Victory of Eagles (Novik, Naomi) 2008

Book 5 of the Temeraire series that gives us the Napoleonic Wars with dragons.  These are just great, fun books that have maintained their quality -- I worry a little about book 6, since it's holding true to the "odd books are about the actual Napoleonic wars and even books are about traveling the world", and so far I've much preferred the odd books because one of Novik's strengths is in rewriting the details of the wars -- and are being published at a reasonable rate, unlike *some* fantasy series involving dragons that began with promise but I've long since given up on (*cough* Song of Ice and Fire *cough*).  


Finished reading 3/29/10.

Little Brother (Doctorow, Cory) 2008

Good book.  For the first few chapters, I had the feeling that an "old person" was trying to appropriate my generation's voice**, it's obviously not intended in a bad way, but it just feels a little condescending when a geezer is trying to be slick.  Once he's finally finished trying to establish his young hacker cred, Doctorow gets down to just writing about universal human needs and conflicts that happen to be wrapped within a near-future teen hacker's world, and it's a compelling read.  


Still, the single best page comes early, when he gives an excellent one-line definition of LARPing: "It's like Capture the Flag in monster-drag, with a bit of Drama Club thrown in."  And later goes on to explain, "The problem with [LARPing in] hotels is that they have a lot of nongamers in them, too [...].  Normal people.  From states that begin and end with vowels.  On holidays.  / And sometimes those people misunderstand the nature of a game. / Let's just leave it at that, okay?"  Brilliant.


I got the distinct impression that Van was originally to be Marcus's love interest, but Doctorow decided against that after an early draft and created the character of Ange, possibly while he was plotting the aftermath of the VampMob and how Marcus would get his last infodrop to the press.  The tracks are covered reasonably well, but Van and Ange go to the same school, Van has an unrequited crush on Marcus, and there's a typo on page 183 of hardcover edition that says "Van was really excited by this party" when clearly it should be Ange.  


** even though I'm just a year younger than Cory Doctorow and not at all part of the generation whose voice he's writing in.  I'd be a geezer appropriating another generation's voice if I were writing this kind of book.

Finished reading 3/25/10.  

545 People

Someone finally forwarded me the updated version of Charley Reese's 545 People editorial -- shocking it's taken this long, since it's been going the rounds for about 2 years.

The problem, even for the original 1985 version, is that it's those 545 and all the congresspeople, presidents, and supreme court justices who preceded them.  Once the federal government does something, it's very difficult to undo, or fix.  Congress is also only as smart as its dumbest member, so, for example, there can be 99 "good" senators and it only takes one Jim Bunning being a dick to screw things up.  Of course, many of them seem to take turns being dicks.

I Can't Quit U, Spidey

I know the condition of this photo makes it look like me and Spiderman had a domestic squabble in which I tore his masked face out of all images of us, followed by a reconciliation in which I tried to mend the damage with scotch tape, but in reality this is the result of having an inquisitive 2.75-year-old for whom nothing is out of reach because he climbs on anything... 

... whoa, just like Spiderman.  Let's just make up and pretend the Tobey Maguire movies never happened, okay?

Oh, the Oscars happened

And Christopher Plummer was nominated (but didn't win).  What I want to know is: now that he has to give up his position as (arguably) the greatest actor never to have been nominated for an Oscar, who has the title?

Reporting statistics without a license

Firstly, I call shenanigans on the ESPN news services for reporting the results of an ABC News/ESPN poll by stating:

"most of those polled are ready to give Woods a mulligan, but they don't think his wife should be so forgiving. Fifty-five percent said they are ready to forgive Woods, while only 29 percent say Elin Woods should do the same. Twenty-one percent say she shouldn't forgive him, and 42 percent of those polled said it's none of their business."

Um... the 29 percent who say Elin Woods should forgive Tiger are not directly comparable to the 55 percent who say they are ready to forgive Tiger because of the little matter of 42 percent who (correctly) pointed out it's none of our damned business!  If you want to try to compare those groups, you should at least factor out the people who essentially declined to give an opinion one way or the other on each question.  Unfortunately, as usual there isn't enough information in the report to make any kind of correct comparison, and of course there's no link to the poll results.


Secondly, I call shenanigans on myself for clicking on a link to a fluff story about Tiger Woods.  I don't even follow golf.