Behold my true form, and despair!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:01 AM | Comments (265)
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The Lord of the Rings Series

So I just finished re-reading the entire Lord of the Rings series including The Hobbit (~1400 pages). And it still holds up very well. I think the last time I read the whole thing was back in the early 80s and I was probably too young at the time to fully appreciate a lot of the story nuances.

Two things I noticed during this read - one is that The Hobbit has a lot of foreshadowing and hints of the grander story sprinkled throughout it. Which would be pretty amazing of Tolkien to have dropped clues of things that wouldn't appear for another 10 years and 1000 pages later.

But it turns out that after he finished the LotR trilogy, he went back and edited The Hobbit to make it more consistent with the later story. Still maintaining the consistency between the layers of the story over such a long tale is quite an achievement.

Another thing is that Tolkien really dwells on describing the landscapes in full detail down the type of rocks and shrubbery the characters pass through. This was annoying the first time I read the series since I was in a rush to get to the action and find out what happened next. This time I could appreciate it as way of placing the reader into the book's world and giving you the feeling that you truly were traveling on an difficult and epic journey.

Plus having read some of the early fantasy that inspired Tolkien (like William Morris' The Well at the End of the World) I can see how it was common to make the geography practically a character in its own right.

So anyway if you haven't read the LotR series (even if you've seen the movies), go read them. You won't regret it. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:02 PM | Comments (577)
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If you're interested.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (335)
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"... I would call my mom and get ... hometown gossip... more recently [my Mom] began peppering our conversation with red-hot remarks about President Obama."
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:09 PM | Comments (416)
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A few new books this week.

First up is Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s classic novel A Canticle For Leibowitz. (I had to replace my old paperback copy, which finally fell apart from having been read so many times.) This book is usually classed as "science fiction" or "post-apocalyptic fiction", but it defies easy categorization. It's easily one of the best novels of the 20th century, in my view. (A good companion volume to this book is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.)

I like hardboiled detective fiction, especially from the old Hammet/Chandler era. (Though my appreciation of Dash's work suffered when I found out he was a goddamned Commie.) Not many writers still work in this genre in the present day, and the best of these is James Ellroy of L. A. Confidential fame. But this is not his best book, in my view: his best is The Big Nowhere. If you like your dames sultry and lippy, your crimes bloody, and your cops unafraid of a brutality beef, than Ellroy is your man.

Augustine's City of God is one of those essential books that comprise one of the foundation stones of the Western world. It is at once a book of theology, history, and politics (Augustine of Hippo originally intended it as a defense of Christianity against those who thought the Christians had brought down the Roman Empire). The book ended up being more about the eternal conflict between good and evil, between the desires of a man's body versus that of his spirit, and the difficulty of living a good life on a fallen earth. I'm always shocked at how few high schools or colleges assign this book any more (or if they do, they relegate it to "Religious Studies" courses when it should more properly be in the Western Civ curriculum). It's not exactly an easy read, but it's very worthwhile.

What's everyone else reading?

Posted by: Monty at 05:21 AM | Comments (254)
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Woke to a few inches of fresh Global Warming this morning. When is this crap going to end?

Video of more smelly Wisconsin hippies below the fold to get your blood pumping as you await the book thread. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:12 AM | Comments (184)
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Now with 100% more LoafDog!

Practically no LoafDog below the fold... more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:23 PM | Comments (619)
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Ace called it correctly a long time ago:

We liveblogged the first show and it was pretty clear that Kathleen Parker 1, had nothing much to say except about her One Big Topic of Sarah Palin (and nothing new there, either), and, even if you're whoring for ratings, you can't talk about her every night, can you?, and 2, was a wallflower without any command of the studio and without the sort of aggressive confidence needed to be a broadcaster.

John Ziegler makes similar points in this piece for Meidaite. Ziegler was the guest several months ago who confronted Parker about her role in the "assassination" of Palin as a candidate during the 2008 election cycle and elicited the odd response from Parker that she "didn't take part in [the assassination]; she led it." (Video below the fold.) He predicted the failure of the show then.

But the primary reason why the program couldn’t work is also the very reason Parker got the gig in the first place. She was clearly hired because she was perceived as a “conservative” who was willing to vigorously attack Palin, while not holding any particularly strong conservative opinions which might offend the largely liberal CNN audience. It is hardly a secret that the best (and perhaps only) way for an unknown or career-challenged conservative to achieve mainstream media acceptance is to be a sellout to their supposed cause (just ask Arianna Huffington, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, David Frum, Michael Smerconish, or Joe Scarborough, to name only a few).

Criticizing Palin (along with endorsing Obama) has quickly become the most reliable path to instant notoriety/credibility for ambitious “conservatives,” and Parker became the poster child for this phenomenon. . . .

However, there is apparently a downside side to getting a show this way. Much like a guy who spends all his cash to get the girl and has nothing left to keep her, Parker had no capital with which to make the show a ratings success. . . .

With no spark, no friction, no talent, and no audience base, Parker brought nothing to the table, and the show was clearly doomed.

(Emphasis mine.) As Ace said during the liveblog that first night, it was almost like Parker was right there and part of the action.

More at the link, including some first-class snark. Like Ziegler says, the show's failure wasn't an Earth-shattering prediction. I think we all knew it was going to be a dud. What is strange is that CNN wasn't able to foresee the outcome more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:57 PM | Comments (90)
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Here's a linkfest for news about shale gas, oil from shale rock,tar sands and such. We keep finding more of it. It'd be nice if we were able to USE more of it in the US. They seem pretty excited about shale gas in the UK, Europe and Israel.


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US proved natural gas, crude oil reserves soar

* Gas reserves rise most in U.S. history

* Technology advances, not new fields, boost reserves


U.S. natural gas reserves increased by the most in history last year, and crude reserves also rose, as companies drilled frantically into shale rock
formations with new technology...

U.S. net proved crude oil reserves rose 9 percent, or 1.8 billion barrels, to 22.3 billion barrels in 2009. Texas saw its proved oil volumes rise most, by 529 million barrels, or 11 percent.

North Dakota, home of the oil-rich Bakken Shale formation, saw its reserves jump by a whopping 83 percent, or 481 million barrels.
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:52 PM | Comments (179)
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Just got back from what was billed by MoveOn.org as part of a nationwide union solidarity protest. In fact, it was really a bunch of loosely-connected leftist groups complaining about the usual suspects: corporations, the rich, Speaker Boehner, the Tea Party, and men. Probably between 400 and 500 people showed up and stayed for about 45 minutes.

I was there with fellow undercover cons @mamaswati, @alwaysonoffense, and @mattdeluca (who you might like to follow on twitter). Photos below are accurately tagged, so if you "borrow" one, please credit the appropriate photographer.
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:02 PM | Comments (133)
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