Reading List: 11/22/63

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:30:22 Z

King, Stephen. 11/22/63. New York: Scribner, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4516-2728-2. I gave up on Stephen King in the early 1990s. I had become weary of what seemed to me self-indulgent doorstops of novels which could have been improved by a sharp-pencilled...

Reading List: The Saturn V F-1 Engine

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:01:21 Z

Young, Anthony. The Saturn V F-1 Engine. Chichester, UK: Springer Praxis, 2009. ISBN 978-0-387-09629-2. The F-1 rocket engine which powered the first (S-IC) stage of the Saturn V booster, which launched all of the Apollo missions to the Moon and, as...

Heads up! Transit of Venus, 2012 June 5-6th

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:19:22 Z

Reading List: Survivors

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:41:32 Z

Rawles, James Wesley. Survivors. New York: Atria Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4391-7280-3. This novel is frequently described as a sequel to the author's Patriots (December 2008), but in fact is set in the same time period and broadens the scope from a...

Reading List: Early Warning

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:50:53 Z

Walsh, Michael. Early Warning. New York: Pinnacle Books, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7860-2043-0. This is the second novel in the author's “Devlin” series of thrillers. When I read the first, Hostile Intent, I described it as a “tangled, muddled mess” and concluded...

Reading List: The Gun

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 21:28:58 Z

Chivers, C. J. The Gun. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7432-7173-8. Ever since the introduction of firearms into infantry combat, technology and military doctrine have co-evolved to optimise the effectiveness of the weapons carried by the individual soldier....

Tom Swift and His Air Scout Now Online

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:56:40 Z

The twenty-second installment of the Tom Swift saga, Tom Swift and His Air Scout, is now posted in the Tom Swift and His Pocket Library collection. As usual, HTML, PDF, PDA eReader, and plain ASCII text editions suitable for reading...

Reading List: Moneymakers

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:29:45 Z

Tarnoff, Ben. Moneymakers. New York: Penguin, 2011. ISBN 978-1-101-46732-9. Many people think of early America as a time of virtuous people, hard work, and sound money, all of which have been debased in our decadent age. Well, there may have...

Reading List: Anomaly

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:15:57 Z

Cawdron, Peter. Anomaly. Los Gatos, CA: Smashwords, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4657-7394-4. One otherwise perfectly normal day, a sphere of space 130 metres in diameter outside the headquarters of the United Nations in New York including a slab of pavement and a...

Reading List: In the Garden of Beasts

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:53:55 Z

Larson, Erik. In the Garden of Beasts. New York: Crown Publishers, 2011. ISBN 978-0-307-40884-6. Ambassadors to high-profile postings are usually chosen from political patrons and contributors to the president who appoints them, depending upon career Foreign Service officers to provide...

Reading List: Kiloton Threat

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:25:14 Z

Boykin, William G. and Tom Morrisey. Kiloton Threat. Nashville: B&H Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8054-4954-9. William G. Boykin retired from the U.S. Army in 2007 with the rank of Lieutenant General, having been a founding member of Delta Force and served...

The Paleo Diet: One Year On

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:59:59 Z

One year ago today I began to adopt the “paleo”, “primal”, or “ancestral” diet after first reading Loren Cordain's The Paleo Diet and, later, Arthur De Vany's The New Evolution Diet. Both books come to much the same conclusions, albeit...

Reading List: Currency Wars

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:18:50 Z

Rickards, James. Currency Wars. New York: Portfolio / Penguin, 2011. ISBN 978-1-591-84449-5. Debasement of currency dates from antiquity (and doubtless from prehistory—if your daughter's dowry was one cow and three goats, do you think you'd choose them from the best in your...

Reading List: How the Hippies Saved Physics

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:01:08 Z

Kaiser, David. How the Hippies Saved Physics. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-07636-3. From its origin in the early years of the twentieth century until the outbreak of World War II, quantum theory inspired deeply philosophical reflection as...

Recipes: Jamaican Jerk Paleo Meatloaf

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:09:18 Z

Here is a further modified version of the Fourmilab Plausibly Paleo Meatloaf recipe which is more spicy and hence interesting. This is a recipe by and for hotheads—if you don't like spicy food, give this one a pass. If you're...

Fourmilog: None Dare Call It Reason