Something To Fill The Time

July 25th, 2011

I know, I know, I haven’t been posting. It’s summer, so there’s no school (and therefore no Tales From the Classroom), and I’ve been watching the politics of the nation with that same sort of fascination as someone viewing a train wreck. For the most part, anyone who has read very many of my previous politics posts will already know what I think about the current debacle in Washington, so there’s very little point in me inflicting my views on others. My cousin has been pestering me off and on to go back to posting book reviews of the stuff I read, so I should probably do some of that.

On going back and looking through my old posts, I realized that the last time I did a book post was nearly five years ago. I’ve read close to 350 books since then, and probably only remember bits and pieces of a lot of them. Still, I think it’s time to go back to at least some of them — if nothing else, I can pick out the really good ones from longer ago. So, without further ado:

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
This is a classic sci-fi / horror story from Ray Bradbury, who is better known for writing the (also excellent) Fahrenheit 451. There’s less of a sci-fi element to this one, and more of a horror theme.

The Exorcist – William Peter Blatty
There’s virtually no way you DON’T know about this story, even if you didn’t know it was originally a book before it was made into the movie. Definitely creepy.

The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history – John M. Barry
This is a particularly good book about the influenza of 1918 that devastated the world, and yet remains largely unknown today. (What, you didn’t know that there was a disease so bad within the past hundred years that they had to dig mass graves in Philadelphia?) The book also goes into detail about the men who fought the disease.

To the Vanishing Point – Alan Dean Foster
I really know nothing about this author, but this book was a really enjoyable read. It’s also a fantasy/horror type book. (Odd how many of those are popping up in my highlights list.)

Demian, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
These are all great psychological novels. Hesse is particularly good at placing his characters in a variety of historic periods and having them convey an individual developing a philosophical ideal in a psychologically realistic way – something that other great writers (like Ayn Rand) can’t quite master; usually it comes across as a tinny-sounding stereotype of a person. Hesse manages to make it convincing.

Well, it is starting to storm here, so I’ll wrap this post up for now – it looks like there will be more posts coming along, assuming I remember to make myself write them.

Money Saving

June 13th, 2011

I saw a link on Drudge about a school district saving money with sheep. I was quite surprised when opening the article to find out that I have actually worked for the district. (And no, for those who are wondering, it isn’t particularly a rural district – it would probably best be described as suburban.)

Bizarre Crime Of The Day

June 8th, 2011

Apparently Washington state has some nut jobs:

HOQUIAM, Wash. – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose and fled.

I’m not quite sure what to say about this one. “He’s not going to weasel out of this one” comes to mind…

What I See Every Day

May 13th, 2011

Besides my usual sub report the other day, I created a visual record of what I saw throughout the day. Click to enlarge:

The Rights of Hoosiers

May 13th, 2011

I certainly hope that this ruling is quickly overridden. Destroying fundamental rights that are as old as this one probably won’t go over well with Hoosiers, and unfortunately the Supreme Court of Indiana is apparently filled by appointment, rather than by election. Another case to keep an eye on.

Another Side Of The Story

May 3rd, 2011

Rewatching the coverage of the September 11 attacks the other day, it made me wonder what the reaction of those students in that classroom in Florida thought about being front and center while history was being made. Apparently the folks at Time were wondering that too.
It’s difficult for me to realize that the little kids you see in that footage are the same age as the students I have every day in class. It’s hard for me to imagine what growing up in the shadow of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers and never knowing things to ever be any other way would be like. I suppose it would be similar to the Cold War in that respect, but even I can only barely remember the end of that – I was about the same age when it ended that these kids were when the war on terrorism began. Definitely food for thought there.

UPDATE 5/5/2011 21.20: CNN has been taking a look at comments made by their users on this subject as well, and their coverage of that is also rather illuminating. There are definitely views from all sides on the issue.

Behind Bin Laden’s Killing

May 2nd, 2011

There’s an excellent article here about the organizations moving behind the scenes to make operations like the hunt for bin Laden successful. Definitely worth the read.

Inspiration 150 Years Old

April 9th, 2011

There’s quite a good story here from the New York Times – they have been covering the history of the Civil War 150 years on, and this article is an inspiring story of how slavery REALLY ended in America.

Overheard In Class

March 19th, 2011

“Effin’ Russia! All they have are guns and soup!”

Nuclear Physics

March 15th, 2011

Nuclear physics is something else that journalists really don’t seem to be that good at. Understandable, I suppose, but when they go out and start making sweeping (and blatantly false) claims about what’s going on with the nuclear reactors in Japan, it becomes a major problem. Reporting that the accidents were a result of “[losing] offsite air-conditioning power” or mentioning the “second nuclear explosion” (18,978 articles on that one!) is horribly and blatantly WRONG. Add to this the newest trend of reporting radiation dosages without putting them in perspective (bananas, anyone?), and voilà! A whole bunch of terrified people, afraid that the radiation from the Fukushima plants  is going to kill us all.

Finally today I found an article that actually explains what has been happening inside of these plants, and provides a basic understanding of how the reactor works, and what all of this means. I would, however, suggest not reading the comments that go with it. Some people seem to get quite snippy that a mechanical engineer would DARE to claim to know anything about the construction of machinery and how it handles stresses and external forces, and get even MORE upset when people try to point out that things aren’t as bad as some of the media are saying. You know, the typical troll stuff, only apparently trying to make people paranoid about the odds of them growing extra limbs or unwanted super powers.