DirtPriest's Challenge - Offensive Lineman Unite!

Howdy. I'm moving over here from my old 50 BC. Apparently 50 books is not a problem.

I welcome any sports conversation that gets brought up, on top of book discussion, so feel free to opine away. Am I a fool for passing on Adrian Peterson for Frank Gore in my fantasy draft? Are the Lions finally an acceptable member of the NFL? Will the 49ers win the NFC? Will Michigan Wolverines fans put up with Rich Rodriguez and his soft pansy defense coupled with a shotgun draw offense?

Let's not forget baseball, even though Jim Leyland has ruined the Tigers for a fourth straight season.

1. Darkwalker on Moonshae
2. Black Wizards
3. Darkwell all by Douglas Niles

This used to be one of my favorite fantasy trilogies, but I just cannot overlook the underwhelming simplicity of the Dungeons & Dragons game that this series seemed to be based on. Don't get me wrong, that campaign would have been fun to play a character in, and Niles' books are a good example of a D&D based novel. But to someone outside of a gaming table this trilogy would probably fall short of expectations. It's basically a simple story of a wayward and errant prince who falls in love with his childhood friend, becomes pals with a pickpocket who almost guts him right in chapter one, and has several adventures en route to uniting the fractured tribes of the Moonshae Isles, before claiming the crown and gaining the respect and wisdom that go with it.

The trilogy is set in the Forgotten Realms, which is a massive shared world that has been a staple in D&D circles since the late 1980's and has a massive amount of published depth available to gamers. There are numerous novels by an almost as numerous list of authors, the Drizzt books by R.A. Salvatore seem to be clearly the best. (I re-read all 17 of them just a few years ago and they really are good, no rose-colored glasses in this case). Many of them are so reflective of their gaming roots that they seem simple or at least one dimensional to the general readers of fantasy stories, they tend to center around a small band of characters who single-handedly save the realm, granted that is the D&D way. A few are outright awful. Here's an example. Now, I read these Moonshae books at least 15 years ago. There is a second trilogy by Niles, which occurs about twenty years later, which I have never read (and why I felt like re-reading what I thought would be an old favorite). After about a hundred pages in to the second trilogy, I just couldn't accept the premise that a tribe of Northmen would break twenty years of peace based on a few swords planted in a levelled villiage. They bore the marks of Corwell, where the heroes are from, and were scattered throughout a far flung isle that was razed by a dragon. Couple that with an iron golem created by some mysterious wizard, who had put a horned helmet on it to place blame for its destruction on the Northmen, and I couldn't take any more.

I used to thoroughly enjoy these D&D books, but they just seem lacking nowadays. Maybe I'm too picky. The other side of the D&D novel realm, however is the DragonLance world, and they are more fantasy novel and less gaming novel. At least the Weis and Hickman ones, some of the DL stories are awful too. DragonLance is a smaller realm, more like, say, Middle-Earth, than Forgotten Realms. FR is really a fantasy version of Earth and is a giant, sprawling place where you can find a spot to do any sort of game. There is even a blank 'nation' for the enterprising Dungeon Master to drop his home campaign world in. Frankly, a lot of the older TSR novels just aren't that good in the grand scheme of things and it really pains me to say it. There are a few gems out there, but I thought these Moonshae books were one of them. I do plan to read a few more of these to break things up, there is a Harpers series that I have only read one of and I quite liked it at the time.

Welcome to the group, DP!

Thanks. That was quick. I have read your thread, but have a hard time keeping up with it. That's actually why I switched to the 75 BC, it seems like there is much more interaction than in the 50 BC, where many members simply post a list.

I'm curious to see what Billiejean thought about the Rice/Texas game she was at. I was busy with the UM/UConn game and only saw a bit of the game from Texas. What little I saw was of Rice having some success against a team that struggled against a smaller opponent. And I just don't think my guts can take the Wolverines offensive and defensive schemes.

Hey DP! Stopping by to say hi so you end up on the right page!

#3: I have a hard time keeping up with my threads, so I cannot blame you!

Hi and welcome. I'm a baseball fan (Cubs) and hockey fan (Blackhawks) and I've been known to root for the Packers, too.

The Lions/Bears game this Sunday should be interesting. Everyone around here is soured on the Bears.

Welcome to the 75 Book Challenge!

I really enjoyed being at the Texas-Rice game, except that there were no replays shown on the jumbotron. We are going to watch our recorded version to see what we think. I loved seeing my daughter in the band. The violin section was the largest the MOB has ever had. She really did look like a mobster with the violin case!

When I talked with her after we got home, she said that the Rice fans were delirious with joy over their loss because they beat the spread by so much. The Texas fans, us included, were not so happy. I heard that the o-line thought they played A+. I mean, really! There is a commitment to the run (so far, anyway), and Gilbert was both under center and shotgun. There was one terrible snap where I guess the center thought they were in shotgun, but he handled it well. No turnovers, except for once on downs. That one hurt, on the goal line. Game Day Final had a play from UT and a play from Rice for the exceptional plays of the week. The Rice play was a tip from one Rice player to another on the goal line. We should have passed more to Chiles, I think. He is good. But, we do have a new Sophomore QB, and I am never satisfied with the first game.

But I thought that everyone thought that Michigan played a great game. Alabama also looked pretty good, from what I saw.

Last night, we watched the Boise State- Virginia Tech game which was great fun. My husband mentioned that we should root for VT since Boise State is ranked above us. I just laughed. :D We will not go undefeated this year, I don't think. But I just had to root for Boise State because I had always wanted to see a Statue of Liberty play, and they finally showed me one. And it gets replayed every time they play.
--BJ

Welcome! I'm a former Spartan, current Orioles fan (yeah, I know, why would anybody admit that?), Saints fan from way back...

Found and starred!

I saw the OU coaches on tv this morning. I guess that they are not satisfied with how their game went last Saturday. I think they played Utah State. Anyway, next week they play Florida State, who I think had a pretty good game last weekend. Should be a good one to watch this weekend. Anyway, OU is planning to play with reckless abandon this weekend, which is a Barry Switzer thing. I actually thought that FSU had a shot, but then I realized that OU will be at home. They never, ever lose a home game.

So who had the worse opener, Kansas or Ole Miss? Kansas, of course, lost their coach in the midst of a lot of controversy. Tech, also, lost their coach. We play Tech early at home. Could be a dangerous game for my beloved Longhorns.
--BJ

*never knew so much about sports in her life* :)

Where to start? Probably with a hello to everyone.

#6) I actually am excited for the Lions for the first time in a long long time. They have rid themselves of almost all of the Millen era junk, and have some of the best young players in the league. How does someone from Chicago root for the Packers? Do you do it openly? I like Green Bay a lot, partly because of the history, partly because I got off the Lions bandwagon years ago and once that veil was removed I saw that there was a lot to like about the Packers. Blame it on Billy Sims blowing out his knee again in 1984. Which segues nicely to...

#10) Oklahoma Sooners football. What to think, what to think. It would be nice to tape that game, the garage will be adamant about watching UM/ND at the same time. On the face of it, OU should bring the thunder after that game against Utah State, but maybe OU isn't that good. My educated guess is that they played conservatively against an aggressive Aggie team that had nothing to lose and everything to gain. The coaching change at FSU is of no concern to me, Jimbo Fisher has been the main strategy guy there for a while. Should be a dandy.

And Kansas had the worst opener, Ole Miss got what they deserve by taking in that Masoli guy that was kicked out of Oregon for getting arrested again. Turner Gill is a better coach than that.

Tommy Tuberville will be a better fit at Texas Tech, and not just because of his initials. He was run out of town at Auburn for running that spread offense junk.

Michigan executed their game plan well, I just hate the plan.

Time will tell with your Longhorns. So much goofy stuff happens in the first week that it takes time for the better teams to emerge. A team like Rice can play their best game of the year and still lose, crushing their mojo for the rest of the year. Or they can build from it and win their little conference.

Finally to #8) I'll assume you mean the Michigan State Spartans, there are so many Spartans out there. But discerning sports fans know that MSU is the premier Spartan team around. I actually like both of the Michigan schools, I don't know any graduates of either. The frustrating thing is when MSU ends a Wolverine championship run at midseason. Anyhoo, there's nothing wrong with being an Orioles fan. They have plenty of history and legendary players. What they need is to tar and feather that Angelos guy that owns your team. The mystery is what to think about Showalter. He has a reputation as a great manager, but I think he is more of a builder. If you look at his two stints previously, he assembled some good players and coaches who couldn't win a big game, then went on to win the World Series the year after he was fired. Wacky.

#12 Well, I've always liked the Packers and it was just coincidence that I went to college in Green Bay. While there (late 1970s), I got on the season ticket waiting list. It took me 25 years to get to the top.

My friends know I'm a Packers fan but I don't wear a Packers shirt to a Bears game or anything so I am open about it, though not overly so.

Not as big of a college sports fan though I'll usually root for the Big Ten team in national contests and, more locally, Northwestern or Wisconsin.

Yup, MSU, got my master's degree in 1987. I'm pretty happy with Showalter. But I agree Angelos should be run out of town on a rail! :)

We finally watched the game on the dvr. Now I am glad that Rice made that late touchdown, because after it they showed the MOB (which they called the Marching Owl Band -- it does not march, just runs into position and plays!) and there was my baby on ESPN playing the violin. She was the one with the purple band on her hat.

So do you think Michigan will beat Notre Dame? Another good game to watch will be Alabama - Penn State.

By the way, I did not notice the lucky initials for Tech. :)
--BJ

#14: I am happy with what Buck is doing with the Orioles, too. It is such a shame that that vaunted organization has fallen on such hard times. I hope his tenure there is a big boost for both the players and fans as well as for baseball in general.

I'll bet that DrNeutron has an immaculate lawn. For those not in the know, MSU has to be the preeminent turf management school in the world and is a world class agriculture school on top of that. The Orioles have never recovered from overpaying for a washed up Delino Deshields. They became tentative and cheap after that. And great score on the Packers tickets. That's like gold.

That has to be a thrill to see your daughter on TV in a band, especially on the field with your favorite team. I remember getting pretty excited to hear my little brother discussed on a local sports show when our high school played in the state semifinals. Again.


4. The White Plague by Frank Herbert
I have actually been reading on top of all the sports on TV believe it or not. The White plague is not particularly pleasant, but tells the gripping story of John O'Niell, who is a molecular biologist studying the genetic patterns of native Irish in an approximation of the modern day when it was published, that being 1982. You can tell by the level of computer technology. Anyway, he is looking out a bank window waiting to complete some business and sees a car bomb go off below him as he is watching his wife and twin children walk away on a shopping errand. They are obviously killed and he is so distraught by the incident that he fractures in to a few separate personalities. One of these goes in to hiding and ingeniously creates a plague virus that is highly contagious and targeted to specifically kill women. He sends the virus to Ireland, England and Libya in payment for the death of his family in a terrorist bombing. (The IRA received materiel and training from Libya). The plague escalates and endangers the continuity of humanity, cities and regions are isolated by burned borders or are simply nuked out of existence to stop the spread of the death. There are obvious disruptions of systems, both religious and political. Yada yada yada, the hunt for a cure leads to revolutions in genetic engineering and the reduced population of women has a huge impact on future society as well.

For something so morbid and destructive, it is actually an entertaining read. Frank Herbert is a man of great ideas and intellect as well as a brilliant writer. Many of the characters are Irish and he perfectly captures the nuances of the Irish accent. Very well done story.

The fates seem to be conspiring to keep me from getting back into the Greeks. Yesterday I got my copy of Stephen Hawking's new book The Grand Design through Early Reviewers, so now I have to read that. It seems to be fairly accessible to someone not overly familiar with concepts of quantum physics as it explains mind boggling concepts through analogy, but the corny jokes can be distracting. A little. That seems to be Hawking's style, but this book has far more of them than A Brief History of Time and so on. I wasn't surprised by that as he is now seventy years old and his goal was to distill his lifetime of ideas about reality and the possibility of a god that created it, or lack thereof, so it strongly reflects his personal voice.

#17: The White Plague looks like a good one. Thanks for the review and recommendation, DP!

DP, I'll be curious to hear about your fantasy team. Usually, I give a lot of thought to mine but this year, realized suddenly yesterday that I still didn't have one.

I just quickly signed up and went with autopick. Guess that's why I've got Brett Favre. I will have to root for the Vikings tonight. Skoal, Vikings!!

I thoroughly enjoyed the Dune series a few months ago as well.

I'll be curious to see how my fantasy team does as well, Linda. Lets just say that if the 49ers lay an egg this year I'm sunk. Multiply that times Matt Stafford and things could be bad. But, there is a reason I picked the guys I have. My strategy this season was to pick my targets and not monkey around with some checklist or ranking sheet, eliminating over half of the teams in the NFL as undesireable or at best, spotty fantasy point producers. Every player on my team has a good offensive line in front of them, even the Lions are vastly improved there, and they are all on teams with good defenses. Ravens, 49ers, Jets, Packers. Done. For the record, I have Donald Driver and Mason Crosby from your Packers. Trade Favre while you can, I doubt his ankle will make it, but he is almost superhuman on the field so who knows. Having a lubricant injection last week cannot be good for longevity.

I had a fun hockey season years ago playing a random online league like you are in (1994?). I won a ten team 'league' by seven points when a single goal counted for ten points. As I recall, my key moves the last few weeks were getting rid of Brian Berard (pre eye injury but his plus-minus rating was killing me) and swapping Chris Osgood out for Patrick Roy. This was back when the Red Wings and Avalanche had their hate filled rivalry, not a popular move when my Wings fan buddies found out. Enjoy your league.

Billiejean, I find Michigan pretty easy to figure out. Until further notice, a team that smashes them on defense will beat them, probably easily. I just don't know if ND is the team to do it. Too many variables and unknowns on both sides of the equation, as it were.

The White Plague looks pretty different for Herbert. I wishlisted it. Also interested in the Hawking book. I still haven't read anything by him, although one of my daughters has several of his books.

I used to root for ND all the time, but lately I forget to even watch them. Kind of like the Dallas Cowboys. Too caught up in the Longhorns, I guess. We are so happy at my house that football season has started. I even forget about the US Open going on this week sometimes.
--BJ

>17 DirtPriest:: Just found your thread. Given the type of reading you seem to do, I'm surprised we don't have a lot more overlap in our libraries. Oh well, who am I to argue with the statistics functions of LT?

I'm not a big Herbert fan. Don't get me wrong, I think Dune is one of the best SF...if not the best SF...books ever written, but the rest of his stuff didn't do too much for me. Hmmm, deja vu—just a few weeks (months?) ago, a number of us were discussing this very point somewhere here...Piyush's thread?

It's pretty evident that you are a sports fan in a league much different than most here. Cool! I confess to following the Steelers and Princeton and treating everything else as "fun to watch but I don't care who wins." Oh, I guess I root for the Florida Gators, also, for various inane reasons.

Anyway, welcome to 75dom.

Edit: persnickety touchstones

Thanks Tad. I've seen your name somewhere, no idea where though.
I can see how Herbert could come across as flat or boring or whatever. His mix of science and social commentary intrigues me. Add that to a great story sequence like the Dune books and it adds up to something I will greatly enjoy. The Dune sequels were almost boring to read but I liked the thought level.

You should know that I have been a Browns fan since the previously mentioned Billy Sims injury in 1984. I promise to be civil.

Do you know where Matt Leinart ended up?
--BJ

Houston Texans. Hopefully he can do better there, in Arizona he was a gutless wonder on a gutless team.

How ironic! Vince Young is from Houston, and he wanted them to draft him. But they passed him by. When the Titans play in Houston, the fans for him are louder than the fans for the Texans.
--BJ

I just heard Kirk Herbstreit singing the praises of the Michigan offensive line. You are so lucky! I wish we had one to sing the praises of.
--BJ

It's much easier to block on a sloppy draw play, you just let the defender run himself into a block basically. If the defender wants to get up the field, let him, but chip him away from the QB. Any stunts or lateral moves at all, the OL simply lets him go and shoves him out of the play. Against Connecticut, the QB would literally just stand there until he saw a gap somewhere then jump in to it, hoping to get three or four yards before any of the defenders could square up on the ball carrier. I suppose that you need a good line to do that but they just don't smash like UM is supposed to. They could, I'm sure and that is my complaint with the offense.


I know it's a repeat on the picture but it fits at the moment.

P.S. I finished Stephen Hawking's somewhat interesting book and have a few chapters of my final Frank Herbert left on the shelves (it's quite short). With luck I can get those reviews up tonight.

They also gave good reviews to the Ohio State O-Line. Of course, KH had to pick Ohio State for the win. They probably will win, I think.

We are leaving the spread behind at UT this year, apparently. Gilbert played spread in high school with two state championships, but now back to the traditional run game. Wonder if they will stick with it?

Looking forward to your reviews. They are always good ones. And glad to see a picture on your thread again.
--BJ

I hope Texas sticks with it. This spread offense is like a plague and there needs to be some powerhouses that stick with a run dominant game. And I used to hate the 'Law Firm' of Herbstreit to Stablein, Kirk always picks Ohio State to win. Pretty easy pick when a 10-2 season at OSU is a colossal failure.

Thanks for the kind words. I get a twinge of anticipation when I check your thread as well, you always have something nice to say about a book or a friend or your kids off to college. There's just too much in the world that is either negative or just stupid, so it's nice to have a few moments of something that is none of those. Now, back to Georgia Tech at Kansas.

:)

I should have watched Georgia Tech - Kansas. Who knew it would be so good? Georgia - South Carolina, not as good to watch. Florida State is looking pretty good.

I think that my husband is going to get a 4 hour break from work that will be just in time for the Longhorns. I hope! I get anxious watching all by myself.
--BJ

How could I be so wrong? FSU played never scored again after I sang their praises. I jinxed them.

Now watching Michigan - Notre Dame. Is the ND quarterback Joe Montana's son?
--BJ

Well, my husband got to see the first half of the game, and the second half went pretty well. Believe it or not, on a goal line jumbo package with Cody Johnson, the announcers said that the UT O-line put on a clinic on how it is done. Well, that is nice!

Congrats to Michigan for another win!
--BJ

There's no bigger improvement than between game one and game two. Turner Gill has some decent players there at Kansas and I just had to see what he could do. Plus, I like watching Georgia Tech run that Wishbone flex.
In honor of your jinx on FSU, I have to recant some of my Michigan criticism. For the Connecticut game I literally did not have my glasses. The blue blobs and white blobs flowing around became blue blobs shoving and dominating white blobs when I saw some replays of last week's game. UM came out angry and really put the boots to ND early. ND made a few nice adjustments and wa-la! A dandy game. I still don't like the scheme of the offense, but I totally understand why the spread offense works. Well.
That was Joe Montana's son, if you couldn't tell by seeing him with his helmet off at halftime. Nate at ND, Nick at U of Washington.
That schedule I was using from CBS Sportsline seems pretty inaccurate. I was excited to check out some of your Longhorns game after the PSU Alabama game got out of hand (which it did), but it was not on ESPN2 as listed.


5. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Another Early Reviewer book, thank you very much. The authors do a good job of simplifying some very advanced and frankly illogical science. Quantum Physics is silly on the face of it but it seems to work, there has never been a test of any sort that has fundamentally changed it. Besides if science can't answer a simple question like 'What is time?' then I would assume that quantum mechanics only seems logical. What if time is an illusion drawn from the way our three dimensional brains perceive and model a multi-dimensional reality. It's all relative.
So, Hawking and Mlodinow jaunt along, posing a few questions in the beginning, explaining some requisite science in the middle, then giving their answers in the end. Why is there something instead of nothing? Why do we exist? Why does this particular set of laws govern our universe and not some other set? I enjoyed the exploration of those questions. Some sort of multiverse concept with every universe having differing fundamental constants has long been an idea of mine, and it pops up again here. By differing constants, that refers to things like altered weight of an electron, or the strength of gravity or the nuclear forces, speed of light, whatever.
The book will pick up some controversy by the authors' replacing of any concept of God with random chance in selecting these constants, but it seemed a bit fuzzy. Staring at a chalkboard covered with arcane math can do that to you. At enough of a depth level, you think you can peer through the veil of reality and gaze upon the inner workings of the universe at a fundamental level. I've been there too. Having a multi-page calculus problem unfold in your mind in a second or so is a life changing experience.


6. The Godmakers by Frank Herbert
I'm not sure what to make of this. Lewis Orne is a member a group that searches out signs of war and violence on planets around the galaxy. He learns a few things about hiding signs of war as well as himself and his many talents. Meanwhile on a planet called Amal, the priest planet, the Abbod convenes a gathering and summons a new god in to existence. Things weave together, prophecy is fulfilled, and so on, but I honestly have no idea what the point was. When I first read it years ago I had no idea what was going on at all, so that has improved, but still...
Interesting story and a fun read but what for?

I did not see the half time of the Michigan - ND game, but when I tuned in I thought I heard the name Montana. But those uniforms have no name on the back of them, so I wasn't sure if I heard right. Joe Montana was terrific, wasn't he? He drove me crazy when I was a Cowboys fan.

The Longhorns were on Fox Sports Southwest. I had some trouble finding them at first myself.

Interesting book by Hawking.
--BJ

Montana was certainly one of the greats, with a great team around him. Roger Craig and Tom Rathman, both Nebraska RB's, Brent Jones, Rice, Taylor, great OL. What a shame Leonard Marshall crushed him and broke his thumb in 1991, in anniversary style it was the first Monday night game that year. Maybe 1992, whatever. That ended Montana's career in San Fran.

Texas is on ABC/ESPN next weekend at the same time as Notre Dame/Michigan State. I'm sure I'll see your Longhorns at some point. I made my friends watch some snippets of the Nadal-Djokovich match during the excessive NFL commercial breaks. What at talented player, he will have to really screw up bad to ever lose a French Open on that clay.

If anyone cares, I finished copy-pasting all of my reviews from my threads on to the book pages where they belong. There are 97 of them.

I tried to find that tennis game, no luck. Did they change the time? All I got was Dr. Phil, and no way am I watching that show! :) I saw an interview of Djokovich on Sunday, and I could tell that he really did want to win. But Nadal has a lot of heart.

I rewatched the second half of the Longhorns with my husband last night. I always get more out of it when he is there. I told him that he must be home for the scary Tech game. I wish we were playing in Austin instead of Lubbock!
--BJ

The tennis was rained out Sunday, moved to Monday afternoon then rained out again. The match was finally played in the evening and finished about halftime of the Jets-Ravens MNF game, and was aired on ESPN2. Which was odd, Dick Enberg and the CBS Sports logos on ESPN like that. Probably not listed in the cable TV guide, those are rarely updated for short notice things like that. And I'd rather stare at a blank wall than watch Dr. Full myself.

My fantasy team took the biggest possible dive this weekend. My quarterback, Matt Stafford, got knocked out for a month or two thanks to Jim Backus. He's the one of the last last links to the awful Millen years in Detroit, and a slow, clumsy left tackle. I was excited about the Lions this year because of two things. One, massive improvement on defense and two, moving Backus in to the Guard position so his lack of agility wouldn't be a big problem. Batting .500 there. Moving on, my primary RB, as well as TE and defense got shut down by the lowly Seahawks and Pete Carroll in his first game. Thirteen points from Frank Gore, Vernon Davis plus the 49ers defense is bad. Donald Driver had two knee surgeries in the off season that I never heard about, Shonn Greene fumbled twice and got benched, netting me -1.5 points and Derrick Mason had two catches. At least I got a good week from my kicker Mason Crosby. You might remember him from the Colorado Buffaloes, Billiejean. All in all I lost 100.5-36, with every one of my bench guys scoring touchdowns that didn't score for me. I just needed to get that off my chest, probably the worst week I've ever had and I did my first league in 1992. Great way to start the season.

Millen's teams were 31-97, the worst 8 year record in the history of the NFL, which led to signs like 'There's a Millen reasons why the Lions can't win', as well as the Millen Man March in Detroit. He called one of the better players on the team a faggot, so off went Johnny Morton to the Chiefs, and generally screwed up every possible way. After just two years, the only players left from his teams are Backus, Gosder Cherilous (mediocre Right Tackle), Dominic Raiola (one of the better Centers in the league and the quickest and most agile) and Calvin Johnson (elite WR, but the 4th WR picked #1 by Millen in 9 drafts). What a waste of high draft picks, real management takes advantage of picks like that. Look at the Chiefs last night, or the resurgent Dolphins, or the Tampa Bay Rays in baseball.

Just thought you would like to know that University of Texas Press is one of the Publishers that is featured in the new section here on LT for publishing houses to advertise (I guess) and show off their wares to an attentive audience.

Nice link! I used to have a few books published by them. I had a book of poetry, but I think I gave it to my daughter.

Sorry about the Fantasy Football team.
--BJ

I enjoyed your review of Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong. Isn't it so interesting how artists can misjudge their own work? Tchaikovsky thought The Nutcracker was entirely forgettable and believed his most important work was one that no one really listens to nowadays (I forget the name of it... oops). Congrats on the review going hot.

What type of Tolkien commentary were you looking for? I'll be starting my annual Tolkien read on the 22nd. Not sure yet what I'll pick up, maybe the two-volume Book of Lost Tales. Last year I listened to The Lord of the Rings on audiobook (unabridged), read by Rob Inglis. It was fantastic, but it did take three months to finish!

I was after the Tom Shippey books, The Road to Middle-Earth and Author of the Century. My winter plans are to delve in to Tolkien's works, but I have to get through some Greek and Roman history first. I have almost all of his published writings, all of the Lost Histories, everything except Roverandom, Mr. Bliss and The Monsters and the Critics really. And Finn and Hengest, which is more of a translation like the Sigurd and Gudrun volume. Two crammed shelves full.
Combining that with the Tolkien Professor lectures should be more than entertaining.

Is there some significance to the 22nd?

Bilbo's birthday is September 22. :)

And he's well past his hundred and eleventy-first.

My fantasy team is not good this year. Matt Stafford was my backup to Brett Favre, so the future isn't looking too bright, either.

I need to join a fantasy hockey league.

43: I love that someone else can answer that question for me :D

I am excited about your winter reading, DP! *settles into a front-row seat*

7. The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
Boy is it nice to read an older book. It really highlights how simplified, almost dumbed down, the English language has become. Miss Hamilton explains her theory about what made the Greeks so great, basically that they found a balance between the seen and unseen, reality and spirit, the individual and the community, the likes of which has never been equalled. In so doing she discusses the surviving literature of the Athenian age, comparing Aristophanes and his satirical comedies to the plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. (Gilbert was the musician and Sullivan wrote the libretti? Very far from my area of expertise in music lore.) She goes on to compare the tragedies of Aeshylus to Shakespeare, Sophocles to Milton and Euripedes to Isaiah. As an aside, Isaiah is the highlight of the Bible as far as this ornery old pagan is concerned and is another of the required reading that I would mandate if I were the Thain of the Land.
The author uses parallel examples to highlight similarities between the above writers. I find Euripides to be exceptionally emotional. His play 'The Trojan Women' takes the heroism of Homer's Iliad and turns it completely around to show the anguish of the wives of defeated Troy as they lament their losses of family and home while awaiting the princes of Greece to draw lots for them. I don't think I could read the whole thing, it being just too sad.
The highlight is Chapter 7 (VII to be specific) where the author explains what exactly makes tragedy so difficult, rare and powerful. 'Why is the death of an ordinary man a wretched, chilling thing which we turn from, while the death of a hero, always tragic, warms us with a sense of quickened life? Answer this question and the enigma of tragic pleasure is solved.' An excellent primer for beginning an exploration of a great age in history as well as an exercise in reading good English, a rarity in these days when some guy can publish an entire novel in text message abbreviation.

Also, can anyone identify this verse? It appears early in the Chapter 7 mentioned above. It was not referenced in the endnotes and I'd rather go this route than just google it.

Here I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

Another terrific review. I haven't read anything by her in years -- and I mean lots of years.

I understand that Sam Acho was triple teamed for some of the plays last week. I am getting excited about the Tech game. Just hope we get some interceptions. Michigan is undefeated, right?
--BJ

#47: The quote is from King John by Shakespeare, Act II Scene I.

I had to go check that play out on LT as I have never read it. I guess I will have to get that Complete Plays of William Shakespeare down as the reviews looked pretty good.

By the way, Cincinnati looked short on O-line tonight during the part of the game which I watched. I hope that things will look up for them in their future games. I am sure that they miss their coach.
--BJ

Cincy did get more or less trampled, but both teams were sloppy way too often. Mid pack in their respective conferences. UM is 2-0.

I figured that I would get that quote identified fairly quickly. Thanks. Shakespeare is yet another of the reading pile that I'd like to get to. I had plans to do so not too long ago and actually compiled a list of the plays to check off as I read them, but haven't done so yet. Having a Complete Shakespeare is handy for reading at home but in reality it is not very portable, and a hassle when boxing up to move. It's huge and heavy. After receiving that tome for Christmas several years ago I gave my paperbacks of the Tragedies and the Comedies to a friend, a move that I somewhat regret, but why would I need two copies of Othello and The Tempest, etc.?


8. David Brinkley: A Memoir
An interesting, if chronologically jumpy, autobiography of a figure that had some influence on me as a wee tot. Not exactly enthralling but worth putting some effort into just for the historical information through the filter of one of the original news media figures from the first days of television. In fact I mostly read it so I could relate one of my prized memories of childhood. We watched NBC Nightly News as a family after dinner back then most nights, probably because locally channel 5 came in by far the clearest through the rooftop aerial. So, I'm about four at the time and I recognize a face and voice on the TV. I looked up to my mom and, with pride and excitement, said, "Hey mom! That's Henry Kissinger. Grandpa says he's a lying ¢@$#sucker!" That didn't go over very well and both of us got in big trouble.
There are some interesting anecdotes about pioneering TV broadcasts of news and how it differs greatly from reading teletypes on the radio. In retrospect there were simple solutions but it was hard to get the ball rolling. Some people just ignored the camera and continued on speaking to the assembled crowd and radio microphones as usual, whereas others came to realize that it was better to let the pictures speak for themselves and only interject requisite explanations. One of Brinkley's favorite praises that he received was that he was a great talker that didn't talk too much.

Oh yeah. After ruminating and pondering about The Godmakers, I think I have come to some sort of conclusion about its point. First, war and conflict seem to be part of human nature. Second, as long as mankind is creating gods in their own image, even while justifying it by saying than man was created in god's image, there will be inevitable religious conflicts between sects that have different ideas about what their One God concepts are. There is also a theme of god doing some very human like things based on very human like drives and interests.
Further, just as an interjection, in the original Hebrew, in Genesis where it states that man is created in god's image the word 'elohim' is used, which is plural. I think the singular would be eloha, but whatever. I'm not a Hebrew grammatacist. The point is that there is a major push towards monotheism and whatnot throughout the remainder of the old testament and I find this an interesting conundrum. Where did the rest of the elohim go after the supposed creation? Were they edited out as the church grew in local power and influence? Maybe I'm being nitpicky but if it is the 'Word of God' then why is there an obvious incongruity of terminology right there on page 1?

Your Grandpa sounds like a hoot!
--BJ

I haven't read The Greek Way -- I don't think many people know Hamilton wrote anything besides Greek Mythology (or at least, that's the only thing we read of hers in a Classics program). I'll see if I can find an old copy of this other one, it sounds interesting and do I enjoy her writing style.

I could not believe that MSU overtime call on 4th down. Even though I was rooting for Notre Dame, I had to laugh.
--BJ

I suppose a hoot would be one way to put it. He was an old fashioned country farmer in everything he did. Here's a tidbit, maybe too late for the season but whatever. If there's dew on the tomatoes in the morning, it will rain later that day. I know now that it's indicative of high humidity and lowering air pressure, meaning a storm system is moving in, but it seemed like magic when I was about seven. Another one is when the crescent moon is tipped on its side (like a C instead of a U shape) the water runs out and it rains within a day or two most of the time. This one I have never figured out, but I noticed the moon tipped in such a way last Tuesday, it rained Thursday, cancelling my disc golf league, overnight Friday and my brother got rained on in a golf outing Saturday morning. It was the first rain here in two weeks. He did win the scramble golf event for the sixth year in a row despite a grip soaking drizzle.

Looks like that fake FG cost Coach Dantonio his health. He had a minor heart attack Sunday morning (if there is such a thing). He is out indefinitely but should be OK soon. What a call though, and a great game. MSU would be dangerous if they had a couple of good cornerbacks. It's their only major weakness. Coach Kelly at Notre Dame needs to quit screaming at his players all of the time. They are not guys who are excited to play for you and I'd bet there are a few players who quit on him.

U of M in reality had no business beating UMass. If the Minutemen had just a bit more speed on defense they would have won, the Wolverines had three long touchdowns on two screens and a quick slant where the receiver simply outran the defenders. They are supposedly ranked mid pack in their Colonial Conference but knifed through the Wolverine defense like a good Wisconsin team, gaining yards in big chunks off tackle and taking advantage of the ridiculous defensive schemes that only work against a pass attack in the coaches' minds. Good luck in conference play, and way to be wimps scheduling Bowling Green for homecoming next week.

I did get to see a little bit of the Texas-TTech game. As usual, I focused on the offensive line. There seemed to be a lot of agility with the guards, out of about six plays, they trap blocked a guard several times and were very successful. Outstanding pass blocking too, but I didn't see enough plays to grade them on power run blocking, or honestly to make more than a cursory observation.

My responses may be a bit sporadic for a while, between reading The Landmark Thucydides, which is very long and a fairly difficult read, and not having a keyboard at my personal iMac downstairs (or an alarm clock). I had an early morning fight with my brother, but being deaf in one ear gives me a fair chance to sleep through an alarm. Apparently I have about ten seconds to go from dreamland to being abruptly awakened by my door slamming open to being screamed at, which I didn't take very well.

Maybe I'm being nitpicky but if it is the 'Word of God' then why is there an obvious incongruity of terminology right there on page 1?

Coming from the side of faith, I would say the incongruity is in our understanding, not in the Bible's portrayal of God. The Bible doesn't make an issue of the Trinity — it's just presented as it is — and that I think is one of the more convincing proofs of its veracity. If the Bible was written by a human being, with no divine inspiration, wouldn't that person try to make it make more "sense"? I know I would if I were trying to start a religion or explain my idea of God.

Maybe it's along the lines of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. It is — because truth doesn't have to make sense. Just because I can't comprehend something doesn't mean it's false. (Algebra is the perfect example :) )

Ouch about the alarm and the ensuing argument. My dad has a 40% hearing loss in one ear and it causes him problems sometimes too. But I don't think he's ever slept through an alarm.

Oh, and guess what? I got my hands on a copy of Lawhead's Byzantium which you had so highly recommended. Onto the TBR stack it goes!

Let's just say the run blocking leaves a lot to be desired.

I saw a late Cedric Benson run, carrying about 10 guys and gaining about 10 yards. I would like to have him back for a season or two. :)
--BJ

That's a decent enough answer. I only bring it up because of the whole infallability argument that irks me. It's frustrating when I have an interesting discussion and at the point of disagreement the only answer I get from certain people is that 'The Bible says so so it must be correct.' You might like The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. It delves deeply into the variations between the Hebrew and English translation that everybody is familiar with, which is where I verified the elohim thing. I actually made it into Leviticus before I just couldn't take any more. It was in one of the Book Clubs several years ago and should be fairly easy to track down online for a decent price. Try abebooks.com, I've had much success there over the years.

You know, in the old days of Medieval Europe, the Catholic church co-opted many pagan festivals and ideas. Like Easter, the bunny represents all that is left of old fertility rites, so on and so forth. It's a long list, including Christmas being the 'birthday' of Jesus. The emphasis on the Trinity is a part of that to 'borrow' the pagan Mother, Maiden, Crone trinity.

And do yourself a favor and put Byzantium near the top. You'll thank yourself. Is it bad grammar to start a sentence with 'and'? I used to think so but I see it fairly often these days. Maybe that ban went the way of 'An Historian'.

The Benson run cane at the end of a game where the Ravens were humiliated by the referees. Terell Suggs was called for roughing the passer, he hit Carson Palmer hard. Not in the head or the knees, just a clean hard tackle, one of those 'cut him in half' hits. Apparently hitting a QB too hard is now a penalty. Ray Lewis was called for tripping after he was knocked down by a shady block and Palmer tripped over Lewis' feet. The Bengals were pretty much shut down and had drive after drive extended by cheap penalties, they managed five field goals and won 15-10.

I become more convinced of the league mandated superstar and villain theory every day. The Colts can get away with whatever they want, so can the Steelers, but the Ravens can't even sack a QBv without a penalty for roughing? Also, going over a receiver's back to get the ball is great defense against the Lions but a penalty against the Colts. Football is way more fun and fair on Saturday.

In my opinion, the NFL is trying to cut down on teams with dominant defenses, more fans are excited and keep watching games with score after score. They will do this by penalizing the defense more and more until teams like the Ravens get the message.

Interesting, because I always thought that a dominant defense was part and parcel of the NFL.

Five field goals seems like an indication that maybe Fred Akers is coaching the team. Did they run one draw play after another? If so, he is definitely the coach. (I am still mad about that loss to Georgia, costing Texas the National Championship in '83. You would think that I could be a more mature person than that at my age.)
--BJ

You know, in the old days of Medieval Europe, the Catholic church co-opted many pagan festivals and ideas.

Oh, I know. Big mistake and one that has a lot of ramifications still today. As a Protestant I have major criticisms of Catholic practices and beliefs. There is just so much there that is blatantly anti-biblical.

I know December 25th is the birth of Mithras and that Jesus' actual birthdate is probably sometime in March (no one knows for sure). When I celebrate in December, I'm not celebrating the date, but the event itself. But I can't agree that the Trinity came from the Maiden/Mother/Crone idea. If the Catholic church chose to emphasize the Trinity and used MMC as a launchpad for that, well, that was a dumb mistake in method. But poor methodology doesn't disprove the doctrine of the Trinity. Like you say, the Trinity shows up on page 1 of the Bible.

C. S. Lewis has an interesting theory on the similarities we can find among major world religions. He argues that all previous myths contain elements of truth that point to what he calls the "one true Myth" — Christ.

And of course you'll have a problem with the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. It says you will, and it's never wrong :). But seriously, yeah. We have a natural tendency to want God to be like us, prone to mistakes and passions. It's hard to comprehend a God who is perfect, and what's more, we don't want to.

There is plenty of similarity amongst religions, almost enough to claim that they are the same thing repackaged for different markets. Like using the existing mother-maiden-crone to help verify the trinity thing as the christian faith spread its way around pagan Europe. Maybe, maybe not. It's something a friend of mine mentioned years ago. I remember the example because I tend to believe in what could be called The White Goddess theory. Briefly, that the dominant female-based nature worship (they are the fount of life after all) was literally conquered by male dominated sky and sun gods which conveniently gave divine right to the kings, priests, or whatever else they chose to call themselves. Hence you can find examples of 'marriages' between the priestess of this or that sect with, say, Zeus or his earthly representative. Borrowing and mixing old and new religious or at least spiritual ideas is nothing new. I tend to prefer the old moon, water and tree stuff.

Just my opinion getting me in trouble again.

----------
Fred Akers rang a bell for me. I probably remembered him at Texas, I definitely remember several coaches from the early '80's. Switzer, Bryant, Ken Hatfield, Earle Bruce... But I think I remember him as the coach of some bad Purdue teams when I was in high school.

The NFL is trying to swap two preseason games out for two more regular season games. There's no way that players will make it through two more games if there are several dominating defenses around. Just opinion (again) but the league might be looking ahead and placing limits on defensive aggressiveness for an expanded slate of games. Defense will always be a big part of the game obviously but there are plenty of 'fans' who are disappointed in a one or two touchdown game and will turn it off as boring. The NFL is in the business of TV ratings and advertising sales over and above the simple product they put on a field. If something is bad for advertisers or the precious ratings the league offices will change it.

They are also adamant about removing judgment calls by their referees even if it hurts their game results, like the game-winning Calvin Johnson catch in Chicago that was taken away. If Bears fans complain that the Lions were robbed of a win over their own team then you know things are silly somewhere in the rulebook.

-------
Thucydides is a very long, dense and tedious read, not to be recommended unless you have a fair grasp of the geography of the times and area. If keeping Chalcis, Cynthus and Carystus, or Delos, Chios and Sestos straight is difficult, than Thucydides might not be the right book for you. However the Landmark edition is riddled with maps literally every few pages to help, as well as a region and year/season note on the top of each page and marking every single paragraph, but it is more of a help to be passing familiar with at least certain headline places and regions going in. Like knowing that the 'Delian League' represents the alliance treasury that Athens demanded from its dependents and stored on the small island of Delos, and that Delos is one of the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean.

As to the Tolkien reading for the 22nd, I am picking at the After the King: Stories in Honor of Tolkien compendium if I don't have at least an hour, if not the three or four it deserves, to dedicate to Thucydides. They are not Middle-Earth stories per se, but are inspired by his styles and whatnot. The first one was not a particularly interesting tale but the way it read was very much Tolkienesque. Hard to describe (for me) but it had the same meter, if there is such a thing in prose, and there are similarities in methods of description.

One of these days I am going to get to the Landmark editions of both Thucydides and Herodotus.

The Alabama - Arkansas game could be interesting as they are playing in Fayetteville. I will be watching UT though. Notre Dame is also playing at that time. Can't wait until tomorrow.
--BJ

I am in mourning for the death of the offense.

You, on the other hand, must be pleased. :)
--BJ

Not really pleased-if a team a friend likes loses, I never rub it in. Unless it's the Steelers. Yankee fans don't remain friends.

No, I meant about Michigan. Seems like they stomped Bowling Green. How is the quarterback doing? (I don't always type things out quite like I mean them, but I was just thinking about what a great game Michigan had.)
--BJ

Oops-I get it now. The QB is supposedly fine, Tate Forcier is a better QB anyways. Robinson is a better runner. Personally, I'd be happier if the defense didn't give up 60 points to UMass and Bowling Green. UM's play at Indiana will be telling. Last year the Hoosiers were their only conference win, and just barely at that. The game hinged on a reviewed interception that I still think touched the ground and should have been an incomplete Indiana pass. Fun game to be at though!

Thucydides will be a very long tedious read for sure.

Michigan is 3-0, right? They are off to a great start. And I bet they beat Indiana, too. Do you think that both Ohio State and Alabama will stay undefeated? I would kind of like to see Boise State in a National Championship game. College Game Day covered alot about their program, and it is pretty impressive. Plus, I think that the quarterback is a senior.

Yeah, to win so impressively with a backup quarterback shows that Michigan is in good shape. I guess the backup was the starter last year?
--BJ

U of M is 4-0, with one win over D-1AA UMass that doesn't really count. Nor should it based on how they played. Michigan State is also 4-0.

Forcier was the starter for last year. There were 'May the Forcier be With You' shirts all over the state until they went on their losing skid for the second half of the season. He seemed to have a big problem holding on to snaps in the shotgun set, Robinson would just randomly fumble. Many turnovers between them.

Either OSU or Alabama has to lose, I'd really like to see Boise in a title game. They deserve it based on prior performance. Somebody in the Big 10 will beat OSU, not too sure about Alabama. They are mighty.

I just found out that our star wide receiver -- really the best offensive player this year -- is out for the game!

Did you see the story about Boise State on Game Day last Saturday? Apparently, it used to be a junior college, then 2A, the FBS. It has been championship material at all levels.
--BJ

Your Longhorns somehow gave themselves a chance at the end of that game against OU. I missed most of it watching Michigan State give the business to a tough Wisconsin team, but it was the designated 'commercial flip' game in the garage.

U of M is in big big trouble. If they are back and forth, up and down the field like that against Indiana, the rest of the conference schedule is going to be a problem.

I did not see that particular story about Boise, but they were multi-time Big Sky conference champs in the late 80's/early 90's, much like Montana in the last ten or twelve years. At the time I was considering enrolling in the University of Idaho just to get away from home (plus my grandpa was from that area) but tried for Lawrence Tech down in Detroit. That didn't work out, mostly because they had just that week before my visit taken all of the old drafting boards, T-squares and triangles out of the classrooms and replaced them with PC's. The campus guide thought I'd be thrilled by that, and was surprised by my disgust. And for extra disgust I much prefer Macintosh computers. So, off to community college I went where I drove my car to death, then the next day by friend's car also gave out, we each lost several hundreds of dollars on tuition because we couldn't get there to drop our classes until the next week. Neither of us ever returned to classes.

So, Thucydides is on a short pause. A friend loaned me Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, which I plan on rolling through quickly and returning. Thucydides was at a nice pausing spot as I had just completed a long and complex run up to the then current events that led to the Peloponnesian War. In fact, the last paragraph I read was something to the effect of 'This brings us up to date with the precursor events leading to...'.

One Longhorn fan posted on a Longhorn site that they (the Horns) had shot themselves in the foot so much they don't have any toes left. Good grief on the penalties. Thank goodness we have a week off. We are going to need it before Nebraska.

Boy, does Alabama look good! And to think that Arkansas had a chance to beat them. I heard a commentator say that Boise State would get jumped by another team because of the easy schedule. My husband and I think that if they stay undefeated, there probably won't be much chance of them getting jumped. Here's hoping anyway.

Wonder if the Horns will even get to a bowl game at all this year. Even Iowa State and Baylor are looking scary to me this year.

My younger daughter is studying Architecture, and she is having to do a lot of drafting on the computer this year. Last year she mostly drew by hand.

A number of years ago, I saw an article that listed Boise as one of the top 5 places to live in the US. I have wanted to see it ever since.

Michigan is finding a way to win every week. That is a good thing. And lots of commentators singing that praises of that quarterback (the new one). Who is going to beat The Ohio State University, so that Boise State can go to the National Championship game?
--BJ

Wisconsin can beat Ohio State, Penn State might (slim odds there), Iowa has a good chance, U of M has no chance, and the Buckeyes skip MSU this year. Nobody is beating Alabama, unless they have to play the Green Bay Packers somewhere. I will be fairly sour about Boise not playing for a championship, but the bowl system is so silly that I consider conference champion to be the highest accolade in the game. Lately the BCS championship has been clearly the two best teams, but were they really? Also the six week layoff is a joke, or at least makes the games a joke. Remember when that undefeated Auburn team didn't get to play for the title even though they won a tougher conference (mathematically at least) than either Oklahoma or USC. The Trojans had to give up that championship because of broke-leg Reggie Bush. Enjoy your millions Reggie, your pride is gone. (Sorry, rant #958 - I despise that guy and the whole defrauding the college experience. I think I recall correctly that somehow his mother ended up with a new house while he was there under mysterious circumstances, might have been someone else, maybe LeBron James who wisely skipped college altogether.)

I'm also surprised that Boise wasn't invited into the Pac 10. Maybe Boise is just too small of a town. Salt Lake City has over 2 million people, Boulder has less than Boise but the nearness to Denver makes up for it. Both cities have more population than the entire State of Idaho at 1.5 million, assuming Wikipedia is accurate. Their blue stadium only seats around 30,000 and the Pac 10 stadiums all seat nearly twice that. Maybe Washington State is lucky to still be in the Conference, they have nearly identical statistics to Boise as far as the university and nearby area go.

Architecture is a great and classic field of study but my future in it reminds me of the old Jimmy Buffett song. "...My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around." I had so much skill as a draftsman growing up that I could appreciate the way computers took so much of the skill away from what is a very technical art. The big new thing in architectural drafting software at the time was some CAD program where you could quickly sketch the basic floor plan with a laser pen, enter a few data as to roof pitches and whatnot and the program would draw up an entire suite of plans, plumbing, electrical, all of the elevations. All the 'architect' had to do was modify the plan to suit everyone involved. Pretty lame stuff for a kid who spent two years in elementary school working my way through my dad's old Technical Drawing textbook from college.

9. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
What a touchy subject. Personally, I have no idea how someone can go through life abjectly ignoring science. I didn't need any convincing that evolution is a real process, but Mr. Dawkins wrote this book specifically to refute Creationism / Intelligent Design theories, none of which hold any water anyway. I can see how his smarmy tone would be a real put-off to a creationist reader who has an open mind, part of that is his Britishness seeping through, the rest is thinly veiled disgust.

Even with the tone, the book presents so much evidence and shows the holes in creationist theories to a highly recommendable degree. An example is the 'Show me the intermediates' argument in the fossil record. First, we are lucky to even have a fossil record, secondly, there is such a massive timescale involved that everything is intermediate, like I'm an intermediate stage between German, Polish and English on it's way to some other 'ethnic' group. The fact that every fossil has to be placed in a strict genus/species pigeonhole is also artificially restricting, on top of the fact that the amount of proto human remains are barely enough to fill a decent sized pickup truck.

More reliable evidence is to be found in the layering of the rocks that fossils are in, molecular analysis of the genome, which can be used to roughly calculate statistically how long the species under analysis has been diverging from an ancestor species. There are examples of micro-ecologies quickly diverging, just an overwhelming amount of evidence really.

There are some not very Intelligent Design aspects of anatomy, by the way. Such as the Vagas nerve, which bypasses the spinal column and descends directly from the brain, down into the upper chest cavity, and back up to the larynx. Not a big deal in a human overall, but a diversion of 15 feet or more in a giraffe. It and all 6 of these cranial nerves happens to exactly correlate to a brain to gill nerve in fish, which a human embryo matches almost exactly to a shocking degree at about 24 to 28 days of growth. Another is the fact that the vas deferens is looped up and over the ureters, a remnant of earlier ancestors that didn't have the curse of the exposed gonads, ripe for excruciating smashings.

The skeleton is the same in all mammals, only the individual bones are different. Whales have hands for flippers and a remnant of a pelvic girdle, horses run on their middle fingers (and toes), and so on.

Look at it this way (this is my own analogy, not from Dawkins). Let's say that a community needs workers to operate a new battery plant in a town. Some people will come from outside the area to work there, but most of the workers will be from the surrounding area and will modify their 'behavior' to get that fancy new job. After a small passage of time, that modified behavior becomes a prerequisite to earning a job there and becomes a standard, which needs a new environmental stimulus to change anew. That in a nutshell is the driving force behind natural selection and evolution in general. If a moth species discovers that it needs a longer nose sucker to get the yummy nectar out of a flower, then only those with the longest snout will successfully breed, creating over time a separate subspecies of extremely long snouted nectar sucking moths. It's that simple really.

The only people that vehemently deny this branch of science are the bible toting sect that think that their concept of a religion is the most important thing in the universe, and they find a way to use that book as not only 'A' science book but as 'The' science book. These are the sort of people who home-school their children to keep them away from a legitimate and balanced education. I'll stop here before rant # 959 commences into religious/political rant #1744... (in case you wonder, I keep the two separate for my own sanity. I have to put that Christian right wing disgust in a separate spot of my mind so that it doesn't burn a hole in some other more important sector in my brain, like where I keep my geometric processor or where NFL player X went to college.)

Here's a nice sequence of my little nephew's golf swing and some fall foliage from Michigan. He's barely three and sadly still in diapers but you could do a professional analysis of his mechanics. So far the depth of his instruction has been to line the club and ball up then hit it. The rest is all his own work.

These are the sort of people who home-school their children to keep them away from a legitimate and balanced education.

As a person who was home-educated from kindergarten through high school graduation, I'm saddened when I hear such misinformed and bigoted views. What is "balanced" about public education? In public school curriculum, a particular viewpoint is taught as true, while the other is taught as false (or not even mentioned at all). How is that different from homeschool curriculum?

And as for home education not being "legitimate," I suppose that's why I was so excellently prepared for college that I graduated with a cumulative GPA of 4.0 from a state university four years later.

I think you are using "legitimate and balanced" to mean "aligning with DP's beliefs" — and I hope you are able to see the terms are not synonymous.

It must irk Dawkins to no end that there are people out there who teach their children what they believe to be true rather than what he believes to be true. He has such evangelistic zeal to see people converted to his belief system! It's quite religious in nature, actually. Poor man.

Cute nephew, btw! Michigan's looking like Ohio right around now with the leaves changing.

I have been out of town without ESPN *gasp* and missed the Nebraska - K-State game, but I heard that Nebraska was awesome. I did hear one commentator today say that OU would beat Nebraska, but at a neutral site, I have my doubts. Next week will be scary for the Horns. I hope that they are practicing fundamentals. I heard that The Daily Texan published their article on the UT offense sideways since that is the way they run it. Pretty funny. I hear that the Michigan QB is being considered for the Heisman. I saw him run a play from an old game and he looked like Alfred Anderson who was QB at my high school. And boy was he great!

Nice photos of the nephew!
--BJ

Oh, I noticed that Boise State got jumped even though they had a big win. They will never get over their conference and get any respect. So we just have to hope that all the other teams have a loss for them to get to the big game.
--BJ

Blame be for believing in science and logic, but if a teacher is not allowed to teach science in science class because of a student's (or more usually a parent's) religious views, then that should not be a hindrance to the education of the rest of the students. Bible stories don't belong in a science lab. That's just the way I feel about it. And it's not a matter of 'aligning with my beliefs' in any way. There's a reason why science aptitude is so low and plummeting even lower in the US.

I am apologizing for starting what always denigrates into a shouting match, I should have known better. I almost didn't post anything about an informative and fascinating book just because this is what happens when evolution gets brought up.

I am very much apologizing for the homeschooling comment, but I had a friend from grade school who was pulled out of middle school over the biology curriculum because it conflicted with her parent's religious beliefs. Apparently studying basic anatomy is a violation of some sort because god designed a grasshopper in such a perfect way that there is no need to look in to it and figure how it works for ourselves. I didn't see her for five years or so and she turned into a disgusting little snob. Quite a change in a school bus pal, so I'm biased there. I'm glad it worked out better for you.

Nebraska took K-State to the woodshed as usual. Denard Robinson deserves the Heisman about as much as I do. Good runner, weak and inaccurate arm, losing team. Michigan State did exactly what they had to do to beat him and the Wolverines as well. They played some simple football. Most teams go in to a game like that thinking they have to outscore Rich Rodriguez' teams, but in reality you just have to play some solid defense and take the plays that are given to you. Some of those given plays will be 65 yard touchdown runs.

I noticed that the MSU coach was back for the first time since the Notre Dame game. And I saw that the Detroit Lions had an amazing win, the first of the year? Don't usually see 44 points in a NFL game.

I watched the Alabama-South Carolina game -- sort of a chess match between the offensive master and the defensive master. Also saw the LSU-Florida game. Glad I am not an LSU fan just because it has to be hard on the heart all these close, exciting games! They always seem to find a way to win though, don't they? Also watched USC (the other one) and Stanford play. Chase Beeler (can't recall if that is how he spells it) went to high school with my older daughter. Boy is he smart! I wonder if he will play in the NFL? USC is really suffering this year. Kind of like my Longhorns. Hoping for a miracle on Saturday, but not expecting it. Oh, I also watched some of the Texas Tech - Baylor game in the Cotton Bowl. I kind of like seeing games played in that old stadium. One of my Sunday School students told me that he had the most fun ever going to his first High School football game. I had to agree. That is too much fun! We ended up getting season tickets to the high school football games even though we don't have any kids in high school anymore.
--BJ

I don't like shouting matches either and I have no plans for starting one. My caps lock is securely off :). I reread my message #80 and I'm sorry if I was snippy. I admit annoyance at the homeschooling comment; I tend to be sensitive to those because I've experienced that attitude and the prejudice it leads to on a personal level. I hate the backwards, uneducated stereotypes that some people hold about home education — and sometimes I'm overzealous in my attempts to correct those erroneous views.

Interestingly, I heard that Dawkins appeared on Ben Stein's "Expelled" and actually admitted the possibility of intelligent design. Not that Dawkins is the one determining whether or not intelligent design is true, of course! But it was interesting to hear that.

Blame be for believing in science and logic, but if a teacher is not allowed to teach science in science class because of a student's (or more usually a parent's) religious views, then that should not be a hindrance to the education of the rest of the students. Bible stories don't belong in a science lab.

But this doesn't address my question about how such an education can be, in your word, "balanced." As I said earlier, the public school system curriculum teaches one origins hypothesis as true, just as homeschool curriculum does. Yet you say homeschool curriculum is not a "balanced" education, implying that a public school education is.

I understand that this is how you feel about intelligent design vs. evolution in the classroom, I do. But that's my point exactly: this is how you, DP, feel about the issue. It is your subjective opinion, which has just as much validity as mine or anyone else's. In my opinion, evolution is just as much of an origins myth as creation. Both are hypotheses that we cannot prove by reproducing the events in a lab. A "balanced" education would teach both.

But I suspect that you, like me, are not interested in a balanced education. We're interested in a true one. We just differ as to what is true.

There's a reason why science aptitude is so low and plummeting even lower in the US.

Are you connecting low science aptitude and "Bible stories in the classroom"? I'm confused; evolution is taught as true in every public school in the United States, with none of those scoffable Bible stories mentioned. Maybe that's the reason science aptitude is so lame in the U.S.? ;)

Personally, I think it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in intelligent design. You have to make the incredibly huge leap to trust that all physical matter came from... nothing.

I'm sure Dawkins' book is very interesting. But to get a truly balanced and well-rounded understanding of the issue, you should read something by a scientist who subscribes to intelligent design. Hear the arguments from the other side. I'm sure I can dig up some titles if you care for a recommendation. And if not, that's fine too. I will sit back and continue my education in sports-related discussion :)

Actually, the reason science aptitude is so low is that a large segment of the population either doesn't care, have parents/guardians who didn't care when they were in school, or simply don't have access to the required education, either through poor schools or bad teachers here and there. It's a big commitment. Just consider the years of math that has to be learned just to study some serious physics. The velocity of a projectile is the derivative of the displacement vector, the acceleration is the derivative of the velocity vector. Without knowing how to deal with calculus, physics becomes a tedious formula memorization exercise. In fact, that's the difference between high school physics class, boring memorization that drives most students away, and proper college level physics class where the student learns how to derive those equations from a few simple starting points, like F=ma. Much easier, actually but you have to be good at calculus first.

I was lucky that I had a long series of good teachers for my whole career at a rural public system (Bullock Creek schools, south of Midland MI), and there was a big emphasis on teaching the kids how to learn and study on their own subjects that they were interested in. In fact, I was lucky enough to get some rudimentary matrix algebra that nobody in my Calculus III class even suspected existed. That was handy at the time, plus I got brownie points for explaining it to the class. Anyway, I can't recall any that I would consider poor, but the advanced English teachers were not very friendly. Mrs Fitch introduced herself with '... and my name begins with an F not a B.' The other one gave me awful grades in Creative Writing class because I wrote poems about things that I was passionate about, namely football. I barely got a passing grade in her class, not because I didn't understand iambic pentameter, which I clearly did, but because I didn't pander to her interests. My brother got an A in the same class by writing drivel like 'Happiness is...', which is really what she wanted. Very annoying and my only C grades ever in fourteen years of school. Unless you include bad penmanship grades early on.

So, here's what I've come up with. You and many others look for meaning through personal faith in one form or another, I and also many others think that there is more to be learned about origins and meaning through quantum physics. In the end they might just be the same coin viewed from opposite sides. There's creation, the mystery of conciousness and free will, manipulating probability (or miracles if you prefer) and plenty of unknowables and maybe unanswerables from whichever way you look at the issue. Fundamentally different mindsets and life experiences lead to such diversity.

Oh, one more thing. I finally found my wallet that has been missing since January while looking for my jar of pushpins. The pins are still missing (surprise, surprise) but I now have my library card back, which means I can resume my habit of grabbing an Agatha Christie mystery on each trip. I selected Sad Cypress and when I got home, I checked the reviews. Lo and behold, you had read it. You summed up my major issue with most mysteries, the contrivance of circumstance. The rating system seems to agree with your summary of it not being a great Poirot but the premise sounded interesting enough to blindly try it. Anyway, I should be starting that pretty soon, pounding through a stack of library specials takes some time, especially when you start with Asimov's The History of Physics. I had to put Thucydides aside for a while, it just wasn't doing it for me. My math processor needs some exercise in a bad way.

--------------------

That Bama/USC game was a big surprise to me. Spurrier rarely has won games against physical teams like that, but he's had plenty of time to modify his coaching style. His South Carolina team is quite different from his old chuck and duck Florida teams. A balanced Spurrier offense? Looks like it. Never thought I'd see the day. It is nice to see the old Cotton Bowl, especially since the so called Cotton Bowl is now played at the new Cowboys Stadium. That has always been a favorite bowl game of mine, it was the first game of the day on January 1 with a traditional matchup between an SEC team and an old school Southwest Conference team. Yeah.

That's cool about that Beeler kid being from Tulsa and all. As everybody knows, there's a fine line between winning and losing. And it's the offensive line. Stanford is outstanding because they have that o-line and a mean defense. What a surprise that they lost Oregon. I really hate that Ducks team, too many gangsters, or should I say gangstas? Almost as many arrests as Florida. Urban Meyer has had five years plus this season there in Gainesville and has had thirty players arrested. Oregon just has arrests for assault and breaking & entering, plus that dufus (his name was something Blount) who punched a Boise State guy after the game and almost caused a crowd riot as he left the field. There were hundreds of people ready to jump over a waist high fence to pummel that mouthy little thug. Isn't football great?

It's even better when your local team, the Lions for me, have made the biggest improvement skillwise that I've seen in the NFL in years. That team is on TV here every weekend and it's nice having arguably the best defensive line in the league anchoring an improving defense. Ndamukon Suh is the real deal and they also have an outstanding young safety in Louis Delmas. The offense is actually very good outside of left tackle Jim Backus who is the worst tackle in the league because his pass blocking is pitiful. By far the worst in that department.

I heard that Suh tipped a Sam Bradford pass, then caught it and ran for 15 or so yards. He is the real deal. I have never seen anything like him, ever. I also heard that Colt is going to start for the Browns next weekend. I hope that it goes ok for him and that he doesn't get injured. We are really missing his leadership on the Longhorn team.

I got to go to one of the Red River Shootout games when I went to UT back in the dark ages at the Cotton Bowl. It was so much fun! It really is a great stadium. And I must say, that I miss the Cotton Bowl from pre-BCS days when it was a major bowl to those who were in the Southwest Conference.

I am getting nervous about this Saturday, but with low expectations (really low) I guess my heart will take it ok!
--BJ

I have been off LT for a while, and I have to comment about the first BCS rankings. I am amazed that OU is on top! And poor Boise State is 3rd! Do you think that OU will stay undefeated? The Missouri game this weekend should be a good one, although OU clobbered them that last time that Missouri was supposed to win. Also, I hear that OSU is very good this year. Usually, OU wins that one, too.

Is the Michigan QB injured again? I hope not. UT had quite a few players injured in the Nebraska game and they were all good ones. I hope that they will be ok soon. I think that a couple were head injuries which is not good.
--BJ

After Stanford couldn't beat Oregon and the Neb/Texas game, I just don't know if any predictions are valid anymore.

This BCS poll is pretty suspect. It's a popularity contest times another separate popularity contest times a computer generated guess. What we really need is some sort of playoff. There are twelve conferences counting the independents. Let's take the champion of each of those and duke it out. Honestly though there is more integrity in winning the conference. Bowl games are a money generator for the NCAA and that is all.

With luck I will finish the Asimov tome tonight (it's big) and get in to The Calculus Wars. I saw it in a book club flyer at least five years ago and have been wanting to read it ever since.

Calculus Wars looks pretty interesting. I added it to my wishlist. I cannot believe that I have not read anything by Asimov. I must be the only person.

I think that a playoff with all the conference champions is a great idea. But what about Notre Dame? Maybe the bowls could still continue. I kind of like them, too. I just don't think the BCS system really works.

LSU and Auburn should be a good game. And Nebraska-OSU. I can't wait until tomorrow. I hope we don't have a letdown and lose to Iowa State! Looks like UCLA is on permanent letdown! :)
--BJ

The biggest problem is that there are just too many teams involved to come up with a system that everyone likes, plus the Christmas break really puts the kibosh on scheduling. The only thing I can think of that has to deal with so many teams is the UEFA Cup, which is a playoff that alternates with the World Cup to determine the best soccer club in Europe. They narrow almost eighty qualifiers down to a champion but it takes over a year.

Notre Dame is included in the 'There are twelve conferences counting the independents' clause, unless Navy beats them then too bad. If the NCAA adopted my system, they could go one of two ways. Twelve teams with a few byes the first round or take the four highest ranked non winners and have a four round sixteen team playoff. It's too simple to ever be utilized anyway. Everyone else goes to the Poulan Weedeater bowl of their choice to make money for a new library expansion.

I highly doubt that Iowa State will make things tough for Texas but you never know. I'm looking forward to seeing whether Michigan State can stay undefeated. They have Northwestern today in what should be a sloppy rainstorm (advantage MSU ground game), then Iowa and Penn State on the road. Purdue and Minnesota should be almost scrimmages. Wisconsin/Iowa should be a dandy, the winner has a good chance to be conference champs if MSU stumbles. Nebraska/Okie State is not aired here (GT/Clemson instead). UCLA is questionable, as is everything from LA.

As added insult, now that hockey has started, the Red Wings are on over any Fox Sports Network games. Boooo.

Just found your thread, Ryan. I'm glad you got to see Kansas' one good game of the season. I'm a passionate KU alumna and fan, but I save my passion for basketball season out of long experience. I remember losing the Orange Bowl as I sat there in the stands my sophomore year due to having to replay the last goal line stand play due to having 12 men on the field. :-( I think that Turner Gill will be a good coach, too, and when he's had a chance to have some recruiting classes and get his system firmly in place, KU has a chance to do better.

If Turner Gill can win games in Buffalo he can certainly win games in Kansas. I go way back with that guy. I started watching college football in 1979, Gill was the QB of the Nebraska team that impressed me so much. I still call them my favorite team even though I'm in Michigan.

I like your playoff idea. Just give the NCAA a call. Surely they will listen to reason. This is the season for a playoff. Three number ones in a row knocked off! I watched the OU-Mizzou game and it was pretty exciting. I also watched the OSU-Nebraska game. Nebraska was not about to lose two in a row. I think that I saw that MSU pulled it out. Did not see that game. Northwestern has been quite good this year. Poor Notre Dame. I hope that they can turn things around and soon. I also got to see some of Auburn-LSU. Auburn looks like they could be #1. Do you think USC can beat Oregon? Can UT beat the Baylor Bears, who are ranked while we are not? Luckily our high school team is steamrolling over everyone, so I do have that to be happy about. Right now, I am just wondering if the Horns can get bowl eligible this year.
--BJ

#93) I gave basketball a good honest chance from somewhere in the 80s until about 1993 or 94. I liked the UNLV team (not as a fan but as a neutral observer), Nolan Richardson's Arkansas teams and Eric Murdock's Providence Friars. I remember watching LSU absolutely crush some team, including their backboard. That crazy Shaq. The Fab Five at Michigan were pretty cool too, unless they were calling timeouts. Apparently that was the only thing they couldn't do. Nothing against Kansas but they were in league play against my Cornhuskers. Basketball just isn't my game. Maybe it's the excessively squeaky shoes, but I just can't do it anymore.

The best way to get a playoff is to have TCU and Boise be the only undefeated teams and play in the BCS Championship. The uproar will be deafening. I have not seen Baylor yet other than that awful onside kick play. It reminded me of Barry Foster's infamous blunder in the early '90s. You might not remember it, but I do because on ESPN they flashed 'ROOKIE' on the screen as he watched a kickoff bounce past him in to the endzone like it was a punt that he didn't want.

I'm more excited for Navy than sad for Notre Dame. The Irish will get there eventually but coach Kelly needs to calm down and stop screaming all the time. Having a guy that's a foot shorter than you yelling up towards your face is not really conducive to morale.

Somebody will beat Oregon. Speed teams never hold up through the season, but beating Stanford like that was impressive so maybe I'm wrong here. Hint - I like Arizona's team.

Some Bowl game will take Texas no matter what sort of shape they are in. Florida Atlantic will get them to five wins and one more gets them to the Peanut Bowl.

I have a lot to get to and will do it is a few stages.

What about the University of Houston team with both Akeem Olajawon and Clyde "the Glide" Drexler? I got to see them play in person. What a combo! Too bad the Rockets didn't take both of them when they had the chance.

Now I see that Auburn is Number 1, rather than Oregon. Only Alabama has a chance to beat them, but I think they can beat Bama.

Boy, MSU is looking good these days.
--BJ

MSU is looking solid but they had several holds not called vs. Northwestern, which is lucky considering their poor start to the game. Phi Slamma Jamma was just a tick before my basketball days. I was just beginning to understand how great Larry Bird was at that time.

Back to what I was doing yesterday when our power was blown out by that windstorm...


10. The History of Physics by Isaac Asimov
If ever there was a handy guide to physics for the enlightened layman, this is it. Perfect for answering questions about a myriad of topics, the good Doctor plods his way through the development of a science from basic fundamentals of measurement to the nucleus of an atom. There is some math, as physics is heavy on equations, but nothing that a B- algebra student can't follow. The emphasis is on placing discoveries and fundamental ideas in their historical context and then thoroughly explaining it in fairly simple terms. One thing that was wearing about this read was the often appearing '... which belongs more in a book on Astronomy.' Or Chemistry. Or Biology. All of which he wrote by the way. A few fun facts that I learned along the way: If the Earth's atmosphere were condensed to the density of water, it would only be 33 feet deep. Also, Herr Fahrenheit based his temperature scale on two extremes. One was the coldest water solution he could come up with, some mix with salt and alcohol, which he set as his zero, and his 100 degree mark was what he determined human body temperature to be. So, even though the scale relative to water is odd, the 0-100 range covers most of the human environmental conditions. Very good as is to be expected, as well as very long. The original version of the book is actually three moderate sized volumes, the edition I read is an omnibus of the three.


11. The Calculus Wars by Jason Socrates Bardi
Right off the bat, there is very little in the way of technical math stuff in this book. It is simply a story about two brilliant mathematicians and the interesting times they lived in. For those not aware, the calculus is mainly an algebraic method of analyzing curves, notably finding the equation of a line tangent to a curve as well as calculating the area under a curve. Anyway, the reason there is a book about this is because of a feud that blew up later in the lives of Herr Leibniz and Sir Newton.

In a nutshell, Newton had come up with his concept of fluxions literally decades before Leibniz but these ideas were never published. Leibniz had the opportunity to browse some pamphlets and books that Newton had given to his friend, one John Wallis. Did Leibniz read something there that inspired his methods of differential calculus? During their earlier years as peers, the two recognized each other as distinguished and preeminent theoretical mathematicians. Later on, a fervent supporter of Newton, with a certain amount of aid from Newton himself, publicly charged Leibniz with plagiarism literally decades after Leibniz published his ideas. These were charges that could never be cleared completely and denigrated into an ugly scene, each trying desperately to discredit the other. There are some very odd quinkydinks that almost imply that the two were fated to interact with each other, such as Leibniz' patron and sponsor in Hanover going on to become King of England because his grandmother was the daughter of King James II or some such (I have a tidy history of Britain from the library on my TBR pile to tidy up my fuzzy royalty data.)

There are some editing errors throughout, the annoying stuff that you know slipped through a spellcheck program that nobody noticed. Things like 'an' instead of 'and', a sentence like '...and France went to war with German.', and even a paragraph that ends in midsentence that fortunately was in the bibliographic epilogue. Along with some odd phrase choices and metaphors here and there, it still is an interesting slice of history well worth reading.

And yet a bit more...

So, my brother seems to be pretty sour when he sees me using his computer. He's been home for the last week with their new baby so things have been sparse on my end as far as posting my reviews. I'm already almost done with The Archimedes Codex, highly recommended on several levels, and after that a few quick Agatha Christie stories just because I always grab one when I go to the library.

Here's little Bailey, because everyone likes cute baby pictures. She looks way too much like by brother did when he was a baby.

Love the baby photo.
--BJ

#98: I've had my eye on "The Calculus Wars" for a little while now, and other things keep getting read first. I'm disappointed to hear about the sloppy line editing, and sorry to hear about the lack of mathematical detail: from the little history I know, both Newton's and Leibniz's approaches were quite different from modern methods, and a technical overview, even one banished to an appendix, would have been welcome. I'm happy to hear that it's worth reading though, and I'll have to bump it up. Hm, there is a TIOLI challenge next month to read a book about history ...

Oh, and what an adorable niece!

Cute baby pictures are always a win. What a little sweetheart!

Hi swynn, nice to have a new visitor. The editing errors are not rampant but just a few here and there. Just enough to notice but not enough to be a bother. The thing that truly bugs me about it is wondering if the facts needed any editing. Should that have been 1691 instead of 1681? That and a few odd phrase choices that seemed incongruious to the matter of the book, like '...but Von Oldenburg spilled the beans', or 'Leibniz opened an e-Bay-like emporium.'
Go ahead and read it, it is fairly short. I think it took me three bedtime sessions to get through it. And I like your idea of a brief technical appendix, but I'm not sure what the target audience is. The casual reader would probably pass on what they think is a book about the calculus even though it is a history that is filed in the science Dewey Decimal area.


12. The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel
This is a fine random history that details the life, death and resurrection of the lost writings of Archimedes, a thinker far, far ahead of his time. He was on the cusp of mathematical theories that did not come to fruition until literally 1800 or more years after his death. The Archimedes Codex is almost two books in one, alternating chapters between the two authors. Noel is a mucketymuck at the Walters Art Museum where the restoration of an ancient palimpsest was done and Netz is an expert on ancient Greek mathematics and geometry who was brought in to decipher the text and diagrams.
In a nutshell, the palimpsest was originally a manuscript of a copy (in Greek) of several works of Archimedes, later the ink was scraped off, the pages rotated ninety degrees and scribed over with medieval prayers. That, by the way, is the definition of a palimpsest. There is historical investigation about the life story of the manuscript through the ages, few chapters about the life of Archimedes, the purchase of the actual codex at auction, some ingenious geometric proofs, a bit about the fundamental differences between Greek math and current math, and some fairly technical information about imaging methods used to recover the scraped off text, like using an X-ray scanner to atomically reconstruct the constituents of the text by locating the iron in the ancient ink. All in all a very nice book.

It is in a similar category as Owen Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read, which I had to have just for the title alone. In this book, the author traces the lineage of the extant copies of Copernicus' Revolutions of the celestial spheres. The legend has it that nobody ever read it but he discovers that almost every copy had many margin notes written and in some case copied from other editions. Who wrote those notes? Gingerich found enough information to write a fairly interesting book about who those people were.

Nice review. And I find The Book that Nobody Read pretty interesting, as well.

I am trying not to be anxious about the Baylor game. Being from Waco, I really, really want to win this one. I am curious to see if the coaches have made some positive changes to this space alien team. Back in the day, Baylor used to have a big Hex-Tex rally.

Also interested in the Missouri-Nebraska game. It is unusual that Nebraska plays better away than at home, but let's face it, UT is also not playing well at home!

I enjoyed watching Boise State on tv on Tuesday. I am guessing that they will not play this weekend after such a late game. Could they beat Auburn? Not sure.

Have a nice weekend.
--BJ

#103: It's on the shelf in my library, so I'll definitely put on my list for this month. (I do agree though that the juxtaposition of Leibniz and e-Bay seems ill-chosen.) Thanks for the plug!

I am drowning my sorrow in chocolate. Truly the team has been kidnapped and replaced by space aliens who have never ever played a down.
--BJ

13. Why Didn't They Ask Evans? and
14. Sad Cypress both by Agatha Christie
Here we have two Christie mysteries, both written around the same time, both make use of telephones and license plates and both have similar poison by morphia murders. I thought both were, as expected, fine mysteries with interesting twists and turns. Neither are the absolute best of Agatha Christie but the contrast between the two highlights just how great of a character Hercule Poirot is. Why didn't they ask Evans? comes across as an afternoon movie plot with its cast of Bobby Jones and Lady Frances doing the solving (barely) and Sad Cypress has the magisterial air of Poirot to give it a fine luster.

So the Giants win the World Series. I hope Jim Leyland was watching so that he can see how to utilize great pitching, which he has plenty of with the Tigers, as well as how to utilize the small-ball tactics that propelled a mediocre lineup to a championship. For the record, each team in the League Championship Series had at least two former Tigers. Notably the Giants had three key players. Cody Ross is a former Tiger minor league player of the year who hit a grand slam in his first game, then injured his knee and was traded off for a pitcher that I've never heard of. Aubrey Huff and Edgar Renteria were massive letdowns as Tigers, Renteria on the unbelievably disappointing 2008 underachievers, and Huff did next to nothing in 2009. However, mixed together on the Giants, Huff laid down a sacrifice bunt in the seventh (Leyland would never have done that on the grounds of wasting an out), then Renteria followed up with a three run homer. A single would have scored two but three is nicer. Renteria has proved that he is a Hall of Famer as a National League player but a journeyman at best in the American League. That's odd. He had the Series winning single for the 1997 Marlins that scored Craig Counsell, played a huge role in getting the Cardinals there in 2004, only to lose to the Red Sox. As an American Leaguer he had embarrassing runs in Boston and Detroit.

Looks like I'm not too far removed from my annual First-Snow-Of-Winter-Barefoot-Pagan-Frolic-By-Moonlight. It's the only frolicing I allow myself to participate in.

Another sad day for the Tigers. Their legendary former manager, Sparky Anderson, passed away today. He also managed the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati which only adds to his status as a hall of famer, and was the first (of two) managers to win a World Series with a team in each league.

I have two books related to Sparky, one is his diary entries from the 1984 championship season called Bless You Boys, the other is a biography called They Call Me Sparky. As I recall the last person to call him George was his mother.

15. The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay
I suppose this was a pretty good story. It wasn't earth shattering, inspirational or anything like that, just a nice solid and very well crafted story by an apparently very talented writer. It is a story of love and hatred, vengeance and forgiveness, with some exploits in the faerie realm thrown in just to make sure it is shelved in the fantasy/scifi section where it belongs. Kay's main fantasy realm is basically an analogue of medieval earth, and is a beautiful little playroom for the author. The Last Light of the Sun is set in the same world as his Sarantine Mosaic books, but instead of focusing on the Byzantine equivalent realm of Sarantine, the story takes place in the northern lands of the Erlings (Viking styled), Cyngaels (surprise! Gaelic Wales/Ireland) and the Anglycyn (Englishey). I have wanted to check out his work since I stumbled across the fact that he assisted Christopher Tolkien in slapping together The Silmarillion. Kay seems to have learned a few tricks about writing and I look forward to checking out his other works. Which was my point in grabbing this at the library in the first place.

In a final note on Sparky, there has been a slow burning controversy for years up here over the Tigers not having retired his number 11, which nobody has worn since he retired. My take on it is that, even though he won almost twice as many games in Detroit than in Cincinnati, he chose to go in to the Hall of fame as a Red, and his bronze plaque in Cooperstown has a big letter C on the cap instead of an old English D.

Kay's been on my radar for awhile and you just bumped him up a few places on my priority list.

Good. He's no Stephen Lawhead but it's not that far off.

So, I'm watching Illinois vs. Michigan for some strange reason and they go to a studio halftime preview where, "We'll show you games where the teams are actually playing tackle football." Back to the game, "Yep. Been two hand touch here in Ann Arbor." I thought that summed up RichRod's Wolverine team in a nutshell, and the Fighting Illini as well. I'm off to watch Baylor-Oklahoma State, two teams that I never get to see. Haven't seen Baylor literally in years.

And how about the Browns beating New England and New Orleans?

LSU beat Alabama. That embattled LSU team can never be counted out. Les Miles looked pretty happy. Wish I had a smile on my face.

And Joe Pa got his 400th win. I cannot believe that he is still coaching, but he seems to have had a Renaissance the last few years.

And TCU beat Utah pretty convincingly. Maybe they should play in the championship game.
--BJ

DP, you will be happy to hear that I started Lawhead's Byzantium yesterday. I'm about 200 pages in. It's not wowing me yet, but I do want to get back to it and find out what happens.

Excellent. The story is a long journey, like Aidan's life.

Joe Pa's 'renaissance' is probably because the rest of the Big Ten coaches have stopped using the tired old 'He's going to retire at any time' trick in recruiting. Now, there might be some honor in playing in his last game.

As usual, the SEC has the most physical teams from top to bottom. Even the bad teams in the conference are tough, like Ole Miss and Kentucky.

My last resort plan for my lame fantasy team is to pick up Colt McCoy. I've had such a rotten season that I might as well play a rookie QB. Even if I score a decent amount of points I am still losing this year. Stafford is broken again, the 49ers are having the most disappointing season of any team I can recall, and that includes the Cowboys this year. I picked them in last place where every stupid team with a stupid coach belongs. Oh yeah, my receivers are killing me, just an all around awful year.

I hear that Colt McCoy is up for Rookie of the Week. Hope I did not jinx him by putting it in print!

Also heard that Wade Phillips got fired. That has been a long time coming, I think.

I thought my dad was crazy to travel out of the country during football season, but as a Longhorn and Cowboy fan, I think he picked the perfect year to do it. Now that he is back, I hope that the teams play better.
--BJ

Rookie of the week? That's like being employee of the month at Arby's. Kidding. It would be nice to have seen one of Colt's games where he supposedly looked like Tom Brady. Full of poise and calm as can be, but a very good offensive line will do that to you, that and Peyton Hillis rushing for huge yards and cracking heads downfield (in the good way). I'm more worried about the dirty Steelers D than awards at this point. They're a bunch of headhunters (in the bad way, but not as bad as usual against the Bengals Monday though it pains me to say it).

OK, that is funny to me.
--BJ

I'm nearing completion of 'The Story of Britain' from the local library. Very very long and a tad too brief in places, but it is admirably serving the purpose that I checked it out for: Providing a summary overview. An example of its brevity, the American Revolution covers literally about three or four total pages, spread around here and there as required. The book is organized very chronologically. Actual military action is so briefly summed up in two paragraphs as to be funny, in an odd way.

Howe abandoned Boston for New York, was chased by Washington to Philadelphia, big victory for the Colonists at Saratoga, British become weaker and more ineffective until the surrender at Yorktown. Meanwhile, in the colonies of India....

The battle of Quebec under General Wolfe from 1775 received more text, but then the book was written by an English mother for an English audience. It is also very clear on the lineages and lives of the monarchs. I'm liking it quite a bit as far as a broad view tapestry to place my segmented knowledge of Britain's long history upon. My problem as an amateur historian is that I am far more familiar with the Anglo-Saxon Britain than, say, Queen Victoria's United Kingdom, Disraeli and Gladstone, and whatnot. It was also nice clearing up the whole Bonnie Prince Charlie thing and the Stuart kings in exile situation. Nobody likes a tyrannical egotistic king who demands absolute loyalty in all things.

Liked the part about the Revolutionary War, aka the Rebellion of the Colonies.

Do you think the Longhorns can beat Florida Atlantic??? I can hardly stand to watch the games, and I hear that ticket prices are quite affordable for that game. I will be in Austin for the A&M game, but I will watch on tv this time.
--BJ

16. The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present by Rebecca Fraser
I outlined my general thoughts above in #121, which did not change after completion and the above stands as my review. The only addition is that it is a fine book if you are interested in the subject but if you are assigned to read it I can easily see how it would be an interminable bore.

17. At Bertram's Hotel
18. Cards on the Table both by Agatha Christie
At Bertram's Hotel is an interesting story but lacks in the mystery department. I can see why it isn't overly popular compared to others. It's actually more of a tale about the hotel than an actual murder mystery.
Cards on the Table, however, was an exemplary Poirot mystery. I really liked the introduction where she explains how there is none of the 'pick the least likely character' aspect to figure out the killer. Four bridge players, four suspects, one killer. Outstanding

So glad you liked Cards on the Table! It is my all time favourite Poirot mystery, one that I’ve re-read the most often. It is excellent! BTW, I love the cover of my copy of the book. There’s something creepy about it.

At Bertram's Hotel is one of the better late Christie’s. It is better than say Nemesis, the last Miss Marple Christie ever wrote, or Elephants Can Remember, the last Poirot she ever wrote.

I thought that was a pretty cool cover too. LT didn't have a match to the generic cover from my library so I had free reign to pick one that I liked.

On the topic of football, I don't think that I could watch another UT game this year, so I guess I am lucky that they will not play another one. At the 7-7 mark, I was doing my best Dandy Don Meredith imitation of Turn Out the Lights. The writing was on the wall at that point. Honestly. And then to rush back into town to see the OSU-OU game. Another disaster.

I heard that Michigan State won. And Auburn (I saw the end of that one). And Boise State lost. Not good for the playoff argument.

I am going to turn over a new leaf and stop being disgruntled. :)
--BJ

19. Cambridge Illustrated History of France by Colin Jones
Continuing my overview of Europe nation by nation, I decided France would be next. I really wanted to like this book, but it was just so vague that I'm not sure what all I gained from it. Not that it is poorly written, it's actually well done, but there is just so much crammed in to it's moderate size that it either needed to be bigger with more specifics (the reign of Napoleon literally covered less than two pages of text) or the emphasis on discussing the political, social, and military history of such a vast timeframe needed to be modified a bit. It is especially vague on the Gaul of ancient times and the Franks, and Francois Mitterand is far more extensively detailed than Charlemagne. Still, there are plenty of lessons to be had here and it does serve as a starting point fairly well, and its treatment of the post WWII era was particularly well done. I just was interested in a more detailed history, that's all.

Hey, I don't mind not watching Longhorns football either. A low blow but I can't resist. I'm actually more upset about the way Nebraska got hamboned by the referees in the Texas A&M game. The final penalty count was 16 to 2. It seems fairly obvious that the conference orders are to not give Nebraska any beneficial calls at all. The Texas game was suspect, but the A&M game was pretty much a joke, notably a late hit on the QB call in the fourth quarter where the defender hit the QB with the ball still in hand and a waived interference call on A&M that took away a first down. I've just seen too much awful officiating the last few years in football and that makes it easy to see a conspiracy theory if you care to do so. The Big 12 seems to be very determined to become a Texas (state) centered conference that hearkens back to the glory days of the SWC (gook luck Kansas and Iowa State), the NFL desperately wants certain teams to be perennially successful ($teeler$) at the expense of the franchises that don't make the big bucks for the league, and so on. It could be my imagination though. I see Steelers logo shirts, hats and stickers almost every time I go out in public and never a Carolina Panthers or even the Ravens.

The Boise State/Nevada game was a dandy, but I'm not sure that the kicker missed that kick at the end of regulation. The ref was right under the post though so the call is probably correct but the university should pony up for the higher posts and not the shorter high school looking ones that were probably pulled down by the students after such a huge win. I think I've gone on elsewhere on my thread about the Pistol offense at Nevada but It was whirling and twirling in that second half. I find it endlessly fascinating, each play has a primary pass or run read right at the snap, then it becomes a triple option attack with blocking and runners coming from all sorts of crazy angles. When is the last time you saw a tight end come around in motion and taking an option pitch for a solid twenty yard gain? Oh yeah, Nevada's QB and RB, Kaepernick and Vai Taua, passed the Pony Express backfield for the most rushing yards by a pair of teammates in history. A final note here, Chris Ault, the coach at Nevada does seminars about his offense and at least one luminary of history has attended. Former Heisman winner Rick Neuheisel from UCLA took his whole staff and now the Bruins run that offense full time. He's coached national title contenders at Washington and Colorado and has been an offensive coordinator in the NFL and thought enough of the system to abandon his old ideas and run the pistol. Lots of teams ran it as a gimmick this year too.

Michigan State was lucky that they played Wisconsin early in the year, plus they didn't play Ohio State this season.

On ESPN they extended the goalposts via computer to show that the kick was not good. It was a close one, though. How can a school have short goalposts? I was surprised that that could happen.

About the Nebraska - A&M game, what about Pellini's unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when they were backed up? And what on earth was he yelling at Martinez for? I could not figure that out at all. There were a lot of penalties in that game against Nebraska for sure.

I well remember the Pony Express. And that fight song that played endlessly.

Maybe UT will have a good baseball season. I can only hope.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.
--BJ

I'm thinking that Pellini would have blown up on a topless waitress bringing him free beer and wings by that time in the game. Kyle Field is about as tough of a place to play as there is and things went pear-shaped in every way.
Thanksgiving is always nice. I got to sit home by myself and watch football all day then read 'Cards on the Table' since we don't have the NFL network for those lame thursday night games. Little brother goes off to his wife's family on thursday and I have to wait until friday when we get together at ma and pa's with a few assorted aunts and uncles. The only problem is that none of them care a lick about football so I'm in and out of mom's sewing room (with 41" HD TV) all afternoon. Now that I think about it, Arizona had a few issues with the officials friday. There was a horrid call on a helmet to helmet hit that cost Arizona a fumble recovery and I learned that an o-lineman can get called for holding to offset a flagrant offsides. The guard literally grabbed the defender's belt as he ran by and watched four Oregon players bury his QB when they were all offsides to start with. I'm thinking that the unabated to the Quarterback rule is only an NFL thing but still... It's getting harder to keep the NFL and college rule sets straight.

Isn't Texas ranked in the top 25 in basketball? There's always that, if you like basketball that is. They're pretty much always a title contender in baseball but that's not until march or so.

I've been a bit tardy here as I'm recovering from a decent bicycle crash. I took off to the corner store to get a pack of gum and an RC Cola (Am I 10 or 36? Some things never change). Since it was dark I had to take a different line into the parking lot than I'm used to to avoid a truck and wiped out at a decent clip in some gravel on the pavement. My hands are smashed pretty good and my kneecap took a pretty good whack so that I have to walk sideways down the stairs. The worst thing is that I ruined my brand new $200 eyeglass lenses. The flexey frames did their job but asphalt and polycarbonate plastic just don't mix like that. And don't forget the road rash on my nose, which my generous moustache sticks in. All around lame.

DP, ouch! Much sympathy. I had a nasty bike accident on a gravel road in my teens. I was wearing shorts, of course, and my legs and hands were a bloody mess. I have fat shiny scars on my knees to this day. All my beauty gone! :P

That stinks about your glasses too :(

The saddest part is that I had a cheap pair for at least six years so of course when I spend money I don't have they are ruined in less than two months. At least I didn't go from racing down a trail in the woods to trying to figure out how I came to be lying in the trees. I was in football shape then so I just walked out but if I did that now I'd probably still be laying there watching the crows peck at my innards.

I'll have a polished kneecap myself now but it will match all the scrapes and dings from disc golf. Woods plus shorts plus throwing windups equals characteristic legs. You've never seen so many scrapes in your life on a such a variety of folks.

# 131 Sorry to hear about your bicycle accident, DP! Hope you get better soon. Too bad about the eyeglass lenses.

Sorry about your bike accident. I upped from crummy old glasses to nice new ones and found that even if I did not have an accident, these new lenses get scratched so easily. Things used to last longer I think.

I heard a rumor that our Offensive Coordinator is going. That should make a huge difference!
--BJ

I still haven't figured out your Longhorns, but I stand by my observation that they are a passing/spread team with a run blocking line, not a pass blocking line. On defense they just need more Acho brothers.

Totally out of the blue today, my mom called and had ordered me a replacement lens. Early Christmas I guess

Alas, one of our Achos is graduating. They are terrific, both on and off the field.

How wonderful for your mom to think of you!!!
--BJ

Moms are supposed to be cool like that. Mine sure is.

A coaching change would be indicative of the situation there, they seem to be misusing their talent of which they have plenty.

I got cut off during that last message, so thanks for the well-wishes. All in all the crash could have been much worse. I could have been run over by that truck whose driver didn't see me for starters. Nobody has their eyes peeled for bicyclists on a cold early winter night out at a countryside corner store. After thinking about it, if I had one of those prissy bike helmets on I might not have scuffed my face and goggles but could have really jimmy-jammed my neck due to the thickness of the helmet, or cracked my jaw or teeth instead. Win some, lose some there.

I did have some extra laying-about time to get in to 'The Battle of Waterloo' (no TS, I'll link to it when I review it) and might be able to finish Troy Soos' Hanging Curve before it is due back to the library soon.

20. The Battle of Waterloo by Jeremy Black
There's one thing missing in this fine study of Wellington's triumph-a map of some sort, even just a map of the battlefield to aid a reader in visualizing the somewhat complicated topography and layout of the local farms, roads and rivers that made up the theater. There are so many army units to keep track of in several locations, not to mention the Prussian army arriving in support from the east, that a lack of a map is a surprising exclusion. On the other hand, this book is intended more for the reader/scholar who is at least passing familiar with the battle. Other than that, the author does an admirable job in detailing this major battle, as well as supplying a brief but informative history of the Napoleonic wars, his exile and subsequent return to power. The book concludes with a study of the aftermath of the battle and its long term repercussions on European politics and social history. It is very thorough, perhaps a bit too thorough for a reader who rarely reads a detailed history but if that is your thing then 'The Battle of Waterloo' is a good one, no doubt about it.
21. Hanging Curve by Troy Soos
I haven't read one of these Mickey Rawlings mysteries in quite a long time. This one has been out for over ten years and I recall it being new when I first read one of these. Soos takes the reader back to St. Louis of the roaring twenties in this mystery about the lynching death of Slip Crawford, a Negro League star pitcher, after an exhibition game against a white semi-pro team, on which Rawlings plays under an assumed name. As his season with the St. Louis Browns carries on, he gets deeper and deeper into the racial tensions and Klu Klux Klan of the era, eventually (of course) discovering the unusual circumstances of the murder.
The thing I like about these mysteries (there are six) is that they star a fictional utility ballplayer who bounces around the league and plays with or for many of the legends of early baseball. It really works as a series because there is a new setting for each tale, and in this one in particular Rawlings has his best season as a player and investigates a very personal and troubling case. The author is a freelance baseball researcher and I recall from somewhere (a bio in an earlier book?) that he works/worked for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He had the inspiration to combine his passion for baseball and interest in Agatha Christie to write some unique and historically detailed mysteries. Are they as grand as a Poirot story? Probably not, but they are very clever and interesting in their own right.
------------------
I did my traditional barefoot frolic last night and I have to say it was the coldest one that I can remember. It was even colder during the day when the wind was howling out of the north. Usually the first snow is on one of those 'Jeez, it was forty-something out yesterday' kind of days, but this year the air was almost arctic, very cold and dry. Not a good omen for the season, I would think.

Thanks and goodbye to Ron Santo, easily the most fun to listen to radio announcer in baseball, even if you hated the Cubs. He was a former player and should have been in the Hall of Fame as a third baseman, let alone as a beloved announcer. You could tell that he wanted to grab a bat and go out on the field and do it right. Although he was a notorious homer, he was very critical when the Cubs made mistakes and the listener could tell that he wanted to bang his head on the desk often, as he was biting his tongue to keep from having a tantrum. I'll miss him.

22. The City at the End of Time by Greg Bear
I enjoyed this complex scifi tale of the end of time, and I think I'll try Porua's method of linking to the review page, which would be right here.

If anyone hates this linking idea let me know but my secret plan is to try and lure in a few new chatty types just to see what happens if things make it to the hot reviews section. I look there most days to see if anything interesting pops up there myself. Plus, I like reading through the book reviews to compare them anyways.

Nice review! I added the book to my wishlist.

I was wondering when the Group Reads -- SciFi Group would choose another book. Did you end up reading all of the Dune books?
--BJ

That is weird about the scifi group but the Canticle for Liebowitz assignment didn't seem to go over too well. And if by all of the Dune books you mean the six Frank Herbert ones then yes, I read all of them. None by son Brian though.It's an impressive story but it seems to drag a bit. Probably why the sequels aren't that popular.

Still reeling over the chaos at UT!

I thought Canticle for Leibowitz was such a great read! Maybe everyone just got too busy elsewhere. There have been so many group reads that I have wanted to do but never got around to doing.
--BJ

I have too much to read as it is, without partaking in group reads. Not that I have a problem with the groups but it's just too reminiscent of English classes with assigned reading and whatnot for me to be regular at it. Those classes were a drag for me every school year. A Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a Mockingbird were the absolute last straw there, and trigonometry became my new 'required reading'. That and failing a multiple choice quiz on the Hobbit. What an embarrassment, first the teacher ridiculed me in front of the class for selecting The Hobbit in the first place, then failing a twenty question quiz. One of those dreaded too high of expectations deals. She later rejected my term paper idea on the science involved in the senses and instincts deer use to survive, so instead she got a dense aeronautical engineering paper on X-Planes and fancy new jets from the early 90's. That barely passed because she didn't understand the technical data involved. I'm pretty much permanently soured on any sort of assigned reading project, but it had little or no effect on my long-windedness.

Canticle for Leibowitz was pretty interesting, I can see why it is regarded as a classic. My final judgement on it was that it is more of an opinion on the social structure of man than a true scifi story, but there are some scifi elements there for sure.

I totally agree with your thoughts on Canticle for Leibowitz.

The one thing about a group read that really works for me is motivation to finish the book that I started and hearing others thoughts always motivate me. However, lately I have not been finishing any group reads. I still sign up for them though, and I have signed on to quite a few next year. I usually always enjoy the book. (OK, I did not really like Last and First Men; however, I did think that parts of it were thought-provoking.)

I agree absolutely that reading for fun is much better than for class. I am on a mission to read all the books that my kids read in school that I have never read. And, for the most part, I enjoy them more than they did because it was not assigned. But there are some people who really enjoy reading books for school and it is more fun for sure than some other assignments I had!

Is Michigan in a bowl game?

I saw the hockey match report for MU and MSU. Amazing crowd. Our hockey team doesn't get much of a crowd.
--BJ

UM plays Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl Jan 1. MS St runs the spread too, but they have more power available than UM. Their QB (Relf, Ralf?) is on the order of 6'4 240, way bigger than Denard Robinson. I only got to see them get outmatched by Alabama this year.

113,000 plus for college hockey? Says alot about sports fans in Michigan. A rare local news viewing on my part claimed it was a Guinness record for attendance at a hockey game worldwide. I can't imagine that ice hockey is that big in Oklahoma, or Texas for that matter. There are people up my way who still scowl about the Minnesota NorthStars moving to Dallas almost 20 years ago. That was a big rivalry with the Red Wings, almost as big as the Chicago Blackhawks.

Last and First Men is one of the first things I'm reading on my eBook reader that mom and dad got me for Christmas. That and Alfred Bester's The Stars my Destination, two golden age classics that I have never picked up in print form. Not from lack of looking, they're two of the handful of authors I look for first at a bookstore. Really looking forward to a Sony 650 Touch. There are several reasons I prefer it over the Kindle, namely it can read my existing pile of mostly pirated books I've collected over the last two years. I plan to comment about the machine after I have some time to tinker with it. There are plans afoot to offload some of my paper books that I have in digital form (scifi stuff mostly) to make room for nice hardcover histories, to both make room on my shelves and to raise capital for some pricier tomes.

23. Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
I finally got around to reading a classic WWII history. Why it has taken so long to get to is beyond me but that's the way it is. The book is pretty good and it is nice to read something that covers a group of soldiers as they move through the war as opposed to one where the soldiers become mere numbers in a greater picture. It has been a while since I read anything on WWII, something I consider an area of expertise. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was probably four years ago, well before joining LT.

My thoughts are here.

Happy Christmas and don't forget the Winter Solstice.

My gift to everyone is a good zinger that I saw on Conan. (It's a good show if you liked his old show on NBC)

"Pauly from the Jersey Show series is being charged with assault and battery for an off-camera incident during filming. If found guilty he could face up to three years... in a Library." Hey-o.

May you all get a DVD set of 'Andy Richter Rules the Universe' in your stocking.

Oh yeah. You all may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of the whole Christian thing, but I am happy to report that the Midland County Courthouse still has its Nativity scene right where it belongs, between the choir figures and the twenty-five foot tinsel snowman, front and center where it has always been. The thirty foot Santa is over by the Santa House. I get pretty wound up about the atheists, non-Christians or whoever that demand that it be removed from public property. You'd have thought that I'd be the other way on that argument but you would be wrong. It's Christ-mass, people, and the best family time of the year irregardless of any religious bearing. For that, I'm grateful.

Merry Christmas to you, too!

The bowls have started and I am about to be without a tv!
--BJ

Bowl season isn't the best time to be without TV but you can take some solace that the games really don't mean that much in the big picture. We've been over the money grab advertising routine before. If the NCAA can use the 'student athletes can't be playing football during final exams and Christmas break' argument for keeping the meaningless bowl games around, and not having a championship game until the second week of January, some five or six weeks after the end of the season, then why do the lower divisions have a playoff? Why are some of the Villanova players taking final exams in a hotel in Cheney, Washington the night before the national semifinal game against Eastern Washington? Why does the EWU football field have cherry red turf? Just a few simple questions that the NCAA won't answer.

It is nice to put the football season to bed with a bowl game extravaganza though.

Looks like I'm falling short of the 75 book total. On New Years Day I was somewhere in the Harry Potter series which puts me currently at about 65. With luck I can finish Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader. Very dense in places but illuminating none the less. I have a biography of Lafayette from the library to finish soon plus a Sony eBook reader for Christmas from mom and dad. Might get to 70 at best. Oh well, a few of my selections this year were very long, especially The Story of Britain and Asimov's History of Physics which ate up over a month between the two.

Merry Christmas DP!!

I got home in time to watch the Florida International - Toledo game. It turned out to be quite exciting! So maybe I did not miss too many games.

Interesting red field! I think I like it better than the Boise State field. I am a traditionalist, however, on football field turf. I like it green. But, on the other hand, my pool table felt is Aztec (burnt orange), and I quite like it. Beforehand, I was a strictly green felt person there, too.

I don't think that the numbers read matter so much as just having fun reading. And you have read some great books this year, and I always enjoy reading your reviews.

I had quite a surprise on Christmas Day. I went to see my dad and stepmom and found out that my brother and his family were all coming too! I hadn't seen any of them in a long, long time. And my brother gave me lots of books for my birthday/Christmas. I am going to have lots of fun with those!

By the way, the other night I was singing "Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over" and it made me so sad. Loved those Monday night football game with Don Meredith. And I agree that a playoff could work. If only Boise State had beaten Nevada, I think we could have gotten one.
--BJ

That's nice you got to see some long lost family. Christmas is good for that. I'm not too worried about the book count either. Unless you have reading time in place of a job it's pretty tough to read some larger books and still get to 75. However, I believe I got to 86 in my first calendar year on LT (I recall posting a little picture of Brian Brennan, one of my favorite Browns players and the origin of lucky number 86.)

That was a fun game last night. Initially I was rooting for Toledo (only because my Tigers' AAA affiliate is there) but then realized that it's not every day you get to see a university win its first ever bowl game. A dandy either way, both teams should be proud.

I guess I'm on the Auburn side for the championship. I have a slightly icky feeling listening to my favorite radio show on Eugene Oregon's public radio station. They air it at 11 AM my time in high quality itunes stream. I cannot recommend Exploring Music with Bill McLaughlin enough. Today's show is 'The Symphony, part 7 - Contributions of Russia'. A link to select listening sites is here. If you like classical music at all you MUST check it out. It might be on locally on your NPR station, it used to be on XM Classics at 11 PM every night.

My folks got me one of those Sony Touch eBook readers. The 650 model is beyond awesome. After I'm done with this I have to visit Porua's thread to get some expert recommendations for a handful of classics to put on it. Any rec's here would be appreciated, stuff of the Thomas Hardy, Wuthering Heights era.

I did have to make myself finish a paper book last night so I could delve in to the realm of eBooks in full after that great game last night...

24. Prelude to Space by Arthur C. Clarke
...because it just isn't Clarke's best work at all. Not that it is bad or anything, it just lacks the pizazz of a space exploration story. The book is basically his prediction from the late 1940's about how the space exploration era would begin and is far more similar to Glide Path than 2001. A fan of Clarke ought to read it but on its own it merits at best an average grade. And my edition's cover has a way too phallic rocket that looks like a ten year old's cardboard cutout. Fitting, because the cover is nowhere near the 'Prometheus' in the story, a Space Shuttle-ish launcher with a piggyback space module nestled in the top.

I forget a thought here way too often-You didn't miss much in the bowl game scene, most of the early games were blowouts, S. Miss and Louisville was decent.

I used to listen to classical music alot when my kids were younger so that I did not have to explain the lyrics to them.

My girls have Sony ereaders, too. I think they mainly download the classics, too.

I am also rooting for Auburn. Their coach used to coach at UT. However, Oregon does have the snazzy uniforms! I heard that OSU is losing a bunch of players for the bowl game due to free tattoos or something ridiculous and even that Tressel might be gone. That is going to make it a tough game against Arkansas. Even though I have family in Arkansas, I can't root for that team after I saw them intentionally injure Selvin Young and try to injure Vince Young. So, I hope that Ohio State can pull that one out. I always liked Tressel myself.
--BJ

As I recall, Oregon has about 500 possible combinations, by multiplying shoes x pants x jerseys x helmets.

Did you hear that Mike Leach is going to Maryland after their coach got coach of the acc (or whatever the conference is)? I heard that Leach was the first coach to embrace Underarmor and the top guy there is a Maryland grad. Love him or hate him, Leach is an interesting guy!
--BJ

You know, I feel bad for maryland's old coach. At first the School wouldn't hire Ralph Friedgen because he was too fat and created a potential image problem, then after he wins a second conference coach of the year they fire him. Lame. Not that Leach would be a bad fit there but I suppose after a decade or so of decent mediocrity and scraping together wins with so-so teams the Terrapins might need a change. From what I've seen of Maryland they have a few outstanding NFL guys, one or two a year, and the rest of their team is iffy. The ACC is pretty interesting but I almost never get to see any of their teams except VA Tech and Miami, once in a while Clemson. Can't remember ever seeing Duke play.

What I heard about the Ohio St deal is that the players sold items from the school, like conference championship rings. At least that's what Pryor did. There was something about tattoos somewhere though.

I also felt bad for the Maryland coach. No one should be fired the year he makes coach of the year. And Leach is somewhat controversial, too. But he gives a pretty good coach's show.

Selling school items is not ok. It just seems like the current system has problems. I hope Tressel is able to keep his job. The high school system also has its problems. I don't really know what the answer is.

Still no coaches at UT. Guess they didn't catch on that the team is not able to coach itself. Personally, I had noticed it early on.

I heard there were a few flakes while I was out of town, but no snow of any kind now. Still hoping for some soon.
--BJ

We're going to lose our snow up here over the weekend, cold rain over the weekend. Not a bad deal, we haven't had any new snow for a few weeks and things are looking dingy and dirty, especially in driveways and roads.

My good friend Scott got me a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard for Christmas. What a great guy, hpoefully he likes The Archimedes Codex in return.

Also, I heard a good joke listening to Classical for Kids. 'Why couldn't Beethoven find his piano teacher? Because he was Haydn!' (WGBH.org has several episodes on their website to listen to at your leisure.)

As to the football, being in Michigan I wouldn't mind if Tressel got fired but not over a situation like this. If the school is 'blaming themselves' for not properly educating their players that they can't sell their championship rings or get free tattoos then that's just not the coach's fault. The players screwed up with the free benefits. As to selling the ring, if that's what Terelle Pryor wants to do then so be it, but the problem is what if some booster or agent offers him a million dollars for it. The NCAA is setting themselves up foe a fall by making these rules upon rules to protect the fairness of the game as well as to protect the players from outside interests. I remember hearing on a radio show that Roy Williams (the then Kansas basketball coach) deemed it a good idea to check with NCAA lawyers before going home for Christmas on the grounds that being home with his son might constitute a recruiting violation.

How about making football and other sports as well a work-study program so these kids aren't begging for money from anyone who will give it to them? This may have changed but the football players (I think only football) are barred from holding jobs during the season to avoid the $60 an hour pool cleaning/cocktail drinking jobs that used to be somewhat common.

I think that is a good idea about work-study. They certainly do work really hard. Funny story about the basketball coach! :)

Well, I wrote out a list of some classics that I like that you might be able to download for free. However, I like some books that others don't like, and I am not really able to articulate reviews for them.

Here they are: Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ok, this is really long, but if you can stick with it, it really pays off); Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville; The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway; For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (another really long book, but worth it I think); The Once and Future King by T. H. White; The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky; If This is a Man by Primo Levi; Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; The Trial by Franz Kafka; The Plague by Albert Camus; The Stranger by Albert Camus (which apparently was the inspiration for The Bohemian Rhapsody, a song which I really don't like!); Diary of a Nobody by George and Weeden Grossmith; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; and The Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

Sorry, you probably did not want this long list. I will also second A Tale of Two Cities and Wuthering Heights from Porua's thread.
--BJ

# 161 Oh BJ you don't like Bohemian Rhapsody? I like the lyrics especially the lines "...I don't want to die, I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all...".

I love The Great Gatsby! A true American classic. One of my all time favourites.

My girls love to sing that song to me to trap it in my head! I just pretty much try to forget the 70s! :)
--BJ

By the way, my daughter said that I should add Anna Karenina also by Leo Tolstoy to the already long list. It is a great one, and much easier than War and Peace, but I thought you would really like all the Napoleanic War stuff in War and Peace. Also, I forgot The Aeneid by Virgil, but I am thinking that you already read that one.
--BJ

Hi DP!! Sending you Best Wishes for the New Year!!! Looking forward to more of your great photos in 2011 and I even follow your sports conversations, sometimes it gives me a little something to talk about with my son. :-}

Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best in the coming year!
--BJ

When you post your new thread, will you link to it?
--BJ

Happy belated New Year to everyone. Busy, busy...

BJ, I had most of your list available and have put them on my eReader, the few that require some searching will be on there eventually. And no, I have never read the Aenid in full, but I am familiar with the general story. When I get time I plan to put a Classical World collection on the reader with the Aenid in it.

Off to 2011...