Recently watched: "The Great Ziegfeld"

A 1936 movie about the life and times of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr, "America's Greatest Showman".  The movie is "suggested by romances and incidents" so we don't have the true story of his life.  Played by William Powell, the movie follows Ziegfeld from sideshow barker (at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair) to creator of the Ziegfeld Follies, the Broadway shows which helped launch the careers of Fanny Brice, Ray Bolger and Harriet Hoctor (all who appear as themselves).

The movie is long (185 minutes) and we see several musical numbers in their entirety (the 8 minute "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" is amazing, even for someone who isn't a fan of showy musical numbers).   The movie won Best Picture, and Luise Rainer (as Ziegfeld's first big star, and first wife, Anna Held) won best actress.  Powell's "Thin Man" costar Myrna Loy appears late in the movie as Billie Burke, Ziegfeld second wife (who would play the good witch in "The Wizard of Oz" three years later (along with Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow).

Recently read: "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson

The most recent book from one of our (by "our" I mean SF...since I do consider Stephenson a SF writer) most interesting writers (and a fairly successful one by SF standards).  In ways, this is a bit of a throw back to some of his earlier works, since it's basically a thriller, with no real SF elements.

Richard Forthrast, former draft dodger and marijuana smuggler, has created T'Rain, a massively successful mulitplayer online role-playing game.  His game is successful enough that it's a target for hackers, which have unleashed a virus that encrypts someones data, and requires them to go into the game and pay to get the encryption key.

Richard's niece Zula (adopted) runs afoul of Russian mobsters that are victims of the hackers, and finds herself in China, trying to help track down the hackers.  From there we get Islamic terrorists, CIA agents and a thrill ride that leads back to North America, and Richard Forthrast old smuggling trail.

At over a thousand pages, many would say that it's much too long for an effective thriller, but this is Stephenson, and we get his usual digressions about any topic which interests him...and luckily for us, they usually interests us also.  This isn't as challenging as his last book, but Anathem suffered at time from being too serious.  Reamde is a ton of fun.

Recently read: "Killer Instinct" and "Riot Act" by Zoe Sharp

These are the first two books in the "Charlie Fox" thriller series, written by Zoe Sharp.  In the first book, Charlie is making a living teaching self defense to women, after being kicked out of the Army Special Forces (for reasons that become clear in the course of the book).  There are a series of murder/rapes going on, and the newest one is a woman that Charlie had a run in with at the New Adelphi club.  Charlie is offered a job working security at the club by it's owner, Marc Quinn, and begins to suspect there's a link between the club and the serial killer.

Charlie is a great character.  Dangerous, well trained but with baggage, she is in the category of "kick butt females" (she even rides a motorcycle) but Sharp handles this territory well, with Charlie being capable but not a super woman.

The second book has Charlie house sitting for a friend in Lavender Gardens estates while working at a gym.  There are teenage gangs running around and the neighbors have decided to employ a security firm since they feel the police can't maintain order.  It's a powder keg waiting to go off, and when a young Asian boy is killed in what looks like a racially motivated killing, the situation turns ugly quickly.  Things become more difficult for Charlie when someone from her Army past shows up.

We see incremental growth in Charlie in the second book, with a bit of thawing out between she and her parents, and understand a bit more of her Army background.  I sped through this second book, and then went and grabbed books 3, 4  and 5 from the Kindle store.  I'm interested in seeing how Sharp develops Charlie further.

Recently watched: "The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers"

I can remember reading the novelization of these when I was a kid, but don't know that I actually watched the movies (originally released in 1974) beyond bits and pieces on a network movie showing.  Several years ago I finally read Dumas' novel (in a newly released translation at the time) and enjoyed it a lot.  I then watched the Gene Kelly movie version, and liked it also (though I think Kelly was a bit old to be D'Artagnan).  Now, with Lester's adaption (with script by George MacDondal Fraser) I've seen what many consider to be the definitive movie version.

It's certainly a lot of fun, with some great casting (Oliver Reed is perfect, and Charlton Heston is very good as Richelieu).  The fights are great, with the Musketeers using whatever is handy as weapons.  I would like to see the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks version, which many say is a template for Lester's films.

New thermostat anyone?

Building a better thermostat...

Wish Congress could get serious...

On the Super Committee Trigger, It's Cut for Cut (Except the Cuts Aren't Cuts)

Recently read: Simon Morden's "Samuil Petrovitch" novels

A big plus on cover design...the striking designs of the covers convinced me to look at the books (while browsing Barnes & Nobel).  I then looked at the Amazon write ups, and decided to try the first book.  It read fast enough that I followed up quickly with the other two.

I enjoyed the books, though at times the main character seems just too much ("no...I won't fail...").  He's possibly the smartest man in the world (though he's barely a man) and in the first book finds the key to the Theory of Everything (this leads to anti gravity in book two, and we see micro black holes in book three).

Set in London (the "Metrozone") with the U.K. in near anarchy, the US a theocracy and Japan destroyed, Petrovitch is a Russian with a past, working on his PhD.  A chance encounter with Sonja Oshicora (daughter of a Japanese gangster) has Petrovitch foiling her kidnapping.

We get an AI (called Michael in later books), the futher collaspe of the Metrozone, and CIA hit teams coming after our hero. Oh...and a warrior nun, who becomes Petrovitch's wife, and then develops trust issues.

The books are over the top, but a good bit of fun.  Might be interesting to see what Morden comes up with next.

I enjoyed some of the Bloggingheads but guess it didn't work out

Bloggingheads collapses.

Chimps in space...

The Horrible Thing That Happened to Enos the Chimp When He Orbited Earth 50 Years Ago

Should everyone go to college?...I would think the answer should be clearly no...

Everyone should not go to college

From the article:

In 2009, American colleges handed out more business degrees than engineering, computer and biology degrees combined. We graduated about the same number of engineers as we did “Visual And Performance Arts” grads.

Alas, despite the fact that engineers are both well-paid and in short supply, The New York Times [NYT] reports “roughly 40 percent of college students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree.”

Malcolm Gladwell on Steve Jobs

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell

My favorite part of the piece, when Jobs and Gates faced off in the 1980’s

In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”

Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

The more I read about Jobs, the more unpleasant he seems…

Kindle News: Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire Face-Off

Obama to order cuts in travel, cellphones, swag

Discworld Reading Order?

 

 

So, if I’m ready to try a Discworld novel, where do I start? 

 

http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-20.jpg

 

 

 

 

Matt Welch on "fear of extremism and mob violence"

 

 

 

http://reason.com/blog/2011/10/04/hooray-for-fear-of-extremism-a

 

 

 

npr Top 100 Sceince-Fcition, Fantasy Books--how many have you read?

npr Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

I didn't really follow this, and thus didn't vote on anything.  I did look at the results, and thought I would at least figure out which ones I had read.  Their rules on series is a little odd, and so there's cases where I had read one or two of a group.

For the listing below, those in red are ones that I've read, those in blue are series where I've read some, while those in black are unread.

 

1	The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy	J.R.R. Tolkien
2	The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy	Douglas Adams
3	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card
4	The Dune Chronicles	Frank Herbert
5	A Song Of Ice And Fire Series	George R. R. Martin
6	1984	George Orwell
7	Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury
8	The Foundation Trilogy	Isaac Asimov
9	Brave New World	Aldous Huxle
10	American Gods	Neil Gaiman
11	The Princess Bride	William Goldman
12	The Wheel Of Time Series	Robert Jordan
13	Animal Farm	George Orwell
14	Neuromancer	William Gibson
15	Watchmen	Alan Moore
16	I, Robot	Isaac Asimov
17	Stranger In A Strange Land	Robert Heinlein
18	The Kingkiller Chronicles	Patrick Rothfuss
19	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut
20	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley
21	Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?	Philip K. Dick
22	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood
23	The Dark Tower Series	Stephen King
24	2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke
25	The Stand	Stephen King
26	Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson
27	The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury
28	Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut
29	The Sandman Series	Neil Gaiman
30	A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess
31	Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein
32	Watership Down	Richard Adams
33	Dragonflight	Anne McCaffre
34	The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress	Robert Heinlein
35	A Canticle For Leibowitz	Walter M. Miller
36	The Time Machine	H.G. Wells
37	20000 Leagues Under the Sea	Jules Verne
38	Flowers For Algernon	Daniel Keys Moran
39	The War Of The Worlds	H.G. Wells
40	The Chronicles Of Amber	Roger Zelaznz
41	The Belgariad	David Eddings
42	The Mists Of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley
43	The Mistborn Series	Brandon Sanderson
44	Ringworld	Larry Niven
45	The Left Hand Of Darkness	Ursula K. LeGuin
46	The Silmarillion	J.R.R. Tolkien
47	The Once And Future King	T.H. White
48	Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman
49	Childhood's End	Arthur C. Clarke
50	Contact	Carl Sagan
51	The Hyperion Cantos	Dan Simmons
52	Stardust	Neil Gaiman
53	Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson
54	World War Z	Max Brooks
55	The Last Unicorn	Peter S. Beagle
56	The Forever War	Joe Haldeman
57	Small Gods	Terry Pratchett
58	The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant	Stephen R. Donaldson
59	The Vorkosigan Saga	Lois McMaster Bujold
60	Going Postal	Terry Pratchett
61	The Mote In God's Eye	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62	The Sword Of Truth	Terry Goodkind
63	The Road	Cormac McCarthy
64	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke
65	I Am Legend	Richard Matheson
66	The Riftwar Saga	Raymond E. Feist
67	The Shannara Trilogy	Terry  Brooks
68	The Conan The Barbarian Series	R.E. Howard
69	The Farseer Trilogy	Robin Hobb
70	The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger
71	The Way Of Kings	Brandon Sanderson
72	A Journey To The Center Of The Earth	Jules Verne
73	The Legend Of Drizzt Series	R.A. Salvatore
74	Old Man's War	John Scalzi
75	The Diamond Age	Neil Stephenson
76	Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C. Clarke
77	The Kushiel's Legacy Series	Jacqueline Carey
78	The Dispossessed	Ursula K. LeGuin
79	Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury
80	Wicked	Gregory Maguire
81	The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series	Steven Erikson
82	The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde
83	The Culture Series	Iain M. Banks
84	The Crystal Cave	Mary Stewart
85	Anathem	Neal Stephenson
86	The Codex Alera Series	Jim Butcher
87	The Book Of The New Sun	Gene Wolfe
88	The Thrawn Trilogy	Timothy Zahn
89	The Outlander Series	Diana Gabaldan
90	The Elric Saga	Michael Moorcock
91	The Illustrated Man	Ray Bradbury
92	Sunshine	Robin McKinlez
93	A Fire Upon The Deep	Vernor Vinge
94	The Caves Of Steel	Isaac Asimov
95	The Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson
96	Lucifer's Hammer	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97	Doomsday Book	Connie Willis
98	Perdido Street Station	China Mieville
99	The Xanth Series	Piers Anthony
100	The Space Trilogy	C.S. Lewis

Some general notes/comments:

"The Thrawn Triolgy" by Timothy Zahn?  A nice addition to Lucas' Star Wars universe (and one of the last things I paid attention to, particulary after the disappointing prequels) but they aren't great literature.

Sigh...outside of the first couple, why include Anthony's Xanth series?

Is Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" held in that high of regard?

Wow, lot more Neil Gaiman books on the list than I would have expected.