Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Friday, December 28, 2007
 
Journalist Mistakes Inflation for Interest
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel carries a regrettable story about a little old lady who lost her "life savings" of about $20,000 because she left it in the form of a check in a safe deposit box for 22 years (regrettable both because her life savings was only $20,000 and because she lost it). Tucked inside, we have a stunning display of simplistic Web research and basic misunderstanding of economics:
    Willie Floyd said she hadn't thought about the interest she was losing by not having it in a standard savings account. The interest she would have earned could vary, but a calculator provided online by the Federal Reserve Bank indicates that if she had bought something for $19,700.22 in 1985, it would cost her $38,480.79 to buy the same goods or services, based on the Consumer Price Index.
Bravo, Marie Rohde, your economics teacher must be proud!

You don't have an economics teacher? The deuce you say!


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:51 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
 
Holiday Greetings
Happy Some-Assembly-Required Day.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:45 PM   1 comments
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
 
The Best Christmas Gift Ever!
I have been tagged by a meme! I don't know if I have ever been done so before. Thanks to St. Wendeler of Another Rovian Conspiracy, I've answered the following:
  1. Wrapping or gift bags?
    Gift wrapping. I was a bagger for a couple years in college, so it's hard for me to respect the "effort" required to put something in a bag.

  2. Real or artificial tree?
    I'd prefer real, but the wife is highly allergic, so we have a very realistic artificial tree. So realistic that it drops needles.

  3. When do you put up the tree?
    This year, we put the tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving, we put lights on it about two weeks after, and we put ornaments on it about a week and a half later. We wanted to acclimate our child to its presence slowly.

  4. When do you take the tree down?
    Sometime immediately after the first of the year.

  5. Do you like eggnog?
    I did as a child, but I can't stand it now. Maybe I got really drunk from it at age seven, blacked out, and developed the aversion then.

  6. Favorite gift received as a child?
    Commodore 128 received in 8th grade, followed by Atari 2600 I received in 6th grade.

  7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, but we don't put it out because we have cats who would drop it from wherever we would put it onto the aforementioned child.

  8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
    Come on, I don't think there is such a thing as a bad Christmas gift. However, in 2005, I got the Bad Cat desk calendar from my mother in law, and it was so inappropriately not funny that my coworker and I started most weekday mornings groaning over the captioned photographs of cats. The humor relied a lot on drug and sexual innuendo. I thought it was so bad that I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a 2007 version.

  9. Mail or e-mail Christmas cards?
    Mail. E-mail, contrary to what the SEC would have you believe, does not provide permanent artifacts.

  10. Favorite Christmas movie?
    As you know, gentle reader, it is Lethal Weapon; I posted my top five list in 2003.

  11. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
    Whenever I first see something that I think someone I know would like for Christmas. But mostly in October/November.

  12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
    My mother's pumpkin pie. My mother can cook only one or two things well. This is one of them, and it always pushes my gluttony button.

  13. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
    Colored lights this year; I think we used white last year. Whichever I find first, I guess.

  14. Favorite Christmas song?
    I like Mannheim Steamroller's "Deck the Halls" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Another winter favorite is Dean Martin's "Baby, It's Cold Outside".
I have not, however, tagged anyone else. Sometimes, you can take the Scrooge to the meme, but you cannot make him by a goose for Cratchit.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:01 PM   1 comments
Monday, December 24, 2007
 
Shoulda Been Blogged, Knowing How It'd Make You Feel
A very Perry Christmas:



(Link seen on Nice Deb courtesy of Ace of Spades HQ which I got to from the blogroll on Musings from Brian J. Noggle.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:05 PM   0 comments
Sunday, December 23, 2007
 
With Kindergarten A Few Years Off, I Have Time To Get In Shape
22


(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:11 AM   1 comments
Saturday, December 22, 2007
 
If You Build It, and They Don't Come, Then What?
David Nicklaus, my favorite St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist, had a two part series this week about the problems that the Renaissance Hotel in downtown St. Louis faces as its presence and that of the relatively new, absolutely expensive convention center hasn't led to its financial success (Part I, Renaissance hotel troubles reflects woes facing local convention business and Part II, More space isn't the solution for Renaissance).

I don't understand the current municipal government drive to turn empty space into empty buildings (or used space, through the magic of eminent domain and sweetheart deals and tax incentives for private "tick on a tax payer" businesses). Aren't there enough examples of these sorts of failed projects or empty shopping centers to perhaps make our great white fathers (of whatever color) abandon the principals of private property and free market a little less gleefully?

Nah, I doubt it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:31 PM   0 comments
 
Legislation Cannot Resolve Anecdotal Accidents
The slide into a nanny state can actually be a slippery slope when they want to legislate sled safety:
    "The challenge that we face is that it's not the norm - nor is it likely to ever be the norm - for kids to wear helmets while sledding," said Bridget Clementi, injury and prevention manager at Children's Hospital and Health System.
Ah, but the government and child safety advocates how to make a norm, don't they.

This story has everything that goes into policy decisions in contemporary America:
  • An anecdote.

      It was close to midnight at Lowell Park, which has one of the best sledding hills in the county, and Ziebell, who had just turned 20, jumped on a snow tube with a friend. The friend fell off while they were zooming down the hill, but Ziebell continued and slammed into a tree trunk, splitting open her skull and crushing her left arm.


  • A spurious statistic that falls apart given any thought.

      Area trauma centers are reporting the usual snowboarding wrist fractures, sledding concussions and ankle injuries, but Children's Hospital of Wisconsin already has admitted three children since Nov. 1 for sledding injuries. That's more in-patient sledding accident victims than in the five-month season last year.


    Keep in mind, it's been a very snowy two month period and don't consider that swimming pool drownings are down a touch in the same period.
And, of course, the impulse to legislate away any possibility of accident, regardless of cost or impact.

Sure, the article doesn't advocate legislation directly, but these things always start this way, don't they?


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:17 PM   0 comments
 
Only Unsympathetic Because It's Never Happened to Me Because I'm Not HOT!
Ex-mayoral aide claims lawyer harassed her:
    A former Milwaukee mayoral aide whose sex-harassment case forced then-Mayor John Norquist out of politics has filed a sex-related complaint against the lawyer who represented her in the Norquist case.
At some point, you have to wonder if this continues to happen to her because she's a repeated victim or because she's just so irresistible and unable to say, "No, thank you, I gave at the office."


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:14 PM   0 comments
 
Stay Away from the Fishy Granola
One of these is not like the others, I hope:

The fishy granola
You know as well as I do that some athletic cat owner is going to find himself or herself bonking miles away from civilization and will have to decide whether to eat a pouch of this instead of the granola or power bar he or she thought he or she grabbed from the cabinet this morning. He or she will.

All of them will.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:04 PM   0 comments
 
Glenn Reynolds, The Instapundit, Endorses Waterboarding
Finally, Andrew Sullivan has a reason to blare. Glenn Reynolds has publicly acknowledged his support for waterboarding in this post:
    SINUS PROBLEMS? Wash them away! Can it really be that simple?
What's he talking about? Nasal interrogation:
    Nasal irrigation is a personal hygiene practice which involves flooding the nasal cavity with warm saline solution. The goal of nasal irrigation is to clear out excess mucus and particulates and moisturize the nasal cavity.
That sounds like waterboarding to me.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:56 PM   0 comments
Friday, December 21, 2007
 
Book Report: Mind Prey by John Sandford (1995)
As I move the books and the MfBJN home office, I've shuffled through my to-read shelves and have found a couple of books that I would have surely read by now if I'd known they were present. This book is one of them. The Lucas Davenport novels are pretty good genre reads.

This book, from the middle 1990s, details Davenport's search for a madman who has kidnapped a shrink and her two daughters and keeps them hidden in a root cellar in the country. Davenport marshals his team (sorry, Deputy Chiefs his team) to find the perp and to hopefully rescue as many as possible.

Davenport novels have a good sense of the upper Midwest, but like in Mortal Prey, someone in the know will find a jarring inaccuracy. In that book, it was little things about St. Louis; in this book, it's when discussing GenCon (whose t-shirt the bad guy was seen wearing). Davenport explains it off-handedly that it's a gaming convention in Lake Geneva. Although the name comes from Lake Geneva, the convention was held in Milwaukee at the time. Take my word for it. Before I was living in St. Louis to prepare my John Sandford fact-checking abilities, I lived in Milwaukee and attended GenCon to hone my John Sandford fact-checking abilities.

Regardless of those occasional devil chords of obvious problems (which probably include things about which I don't know, so I don't hear the krang!), the books remain readable and enjoyable, and I'll get around to the one remaining Sandford on my shelves (Dead Watch) one of these days.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:16 AM   1 comments
 
Book Report: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris (2007)
I read about this book in an Entertainment Weekly at the dentist's office, and since I used to work for an interactive marketing agency, I had to have it. So I ordered a brand new book for over $1. Which explains why I'll avoid Entertainment Weekly in the future; it tempts me to order expensive books that I might enjoy.

I did enjoy this book. It details the story of a Chicago ad agency (real ad agency, not interactive) that's slumping immediately after 2000. Told in the first person plural (we this, we that), it nevertheless breaks individual characters out to identify what role they play in the process.

It's enjoyable and comedic, but not quite completely on the money in describing the day to day that I would expect from a failing company. I mean, the book describes some office nuttiness and the dread of lay offs that trickle out over the course of days or weeks while people continue their underemployed shenanigans. Brothers and sisters, in most cases, layoff will happen pretty chop-chop when things are as bad as they're portrayed in this book. Also, the characters are just a shade too whacky. The narrative voice takes a while to get used to, and I'm not sold on the ultimate sentences that wind it up--I don't know what those are supposed to mean.

But it's a good enough book, and a literary read at that. Who would have known?

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:01 AM   0 comments
 
Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, Seeks to Disenfranchise the Visually Impaired
How else can we take this column?
    I've used this column in the past as a means of issuing impassioned pleas to product designers. Now it's time for another, at least as heartfelt as the ones in the past: Please, keep things quiet. Or at least give me the option of doing so.

    I've noticed that over the past few years, more and more of my appliances want to tell me things, whether I want to hear them or not, something they accomplish via a variety of beeps and buzzes.
He then tells manufacturers to knock it off. For his own comfort, he would deprive the visually impaired of the ability to know when their dishes are done, when their laundry is done, or when their power to their televisions has gone out. Or he would give pranksters the ability to deprive the visually impaired of those same abilities.

Friends, I know the world we're living in and its march to a cacophonous new world where silence must be broken to better serve the minority amongst us who cannot see or cannot see well. At a nearby intersection, the crosswalk now blares "Wait!" or "Walk sign is now on to cross" along with an incessant beeping to draw the infrequent visually impaired person to the push-to-cross button. It never stops, and it insists upon making its noise all the time for the benefit of the few.

Much like the occasional news story about visually impaired people who are endangered by the silence of hybrid vehicles. When they get their way, all hybrids will be outfitted with internal combustion engine sound simulators so that the minority is not endangered. Meanwhile, other minorities will continue to agitate for sound abatement expenditures to counter internal combustion engine sounds and the eventual loud safety mechanisms.

Me, I am preparing for the beeping, blaring future by buying ear-plug stock and turning up the music in my headphones so I can deaden my ear nerve endings.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:21 AM   1 comments
Thursday, December 20, 2007
 
The Miser Chronicles
As one of our biggest home improvement projects in our previous house, sadly enough, we put drawer liners in our kitchen drawers. Surely that added $1000 to the selling price of the home and recouped more than 100% of our investment for the improvement in the sale price--if the purchaser opened the drawers and didn't rip out the marble-looking liner as part of a complete remodel.

Because I prefer to err on the side of too much, I bought a little more than a roll and a half more of the contact paper than I needed. I injected the complete roll and the partial roll into the second-hand contact paper market through the underground economy, meaning I sold them for a buck or something at a garage sale. However, I found some scrap in my basement that represented some cuttings from the partial roll.

Throw them out? What kind of miser would I be then? I mean, sure, I don't have a a drawer or two of suitable dimensions to use this contact paper as nature intended it, but I could find some use for it.

And I did:

Christmas gifts wrapped in drawer liner


Now that's Christmas wrapping paper you can reuse.

I didn't remove the adhesive backing, so the gifts' recipient can line two small drawers or wrap gifts herself. Given that she's a miser, too, I wouldn't put it past her. However, since it's my inheritance she's protecting, go, Mom!

You trained me well.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:13 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
 
Might I Suggest Poison?
Researchers seek keys to slow homicides

No doubt, this search into the obvious is government-funded.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:09 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
 
Wherein A Children's Book Creeps Me Out
When we get to the L in The Alphabet Book (Bright & Early Board Books™), I get creeped out:

Lion with conspiratorial wink with lamb


There's no reason for that lion to wink that doesn't cause me disquiet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:00 PM   1 comments
Friday, December 14, 2007
 
Mitchell Report: Perspective
Remember the cocaine scandal of the 1980s and all of the players implicated in it?

Keith Hernandez and some other guys.

There's your long range impact of the report, fellows. People who need to run hysterical daily columns about events in the sports world today shriek that this will impact players forever and predict fire and brimstone for those implicated, but in twenty years, it won't be a footnote, even. Just something mentioned parenthetically in some sports biographies and may be included in the index.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:50 PM   0 comments
 
Coming Soon
Coming soon to a newsstand near you:

Brian J. in History Magazine
Click for full size


Seriously. Any time I'm published in a magazine you can get in your local Barnes and Noble, I'm thrilled. I would prefer to get jaded, though.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:48 PM   2 comments
Thursday, December 13, 2007
 
When Is It Okay For A Policeman To Lie?
According to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, it's okay when the police officer lies to Federal investigators in an immigration matter:
    The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission voted Wednesday to overturn the firing of Police Officer Alexander Ayala, even though he lied to a federal agent as his brother was being investigated for adopting a false identity.

    ...
    Ayala's firing came after an internal investigation alleged that he had lied to immigration officials when asked May 30 about his brother's citizenship status. He told a federal agent that his brother, Oscar Ayala-Cornejo, was a Mexican citizen living in Mexico, and that he had not spoken to him for a long time, according to testimony provided by witnesses before the commission Wednesday.

    "At that moment in time, I was being a son and brother," Ayala told commissioners Wednesday night as he pleaded for his job. "I was an immigrant, and it's hard being an immigrant here."
The rule of law takes another hit, or at least the perception does. When you have an accumulation of stories wherein suspects surreptitiously recording their own interrogations catch police detectives perjuring themselves, wherein police patrolmen are caught threatening to make up things to take citizens to jail by dashboard cameras in the citizens' cars, and wherein police officers are allowed to keep their jobs after lying in an investigation and in supporting lawbreaking by family members, you're facing an increasing suspicion on the part of the citizens that maybe the law enforcement officials aren't exactly looking out for the citizens and that, instead of being held to higher standards, are held to lower standards.

Maybe law enforcement professionalism isn't taking a hit. Perhaps the legislators' eagerness to add ever-increasing numbers of police to the streets hasn't actually lowered the standards for recruits or the training thereof. But the perception of rule of law, or lack thereof, will have a certain impact on citizenship, and not a good one.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:25 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
 
Asylum Granted in Louisiana
Man rescued from Mississippi

(I know, I don't have much these days but comments about headlines and book reports.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:02 PM   1 comments
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
 
Book Report: Dave Barry's Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides by Dave Barry (1994)
This book, originally published in 1994, reads something like a Lileks book. But before Lileks started with his books. And with more whackiness than general wit, which marks the difference between these two authors. In 1994, comparing a writer to Dave Barry would have been a great compliment; over a decade later, a blogger compliments Dave Barry by comparing his book to James Lileks. Meanwhile, somewhere in Indiana, a small blogger-reliant blogger has been compared to Brian Noggle, and no one noticed, and the blog disappeared shortly thereafter.

At any rate, this book looks at some things you can buy and makes some general mirth about them. Items include a pound of simulated human fat, a wire nose-opener, a can of pork brains, and a cutout of a police officer. Hilarity, Barry-esque hilarity, not Lileks-esque hilarity, ensues.

On a side note, Dave Barry makes one snarky remark about ubiquitousness of cellular phones. In 1994. Brother, you have no idea what's coming, do you? Not even in your most fevered Floridian dreams could you guess how well that quip would hold up at least a decade into the future.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:56 PM   0 comments
 
A Christmas Classic
Just like Andy Williams, but in medium res graphics:


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:06 AM   0 comments
Monday, December 10, 2007
 
Guess That Party, Republican Edition
Headline: Former state rep sentenced for fraud. Lead:
    Former State Rep. Nathan Cooper, somber and tearful in federal court, was fined $6,000 and sentenced to 15 months in prison today for an immigration fraud scheme that derailed his political and legal careers.
Oh, yeah, sounds like the same old game, ainna? We don't get the party affiliation until paragraph 8.
    The Cape Girardeau Republican pleaded guilty in August to one count each of visa fraud and making a false statement to the Department of Labor.
Has AP paid attention to the right-leaning blogosphere's game, or has it always let the party affiliation fall into the lesser paragraphs on some stories?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:26 PM   0 comments
Sunday, December 09, 2007
 
Weaker Dollar Hurts Manufacturers
Foreign manufacturers, that is:
    Missouri exports hit $12.8 billion last year, up 22 percent from 2005, and experts predict this year's export sales will be even higher. Illinois exports totaled $42.1 billion in 2006, up 17 percent from the year before. Canada, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom and China are the top export countries for both states.
Oddly enough, the story's headline, Local companies moving deeper into exporting, doesn't mention the effect the lower exchange rates have. The story itself does mention it, though:
    LaBounty and others attributed the recent growth in local exporting in part to the weak dollar, which has fallen more than 10 percent against a basket of currencies in November compared to the same time in 2006. What that means: The cost of U.S. goods is cheaper for companies and consumers abroad.
Still, one can see that this is a "good" economy story instead of a "bad" one, which no doubt would have mentioned the lower dollar in the headline.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:11 AM   1 comments
Saturday, December 08, 2007
 
The Man To Beat
William Gass, writing poobah at Washington University, has a home library of 20,000 books.

Of course, according to the sidebar, he's only getting about 30 new books a month, so I'm definitely on a pace to overtake him. Heck, on a good weekend in book fair season, I add 40 or 50.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:32 PM   0 comments
Friday, December 07, 2007
 
Book Report: Spill the Jackpot by A.A. Fair (1941, 1962)
Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason novels, used the pseudonym of A.A. Fair to write the Bertha Cool/Donald Lam series (a small set of 20+ books). This is somewhere early in the series, written in 1941 and re-released in the 1960s to capitalize on Gardner's grown popularity.

The book has all the earmarks of 40s pulp: a hard-boiled detective working on a convoluted plot involving a wealthy young man whose fiancee runs off before their marriage. The father, who disapproved of the marriage, might have had a hand in it, and he hires Cool and Lam to find out why the woman disappeared. The paterfamilias plants evidence he wants the detectives to find, but they go beyond the simple decoy to find the woman, much to the father's chagrin.

Not before a murder occurs, though, so the detective (Lam) needs to figure out who did it and square it to the best of his belief in justice.

The book's cock-eyed enough to make it interesting. The main character, Lam, isn't a good fighter, and every scrap he gets into, he loses. He also doesn't figure out everything just right, but he makes things as right as he can given his limitations.

This looks to be a cool series that I'll pursue in the future.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:30 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: It's Pat by Julia Sweeney and Christine Zandar (1992)
I don't know why I did this to myself. It's a book based on a Saturday Night Live skit that I didn't find particularly amusing. I mean, don't get me wrong, I hold onto SNL skits beyond normal bounds of sanity--after all, I saw Night at the Roxbury on its opening weekend and Ladies Man as soon as I could, but the Pat thing? Nah, I have dodged that particular movie with aplomb.

As you know, gentle reader, the Pat thing is a skit by Julia Sweeney, an SNL alum I remember fondly up until the point that I deconfuse her with Jan Hooks, who I thought was hot. The gag in the skit, the movie (I presume), and the book is that you don't know if Pat is a male or a female. So innumerable hours of skit time, movie time, and fictional decades in the book are spent by people trying to pin Pat down metaphorically or literally to find out.

I guess everyone needs a hobby.

So the book's schtick is that it's a scrapbook of Pat's life, written in such a way to avoid all pronouns. Um, that's it.

Well, it didn't take too long to peruse, anyway, and I probably only spent a quarter on it.

Why do I do this? So I can serve as a warning to you, gentle reader, and I hope you'll learn the lesson and not bother with this book.

Apparently, an ad at the back indicates that a similar book exists for Wayne's World. Oh, my.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:23 PM   0 comments
Thursday, December 06, 2007
 
Dog Joke
Dog walks into a telegraph office and writes out his telegram: "Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof."

The clerk says, "You can add another woof, since you're charged the same price for ten words."

The dog says, "But that wouldn't make any sense."

(I don't know why dog jokes get to me, but they do.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:44 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
 
Authorities Cite Drops of Jupiter At Scene As Evidence
Man talking on cell phone killed by Train in San Leandro

Dude, not only is it impolite to talk on a cell phone during a concert, but it's dangerous as well.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:36 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: The Book of Lists 1990s Edition by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace (1993)
I have been a fan of the Book of Lists series since my middle school days, when I bought the first Book of Lists as a paperback at a flea market just up the hill from the trailer park in which I lived. I've even read The People's Almanac, for crying out loud.

From a name that includes The People's Almanac, you can guess that the authors lean a little left of center. Now that they're flogging more recent history, it becomes more apparent. For example, the following list:

Presidents of the latter half of the 20th Century who were The Devil:
  1. Ronald Reagan
  2. Richard Nixon
  3. George Bush
  4. Ronald Reagan
  5. Ronald Reagan
Well, perhaps that list didn't appear in the book, but it could have. The authors rely a lot more on Exclusive for Book of Lists as their source material, which means that now that people have heard of it, the authors could send out a questionnaire instead of doing research. Not that all of the lists are like that; just a lot more than in previous editions, as I recollect.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, essentially the authors come up with chapter titles and then coalesece lists around them. Or vice versa, they come up with a bunch of trivia lists and make chapters to reflect it. Regardless, it's just a pile of trivia on a bunch of topics.

The book best serves as a sort of brainstorm for further research, as it's probably foolish to cite this book as a comprehensive or even correct source. Which could serve, ultimately, as the beginnings of many, many essays or articles if I don't just throw the book on my read shelves and forget about it.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 PM   1 comments
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
 
Book Report: The Enforcer by Andrew Sugar (1973)
This is not the paperback rendering of the Dirty Harry movie (this is). This is the first in the Objectivist-themed 70s paperback pulp series The Enforcer (I read the third book in the series, Kill City, in July).

It's more of what that one was about:
    I mean, imagine Atlas Shrugged if, instead of a cipher for Ayn Rand's fantasies of the perfect man, John Galt was an author who died somehow and was now living in a series of cloned bodies that deteriorate in 90 days while he works for the John Anryn Institute using his wits, his special power over his own life force (ki), and judo to take on all the Tooheys of the world (sorry, wrong book). But it's pulp fiction with a definite Objectivist theme.

    In between bursts of violent action, we have Penthouse letters sex scenes, the most graphic I've seen depicted in any paperbacks I assume were sold at drug stores. I mean, in some pulp, you get the "they're going to have sex" paragraph, "they're having sex" paragraph, and then the "it was good" paragraph. In this book, you get the he did that and she did this to his that and it was good thing. It starts graphic to the N-degree and then goes into the metaphorical several paragraphs later. Conforming with Ayn Rand's theory of sex, I reckon.

    Also, we get the speechifying, but in small doses, where the protagonist and his Institute compatriots go on about the power mongers who would rule over men. Nothing comparable to Galt's Speech, though, so the narrative is not impaired too badly.
What fun!

Author Alexander Jason is dying of inoperable stomach cancer at 38, but the John Anryn Institute has a solution and a means for him to chear death (the aforementioned cloning). On his first of his indentured service Enforcer missions, he's sent to a Caribbean island to blow up some oil wells, but the training wheels come off in a big hurry as he is inserted on the wrong beach and is captured right away. He awakens from weeks of torture to endure weeks more of torture before a second Institute mission arrives with a change in plans; instead of the oil wells, their primary focus is a secret lab in the jungle. And Jason has to deal not only with the new mission, but also a traitor in the midst and the breakdown of his clone body.

Probably the most possible fun I can have with this sort of pulp book, but your mileage may vary if you're not into Objectivism.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:25 PM   0 comments
Monday, December 03, 2007
 
Book Report: Momisms by Cathy Hamilton (2002)
I bought this book earlier this year at a garage sale here in Old Trees at the same time as I bought my Triumph TR books and New York At Night. So I got it cheap, which is good, and in an gluttonous frenzy of book buying, which is also good, for this is not a book I would have liked to have spent a pile for and to have bought by itself.

It's a little gift book, and a slightly amusing one at that. The author takes individual clichés uttered by mothers, places them one up on each page, and writes a couple sentences of exegesis. I would have said humorous exigesis, but it's mostly wry. I guess if you're looking for something for your mother for Christmas and cannot think of anything (especially if, unlike my mother, you cannot simply stick to power tools), perhaps you can share some warm memories and smiles with the Hamilton book. It's a gift book, that's what it's for. Not great insight into the origins of the Modern American-English language.

Think of it as Lileks without the photos and without the depth. Speaking of whom, he's got a new book out, Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery. Buy two copies today, and send one to me care of this station.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:12 PM   0 comments
 
It's Only Tricky In 2007
Here's an obvious Constitutional crisis in the making:
    Either way, a two-story mural decrying eminent domain is testing the boundaries of the First Amendment, sparking a federal lawsuit that challenges the city's intricate zoning code.

    At issue is a tricky constitutional dilemma — fighting clutter versus protecting free speech — that experts say could force St. Louis to rewrite its laws regarding outdoor signs.
When your basic Bill of Rights freedom runs counter to a municipal regulation applied to a political message advocating the limitation of government power, which should win? In 2007 America, apparently it's a toss-up. At least according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:35 AM   3 comments
Saturday, December 01, 2007
 
Wish I Was There
The Milwaukee Rep is going to stage all three parts of The Norman Conquests simultaneously. (Story.) Man, I wish I was in Milwaukee to see them; I love the plays. How do I know about them?
    This is not the first time the company has staged "The Norman Conquests." The Rep did the trilogy in the smaller Stiemke Theater 13 years ago.
I saw all three of them my senior year in college. Better yet, in the high point of my girl-chasing career, I took three different women to see them.

Unfortunately, a scheduling error made it so that I scheduled two of them to see "Table Manners", so I saw that one twice and had to take one of them to see a second play. Also unfortunately, they all wanted to be "just friends."


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:10 PM   0 comments
 
At Least It's Not Written In Text Message Speak
I haven't offered much commentary on the Scott Thomas Beauchamp Baghdad Diarist thing going on at The New Republic because I haven't found it that interesting, but apparently the editor of the magazine offers a long-winded reasoning for why they thought the fabulous, though disputed, claims were not untrue (Fog of War, link seen on Instapundit).

What strikes me most about the piece, though, isn't the tone or the high-handedness, but rather the sad indicators of what passes for shoe-leather journalism and fact checking by senior staff at a national magazine.

We've got Instant Messages rife with obscenity, written in the gibberish that passes for the communication by most people in that medium:
    TNR: where did you see the crypt keeper?

    Beauchamp: are you there?

    TNR: yes

    Beauchamp: the last thing i got was "where did you see the crypt keeper"

    TNR: yes

    Beauchamp: the dfac on falcon or chow hall, as it IS commonly called

    TNR: what about kuwait?

    Beauchamp: brb [be right back]

    Nine minutes of silence

    TNR: you there?

    Ten minutes of silence

    Beauchamp: ok just did a sworn statement

    TNR: about?

    Beauchamp: saying that i wrote the articles

    TNR: ok

    Beauchamp: theyre taking away my laptop

    TNR: fuck is this it for communication?

    Beauchamp: yeah and im fucked

    TNR: they said that?

    Beauchamp: because you're right the crypt keep WAS in Kuwait

    FUCK FUCK FUCK

    this is bad isnt it

    TNR: yes

    where in kuwait?

    Beauchamp: it did happen in kuwait

    Camp Beuhring

    tnr: why didn't you tell us that?

    Beauchamp: i thought it was on falcon

    till somebody here convinced me that it wasnt i just talked to [Soldier A] and he convinced me that it was in kuwait when i thought it was on falcon fuck

    TNR: if what you're saying is true it's not the end of the world

    Beauchamp: ok

    TNR: as long as we can confirm it

    Beauchamp: good

    i have to go like NOW though im so sorry

    TNR: are you gonna be able to talk again?

    Beauchamp: i hope so but i dont know

    thank you again for everything

    TNR: i didn't do anything

    what did you sign?
I mean, I know I am one of the six people in the world who use complete sentences and punctuation in IM conversations, but do we have to see how simpleton national media players can be?

Then, there's this bit:
    We'd left messages on his MySpace page for him to call.
Oh, goody. Postings on MySpace. Just like Woodward and Bernstein, except without the effort or the result.

Maybe I'm holding them to too high of a standard for effort or for actual journalism as I would expect it in a national magazine of purportedly lofty reporting and commentary; that is, I didn't expect it to read like how two teenage girls discuss the latest pop idol.

But it probably is just me. After all, Foer says that the goal of the fact-checking was not to find out if the thing was true, but rather, if it was plausible:
    Facing the difficulties of verifying the piece, but wanting to ensure its plausibility before publication, we sent the piece to a correspondent for a major newspaper who had spent many tours embedded in Iraq. He had heard accounts of soldiers killing dogs with Bradleys. These accounts stuck with him because they represented a symbolic shift in the war. Iraqis regard dogs as annoying pests. At the beginning of the conflict, Americans made great efforts to befriend these mistreated mutts. It seemed telling that Americans now treated dogs with as little regard as Iraqis did. He considered Beauchamp's dog- hunting anecdote plausible.
And:
    Among others, we had called a forensic anthropologist and a spokesman for the manufacturer of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Nothing in our conversations with them had dissuaded us of the plausibility of Beauchamp's pieces.
Not implausible and based on the finest Internet gleanings available, they ran with the story.

Pardon me if I further assume that anything that appears in a national publication is only as reliable as a blog account or Wikipedia entry. Or if I don't bother to read national publications.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:57 PM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."