Wednesday, May 28, 2008

6. Little Brother


I just finished this great new novel written by Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame. Its a story about what might happen to a high school hacker living in SF if a terrorist attack blew up the Golden Gate Bridge and the Department of Homeland Security declared martial law in the city.

I enjoyed the story immensely, it kept me up late last night turning pages. The technology that Marcus, the main character and hacker of the story, used was almost as interesting as the plot itself, which says alot. Some of the technologies used were: TOR, a tool that allows users to surf the web and email each other anonymously, RFID chip neutralizers, gait analyzers, (ie motion detection analysis that could supposedly identify people by their gait--this was neutralized by putting some pebbles in ones shoe.) and ParanoidLinux, a free linux distro with an intense emphasis on personal privacy and security.

There are instructables of how to use all of these technologies here and the book is available for free download here

Monday, May 26, 2008

5. Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook




This book is a survival guide with fun, simple recipes in the margins. It has chapters on saving water, growing your food, storing food, managing your waste, creating your own energy, alternative transportation, being prepared for emergencies, imagining sustainability. All with a breezy, conversational style.

The parts I liked about the book, were its emphasis on communitarianism, after all in an emergency situation or in a world of less food and work, you are going to need good neighbors. That's your most important asset, not your gun stash or your EMRs.

I did have a slight problem with the change your ride chapter, in which he spends the entire chapter writing about potentially better gas mileage and bio-fuels. Biofuels are not sustainable, even if you look past the idea of burning food in a car in a starving world, there's the fact that you are taking nutrients out of the soil to grow the corn and then never returning the nutrient via compost as you can when the corn is used as food. Oh, yeah and one more annoyance was all of the powdered milk in the recipes.

But the chapter on Utopia which deals with eco-villages, developing consensus and talking to the gun-nut-wannabe-warlords with a reference to the Seven Samurai more than make up for the ethanol name dropping.

But overall, I heartily enjoyed the book and will try some of the recipes (without the powdered milk).

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

currently reading

In Defense of Food
the Color of Magic
Little Brother
A Country Year
Twelve Wild Swans
Post-petrol Survival Guide and Cookbook

you see how this goes!?

4. In Defense of Food



Okay, I haven't finished this one yet, but I had to jot down a couple of notes, because I love it so much. This book is an expanded article that Pollan wrote for the NYT review last year. I remember reading that article and being captivated. The advice begins simple and gets just a bit more involved and developed.


Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.


The premise behind the book is that American cuisine has become hijacked by Nutritionists who have clumbsily broken down food into its nutritional components: protein, carbs, fat, and taken all pleasure and real health out of eating. So when you see a loaf of bread the thing you see is "Low-Carb" or "Low-fat" or you look at the Nutritional breakdown. The nutritionists break down food into the "essentials" and then have this strange manichean view, where protein is "good" and fat is "bad". Eventhough we require fat to survive. Pollan gives an example where a group of people are asked what is healthier a diet with no fat or a diet with just a pinch of fat, and a third respond that the no fat diet is healthier.

More to come...

3. the Golden Compass



I really enjoyed this book and especially the idea of the avatars. That concept caught my imagination like the patronus in Harry Potter. I want to know what my avatar would look like. What a great idea, the avatar, a constant companion, a piece of your soul, a physical representation of the internal dialogue that we have in our heads.

I have to admit that I could probably do with re-reading this novel, I have a tendency to stop and start books and read 2 or 3 at a time, and the way the plot of the story unfolded, I kept thinking, oh that's what that was about and wanting to go back and re-read parts with the new knowledge. Every part of this novel was so beautifully described and thought out. I really loved it.

One of my qualms about the books was the portrayal of the rivalry of Iorek and Iofur. It seemed pretty much a pitting the patriarchal Iorek vs the Fey values of Iofur, in a bad guy=evil fey vs good guy=tough authentic patriarch. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other than that, I loved the witches flying around holding their twig of the magic tree, I also loved the urban legend-esque slang of the names for the "Gobblers".

2. Wyrd Sisters


I finished this book last week. It was a lot of fun. I loved the character of Esme Weatherwax, who was a mean old witch and unapologetic about it. And also her conflict with Gytha Ogg, who was the partying dirty-minded wise woman, and Greebo her evil cat. And Magrat, the young sterotypical new age witch, hit a little close to home. Great characters. The fool, and the fool bureaucracy that made being a court jester the most serious and gray flannel suited career imaginable. And the dwarf playwright. I loved the characters. A fun ride.