Author Archives: Craig

King George: What Was His Problem? Review

King George: What Was His Problem? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About the American Revolution, Sheinkin. Non-fiction. This was a very quick read that I picked up on the recommendation of my librarian. Sheinkin has apparently contributed to several textbooks, and textbook editors weren’t interested in what he considered the most interesting quotes and anecdotes he found while researching, so he’s making them available in a series of non-text history books. It reads a little younger than middle school to me, but that may be an effort to broaden its appeal to more than just the readers (i.e., those who read for pleasure). I now know far more about the War of American Independence than I ever have. It won’t last long, but it was pleasant to get there.

For no good reason

Lifehacker yesterday posted an item about yourfonts.com, where you can make a TrueType font out of your handwriting. Here‘s what mine looks like
The yourfonts site was overwhelmed yesterday, but is probably settling down somewhat now. One font aspect that they don’t let you build is ligatures, which is a bummer for me because I’m terribly fond of my “th” ligature.

Man with the Strange Head Review

The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories, Breuer ed. Page. Yes. When I first put a hold on this, I missed that all the works were by the same writer. I don’t know whether that would have changed my decision to read it, but I’m glad it turned out as it did. The stories were written between 1927 and 1940, with well over half prior to 1932, making this pretty early indeed as modern sf goes. One of the “stories”, Paradise and Iron, is a novel in its own right, and one of my favorite works in the volume. Several of its themes are revisited elsewhere in Breuer’s work, but it was a creditable piece for a time before Colossus, much less ENIAC.
I was forced by its sheer tedium to skip Page’s introduction, though I did refer to it to see what he had to say about the history of each story. I was interested that he described a Breuer story as “less bigoted” in its treatment of immigration/integration panic than some other works of the time (Page doesn’t seem certain whether the story is using alien invasion as a metaphor, but it sure seemed like it to me). I’m a little tempted to see if I can find any David H Keller, to see what would be more bigoted than this:

The Earth women liked the Martians, who though weak, were good-looking and certainly had an effective way with the ladies.…

or

“I have the highest respect for the individual Martian gentlemen whom I know personally.… But such Martians are exceptions.”

or

“The children of these bi-racial unions are the worst outcasts of all, accepted by neither race.… They are physically unfit for labor and are not accepted among the intellectual classes; they sink into the utmost depths of degradation. I shudder to think of them. What shall we do with them?”

The dialog, of course, expresses a character’s view, but nothing in the narration challenges that view.

Mmm… chocolate

As implied by a recent twitter/twitpic update (and a less recent one, too), I’ve taken to relatively high levels of cacao in my chocolate lately. This is partly due to Sandra Boynton’s advice (as reported by a local chocolate reviewer and friend of the Collective), but also because chocolate packaged as baking chocolate is far less expensive than the same strength of chocolate from the same manufacturer packaged for eating.
One slight drawback of the 100% cacao chocolate, though, is that it doesn’t go as well with salty snacks; I find, in fact, it goes best with something a little sweet.

More spam observations

Since we moved, I think we may have picked up some more address harvesters—or maybe the blocks of IPs I banned via .htaccess at the other place were keeping them out. Anyway, I am a little surprised that address at example.org is getting spam (not really example.org, but you get my point), while otheraddress at example dot org is not. I had thought the harvesters were smart enough to see through “dot”, but so far they are demonstrating that they are not. It’s still early days, of course; we haven’t even had our first comment spam attempt.

More chaos, new order

If you’re reading this, you’re seeing us at our new hosting outfit with our new WordPress software. A bunch of internal links will be broken for a good long time, but we’re hoping that this will be the last time that happens.

The Code Review

The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-At-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct, Bernstein. Non-fiction. I can’t say I’m surprised, though I am a bit disappointed, that sports writing seems to be far more about the sports than about the writing. If I never see the phrase “For whatever the reason” again, I will never again be irritated by it (first, it’s pleonastic: it adds no content to the sentence. Second, it’s ungrammatical: it should be “For whatever reason” or “Whatever the reason”). It showed up in both Bernstein’s text and the interviews, so either he re-wrote his subjects or everybody in sports talks similarly. Really, it could go either way. Complaints aside, though, the book does a reasonable job with its topic—and now, back to the complaints—though it could have accomplished its job in many fewer pages.