Posted by barb on Jun 9, 2004 in
Books by Frederik Pohl
This is the third installment in Pohl’s Heechee saga, and even though the cover proclaims it as the “gripping finale”, there is another book in the series, which makes me very happy because I was not ready for it to end (a sure sign of a great book).
We pick up with Robinette Broadhead about 25 years after Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. He is even more sucessful, and Heechee technology has advanced the human race beyond anything anyone could have imagined. Gone are the random trips from Gateway where the prospector has no way of knowing the final destination of their ship, nor whether or not there will be enough power and provisions for the journey.
But Earth is still overly populated, and there are not enough ships carrying pioneers to off-world colonies to alleviate the problem. Terrorists attack with a temporary-insanity illness, and no one can find them. Robin struggles to cure all of the world’s ills while the Heechee come cautiously out from hiding.
This was an excellent book, and Pohl continues his easy writing style. Recommended.
One note: This book was written at a time when astronomers believed that quasars were galactic (i.e. local) sources. So there are a couple passages talking about someone flitting about the galaxy studying quasars (among other sources). However, now there is a general consensus that quasars are indeed extra-galactic sources, and are, in fact, one of the most distant sources in the Universe. So these couple of lines date the book.
Not that many people would notice.
Plus, there is still a small camp of astronomers who believe that quasars are local, so the pendulum may swing back the other way if more evidence mounts for that camp.
Posted by barb on Jun 6, 2004 in
Biking,
Movies We biked up to Reston Town Center today to see the latest Harry Potter movie. It was only 4 miles from where the W&OD trail crosses Hunter Mill (where we parked and unloaded the bikes), so it wasn’t as much of a workout as our past two bike trips. Next time, I think we’ll start from downtown Vienna, which will add a couple miles to each leg of the trip.
Total miles: 8.0
Posted by barb on Jun 6, 2004 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This is perhaps the best of the Harry Potter films yet. As Andrew pointed out, there is a lack of the look-at-how-magical-Hogwarts-is scenes, and just a good solid story. I haven’t read the book, yet, so I’m not sure how closely the film followed it. However, there were a few things that felt like they needed more explaination, and so I suspect they ended up on the cutting room floor.
Posted by barb on Jun 2, 2004 in
Books by Mary Roach
Roach takes what could be a morbid topic and turns it into an always fascinating, sometimes light-hearted but never irreverent book. Her style was easy with a pinch of humor (presumably out of necessity).
The book covers topics from the mundane (cadavers used for gross anatomy classes) to the gross (the “body farm” behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center used to study how bodies decay to improve foresic science) to the bizarre (experiments transplanting living puppies’ heads onto an adult dog as a pathway to eventually transplant a human head onto another body).
She covers things that I had never dreamed of, though should have been obvious. For example, the need to use cadavers to design crash-test dummies that are able to simulate how a real human body reacts to the trauma of a car wreck. She also covers the ethics of using cadavers to design better weapons (not acceptable) and to design test dummies to test bullet-proof jackets (less clear, though there is an unwritten code against firing bullets into a human cadaver, even to improve live-saving devices like bullet-proof jackets). There is a chapter on how bodies recovered from a plane crash can help reveal the cause of the malfunction when the black box is not found and not enough of the plane wreckage can be retrieved from the site.
The weirdest thing in the book, in my humble opinion, is the Swedish scientist who is developing a technique to turn human bodies into composte. The idea is to dispose of the body in a more environmentally-friendly way, without wasting valuable space. The compost can be used to plant a memorial tree with the organic material as fertilizer. While weird, I really like the idea, and hope that it catches on.
Excellent book; highly recommended.
Posted by barb on May 30, 2004 in
Books by Terry Pratchett
I don’t know if I’ve started getting my sense of humor back (though I wasn’t aware that it had gone anywhere), or if Pratchett vastly improved his style between writing The Color of Money and this novel, but I rather enjoyed this one a lot more than The Color of Money.
Carrot, a human orphaned as a baby and raised by dwarf parents, is sent to the city (Ankh-Morpork) to see the world. Of course, he’s been sent to work with the City Watch, a shabby bunch of guards who are not well respected but for good reason. Carrot, however, has a strong sense of morals and wants to rid the city of crime (even though crime is legal as long as it’s done within the guidelines of the guilds).
Meanwhile, a secret society is illegally using magic to summon a dragon for their own nefarious purposes. Unfortunately, dragons are hard to control once they’ve been unleashed.
Fun, fanciful diversion
Posted by barb on May 28, 2004 in
Movies 4/5 stars
I know. I know. Brad Pitt in a summer blockbuster just can’t be good. Now, I’m not a huge Brad Pitt fan (I think partly because I started hearing the no-showering rumors were true), but he was not nearly as annoying as I was expecting. I dare say he wasn’t bad in fact. The performances in Troy were overall quite good — in particular, I liked Eric Bana as Hector and Orlando Bloom as Paris — though there were a few clinckers. I wasn’t impressed with Agamemnon (Brian Cox).
Fortunately, I’ve never read the Iliad, so I wasn’t burdoned with knowing the inaccuracies in the movie. I quite liked the story, though some of the battle scenes could have been shortened. It was interesting that the director/writer/whoever chose to write the influence of the gods out. There is no golden apple. Achilles’ mom is not a sea nymph. Achiles dies from several arrows to his chest (though he pulls those out, leaving one in his heel).
Good, fun, summer movie.
Posted by barb on May 25, 2004 in
Movies 3.5/5 stars
If you watched the trailers for this movie, you might think that it’s a comedy. It’s not. Fortunately, a couple friends had already warned me, so I was prepared for a drama. I rather enjoyed it — it’s a different sort of role for Drew Barrymore, at least from her recent spate of romantic comedy roles like Never Been Kissed and 50 First Dates. This is a story about dealing with what life gives you, even when it’s not what you had planned for your life. Happy ending? Not exactly. Didn’t need one. Life rarely does.
Posted by barb on May 23, 2004 in
Books by Mark Kurlansky
Kurlansky follows the history of salt and salt production from ancient times to modern all around the world. From evaporating brine in clay pots to evaporating brine over wood, then coal, fires to mining vast salt mines, this history was interesting.
The best parts for me were seeing how salt influenced history — like the role it played in the American Revolution or the American Civil War. I think that incorporating even a chapter or two of this kind of history into high school history classes might spark an interest that modern text books can’t. I know I would have been more interested…I always found history to be dry and dull, but this is just the sort of thing to spice it up (pardon the pun).
Posted by barb on May 23, 2004 in
Biking,
Books,
Pictures Andrew and I decided to go out for a bike ride this morning. We haven’t been out since a particularly nice day in February. It seems that the nice weekends of late have been taken up with wedding stuff, so our bikes have languished in the shed for the last two months.
We drove up with the bikes to the Washington & Old Dominion trail (W&OD) in Vienna, and headed off to the south/east (for the first part of the trip, it’s mostly a gradual uphill — the benefit of going this way first is that on the way back, when we’re already getting tired, the way is mostly downhill). My original goal was to go at least 8 miles — that’s how far we went in February. We ended up going a total of 10 miles round-trip! This is a definite improvement over last year.
When we got back to our car, I bookcrossed one of my books at the caboose along the trail.
Posted by barb on May 17, 2004 in
Movies 4.5/5 stars
I wanted to go to this when it came through town, but just didn’t feel like I could go alone (nor did I want to drag Andrew along). If/when it comes through again, I’ll definately get tickets.
This reminded me a bit of a one-woman show I saw several years ago called Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens. In both, I laughed, I cried, I laughed til I cried. Whistling Girls was a collection of stories about women in general — from one monologue on wanting the Dream Date game, complete with zits for not doing a dare, to a monologue about a woman being raped to a monologue about the old Girl Scout manual (teaching girls how to keep up a home).
Vagina Monologues had the same range of subjects, but all relating somehow to a woman’s vagina — from reclaiming the word ‘cunt’ to a gang rape survivor describing her vagina before as a village and after as a village plundered, destroyed. At times moving, at times funny, always captivating. Strongly recommended.