Christopher Moore has long been one of my favorite authors. Two of his best works, Lamb and Fluke, are easily on my top ten favorite book list. So it was with great regret and disappointment that I had to abandon reading his most recent work, Sacre Bleu. The story centres on the impressionistic artists like [...]
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Posted: May 4, 2012 in Books, Entertainment, humour, ReviewsTags: christopher moore, sacre bleu
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A few posts back I got excited about a Monkey Wrench Gang film. Now I’ve stumbled on up to date information about an Ender’s Game movie, which has been kicked around for nearly a decade. Ender’s Game is a novel by Orson Scott Card which won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best SciFi [...]
Oh, I guess it doesn’t take much to make my day, but I was absolutely ecstatic when I stumbled on the fact the The Monkey Wrench Gang is being made into a movie with a 2013 release date. Finally, a reason to hope that the world doesn’t end at the end of this year. The [...]
Sisterhood of Dune is an interesting parable for our times. While it will be most interesting and understandable to those who are following the Dune megaseries, it provides an enlightening reflection on a major issue of our times. The story takes place several hundred years after the battle of Corrin, when the human race finally [...]
Luddites and Conservatives
Posted: February 21, 2012 in Books, Current Events, Election, politicsTags: conservative, luddite
The most recent installation in the Dune SciFi series is Sisterhood of Dune, continuing the story of the post Butlerian civilization. Don’t stop reading; this is not a book review, although I’m enjoying this new book particularly because of its relevance to current political trends. I’m going to guess that Herbert and Anderson, the authors, [...]
On a lighter note, I just finished Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. When I first laid eyes on it I was not only intimidated by the daunting 800 pages of the first volume, but even more-so by the fact that it is at least a five volume series. I have a lot [...]
A Language Older Than Words
Posted: January 28, 2012 in Books, Environment, ReviewsTags: derrick jensen
Several years ago, the last time I was in Moab, Utah, I visited the renowned Back of Beyond Bookstore and picked up a volume by Derrick Jensen called A Language Older Than Words. When I got home it got put on the bookshelf where it’s sat until a few days ago when something prompted me [...]
Determinism and Free Will
Posted: September 12, 2011 in Books, Integral Studies, Personal Whining, Philosophical Debris, ReligionTags: determinism, free will, incognito
In the final chapters of Incognito, Eagleman turns to the question of determinism and free will. If the sub conscious is so instrumental in our conscious thinking, if decision making is so predetermined by brain activity, then there is no scientific room, he says, for the idea of free will. Even though it is such [...]
DC Reboot
Posted: September 4, 2011 in Books, Current Events, Entertainment, Media Gleanings, Personal WhiningTags: comics, reboot
I grew up on comics. I actually think that they taught me how to read … well. Comics had a strong vocabulary and, the Marvel ones at least, stories with deep characters and themes of social justice and introspective psychology. I stopped buying and following comics in my 20s when commercial greed took over the [...]
Well, it seems that there is a lot of post Hugo chatter on a number of SciFi Blogs criticizing the best novel award going to Connie Willis. The criticism ranges from Blackout/All Clear not being proper SciFi, to a poor account of history to it just being a badly written novel. As much as I [...]
From “Incognito”, The Power Of the Subconscious
Posted: August 27, 2011 in Books, Integral Studies, Pedagogy & Education, Philosophical DebrisTags: david eagleman, gurdjieff, ouspensky, subconscious
I am progressing though the non-fiction book, Incognito, by David Eagleman. At the moment it is a survey of research into the subconscious, presenting one study after another that sheds light on that part of our minds. Up to this point it has been mostly a presentation of data, with little other interpretation or speculation. [...]
FRACTALS, QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE SUB-CONSCIOUS
Posted: August 25, 2011 in Books, Integral Studies, Philosophical DebrisTags: david eagleman, incognito
When Mandelbrot first presented Fractal Geometry to the mathematical community, it was ridiculed by the traditional mathematicians who were fixated on Euclidean Geometry. To them, geometry was made of lines, curves and surfaces. It is the geometry that we’ve used to construct man made things, and, as such, has served us quite well. It is [...]
