Back before the Alaska trip, I listened to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.  Most of the time, I don't particularly care if I get everything out of a book.  Mostly, I listen while driving, and it's better that I devote attention to other things.  But this book was interesting enough that I wanted to listen to it again.  For some reason I don't remember, I decided to play it through the audio system in the kitchen.  Nicole ended up listening, too.  Pollan makes some interesting points.  The ones that stuck with me are these:

• Legally, a food is defined nutritionally.  This means that "peanut butter" isn't "butter made from peanuts."  It means, "so many calories, so many grams of fat, so many grams of protein, so many carbohydrates, these vitamins, those minerals, and some other stuff."  Peanut butter doesn't have to include peanuts!  As long as it meets the nutritional definition of peanut butter, it's legally peanut butter.
• Americans don't think about food, Americans think about ingredients (as in, nutritional components).  This is bad, because we don't know what nutritional components we need (there are almost certainly some that we don't know about, yet).  Even if you assume we know all our nutritional requirements, we don't know the correct proportions.  Let alone things like how those proportions change with age, pregnancy, illness, etc.
• So, we define what we eat in terms of things we don't understand.  This makes us constantly change how we eat.  Every new study is also a marketing opportunity.  Which is why our food is so heavily processed.  It's much easier to introduce the latest "celebrity ingredient," or omit the latest nefarious one, when the food is nothing but ingredients.
• Our ancestors did just fine, eating food (as opposed to ingredients).  Many non-Western people continue to eat food (as opposed to ingredients), and they are far healthier for it.

So, the interesting thing about this is that Nicole's quietly changed our diet.  I come home to find her cooking dinner, more often than not.

I've just finished Jasper Fforde's first 3 Thursday Next books.  It's an interesting idea, but I think he tries way too hard to make his book-world internally consistent.  Having never read Great Expectations, I was surprised by Miss Haversham's demise.  I was annoyed to reach the end of the 3rd book, and discover Thursday's husband is still eradicated from history.  There's no resolution to any of Thursday's major problems.  There's a fourth book, which I'll be hearing soon.  Hopefully it doesn't suffer from these short-comings.

The most-recent book is Plato & a Platypus Walk into a Bar.  This is a history/explanation of (Western) philosophy's major ideas, using jokes to illustrate each.  As an example, the authors use the joke "Doctor, there's an invisible man in the waiting room."  "Well, tell him I can't see him!" to illustrate Kant's idea of "the thing-in-itself."  (An invisible man exists, but can't be perceived.  None the less, the receptionist is aware of him, somehow.)  The book isn't as funny as you might think.  It's certainly not as funny as the authors thought.  On the other hand, some of the jokes are funny.  Most annoying, the joke-free portions of the book are frequently concise, understandable explanations of major philosophical ideas.  It probably would have been a better book without the jokes.  Of course, it would have been a completely different book, and I might not have picked it up without the hook.

Almost through reading (not listening to) Mary Roach's Stiff.  This is a look at how Americans (and others) treat corpses.    Most interestingly, I was talking with a friend at work, and mentioned that the book had a section about automotive collision testing using corpses.  GM & Wayne State are heavily mentioned.  From the book, between them they accounted for some 50% of the published cadaver tests in the automotive collision field (during the 50s & 60s, anyway).  My friend said, "I know.  I used to run those collisions.  That job you described, about wiring (in both senses of the word) sensors into cadaver's chests?  I used to do that job."  So, that was an interesting conversation.  (Used to be, surviving a car-crash was largely a matter of your heart beat.  Impact accelerates your internal organs, within the "cage" of your ribs.  If your heart happened to be filled with blood (just about to contract) at the moment of impact, the acceleration increased it's weight to more than the aorta can support.  Which leads to a torn aorta and death.  If your heart was empty, you were far more likely to survive.)  Strangely, militaries (not just the U.S. military) avoid using cadavers in testing.  You'd think it'd be an obvious fit.  If you want to know what a bullet does to a human body, shooting a dead human body is clearly the way find out.  Apparently, it's OK to experiment on bodies for humanitarian or medical purposes.  But it's not OK to use corpses to learn how to better make more corpses.  So armies don't do it.  (But they do experiment on live soldiers.  Go figure.)  Oh -- and I now wonder why it's OK to harvest organs from cadavers, but not blood?  We could probably solve our blood-supply issues easily.  But we won't.  Lastly, Chinese culture and law are way more lenient about what can be done with "discarded" medical tissue (think "aborted fetuses").  Think hard before consuming any Chinese folk remedies.

Just finished listening to The Odyssey.  I understand that it's a translation of an oral, pre-writing, work.  That's why it's so repetitive.  But, if I hear "child of Morning, rosy-fingered Dawn" or "Tell me, and tell me true," one more time I may flail, foam, and thrash about the room.

I had read an abbreviated version.  But I wanted to read the real thing.  Plus, I thought it'd be interesting to hear it.  After all, that's how it was supposed to be presented.  But it drove me up the wall.  The pacing is, by the standards of a video age, excruciatingly slow.  The first quarter, maybe third, of the work doesn't even follow Odysseus.  It's all about his son Telemachus, and how badly his home is treated by Queen Penelope's suitors, and his travels to Sparta seeking word of his father.  Even after Odysseus enters, almost all of his story before his actual return to Ithaca is told in flashback.  Every narrative is interrupted by digression -- even the digressions.  No action takes place without extensive dialog.  Mid-fight, someone will stop spearing to exclaim about the wickedness of his opponent, the number & type of sacrifices he'll offer, which Gods will be receiving those sacrifices, the various offenses committed by the villain and the punishments merited by each, the male-ancestors of all combatants, and then the opponent will respond in kind.

I did learn the answer to a question that's bugged me since I first read the Odyssey.  Odysseus returns in disguise.  Penelope, inspired by the Gods, holds a contest to decide which suitor she'll wed.  Odysseus left his massive bow at home when he went to Troy.  Anyone who can string it, which no one but he has ever accomplished, and shoot an arrow through 12 iron axe-heads, as he used to do to exhibit his skill, will win.  Of course, they can't string it.  He can.  Does.  Wastes an arrow shooting it through the 12 axe-heads, then begins slaughtering suitors.  My question: Odysseus went to Troy -- the largest, most-important fight of the Age, involving Continental-scale armies in a time when a dozen-man sheep-stealing raid merited a ballad, and he left without a bow that can throw an arrow through a dozen axe-heads?!?  That's like the US Army deciding to engage in urban combat, but leaving all the snipers State-side.  Turns out, the bow was a gift from a dear friend of his youth.  He considered it an heirloom of his house more than a weapon, and feared losing it.  Which probably says as much about the difference between then & now anything else in the book.

I'm going to have to buy a bunch more timber and stakes.  India dug out, again, a week-or-so-ago.  This time, she broke through a buried 2x6.  The wood's been in the ground long enough to rot.  We've not had time to do anything about it.  We've been letting India out for only brief periods.  As often as she's escaped, she's never do so immediately after being let into the yard.  Last night, she disappeared through the existing hole within 10 minutes.  She didn't return until 7 this morning.  She's currently taking a post-bath nap.

Oh -- interesting website: sensibleunits.com.

Finished Legacy of Ashes.  Ended up feeling kind of sorry for the CIA. Still think, always assuming the book's content is not too biased, the Agency's history is one screw-up after another.  At the end of the Cold War, they had no clear target and a President with no use for them.  The Agency exists to serve the needs of the President.  Without a clear target, a mandate from the President, and facing a Congress eager for a "peace dividend," many in the Agency left for more-lucrative pastures.  That left the CIA staffed with people too burned-out to look for other work, and recent graduates with no experience of the world outside Yale, yet alone North America, and burdened by myriad regulations.  One anecdote is of a recruit, who would have been only the 2nd fluent Farsi-speaker in the entire Agency, who was not hired because he couldn't pass the English-language test.  It wasn't that he could speak & write English -- it was that his English wasn't up to Ivy League standards.

Origin of Species is something I've wanted to read for a long time.  It's not easy.  Darwin was clearly, obviously, unmistakably writing about something he knew.  The degree of logic, the layer upon layer of reason, example, expected dissent and counter-argument is overwhelming.  The man understood that he was presenting an idea that wasn't self-evident, and went to great lengths to show that it was correct.  Even to the extent of starting from really simple things -- like the fact that individual organisms compete to survive.  Who, other than a genius trying to demonstrate an obscure truth by constructing a framework of observations, would bother to establish that fact with multiple examples and still more citations?  But those same densely-layered arguments are almost impossible to follow, especially in an audio format.  There are also problems of anachronism.  Not surprisingly, in Darwin's day "species" didn't have a rigorously-defined meaning, so Darwin uses it (and the term "variety") in ways that seem incorrect to modern ears.  I may have to abandon it.

Listened, again, to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.  Still, in my opinion, possibly the best fiction audiobook ever.  Lenny Henry's reading is outstanding.

Next up . . . Homer's Odyssey and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

I really enjoyed The Canon.  Enough that I listened to it twice.  Enough that I intend to acquire a printed copy, so that I can study some passages at leisure.  Enough that Nicole & I sent a printed copy to a nephew as a birthday gift.  I think I get my point across.  I don't know of a better general introduction to the current state of scientific knowledge and, more importantly, to science as a method of thought.


After I finished that book, I switched to fiction -- Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson's Variable Star.  This isn't, as it is sometimes marketed, a "lost," "new,"  or "unfinished" Heinlein.  It is a novel written by Spider Robinson from an incomplete outline and story notes of Heinlein's.  Having said that, the flavor is strongly Heinlein, especially the opening and the structure of the ending.  More to the point, it is good.  I actually have a printed copy, and had read it twice before I found the audio-version.  I wanted to hear it mostly because it's read by Spider.  I usually enjoy hearing a work read by the author, especially an author with a very strong "voice" in print.  Speaking of which, I was surprised by Spider's voice.  I hear something like a young Carl Kasell, with occasional hints of Frank DeFord.  I learned stuff, listening to Spider read.  There were a few places where I thought, "Aha!  That's what that meant."  Nothing earth-shaking, but a better understanding of his intent in those passages.  Well-worth the price of admission.  I listened to it twice.

Back to non-fiction, for David Shenk's The Immortal Game.  The game of the title is both a specific game and chess in general.  The author states that Chess has undergone 4 phases: Romantic, Scientific, and two other very recent phases that he names but doesn't explain.  Everyone begins as a romantic-style player.  Yer buckles on yer swash, briefly contemplate the concept of "strategy," and "have at you!"  It's all about being clever, deceptive, tactical, sneaky, and smarter than the other guy.  The Immortal Game is generally considered to be the epitome of romantic play.  The winner sacrificed a Bishop, both Rooks, and the Queen.  He was clearly losing, right up to the point where he won.  The book is an analysis of that game, a history of chess, and a history of the author's involvement with chess.  All three are interesting.  The author, like most of us, never made the transition from romantic-style play to studying the game.  Thus, he isn't and can't be a "good" player (meaning ranked and taken seriously).  The book ends with him struggling with his desire to play chess, but strong aversion to the mind-bending (perhaps breaking) study needed to be competitive.  Finally, he realizes, through New York City's chess-in-the-schools program, that the game isn't just about competition.  It's as much about mental exercise, focus, and disciplined thought as it is about winning.  And that insight allows him to shift his mental perspective and stop worrying about being "competitive" and just play.

The current book is Legacy of Ashes.  It's a history of the CIA.  Gah!  If even 1/4 of what is in this book is accurate, then the Agency hasn't gotten nearly the abuse it deserves.  Truman wanted a newspaper.  The agency responded with something along the lines of, "Right.  Of course.  So  -- what do we blow up today?"  Populated by former OSS wartime operatives, they just didn't get the idea that "intelligence" doesn't equal "covert operations."  Presidents either ignore the agency ("Why can't you tell me something that isn't in Time magazine?") or despise it (Nixon thought he lost the famous TV debate against Kennedy because the CIA secretly briefed Kennedy's campaign).  At the same time, Presidents desperately wanted covert operations, because the alternatives were open war or doing nothing.  End result, the only way the agency received any sort of positive attention was when it did something simultaneously covert and spectacular (e.g. overthrowing Iran).  Needless to say, those projects did nothing to further the agency's actual intelligence activities.  Plus, the agency is notoriously bad at analysis -- they missed Sept. 11, they missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, they insisted, until after the invasion was fact, that the Soviets wouldn't invade Afghanistan.  The only major publicly-acknowledged success was the Cuban missile crisis, which wasn't really a success because Kennedy failed to listen when his DCI warned him the Soviets might be putting ballistic missiles on the island.  Mess.  Glad they ignored my resume.

So, I'm sitting here, on my sofa.  The Wii is playing it's "you're ignoring me, but that's OK" music.  Ember (Cat #4) is curled-up and sleeping about 8 inches from my right leg.  India is doing doggy things in the backyard, through which I should be forcing a reel mower.  Maple seed-pods, the color & translucency of old parchment, spin past the window, air assaulting the lawn and getting hung-up on dandelion redoubts.  Nicole is upstairs in her sewing room, making something of beauty, warmth, and utility.

I'm listening to Natalie Angier's The Canon.  It's a whirl-wind tour of science.  Not the usual latest-developments pastiche, nor a complete history of a particular field, it's what-scientists-wished-laypeople-understood-about-science.  Some examples:

• Science is a way of thinking.  It is not a catalog of facts.  The paramount importance of experiment is the only unchallengeable doctrine.  Every scientific understanding is up for revision, reversal, or re-enforcement by experiment.
• If you're going to challenge a well-established Theory (e.g., Evolution), you better have something spectacular.  'Cause we've already tested it thousands of different ways, and it withstood everything our best & brightest could throw at it.  The goal of a scientist is to try and break his own ideas -- and hopefully fail.
• Statistics is important.  It's also difficult.  Understanding it requires work.  It's like food -- you don't have to learn to cook, but you should at least be familiar with the basic terms.  Otherwise, you'll be eating-out a lot, and probably not enjoying it.  After all, if you don't know kimchi from a burger, you can't order and the waiter'll bring you whatever isn't moving that day.
  

Listening to this book, I realize I learned nothing from my high school Chemistry class.  Somehow, I got a C without understanding the fundamental difference between covalent and ionic bonds.  I learned that, these days, most people who think about the best way to teach science have concluded that we teach it backwards.  It should be Physics first, then Chemistry, then Biology.  Why?  Because Physics is the foundation science; and you can do easy/simple experiments that will teach the scientific method.  There is no such thing as a simple Biology experiment.
The book also re-enforced the degree to which science has permeated our culture.  When the toaster fails, no one in America offers sacrifice to the Toaster God so that it'll function again.  Neither do we assume that it has simply stopped working, but might simply start working later, and so wait around to try again.  We assume, in a way so fundamental to our thinking that we are blind to the assumption, that things happen for comprehensible reasons.  So, we check to see if the toaster's not plugged-in, or confirm the darkness-o-meter isn't set for barely-warm, etc.  All while talking about how we "don't get" science.
One of the things I've gotten from the book, so far, is a visualization of the electron cloud from Brian Greene.  He suggests thinking of it a pixelated face.  You look at, you know there are 2 eyes in there.  You don't know exactly where.  you only know that those 2 dark patches are the places where the eyes are most likely to be.  They might be somewhere else, but that's improbable.  And yet, while we don't know exactly where the electrons (or any particle, for that matter) are, they are there.  They occupy a distinct location.  Just like the eyes in the face behind the pixels.

Time marches.  Afternoon becomes late-in-the-day, becomes tomorrow.  The cat wakes.  The dog digs to freedom.  And I go measure the porch and try to learn if I need a permit to extend it.  Ah, entropy.

I finished Caesar's Legion.  The Tenth Legion, of the title, was the premiere military unit of Rome from about 50 B.C. to about 130 A.D.  I learned a lot about the Legions.  I also learned about the Roman Civil War (the first one, anyway).  I learned about Gaius Julius Caesar.

Like most Americans of my generation, most of what I know about Caesar is from Shakespeare's play.  (Who am I kidding?  Most of what Americans of my vintage know about Caesar probably comes from The Simpsons.)  Turns out he was a good military leader, although not the genius strategist I'd thought.  Mostly, he was amazingly charismatic, a remarkably good engineer (even by Roman standards), and famously, even in his own lifetime, lucky.  Whenever he made a mistake, it was recoverable.  Or his opponent made a worse one, or failed to capitalize on Caesar's error.

There were Romans before Caesar who dominated Rome and gave but briefest lip-service to the Republic (Marius, for one).  But he actually attacked & conquered Rome.  Not the City, itself; although his troops did riot there at one point (in his absence).  Nonetheless, he launched the civil war, and methodically destroyed the Senate-appointed defenders of the Republic.  I suspect it is mostly coincidence that his battles were outside the Italian peninsula.  His opponents' power bases, like his own, were in the Provinces.  He had to follow and beat them on their own turf.

Marc Antony was, based on this book, anyway, an incompetent thug.  His military commands frequently mutinied.  His attempts at conquest, in the wake of Caesar's death, were poorly timed, unsubtle, and badly executed.  During life Caesar avoided leaving Antony in command (even when Caesar left and Antony was second-in-command).  After one of Antony's more-egregious failures, Caesar left him behind.  By contrast Caesar regarded Brutus (as in "et tu, Brutae?") as his adopted son.  Brutus supported Pompey (and thus, the Senate) against Caesar.  Nonetheless, when Brutus was part of the opposition force in one of Caesar's battles against Pompey, Caesar issued special orders that Brutus was to be unharmed and allowed to escape in the aftermath of victory.

'nother thing I learned from Caesar's Legion.  One of the great advantages a Roman Legionary held over his opponents: (Daniel will like this) pointy swords.

No kidding.  Everybody else had a sword with a rounded tip.  Useless for stabbing.

'nother thing -- their pilum (javelin) was 1/3 iron and 2/3 wood.  The iron was deliberately left somewhat soft.  The opening move of every battle was to thr javelins at the enemy's close-packed troops.  Why were they close-packed?  Because the opening move was to throw javelins.  If you're standing close enough together, you can all raise your shields and and everyone is protected.  The reason the pilum is soft is so that it'll bend when it penetrates the enemy's shield.  If you get lucky, and the Romans threw enough javelins that they frequently did, the javelin point would penetrate the edge of 2 overlapping shields, bend, and (effectively) staple those shields together.  heh.  Pretty smart, those Romans.

I listened to a bunch of Aubrey/Maturin books, not too long ago.  They're good.  They're enjoyable.  They're definitely worth spending time listening to.  They certainly fulfill my principle goal of remaining awake, avoiding the complete waste of 3 hours of car-time a day, and not getting angry (thus, avoiding the radio).  But Hornblower's still my man.

After those, Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope.  It's not Ender's Game, but it's not a complete waste, either.  I don't remember the reader, so he was at least average-skill.  The story was OK, but not riveting.  It boils down to: Bad king deposed, bad king's daughter returns to wreak her vengeance & and retake kingdom, good guys stealthily & accidentally position themselves to depose bad king's daughter.  Not much in the way of character development.  Mostly, the characters are what they are.  It's more about what caused them to be that way.  Plus, gods & religion, 'cause this is Orson Scott Card.

More recently, David Maguire's Wicked.  I abandoned it about 2/3 of the way through.  I realized I really had no attachment to any of the characters, or the story.  I thought the reader was very good.  In fact, I appreciate him more than the actual story.  The best explanation I have for my lack of interest in the story is this:  The Wicked Witch of the West isn't a character, she's an archetype, and that means she can't have a backstory.  She's not meant to be a person, with a history that lead her to her wickedness.  Nor an alternate point-of-view, showing her wickedness to be a matter of perspective.  The Witch is just Bad.  She's not a person, she's a Function.  The "hook" for Maguire's story is "the real story of the Witch."  But, since I think she can't have a story, the book just doesn't work for me.

Currently, I'm listening to The Black Echo.  This is the first book in a series about an LA detective named Harry Bosch.  I heard of it an aldoblog, which is where I first learned that putting audiobooks on iPods is not only possible, but a really good idea.  Michael Aldrete (the blogger) notes this series as one of his personal favorites.  So far, I'm liking it.  It's a good noirish detective story, with a main character driven to "do the job, regardless of the cost."  The reader is excellent.  Initially, I objected to some of the special effects (e.g., adding an echo to indicate the speaker is on the phone).  But I've come to appreciate them as very effective and only initially obtrusive.  The story's good, the reader's excellent, and I'm looking forward to finishing this story -- and pursuing others in the series.

I just finished listening to Stephen Fox's Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama.  Alabama is the most successful commerce-raider in history.  In 2 years, Semmes captured (and almost always burned, after removing the crew)  65 Union merchant vessels.  He, with slight help from other Confederate vessels, badly disrupted Union commerce.  When Alabama was sunk, the newspapers printed a list of 900 vessels that had been sold by U.S. owners.  They were sold because the insurance, and risk of encountering Alabama, was so great they were too expensive to operate.

Strangely, the thing that caught my notice was in the closing pages.  Fox referred to Alabama as the most historic Naval vessel of the war.  Of course, my immediate reaction was "Nuh-uh!  Monitor and Merrimac!" (or CSS Virginia, if you're a stickler).  The ironclads clearly foreshadowed battleship development, with armor, gun turrets, steam-only propulsion, etc.  Thing is, battleships barely survived WWI.  They certainly didn't survive even the opening of WWII.  (You might look at the fates of Bismarck and HMS Prince of Wales, -- not to mention Pearl Harbor.)  In that light, the ironclads were evolutionary, but the lineage ultimately proved a dead-end.

Alabama attacked (almost entirely) merchant shipping.  She operated on long-duration cruise, years between returning home.  Contrary to usual practice of the day, she burned her prizes rather than sell them.  (No nation recognized the Confederate States of America, so Semmes had no one to sell to.)  Her modus operandi was speed, closing on her victims so fast they couldn't escape.  She was well-armed, but not armored.  I think she was the fore-runner of the U-boat.  They, too, just destroyed their prizes.  (In their case, no room for prisoners and it's very difficult to bring a boat alongside the rounded hull of a submarine.)  U-boats weren't particularly fast, but fast isn't necessary if one can simply materialize next to the target vessel.  Like Alabama, they were built without armor, but with perfectly adequate weaponry.  They and Alabama fulfilled the same function.  Perhaps Fox's statement wasn't hyperbole, after all.