Category: Personal

Humpph: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition is the seventh novel in a sequence of ten books through which Harry Turtledove explores what might have happened if General Lee’s Special Orders 191 reached him in 1862 and the Confederacy went on to win the Civil War. Since it’s somewhere in the middle of a long story (this volume alone has more than 500 pages), a review is difficult, though it is the conclusion of the American Empire trilogy and therefore ties up some of the threads; it covers the years 1934-1941.

Turtledove has adopted an interesting approach in the series, almost like that used by TV soap operas, creating many characters, devoting a few pages to each, and constantly cycling through their stories. These characters are all over the map geographically and demographically, though few–quite unlike a soap opera–ever meet. Opposition essentially focuses on a character named Jake Featherston, now president of the Confederate States of America, and the effect his actions have on his own country and the USA (which now occupies English-speaking Canada).

If you’ve followed the story this far, keep reading; if you haven’t, start at the beginning and not here.

recommended

I generally prefer not linking Yahoo! News stories because they evaporate after a week. However, this headline is too good to pass up: Some ads to run during Super Bowl. Those ads, BTW, include all three prescription pills to make you hard and plenty of beer.

Frum and Perle ask an interesting question in a NY Times OpEd piece: What will the Democratic candidates due about the Saudi Problem. Trouble is, Bush hasn’t given an answer either; last night’s speech was a farce of the highest order, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Pot, meet kettle.

I read these three books, finished just before the trip, and thought I’d wait a few days for my thoughts to percolate. Interesting aside: though the cover credits them to Ian Douglas, this turns out to be a nom de plume for William Keith, who explains some of the publishing industry machinations in regards to pen names. Unfortunately he hasn’t updated the site in the last three or four years and following these convoluted trails on Amazon is not for me.

The trilogy is comprised of Semper Mars (1998), Luna Marine (1999) and Europa Strike (2000). The focus of the stories is a group of Marines as they defend American interests off-world after the discovery of ancient alien artifacts on, well, Mars, the Moon and Jupiter’s moon Europa from the years 2040 to 2067. Keith pulls together some interesting speculation (the so-called Face seen in fuzzy photos of the Martian surface turns out to be part of a huge, 500,000 year old alien colony), then intertwines some aspects of our past (the pyramids in Egypt turn out to be older than currently thought and part of a different, more recent visit by a different set of aliens) and mythology (these aliens portrayed themselves or were perceived by our ancestors to be gods).

Stack politics on top and you have some solid military SF. Keith definitely knows his marines, or at least he knows their ways better than I can dispute, and the political developments forty plus years in the future are not too improbable. If anything he was too conservative in projecting technological progress and, for instance, should have known better than to put specific details (such as quantity of memory and CPU speed in a PDA) in the pages. The books hang together well, I guess I’m saying, though the alien artifacts at the core of the last novel were a bit stranger than necessary; the ending seemed as if the author hoped to extend the series further as no conclusion to the underlying story was offered.

Recommended

A few minute later: Well, a quick trip to Amazon showed that, though Keith’s website has no mention, he has written a second trilogy that follows on to this one. Book One of the Legacy Trilogy is called Star Corps and was just published last year. Can’t find any mention of books two or three just yet.

I used to read the Star Trek novels religiously up until about three or four years ago. A lot of them were pretty good, some were even terrific and because of the franchise value, some of the better science fiction authors were willing to mold their story ideas into the ST universe. Nowadays I read more on the web and less fiction but sometimes one of the novels will catch my eye.

The Last Roundup is an Original Series book written by Christie Golden set in the months between the sixth (The Undiscovered Country) and seventh (Generations) movies. The bridge crew has dispersed to various parts of the quadrant: Spock, Uhuru and Bones are working on the details of the Federation-Klingon peace agreements, Scotty is vacationing on a lake in Scotland, Sulu is (still) captain of his own starship, Chekov is not finding a ship of his own to captain and Kirk is bored as instructor at Starfleet Academy. Two of Kirk’s nephews, young men in their 20s who James T. ignored as his own career boomed, come to him to ask for his participation in a new colony they plan to found.

Reluctantly he agrees, bringing along Scotty and Chekov and, of course, almost instantly the colony is in the middle of a scheme for revenge by a never-before heard of species whose primary complaint is against another species, one of whom is an Academy student who followed Kirk to this planet. The aggressors, who provided the planet to the colony as a front for their plans which will, of course, threaten millions of lives and destroy the galaxy as we know it.

Golden is a veteran of the ST Universe and though that short description seems riddled with cliches, she did a decent job and so I’d say that the novel is better than, say, an above-average ST TV episode. Characterizations are real, very little cardboard. Kirk, for instance, is facing his age and not just protrayed as the instant female magnet who can solve every problem by snapping his fingers. Though he does in the end fix everything–even Golden can’t avoid the requirements of the formula.

Recommended

Don’t you just love the way the Bush Administration is protecting our right to be obese from those nasty foreigners!

USA Network has given the green light to a very strange sounding take on the Frankenstein story; first as a movie and possibly as a weekly series after that. The monster and the doc are 200 years old now, living in Seattle.

New York Times Link Generator: Avoid that nasty registration requirement.

Except for the cold, the no air, and the pink and red color scheme, Mars looks like a great place to visit (many other interesting photos and such on the Spirit Imagery page).

For sure I’ll be buying Dawn’s coming novel when it comes out, though I expect her to ask me to read it first. Because I want to.

We were in Jersey this weekend to visit my family, which was really nice except for all that rain, snow and cold, and all was well, the Eagles went down in flames. But the Fates were not without their jokes. Trying to be a good son I volunteered to shovel my parents’ short driveway. Of course there was a big icy patch and I fell. Turns out that thrusting one’s hand out to stop the fall is not a great idea and to teach me that lesson I know have a splint wrapped around my hand for the next week. Uggh!

Krugman: Deciphering tonight’s SotU Address. Short answer: look at actions, not words even though tonight will be full of words.

That Saha saga I related the other day? As expected, Fullham has come to their senses and taken the £12M transfer fee and ManU will be even stronger across the frontline now that Louis has passed his physical.

Several American players have now jumped to the EPL and Europe in this window. In fact, Saha will be replaced in the Cottagers’ lineup by Brian McBride after the team beat a $2M transfer fee offer from Blackburn Rovers; the 31 year old McBride is leaving behind the Columbus Crew for a salary that is more than $1M higher plus an opportunity to really show his scoring touch. Forward Clint Mathis is going to Germany, joining Hannover 96 of the Bundesliga after four years with the MetroStars, on a free transfer since he was out of contract; Hannover already has fellow American national team member Steve Cherundolo on their squad.

We received in the mail today a beautiful, thoughtful holiday gift, a pair of stainless steel Zepter Home Art cooking tongs, from our dear friend Annie in Hungary. What a sweet person! These really are lovely and I can’t wait to use them to make a delicious meal.

Prototype Marvin costume revealed

Karl’s gone green!

This is one head coaching hire I really like. Frankly, I don’t care how well the Bears do next season but I think that the ownership should be commended for bringing in a minority coach who speaks well, is creative and knows his defense (taking the Rams from near bottom to near top during three years as coordinator) and his team history–setting goal number one as victories over the hated Packers. He’ll need some big help on the moving the ball side of things because he has no background on offense and not too much in the way of talented players to use as a seed kernel.

Perhaps he (and whoever he brings in as coordinator) can get from Kordell Stewart what Bill Cowher never could, but it won’t be as starting QB–that job belongs to Rex Grossman (who’s still not Jewish) after a very promising rookie year–but Slash was a great runner and reciever and should be able to contribute as a different kind of weapon if he’s willing. Marty Booker and Anthony Thomas have potential and perhaps Coach Smith can get GM Angelo and the ownership to open the checkbook for some top free agent talent.

That may be easier for Bears fans to dream about than expect, though, since they reportedly gave Smith one of the lowest paychecks in the league; even Gregg Williams, fired as the Bills coach, got nearly $500k more to be Joe Gibbs’ new defensive coordinator in DC. Smith is the now the fifth African-American coach in the NFL along with Arizona’s Dennis Green, NY Jet’s Herm Edwards, Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis and Indy’s Tony Dungy.

OligoplyWatch has an interesting posting on how the big food companies are responding to the low carb market demand. Unilever, for instance, will be releasing a large number of low carb versions of its Ragu, Skippy and Wishbone products, hoping to pick up the slack from the declining sales of its Slimfast line. OW quotes a Fortune article: “Meanwhile, at food-science labs across the country, researchers are figuring out how to take the carbs out of just about every product we eat.” And, as I expected, these entries will lower the price of low carb products; the Skippy peanut butter, for instance, will have a list price of $2.89 versus $6.99 for Carb Not Beanit Butter, and you know there are always coupons and specials on their stuff. W00t, if I do say so myself.

Mike Mularkey, who spent the last three seasons as the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was named today as the new head man in Buffalo. The Bills have a solid trio of skills players–Drew Bledsoe as QB, Travis Henry at RB and Eric Moulds at WR–and a proven guy like Mularkey, nine years a tight end in the NFL, ought to be able to do better than last season’s 15.2 points/game and 30th place in overall offense. The hiring leaves Chicago and Oakland as the only teams without coaches; seems like St. Louis is going to stick with Martz another year even though many observers don’t see why.

The way soccer players (outside the US) change teams is different than the trade/free agent system used by American professional sports; instead, the acquiring team pays a transfer fee, unless the player’s contract is up and then there is no fee. Contracts tend to be a bit longer, at least in the EPL, where five years or so seems normal. The transfer fee is set by the player’s current team, sometimes as part of the player’s contract negotiation, and smaller teams make a good bit of their revenues by developing players for sale to the richer franchises. Transfers happen only in two windows: the close season (what we call the off-season) in the summer and for the month of January.

All of which is a lead-in to saying that the current situation of Fullham’s Louis Saha is quite amusing, and strange, to this American observer. Saha has come on very strong this year, with his 15 goals leading Fullham to a better halfway record than they’ve had in years. However, the top clubs in the EPL, especially Manchester United and Chelsea, seem to never be quite satisfied with their makeup and so ManU has come along and offered to buy Saha. Fullham management, well aware that without Saha they have little chance of making a strong finish and qualifying for European competition (meaning even more money coming in next season), have said no to them.

But the player, not surprisingly, wants the chance to star for one of the world’s top clubs and his desires must be taken into account–one would only imagine that his play will suffer otherwise–and so today’s headline, that Fullham have put an £18 million transfer fee on him, seems capricious at best. However, all the attention plus a six week injury to top striker Hernan Crespo have brought the other big spender, Chelsea, into the situation.

This news comes only days after Saha himself announced that his transfer to ManU was done, requiring only that he pass a physical and that his new employers send over a check for £; Fullham have denied any such deal, of course, and insist that Saha is far too precious to their needs to let him go. Cottagers boss Chris Coleman (don’t they have some quaint team nicknames?) says no way but one can only watch and see what happens over the next two weeks, before the window closes.

• Is Pay Per Click advertising, such as the Google ads on this site, hitting a perfect storm?
• Martin Mayer, a respected writer and observer of the American banking system and the Federal Reserve, brings to light an interesting tool the Administration ought to be using the in the fights against terrorism and drugs but doesn’t: tracing the path of large blocks of paper money, such as the one Saddam had when he was captured in his hidey hole.
• Web helper: Converter for funny characters is not necessarily the title I’d choose for this page but it is quite handy nonetheless.

Humpday indeed.

Now low carbers can have it their way at Burger King too.

Let’s just say I have high hopes for the meatloaf I just prepared for tonight’s dinner. Because otherwise TS1 ain’t never gonna let me cook another. ‘Nuff said? (I’m pretty sure it is.)