who like beer, know what hops are. Probably anyone reading this blog must know by know at least a little about the wonders of hops, those resinous flowers we’ve been using for hundreds of years to bitter, and sometimes to flavor and aromatize, our beer. Well, a few weeks ago Miss Jiwaku and I made an unusual use of hops: we made some hand soap with some old hops. I had a few grams of some old Willamette hops, and some very old Cascade leaf hops — though the later, I discovered, is old enough …

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Deus ex Pigritia, or Why You’d Better Not Get Me Started on Battlestar Galactica

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Inevitably, when someone hears that I am an SF writer, they immediately mentioned whatever SF things they happen to know about or like, expecting I, too, will like it. This is awkward because I usually rather hate their favorite book, TV show, or movie. Not all SF fans, or SF authors, like all SF. It’s a simple thing to say. But it’s another thing to explain it, and they usually seem to find the fact so unbelievable that an explanation seems wanted. My explanation almost never satisfies them, but maybe that’s because I haven’t rehearsed my sound bite. After all, …

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