When I was at the library the other day, I noticed they had a lot of the “modern Scholar” series on CD. These are a series of lectures, recorded specifically for this series, about virtually every topic you can think of. Series cover finance, the supreme court, baseball, science fiction, the crusades, philosophers, etc. The list goes on and on.

I grabbed the “History of the Supreme Court”, by Professor Kermit Hall. It consists of 14 lectures, covering thirteen defining cases of the Court. Each lecture is a bit over 30 minutes in length. So far, I’m about 2/3rds of the way through, and I’m really enjoying it.

Its well worth looking into, if you like this sort of thing.

To be clear, I’m a strong supporter of gun rights, and I do keep one (well, three, actually) in the house. But, I think we can all empathize with this poem.

Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House by Billy Collins
(From Sailing alone around the room).

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

From here….

Worth reading.

Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, which publishes about two hundred e-books per year, thinks that the old publishers’ model is fundamentally flawed. “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.” Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing. With the possible exception of Harlequin Romance and Penguin paperbacks, readers have no particular association with any given publisher; in books, the author is the brand name.

That the publishers view bookstores — rather than readers — as their customers explains much of what ails the industry. And that Tim O’Reilly has always seen the reader as his customer explains why O’Reilly Media, which was once as print-centric as any other book publisher, is doing better than most publishers.

Another choice observation, from Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti:

In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers — like executives in other media — are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business.

 

More than a little goofy, but this shirt has caught an Internet meme, and is taking a bit of a ride.

Read some of the reviews, funny stuff.

I had been debating scraping up the money to pick one of these up for some time. Not anymore, after this whole “delete two books” thing that just happened. If I buy a book, I own the book. Period.

As much as I love books, there are several things wrong with the ebook readers so far

a) too expensive.
b) the books are still too pricey. Electronic books should be *much* cheaper than physical books
c) No tethering, whether wired or wireless. If you buy it, you own it, the thing never “phones home”.
d) Need really, really strong pdf support. I’ve purchased into the triple digits of pdf rpg game books. A smaller, easier to use reader than my laptop? SOLD! So far, it hasn’t happened.
e) Strong annotation capabilities. I’ve only played with the Sony ebook readers a bit – not impressed with them, in this regard.
f) color display – optional too. Can switch it off and on. That way you can easily view comic books on the things.
g) Has a computer based integration “store” in effect. If the device has wireless of any sort, I want to be able to turn it totally off. I want to purchase and download the books to my laptop, and then transfer them.
h) Backup to a usb stick. Insert it in the reader, hit 1 or 2 keys, and boom, it backs up your stuff to the key. With encryption and tight compression as options.

So yes, I’m a week or so late.

I don’t even watch tv myself, I just turn the tv on for the birds when I leave, and turn it off when I walk in the door.

I get at least three channels. No idea what they are, except I did watch a couple of minutes of some CSI show.

Though, the picture is about a zillion times better.

A dying ten year old girl wanted to see the Pixar movie UP. She was near death and too ill to go to a theater.

Pixar sent an employee with a DVD to her house.

She died seven hours after seeing the movie.

A great quote of my brothers, made when me, him, mom and Kat were about to dig into a huge plate of wings at Rocco’s pub in Marietta…

(His comment was about the four of us eating…)

Like a pack of Hyaena’s descending on a carcass…

Tuesday nights are 2 for 1 wing nights at Rocco’s.

Recommended. Great local bar/pub thats been in business for over twenty years.

Comics gone ape! I got my copy last night. I haven’t had time to read it in detail, but its much better than what I was expecting. There are several comics I’m going to have to track down now. (Monkeyman and O’Brian for example).

If you like comics and gorillas, this book is a must!

Mind, thats kind of a small niche.

Lets see, a few things I want to do in the upcoming few weeks. These are not in any particular order.

1) Go catch a hellbender.
2) Get up to Greenville SC. There is a footbridge I want to look at, and a couple of places nearby that Granola showed me, when I would go up there to visit her. (If I can find them)
3) Visit Chattanooga – there is an old bridge that has been converted to a footbridge, over the Tennessee river, that I want to visit. (I like footbridges.)
4) Get out to Augusta GA. There is a huge bird rescue in Harlem GA I want to visit, and I want to see the canal in Augusta.
5) Rig up a climbing area for the birds.
6) Get some more pictures taken.
7) Go see Wolverine, Watchmen (if its even still in the theater), and the new Star Trek movie. Get timecrimes from Netflix.

Okay, I bought a small mortar and pestle simply because they are cool. To me, they bring to mind spells, and magical potions, burbling pots of incantations.

Not that I believe in magic, nor am I wiccan, etc.

However, the thing is proving useful for reducing food to hermit crab sized fodder. So – if you routinely need to pulverize foodstuffs (spices, etc), get one!

An older pcworld review of the Pulse smart pen

Essentially a writing implement with a small computer wrapped around it, the Pulse Smartpen uses a camera (just under and behind the pen) and custom paper with millions of microdots to capture every stroke and notation. The real magic, though, is that the pen simultaneously records every sound and connects the resulting audio to the captured image. All the captured material is timeline based, so turning back to any page in your notes and tapping the pen on a word will restart your audio at the precise moment your wrote that word.

My inner geek – overt as he is – is drowning in drool right now, for this lovely little baby.

Edit: Another, longer review.

Now if only I didn’t lose pens all the time…….