Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Reviews

  • What Are We Reading

    What Are We Reading

    OMWC

    One of the few benefits of the pain-in-the-ass called “relocation” is the occasional discovery of something one possesses but had forgotten. In my case, it was one of my favorite books from my childhood, covers missing, pages yellowed and tattered, thumbed through to nearly the point of collapse, but still readable and delightful. Curtis MacDougall‘s Hoaxes is a classic, ranking with Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Randi’s Flim-Flam in the category of “books to help you develop a healthy cynicism.” Put aside MacDougall’s idiot politics, the guy could write and do real research.

    SugarFree

    The menu that Cracker Barrel Typhoid Mary handed me. Ugh.

    Riven

    Ah, so when we last left off, I was just fixing to read Grave Peril, the third book in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Since then, I’ve finished that book–and Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Something Borrowed, I Was a Teenage Bigfoot, and Proven Guilty. I’m currently about hip-deep in White Night, which isn’t as Christmasy as the title had initially led me to believe, but then I’ve had Christmas on the brain since Halloween, so… Maybe that’s not on Butcher. Also reads but timeline-ambiguous: Vignette, A Fistful of Warlocks, B is for Bigfoot, and A Restoration of Faith. Clearly very easy and whimsical stories to read, they’re entertaining and just-distinct-enough from each other that I will likely read the entire series right into the dirt. As long as Butcher keeps writing them, I’ll keep reading them, and I think I’m about halfway through the entire catalog at this point, if I include all the sundry shorts. … So he’s got another month or so to write the next one before I get to the current end of the series.

    mexican sharpshooter

    My reading once again, has been limited by what I read my four year old.

    This month’s entry is Shel Silverstein’s classic, The Giving Tree.  It is a touching story on the surface, but upon closer examination is a cautionary tale about the moral hazard of the welfare state.  The story begins with a boy playing with a tree but inevitably, time plays its terrible curse upon the boy and the tree.  The boy grows and no longer has interest in the tree.  The tree notices the boy coming by less often, but when he does, she finds the boy is missing something.  The boy first has no money, but the tree offers the boy her apples.  Now this is act of pure kindness on the tree’s part, and also an important lesson missed by the boy.  The apples you see, were meant to be sold in the market for a profit so the boy was able to have spending money.  Given the utter lack of overhead costs incurred by the boy, any apple sold was sold for a profit.  The boy then makes the mistake of spending all his money foolishly.

    His mismanagement of the tree’s gift is evident because the next time the boy comes to the tree for help, he is in need of a house.  Perhaps he knocked up some girl and needed a house.  Who knows?  Ultimately, if he had been a better steward of the tree’s gift of her apples, he would have used the profits from the apple sales, and applied those towards the startup for another, more profitable venture.  At the very least, the profits could have been used towards a down payment on a house. Given he had no money tells me it was spent on women and booze, because he now had a family and was once again asking the tree for help.  She offers her branches to build a home, and probably a shabby one at that.  Apple trees aren’t exactly known for their high strength wood, unless this was some kind of magic tree.

    Clearly, the boy made a mistake in who he married, because the next time he comes to the tree for help he wants to get away and have an adventure.  Between his debts and his dilapidated home, I would want to get away from everything too.  The tree once again offers the boy help by allowing him to chop down her trunk, and use it to make a boat.  Boats are nothing more than a hole in the water filled with money if you ask me.  The tree apparently was happy, but not really.

    Behold! The Welfare King upon his throne.

    The story concludes with the boy comeing back to the tree as an old man.  Surly, broken down—he can’t even chew on apples anymore out of disgust for his poor decision making.  The tree inevitably offers the only thing left she can as a stump, and offers the boy a place to sit his lazy ass down.

    The lesson here is the moral hazard of the welfare state.  The tree gives selflessly, and the boy takes advantage of her generosity by stealing everything she is worth—even in death.  A better course of action would have been to give the boy the apples as a loan.  How do you pay back a loan to a tree?  I don’t know, maybe the tree could’ve loaned the apples with the stipulation the boy plant a dozen of those apples somewhere.  Something, anything really to instill upon the boy the apples he is selling to spend on hookers and booze was not his to begin with.  The smartest course of action, being that he could clearly sell apples, is to plant more trees. Then the tree wouldn’t be so damn lonely for one, being surrouded by other trees, but the boy would have a larger supply of apples to bring to market.  Perhaps even plant a few more trees, and entire orchard of trees, and become de facto king of the magical apple tree forest. That never occurred to the creepy bearded, bare-footed Silversteen.  Obviously, because he wanted you to believe it was better to give everything to everyone, especially the undeserving.

    Ayn Rand would’ve had an epic, 96 page field day with this.

     

    jesse.in.mb

    Coming off a rough few months and finally getting a chance to do some reading. I finally finished the Lies of Locke Lamorra which I mentioned a quarter ago. It got better after where I was at before, but I’m not sure I’m going to pick up the next book in the series. There were open questions, but the tale itself comes to a satisfying close.

    Jeff Wheeler’s Storm Glass is another first book in a series. I *might* pick up the next one. The blurb made it sound like an impressively hamfisted parable for modern socioeconomic disparities set in a roughly steampunk (English, not wild-west) setting, but it was more enjoyable than the blurb made it sound.

    The Shadow & Bone trilogy (also apparently called the Grisha trilogy) is again a vaguely steampunk set of novels reminiscent of The Legend of Kora. The setting is overtly Russian and at about the end of the tsarist era, but in this universe some people are born to manipulate aspects of the world around them and some people are just fodder for the constant wars at play. There were a few points in the series where the story faltered, but the cadence kept me reading and I put down 2.5 of the books in a day-and-a-half.

    Currently reading Roadside Picnic, but I’m barely through the foreward so it’ll have to wait until next time.

    SP

    I have been reading self-help and how-to books this month.

    ”How to Relocate AGAIN and Stay Married”

    ”Creative Arson: When You REALLY Can’t Pack One More Box”

    ”Toss It! (Grandma’s dead, she’ll never know you gave her ‘heirlooms’ away)”

    “How to Get Moving Quotes Without Talking to Humans”

    “Nobody Needs 23 Kinds of Wine: Throwing Packing Parties to Reduce Your Cellar”

    ”Do the Math, Or Is it Cheaper to Replace All Your Household Goods Than Move Them?”

    “Ikea is Everywhere: Why Move Your Furniture?”

     

    Brett L

    I read to unwind, and after a hell of a month of November, I dove into a whole crapload of books this month. Not all of them great, but several pretty quality reads.

    I started with Gears of the City by Felix Gilman. I’ve had a pretty serious literary crush on Felix since reading The Half-Made World. Gears is a sequel to his 2007 book Thunderer. in the first book, a man named Arjun came to The City looking for his God, who had left Arjun’s monastery quiet and empty. The City contains hundreds of gods, and Arjun gets tangled up with two in particular, one a god of rot, water, and death; the other a god of flight, wind, and freedom. Many hijinks ensue and we leave the first book with Arjun going to The Mountain to look for his god. But the The City and The Mountain are mystical places, not really fixed or Euclidean in space or time. The second book picks up with Arjun having been spat out by The Mountain with a hazy set of memories. Short version is, the first book is great, the second one’s reach exceeds its grasp. I really wanted to love it, but it tied up too many things too neatly. Still loads of great characters and imaginative encounters, just not as sexy.

    After that came something lighter — the 4th installment of Drew Hayes’s NPC series (officially Spells, Swords, & Stealth series according to Amazon, but the first one was NPCs). Anyhow, this is I guess, LitRPG genre? There are two interwoven stories in the series. One is that the characters in the DnD-style game are actually in existence somewhere and controlled by people in our plane. The other is a group of NPCs who form a party to save their little town. I think its a fun series. Has some original twists and turns. Hayes does a good job between just shrugging his shoulders at some things (adventurers take stupid risks. its what they do.) and really nice world building on the other. Some of the characters include a gnome paladin of the god of minions, a half-orc wizard, and a former player-controlled character who should have died on a natural 1 roll but instead became an NPC.

    I also read the first two books of the Books of Babel series, Senlin Ascends and Arm of the Sphinx. The first book was wonderful steampunk. The second was not as original or lyrical, but moved the story along. A slightly older schoolmaster named Senlin takes his new bride to the Tower of Babel for a honeymoon (think steampunk technology, trains, some electricity, lots of steam engines) and immediately gets separated in the crowd. Thereafter begins his quest to reunite with his wife, in which he discovers that his morality is fluid, and he will do whatever it takes to get back to her. The second book takes Senlin to the mysterious Sphinx who seems to run and repair all of the automation for the tower. Senlin makes a deal to get closer to finding his wife.

    I also read a short story from Mark Lawrence in the Nona Grey universe called Bound. Lawrence continues to be one of my favorite writers, but $3 for 16k words is at the edge of my price range for anybody. Only read it if you are caught up on the Jorg/Red Queen and Nona Grey books and are waiting impatiently for the next book to drop.

    Finally, I started the Expanse books by James SA Corey. I don’t know why I hadn’t read them before, since space opera is absolutely my jam, but I had not. Nor have I watched any of the series on Syfy/Amazon. I really feel cheated that I haven’t been reading this all along. Although given the sheer number of novels and novellas in the series, it would be great if someone could tell me when to pull the ripcord so I don’t become bitter and disillusioned.

  • BIF Review: Florida Beer

    BIF Review: Florida Beer

    TL;DR:  these beers are all of high quality, and very true to type.  If you like a particular style of beer, you will like these versions of that style.

    Omphtaloskepsis begins now:

    This box of goodies was a very nice gift, and like all good gifts, it says something.  It says something about the recipient (I like beer) it says something about the relationship between the parties (we like beer), but what does it say about Florida Man?  Rather a lot, and rather surprising revelations to me, who only knows FM from his meth-and-gator insights and his flirtations with Jesse.

    These beers are all very disciplined.  While it’s fun to think of Florida as the home of funny headlines and Burn Notice, it’s beers like this that reminds you that it’s also the home of the House of Mouse.  At every brewery tour I’ve ever been to, someone in the tour group makes some comment about how megabrews suck, and the tour guide always responds with some variant of “They are great brewers, it takes a lot of skill to make a beer with so little taste and no way of hiding flaws.”  Well, these beers are like that — not because they have no taste, but because (with one exception) the tasting experience is perfectly consistent across time and tongue.  Any off notes would be very easy to notice, and they aren’t here.  I actually find this a little disconcerting, as my favorite genre (Trappist ales) has tons and tons of different things with the flavor in flux from the first sip to the swallow.  You can hide mistakes in that.  And while I only got one can of each, I’m completely willing to believe that the quality control at these FL breweries are much better than I get when drinking the Belgians (though to be fair, there is a lot more room for variation when stuff gets shipped across the Atlantic).  The other thing about these beers is they are exactly what is on the label.  No “well, it’s kinda sweet, so maybe we’ll call it a porter?”  Other people with more knowledge than I have may disagree, but as far as I can tell, the typicality of these ranges from “textbook” to “would win best in breed at Westminster.”

    So what beers did Florida Man send me?  These beers:

    Funky Buddha “Floridian Wheat Hefeweizen” – orangeish yellow, mildly sweet, citrus aftertaste.  Great with pizza.  Somewhat light-bodied for an unfiltered type.  I give it: three beers out of a six-pack.

    3 Daughters Brewing “St. Pete Beach Blonde Ale” – pale yellow, cloudy, headless.  An odd scent, presumable from some sort of yeast of which I am unfamiliar.  The taste is pleasant, sweet, and a little hoppy, with a buttery aftertaste.  I give it:  thirteen out of twenty-five wafers in a FOUP.

    3 Daughters Brewing “Rod Bender Red Ale” – I likes me some red ales, and I likes the heck out of this one.  More russet than red, with a malty and yeasty nose, this is one of the beers you should pull out when someone says “balanced malt and hops” to show them one that actually does this.  As good as the beer is, I’m wondering about the brewery name.  3 Daughters?  Isn’t every woman a daughter, kind of by definition?  Why not “3 Chicks Brewing?”  I give it:  17 /19 prime numbers.

    Tampa Bay Brewing Co.  “Last Days of Summer Fruited Sour Ale” – This is one of the ones I can’t verify is true to type, due to my lack of experience.  All the sours I’ve had up till now (which has been three I think) have been very tart.  This one isn’t.  You might call it subtle.  When you pour it, it looks like Natty Light, when you smell it it smells like peaches and hops. When you taste it though, it  is neither.  It’s very mildly tangy, and like other sours and fruited lambics, completely un-beery.  If I were to try and bring a fruited sour to the Japanese market, it would be this one. I give it e / pi transcendental numbers.

    J. Dubs Brewing Co. “Bell Cow Milk Chocolate Porter” – It’s chocolate. Dark brown, chocolate nose, chocolate taste.  I like chocolate.  I like this beer, rather a lot.  But because they are cramming actual chocolate into this, there’s room to hide mistakes in brewing.  So I can’t claim that this is as high quality of the rest here, but I can claim it’s yummy.  I give it: 4.5 / 5 Kit-Kat bars.

    Crooked Can Brewing Co. “Mr. Tractor Kolch” – Someone who is an actual expert needs to drink one of these so they can explain something to me.  People keep equating “bitter” with “hops,” so when I say “I don’t particularly care for IPAs,” that gets translated to “I don’t like bitter beers” which is not true.  This beer has a definite hard stop of bitterness to it, which while I don’t think necessarily adds to this particular beer, isn’t a flaw or off-putting to me.  What it does NOT have is a flavor equivalent to its nose, which is what I think of as “hops,” a resinous herbal scent (and in other beers, flavor).  I can only assume that there are some hops which impart a more bitter taste ,and other cultivars that impart a Pine-Sol taste.  It would be good to have an actual beer person either confirm this or explain the difference between this beer’s bitterness and an IPA’s “I am drinking a lumberyard.” (Note to self: name my brewery’s IPA “Hoppy Ending.”  Put a picture of an Asian girl in a bikini top on the label.)  Anyway, if you offer someone a beer, and they say “yes,” and then you ask “what kind?” and they say “I dunno.  A beer.” Then you should give them this one.  I give it 55 / 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Florida Avenue Brewing Co. “Brown Ale” –  Brown. Dense head.  Nose of roasted malt and hops.  Toasty, caramel, really good, buttery aftertaste. lighter body than most.  An excellent candidate to be my everyday beer.  I give it:  77 / 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

    Bold City Brewery “Killer Whale cream ale” – Pale yellow, minimal head, smells like high school. Taste is subtle, muted, sweet.  I give it: 90 / 165 beers in a keg

    Cigar City Brewing “Florida Cracker Belgian-Style White Ale” – Yellow, hazy, thick head, little smell, lightly fruity.  It’s a Belgian White.  I give it: 2 / 3 orange peels

    *About the numeric scores — the Venn diagram of “thing that are good” and “things that I like” does not perfectly overlap.  The scores are how much I like them, not of “how good” they are.  These are all quite good, high-quality beers.  Also, I am totally not ripping off a particular movie reviewer’s shtick, I am trying to make it a meme.

     

  • What Are We Reading – November 2018

    OMWC

    I haven’t had much fiction time this past year, but some travel allowed me to read The Bear and the Dragon, by Tom Clancy, which posits a future alliance with Russia and a shooting war with China (this was written before Putin had transformed the Russian government into a one-man Mafia). Ever find yourself at home and alone, and just vegged out on the couch finishing off bags of Doritos? This is the literary equivalent- absolutely no substance, but lots of fun if you don’t get caught. Like the usual Clancy novels, the characters would have to be fleshed out quite a bit more to even reach the level of cardboard, the plot is predictable, and the tech is more interesting than the prose. It sprawls, it badly needs editing, and Clancy’s verbal tics, particularly useless foreshadowing, pepper the pages (“He would soon find out how wrong he was.”). His sex scenes are cringe-worthy. But still… mindless fun.

    SugarFree

    Getting ready to read the new Laundry Files novel from Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index. I say getting ready because my habit with The Laundry Files is to back up a few novels and hit the new one at a run with the last couple or so fresh in my mind. I went back to The Annihilation Score this time, the one everyone seems to hate and is the jump the shark point for the series, blah blah. I like that The Annihilation Score and The Nightmare Stacks are from different POVs than Bob–it keeps the series from going stale. I’m about halfway through The Delirium Brief, so I should start the newest one this weekend.

    I’ve been spending most of my reading time this month gorging on Dracula movies since I finished rereading the novel in October. The 1931 Bela Lugosi’s version is slower than I remember, but his performance is still fantastic. (It is an adaptation of a stage version of Dracula and its yap-yap-yap origins really drag it down.) I rewatched all the Hammer Draculas as well, and their pleasures are intact. Christopher Lee will always be Count Dracula to me: haughty, snide, sadistic and bloody-eyed. He doesn’t even have any dialogue in 1966’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness–he just snarls and growls and ends up the only thing on the screen.

    Blacula is so much better than it has any right to be and even the much-derided 1979 version with Frank Langella’s disco hair is better than I remembered. Dan Curtis’ 1973 version for American television has Jack Palance as the Count and it is really enjoyable. I still have the 1977 BBC production (supposedly the most faithful adaptation of the book ever made) and Coppola to go. It has been a very long time since I have subjected myself to Keanu Reeves’ whoa, like totally Jonathan Harker, bro, and I’m not looking forward to it.

    Riven

    Over Thanksgiving weekend I read the first two Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher: Storm Front and Fool Moon. They were both fun and easy reads, which was nice because two dogs and a toddler were a huge distraction in the living room in which I was reading. They were a little formulaic, but I was sufficiently pre-warned by SF and was expecting that. In fact, I expect the rest of the Dresden Files books will follow very similar formats. I’ll be finding out soon because Grave Peril is next on my reading list. Reading these books feels a little bit like homework, since reading them was sort of a prerequisite for my rpg group’s next adventure: Your Story. (Everyone wanted a Pathfinder break.) But it’s really easy homework, and they remind me a bit of The Hollows series that I enjoyed so much last summer. If you’re looking for entertaining urban fantasy that isn’t too challenging and builds a nice world, either series would be a good fit.

    mexicansharpshooter

    Recently I found an old book titled, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  Its been gathering dust as a shim for the kitchen table for the past three months, I figured I might as well actually read it to my 4 year old.

    Its a harrowing tale of a missionary named Sam, sent to an unfortunate land where nobody speaks in complete sentences, or without a form of pentameter.  I imagine it might have taken him months to adapt to the local custom in order to converse with the locals, and the story focuses on his interaction with one nameless local.  I imagine Dr. Seuss was unable pronounce the local’s name, and to be honest I doubt I would remember it either—the man is vegan, as is the standard in his culture.  I imagine his B12 deficiency is the root cause of his demeanor throughout the entire story.

    Sam is a missionary from the Church of Carnivorous Kinship (COCK) and is charged with converting a single vegan to a meat eater, thus fulfulling his destiny, and securing his place in heaven by his alien Reptilian overlords.

    I assume it begins early in the morning as the story begins while the local is reading a newspaper, and Sam offers him a simple ham and eggs breakfast.  He first tries to convince the local to eat it with a both a rodent and cannine companion, offers him a consideably large piece of real estate, and even offers the local to eat it in the location of his choice.  Much to Sam’s charign, the local then violates NAP by pushing him into oncoming traffic on a major highway, even forcing Sam to dodge an oncoming  train—WITHIN A TUNNEL.  The local’s shocking refusal would shake the convictions of the average missionary, but Sam is no average missionary.  The local eventually forces both over a seaside cliff, where he finally submits to Sam’s simple request and tries the meal.

    He loved it.  Becasue ham and eggs are delicious.

    The local, now cured of his B12 deficiency, is a much more personalble fellow, and likely continues the COCK lifestyle to this day.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the local is the missionary in the sequel Go Dog Go.

    Tune in next month.

    SP

    More Bosch. (And I started watching the series on Prime, and have some thoughts, but this post isn’t about TV shows.) Also read Scott Pratt’s latest Joe Dillard, Due Process, number 9 in the series. Enjoyable, if predictable, mind candy. Robert Dugoni’s A Steep Price, the most recent Tracy Crosswhite installment, is now the fiction in rotation on my Kindle.

    I’ve just begun the non-fiction-ish Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency. Too soon to have formed a real opinion.

    Another book that just landed on my doorstep is Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome, penned by Venki Ramakrishnan, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with the ribosome.  I purchased this one in print, as is my habit for anything I think OMWC and/or various geeky houseguests might also be interested in reading (and why we have overflowing bookshelves in our library). Haven’t read more than the introduction, but I think it will be very interesting.

    As part of an ongoing personal project building a sort of online research aid website for family history in my hometown (yes, I’m a nerd), I am re-reading the history book the two local historical societies produced 30-odd years ago and indexing the people . It’s very interesting to revisit this collection of local history and local family histories submitted by the families. This makes the book something of a cross between oral history anecdotes, verifiable facts, supposition, and wishful thinking. My family joined this community just a few years before my birth, and even having spent my entire life before college there, I’m finding all sorts of new connections and gossipy details about the place. It’s quite fun.

    jesse.in.mb

    It’s been a trying two months and I haven’t gotten much reading done. I finally (and just in the nick of time) Finished James R. Walker’s Lakota Myth. It’s been on my shelf since I visited the Crazy Horse Memorial. The editor, Elaine Jahner does the unenviable job of balancing an academic understanding of ethnography and folklore, the context that Walker brought to the stories, and showcasing the work Walker did in trying to bridge the gap between oral story-telling and a literary cycle. Some of the stories are told multiple times in the book, with each telling revealing how differently shamans, converts and entertainers told familiar tales with different emphases. I’d picked it up expecting something more like Bulfinch’s Mythology, but was pleasantly stimulated by the explanations for why certain decisions were made about the presentation of a mythology that was not already rooted into an English-speaking audience’s popular consciousness.

    Web Dominatrix

    I am currently enjoying We The Corporations by Adam Winkler. I met the author randomly some years ago at a book festival. Truthfully the book caught my eye because I recognised the author’s name.

    Winkler is a constitutional law professor at UCLA, and We The Corporations explores the complex topic of corporate personhood, and how businesses have won constitutional protections. I’m not far enough into it to give a review, so I expect I will report back next month.

    Brett L

    My big read of the month was Charlie Stross’s latest Laundry Files book The Labyrinth Index. Let me start with the good: The premise — that a Cthulonic cult has worked a mass glamor on the USA to make everyone forget the President every time they sleep was actually excellent. The group of Secret Service agents on the Presidential detail basically sleep every 4th day so enough are awake to remember why they are guarding this guy. The rest of the book is shit. Everyone and his fucking brother who isn’t currently the Eater of Souls or cohabiting with him is basically a vampire by the end. I don’t know, Stross started out emulating the styles of spy novelists in his first 2 or 3 installments. Maybe he decided to emulate Robert Jordan with this one because basically nobody remotely important dies, and I was bored by the end.

    I also tried to read The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World. Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point but if you’ve ever had to take any sort of process engineering or electronics course, you’ll know the systems he’s talking about. And then take a not particularly imaginative person and have them try to explain through large, complex poorly defined systems in the real-world like schools. I don’t know, maybe its because the author started with a “nuanced” view of Norman Borlaug and I have a very un-nuanced view of Norman Borlaug. I’m sure this is a revelation for people who don’t have any formal systems training, but I found it not particularly insightful and his deep thoughts not particularly deep before I gave it up about 2/3 of the way through.

  • What Are We Reading – October 2018

    OMWC

    Geek books and real books. My fun real book this past month was by H.L. Mencken, who was incapable of writing anything uninteresting. Although we love him for his short and cynical essays, chock full of quotable and meme-able sentences, his scholarly work is equally enjoyable. The American Language is a study on how our version of English developed and on the taxonomy of American vocabulary, grammar, and usage. It delights my inner geek, amuses and informs on every page, and gives a fascinating insight into Mencken’s inner thoughts on the language that he used so brilliantly and effectively. I was less thrilled with a lot of the updates added by editors after Mencken’s stroke and eventual death, but at least they were kind enough to set their portions off in brackets.

    My geek book for the month is High Fidelity Circuit Design, by Norman Crowhurst and George Cooper. This is a book from the 1950s that has recently been reprinted. If you want to understand Nyquist stability criteria, feedback, and the finer points of tube amplifier design (I told you it was a geek book!), look no further. These days, engineers use computer modeling to determine gain and phase margins for stability and sims to predict performance, but back in the stone ages, they actually plotted stuff on graph paper and used rulers and protractors. I confess that reading this covered my with waves of anachrophilia.

    SugarFree

    October is the month for horror. I went back to the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde. Old friends to cuddle up with.

    If you’ve never, Frankenstein plays out far differently that pretty much every movie adaption. The Monster is made over just a few pages of grave robbing and surgery, no electricity and no cackling, and Frankenstein is young, only about 21, and while full of hubris, he isn’t a mad scientist, just a mildly full-of-himself student. It would be interesting to see a film adaptation actually tackle the book.

    SP

    Let’s see, what have I been reading this month. I’ve just started The Pattern of Evolution by Niles Eldredge, which our European guest had selected from our library for bedtime reading and left laying on the table upon his departure. (One of the great benefits of marrying another extreme reader is that there are always books that I haven’t read, and I don’t even have to venture out to the library or pay Amazon.)

    I’m revisiting The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart. Stewart has put together a pretty comprehensive look at the major plants, herbs, spices, that are made into various potent potables. There are interesting historical notes about the discovery and use of the different ingredients, and some geeky botany stuff, too. Oh, and recipes for drinks. This isn’t really a book one reads straight through, although I am. But I also read cookbooks cover to cover just for fun.

    Just picked up the book mexican sharpshooter has recently reviewed, Data in Decline: Why Polling and Social Research Miss the Mark by Steve Wood. I expect a throughly interesting read.

    In fiction, I’m still working my way through the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly on Kindle. I haven’t viewed the series which is based on the character, but I might add it to my watchlist.

    In audio, I was listening to A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett, but I’ve kind of lost interest about halfway through. Plot: Horrible people do horrible things. Less horrible people also sometimes do horrible things. Especially in 19th century banking empires, British politics, and banana republics run by thugs. Eh. Probably won’t finish it unless I end up having another long, tedious drive alone.

    jesse.in.mb

    I don’t have much to report. I went on a bit of a binge of buying cookbooks including Mormioto’s Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking which is accessible enough and got me to make my own dashi from scratch (god damn did my kitchen stink of fish for days, but it was very tasty). I found the content personal, but I was hoping for more…I dunno, context for the food I was preparing. I also grabbed Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking more to kick money her way than anything as I’ve been scraping recipes from her website for years (The Boyfriend does not approve of how much I gravitate to her more gochugaru-centric offerings).

    I burned through the available issues of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina which started off with just the right level of twisting to the character I was first introduced to by Melissa Joan Hart, but I’m not sure it is living up to its promise so far.

    Started but not finished: I circled back to The Lies of Locke Lamora, and pushed through until it found its groove. I’m a little more than half-way done at this point so maybe by next WAWR I’ll have a final opinion. I’ve been chipping away at just the introduction to James R. Walker’s Lakota Myth, which has been unskippably interesting, but also too academic for the naked-poolside-reading I was hoping the main contents would be while Iwas in Palm Springs…perhaps next time I’ll have more.

    JW

    A wise man once screamed “NO! You must not read from the book!“and I have followed that advice ever since.

    A Leap At The Wheel

    Books on Audiobook:

    The Wizard of Oz: Or so I thought.  It was actually a 2 hour radio broadcast will a full cast.  Not recommended.

    Till We Have Faces: I didn’t realize this was fiction, based only on the name I assumed it was non-fiction.  But it was one of the few Lewis books left that I hadn’t read so I threw a hold on it in the library’s audiobook application.  It is in fact fiction, and it is fantastic.  In addition to being written by an expert craftsman, this is a novel that would be pretty impossible to write in this day and age.  The concept of having a female protagonist who takes up some masculine role in society would inevitably become bogged down in the current simple-minded discussion of gender issues.  But being written in the 50s actually allows Lewis to write a stronger, more interesting female character that provides a clearer analysis of gender roles.  Nothing turns me off of fiction faster than weak women, and between this book and That Hideous Strength, its nice to see my literary hero doesn’t fall into my literary pet peeve. Also, this not really a book about gender roles.  Its not a book about any one thing, because it is about nine or so different things.  If I had to pick one thing it was about the most, it would be about how you would get along in a world where the divine is real and doesn’t really love us.  Highest Recommendation.

    Democracy in America: Ufda.  I find historical books about history and political economy really interesting, but they require a lot of concentration because you need to both consider the words on the page and the frame of reference that they were written in.  Kind of like the Screwtape Letters.  In any case, 34 hours of that is just too much for me this month, when I’ve either been too sick to do productive work (fucking strep, fucking high-false-negative strep tests), or working 7 days a week to catch up.  Only made it through about the first third, I’ll come back later.  Incomplete.

    Whitepapers: I don’t normally list all the whitepapers and journal articles that I read, but there were some interesting ones that might be of interest here

    Why Suburban Districts Need Public Charter Schools

    Honestly, there isn’t much groundbreaking here, but it lays out the argument for charter schools in the suburbs.  Just the kind of thing you would expect to find from some shitlord conservative think-tank like… *needle scratch* the Progressive Policy Institute?  Interesting for that reason alone.

    Hidden Tribes

    You know all those people saying “80% of the US is opposed to political correctness?”  This is the research that they are pulling from.  Its generally a pretty interesting look at the electorate, though I think it has some shortcomings.  It’s interesting because the categorization they propose feels truthy, and it seems to be a better signal than party affiliation for predicting opinions of the tribes.  It’s limited because it doesn’t spend a lot of time on meeeeeeee and my tribe.  Political opinion is a high dimensional space, and this projects that space onto a single axis.  It puts me in the moderate camp, which is probably right in that I’m pretty close to center on the left-right axis.  But I’m a huge outlier on a bunch of other axes on the political space.  A model is only as good or bad as its predictive power, and this seems predictive for a lot of people.  “Bad for outliers” is hardly a reason to reject a model.  And I found it to be very helpful to see the divisions within the right wing and within the left wing.  Its not news that the right and left disagree, but disagreements within the wings are pretty important these days.  Highly Recommended.

    Truth Decay

    The truest thing I’ve ever read was the argument that Killmonger was the protagonist in Black Panther, which is an Alt-Right parable.  The second truest thing I’ve ever read was this paper.  This paper documents and discusses the reduction in faith in information provided by institutions like media, government, and academia.  The interesting thing though is that this paper is *incredibly* careful to present the case in a way that doesn’t turn off anyone from any political orientation.  One of my hangups is that a lot of this distrust is the result of these institutions becoming untrustworthy because they are becoming self serving, partisan, and/or low-quality shitholes.  Guess what, it talks about that (maybe using different terminology…)  One of the hang-ups of a friend of mine is that the Right has a financial incentive in developing an ecosystem of alternative news outlet and those with the biggest financial incentive are the loudest talking about how you can’t trust the MSM.  Guess what, it talks about that too.  It is pretty clear that this has been heavily edited to take into considerations the thoughts and objections of reviewers with a very wide array of intellectual orientations, and its a very, very strong document because of that.  I told this friend that this is exhibit A for why educational institutions need intellectual heterogeneity.  While this progressive friend is not yet ready to admit that academia is a stifling monoculture, this paper is helping me change his mind. Highest Recommendation

    Podcasts: I just wanted to call this one out because it is really, really interesting

    So to Speak Podcast with Don Verrilli. Verilli was the Solicitor General in the Obama administration.  He is, quite possibly, the most skilled Supreme Court lawyer alive.  I probably don’t agree with him on anything policy-wise, but when the guy talks about how to argue in front of the Supreme Court, there aren’t too many living people with more to say.  And when he makes an admission against interest, well, that’s worth taking a note of.  He makes two here.

    First, Verilli says that he thinks the Roberts Court really does support the 1st amendment because they have an ideological commitment to it.  Its not just a tool for achieving a partisan end of being pro-business or owning the libs.  I think this too, but its nice to hear it confirmed like this.

    Second, an more importantly, Verilli comes out and says that there’s not an Originalist argument for campaign finance laws.  He talks about how the Founders had a broader understanding of corruption that the modern court does.  But even if that’s true, they didn’t think that there was an exception to the 1A to combat this.  I don’t think he says it, but this is consistent with the idea that it was the structure of the government that was supposed to prevent this type of corruption, not restrictions on civilian action.  Recommended if you follow the SC

  • A good book, a beer, and a quiet afternoon. — Part 2

    For part deux of this review I decided to go for a beer that is significantly less awful than Honey Brown.  Given that everybody here loves pumpkin ales, I found a doozy.

    This is my review of Grand Canyon Brewery  Will o the Wisp Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Pumpkin Ale.

    Part 1 discussed some of the biases within the data that are making polls less reliable.  Today I will touch on parts of the book that discuss methods professional pollsters use to account for these biases, and their drawbacks.  This is the second part of the book.  The first thing Wood points out is how the public at large misinterprets polls to begin with.  Most people hear about polls through the media, who among other things, have a penchant for oversimplifying.  It is because of the way the polls are presented that most people do not realize the confidence level the pollsters have in the poll results, or even how the margin of error works.

    This factor makes it hard to definitively state that findings are wrong; more often, they are presented as simply imprecise. Probability samples using the standard 95% confidence level generally have a margin of error roughly equal to the inverse of the square root of the sample size.48 The confidence level tells us how sure we are that the true average lies within the margin of error.

    […]

    If in our above example with a simple random sample of 836 registered voters wherein 45% state they will vote for candidate A, assuming there are only two candidates in the race and nobody claims not to know whom they support such that the other 55% state they will vote for candidate B, the real margin of error for that poll at a 95% confidence level is 6.8%. While this poll would report candidate B with a 10-point margin over candidate A, in reality this poll states with 95% confidence that candidate B’s lead over candidate A will be between about 3 and 17 points.

    In closer races, this means election polls can claim to be accurate while having next to no predictive power. If in our example, the candidates instead polled at 48% and 52%, the candidate supported by 48% may actually have a lead of nearly 3 points.

    This of course means the races could have been within the margin of error the entire time, within the confidence levels, and still come out with the “unexpected” result and the majority of the public would be none the wiser.  Unexpected results as we have seen in recent events, have been met with shall we say, less than heroic reaction.

    A way professional polls will account for some the self-selection and sampling biases is by weighing the results.

    By its nature, weighting entails a lot of assumptions which do not necessarily hold up to scrutiny. It embeds the presumption that researchers somehow know the actual proportion of various groups within the study population such that deviations from those proportions within the sample can be detected. It also presupposes that each group behaves as a block with identical characteristics, rather than as individuals. This could be described as a form of scientific stereotyping, since it suggests that individuals have behaviors identical to the groups to which researchers have assigned them.

    […]

    Let’s say the researchers who sampled ten people to determine their favorite colors ran the study again with a new random sample pulled from the same population. This time, a sample of 8 people are selected instead of 10. When this group is surveyed, the results are substantially different from the first group: four respondents pick green as a favorite color, one chooses red, and another three select blue. When looking at the sex of the respondents, the researchers notice that seven of the eight in this sample were male, with only one female.

    […]

    The findings from this second study and those from the first are both equally considered valid. However, the first study made it appear that green and red were the only colors preferred by the population. Due to sampling and weighting errors, it completely missed the fact that blue is also a common preference for some. Additionally, in the second sample, a single data point was used to represent the entire population block of females. A larger sample would have reduced the magnitude of this error, but this example shows how weighting can misrepresent the data and increase error while theoretically accounting for sampling bias in both cases. Weighting trades precision in the hopes of increasing accuracy, yet it can actually detract from both.

    All Mexicans with libertarian politics like beer.  We can say that, because you all have me as that single data point.

    Further into the book, a third section begins to present potential solutions towards obtaining more accurate, and precise poll results.  The first seems obvious:

    Questions are inherently subjective because they must be interpreted by the person answering the question. Researchers require objective, quantified data rather than a collection of individual interpretations. While some question formats may appear to make quantification possible, such as a “For/Against” question, no two responses are truly comparable when individuals are responding to questions with their own subjective interpretations of the question’s meaning. The same core concept, that different people must answer the same question for the data collected to be comparable, is behind the importance of using identical wording when asking the same question at different points in time to measure changes between the two periods.19 However, because every individual has a different understanding of any given word’s definition, the folly of asking questions at all becomes apparent.

    Definitions are probably the most difficult thing to define between individuals with dissimilar viewpoints.  Lets pick on the statement, “everyone has the right to free healthcare.”  What is a right?  What is free?   Healthcare in of itself is not a right, but a commodity.  We can probably give the pollster the benefit of the doubt and think perhaps they mean access to healthcare, which in of itself may not be a right either, but not something anybody is necessarily going to deny…..Wait, what in the hell do you mean for free!?

    One can see how such obvious differences in opinions can lead to differences in how one answers qualitative questions like this.

    A potential solution is by using social media algorithms to continuously take in information on the user, and by accounting for self selection biases by measuring sentiment amongst a like minded people.  This is not without other issues.

    In doing, so these platforms are collecting data that are inherently subject to multiple biases,including social desirability bias. Social media posts are often directly tied to one’s identity, so making taboo statements or posting certain perspectives may have ramifications. Therefore, individuals using social media have incentives to portray themselves in a specific way based on the perceived preferences of their chosen social circles.

    […]

    As far as samples drawn from social media populations themselves go, there is a fair amount of self-selection bias at work which is closely related to the social desirability bias contained within the data. Many individuals, even those who nominally use a given public or semi-public platform, will react to perceptions of facing social disapproval for their beliefs or group membership by simply opting not to make statements at all, effectively withdrawing from such platforms. Some views are consequentially likely to be proportionally misrepresented. As Anne Halsall, co-founder and CPO of the company Winnie, noted, “Online representations of self must be carefully designed and maintained; a well- cultivated social media account has taken the place of the well-manicured lawn in signaling wealth, status, and general got-it-togetherness to peers.”39

    Indeed.  My social media accounts all include pictures of me wearing a fitted suit, and generally have little controversial content posted.  Why? Perhaps I like to think of myself as an adult, and present myself as such.

    The strength of large, properly collected datasets can allow for active proportional sampling. A large dataset may not itself be perfectly representative of a given population, but it is likely to contain representative samples of any given population. Once such a dataset has been assembled, the proper sample for a particular study need only be identified from within that broader dataset.

    […]

    In cases where specific representation is necessary, researchers can repeatedly randomly sample an existing large set of data until certain parameters are met and study that sample. Since the data has already been collected and researchers in this scenario are only conducting sampling to determine which data to pull, rather than who to attempt to reach, results can be synthesized without worrying about sampling bias, self-selection bias, or the increased error associated with traditional sample adjustment methods. This sample can even be tagged and repeatedly referenced in the future to examine change over time. It can also be isolated from the larger dataset before again running the sampling process until the same parameters are met in a new sample without using the initial sample group, in order to conduct verification checks.

    I am going have to go ahead and disagree here.  While I accept that virtue signaling is a thing, and one that is not going away anytime soon.  There are a number of ways I avoid giving information about myself on the internet.  I use as few Google products as possible, along with other no brainers like using a pen-name.  Plus when I go on Facebook I will screw with the ad-bot by listing any and all political ads as hate-speech, and saying that NowThis news is sexually explicit.  I get ads like this now…

     

    Whatever the results of the election in two weeks, because of this book I am more interested in seeing how the results of poll predictions play out.  I have an itchy feeling in some places, they will be dead on, and in others….well…

    This is not a beer for the faint of heart.  It is a level of insanity that most of you will happily accept, given you are receiving it as a gift.  This falls in the “overdone, gluten-free dunkel” category.  The bourbon is rather overpowering, but it goes well with the pumpkin since most of us associate it with sweetness, except it does not taste at all like pumpkin pie.  It is one to savor the complex palate for a long time.  So if you show up to chug it, you are going to have bad time.   Grand Canyon Brewery  Will o the Wisp Bourbon Barrel aged imperial Pumpkin Ale 4.8/5

    As for the book, it is now available on Kindle…unfortunately it may no longer available gratis, but I highly recommend it!

  • Smoke em if you got em.

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  there are times I draw inspiration from the audience.  This time around…..

    …so this is my review of Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale. H/T Ed Wuncler

    No, this is not a bizarre reference to our favorite South American dictator.  Maduro is a reference to a style of cigar wrapper.

    Let’s take a step back.  There are three parts to a cigar:  the filler, the binder and the wrapper.  Each comes from a different part of the plant, and when done correctly will blend together to form what many argue is the perfect companion to a glass of Scotch.  On a handmade cigar the filler is made from long leaf; oily in texture and slow burning. The binder is somewhat loose and its purpose is to serve exactly as the name implies.  The wrapper on the other hand is made from the silky leaves on the bottom of the plant, shaded from the sun and providing the subtle texture against the lips and much of the flavor.  

    There are many kinds of wrappers, some are natural, some are darker and some even claim to be grown in Connecticut.  For our purposes, a Maduro wrapper comes from the same part of the plant only left to ferment for longer periods of time until the leaf turns a deep brown.  Some will take it to another level called Oscuro, but this adds a lot of cost and in the past has led me to clearing out a smoke pit. Maduro wrappers add a nice complexity to the smoke; often giving hints of chocolate and spiciness.  Being that I happen to like darker beer than light, it should come as no surprise that a cigar with a Maduro wrapper is right up my alley.

    Steady…
    See? Nice and easy.

    To smoke a cigar, you need to cut the cap clean and plum.  Many use a device that simply punches a hole into the cap, others will cut a slit into it, but the more popular way to do it is with a guillotine style cutter.  If you have a sharp blade and a steady hand however…

    A crooked cut will cause an uneven burn which does affect the smoke characteristics, not to mention make you look like a noob.  If you’re going to roll with it my way go slow, and know the cap is paper thin, and held together with a mild adhesive. Nice and easy.

    Do not use a lighter, unless you are in a pinch and even then if you are in a pinch why are you smoking?  Use a wooden match. Yes, it does make a difference. By the way, Ed…this was good, very good. We can hang out.  

    Now I didn’t drink the beer with the cigar, before anyone asks.  This one is quite robust with the malts but also does have a bit of hops to balance it, therefore it is not a proper Scotch Ale.  Like the other from this brewery I tried, and reviewed it is well made and one I can recommend. Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale 3.8/5.

  • What Are We Reading – September 2018

    SugarFree

    I spent the month reading The Complete Chronicles of Conan, a volume issued to celebrate the centennial of Robert E. Howard’s birth. It not only collects the published stories but also the fragments and notes from Howard’s archived papers. The stories are arranged by publication order, my preferred way to read them, and were taken from the original publications with comparisons and corrections to Howard’s final drafts where still extant.

    Re-reading the Cimmerian’s adventures is like going out drinking with an old friend: you know all the stories but the pleasure of hearing them again cannot be dismissed. I also re-watched the 1982’s Conan the Barbarian, one of my favorite movies, the terrible Conan the Destroyer and the aggressively mediocre 2011 reboot (although I thought Momoa made a pretty good Conan.) And, to complete a total Conan emmersion, I re-read all The Savage Sword of Conan issues edited by Roy Thomas. So much barbarian action…

    Web Dominatrix

    When I’m not whipping websites into shape, I am a business consultant to service providers, so most of what I read is related to business. I just finished Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, founder of the Young Entrepreneurs’ Association. The book is all about how to scale a business and what a lot of companies get wrong.

    I really like that this book draws a distinction between starting a business and scaling a business, both two very different processes, but many “business gurus” lump them together.

    There are many concepts in this book that aren’t a great fit for service providers, though the author indicates these strategies could be used for any business. For example, the author says there are four areas in which one needs to optimise their strategies and systems, and one of the areas is “routine.” As a systems strategist, I would argue that routine execution needs to be built into each strategy and system, and not treated as a separate system itself. If each system isn’t designed to be implemented, then ultimately the system won’t be as effective.

    But I digress.

    All in all I would recommend this book for any business owner to read, but keep an open mind and think about where you can improve upon these concepts instead of merely accepting them as commandments written in stone.

    SP

    I’ve generally been a fan of Michael Connelly, dipping into his work here and there over the years. I realized a couple weeks ago that I’d never read the early Harry Bosch books. So I’m correcting that with The Black Echo: A Novel (A Harry Bosch Novel Book 1). I like to read series in order, so I can only imagine I first picked up a mid-series book laying around someplace way back when and didn’t realize at the time that it was, in fact, part of a series. Now, I will, of course, proceed to binge-read the complete Bosch books (in order). (Update: I’ve just moved on to Harry Bosch Book 2.)

    In the car while driving this week, I started listening to Ken Follett’s A Dangerous Fortune. The narrator, Michael Page, has a wonderful voice, and that’s improving the story considerably.

    Also, I’ve been trying to follow jesse.in.mb’s marvelous example and pare down my physical book collection. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I crack myself up!

    This week I did manage, though, to take a box of about 3 dozen books to my Dad, from whom I received my voracious read-anything-all-the-time habit. He’s read everything in all the libraries of his county, so we try to keep him supplied with interesting works. This time he received all my Rick Riordan Tres Navarre books (all now available on Kindle if I want to revisit them periodically), along with a bunch of others.

    Oh, yeah, and I am reading my constant companion: my pharmacology textbook.

    jesse.in.mb

    Slow month for me. I put away a trio of novellas by romantic fiction author Illona Andrews (it’s actually a husband and wife effort. Their Innkeeper novels are a foray into urban fantasy without erotic content and they were breezy literary candy. The downside is that Amazon now thinks I’m a randy heterosexual hausfrau. I’ll live.

    I set aside a copy of The Lies of Locke Lamora at 1/5 of the way through, I was having a hard time maintaining interest.

    On the audiobook front I listened to Ken Lozito’s Genesis, which was entertaining enough although some sections seemed like filler. L.T. Ryan‘s Noble Beginnings is a big ol’ no for me. It’s 6 hours of uninspired fight scenes read in a clipped tone. I’m reminded of Homeric poetry in the way the author used a series of stock phrases without alteration over and over again. Various characters “hitched up [their] shoulder[s]” 27 times and shrugged once…at the end. I’d kind of assumed the author was unfamiliar with the word.

    Not Adahn

    I had thought about going on a rant abut how Catalyst Games has completely cocked up FASA’s Battletech, when I received a Mysterious Package in the post. Opening it, I discovered the following cookbook:

    I assume that this was written by UnCiv, and forwarded on to me for a review prior to a second edition, or perhaps for an additional cover blurb. It is somewhat distressing that my post box location was so easily obtained, but that was a risk of becoming known to the Glibhedrin.

    In any case, this is a wonderfully useful addition, as it allows me, through judicious variation of my orphan’s food supply to engage in carrot-and-stick motivation techniques, without the expense of obtaining carrots! My only criticism, minor as it is, is that in an effort to pad the book’s length to a full 28 pages, our UCS has engaged in excessive extravagance in his ingredients list on a few recipes. Butter, really?

     

     

     

     

     

  • Comixology Unlimited – One Guy’s Opinion

    A few months ago a few other Glibs suggested I check out Comixology Unlimited when I incorrectly complained that there was no good comic books subscription service.  Turns out, there is a pretty ok comic books subscription service. After subscribing for a few months, here are my thoughts and a list of books I enjoyed reading.

    Comixology is, by their own account:

    ComiXology, an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary, is a revolutionary, cloud-based digital comics service. With content from over 125 publishers as well as thousands of independent creators from around the world, comiXology provides an unrivaled library of comic books, graphic novels, manga and bandes dessinées. The company’s first-in-class innovations include the exclusive Guided View technology which provides an immersive and cinematic reading experience and a monthly subscription service. ComiXology is based in New York City, with operations in Seattle and Los Angeles.

    Comixology Unlimited is a $5.99 a month service that allows you to read an unlimited number of comic books from a limited catalog of books.  And that’s the nut. If there’s stuff in there you want to read, it’s a good price that lets you drink from the fire hose. If it is $5.99 for access to crap you don’t want, it is a waste of time and money.

    The reading experience took a while to get used to, but that’s mostly my fault.  I’m reading on a Google Pixel 2, which has a 5 inch screen. Trying to fit a full page on this isn’t going to happen.  I’ve found that you can read in landscape mode with the page set to screen width and scroll down, and that works pretty well for most pages.  But if there is a big splash screen or something interesting in the lay out, it’s a bit of a hassle.

    The Comixology app tries to solve this with something called a Guided View, where you are transitioned from panel to panel.  Again, this is ok, but fails to give you an overview of the whole page. I found that this is really important for me, so I didn’t use Guided View for a long time.  But last week I decided to see if I could get it work. Under settings, there’s an option to show the whole page on enter (or exit if you want,) and I found that gives me the experience I like.  I can see the whole page and then it feels like I”m zooming in on the panels. Between that and aggressively rotating my phone between landscape and portrait orientation, I’ve got to say that the reading experience is pretty great.

    The Guided View with my preferred settings is “better than free,” that is, I’d pay for this even if I got PDF’s of the books for free.  The ability to whip out my phone and read a few pages while waiting at the bus, standing in line at the bank, or when my kids are trying to talk to me at dinner is nice and I’m glad to have it.

    The selection is really the life taker or heart breaker of this service.  So what did I find? Lots of good, and a little bad, as long as you have a reasonable expectation.  I knew that the publishers wouldn’t want to cannibalize new sales, so I expected to only find old stuff.  By and large, that’s been true, so I’m happy with that. Some publishers, and I’m looking at you Dynamite, only like to put the first trade of a series on Unlimited to entice you to pay the per-book price to buy the rest of the series.  More on that later.

    So you’ll have to look at the Unlimited catalog for yourself to see if it has enough to get you to shell out six bucks a month.  For me, there is more than enough to keep me entertained. Marvel and DC have taken all their goodwill with me and lit it on fire   Not the SJW stuff – that’s always been a part of the big 2 publishing houses. It’s the stories. I have no interest in reading books that are going to last two years, maybe, and that are going to get jerked around to fit the latest and greatest cash grab event.  But the backlog from the big 2 and indies is large enough to keep me going for a long, long time. Here’s some good stuff on Unlimited that I’ve been reading:

    Super Dinosaur!!! This book is a wonderful, earnest story about a kid-genius and his best pal that happens to be a dinosaur.  Lots of awesome stuff happens and it’s all innocent, crazy fun from a guy that we know can write serious, brooding stories like the Walking Dead and Invincible.  But this is a book for your inner seven year old. I didn’t even write those exclamation points, they just showed up on their own.

     

     

    Atomic Robo & The Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne The honest to God, true life documentary story of that one time Nicola Tesla invented a nuclear powered robot in 1932 that went on all sorts of zany pulp adventures.  HP Lovecraft shows up. An insane dinosaur mad-scientist shows up. Carl Sagan shows up. There are lightning guns. There are cowboys. More fun for your seven year old self.

     

     

    Rebels The honest to God, true life documentary story about Seth Abbot and the Green Mountain Boys.  Ok, this historical fiction is actually about real people. There are no lightning guns or dinosaurs.  This isn’t a story for my seven year old self. But I love the Revolution. Its fascinating, and I think every American should buy into the myth of America.  And oh look, its written by a guy who calls himself an almost-socialist (before it was cool to do so) who also thinks that the Revolution was fascinating and that a myth that every American should buy into.

     

    Lumberjanes Yeah yeah, it’s a book by SJWs for SJWs and it passes the Bechdel Test.  I don’t care. This is a good book. A bunch of girls at summer camp solve a bunch of Scooby-Doo level supernatural mysteries.  The characters are fun, the story telling is tight, the jokes are plentiful, and the politics are on the back burner if they are in there at all.

     

     

    Hellboy Man, what can I say about Hellboy if you don’t already know about him?  Ok, here’s the premise – Hellboy is a demon born on earth due to a WWII occultist’s summoning.  He is prophesied to bring about armageddon. And.. he’s got the personality of a blue-collar dude that just want to live a normal, humble life.  But he’s stuck working for the government as a paranormal investigator. He’s a wonderful, lovable character living in a world of geek-porn. There are Nazi’s, Rasputin, his best friend is a fish-man, his lady-friend keeps setting things on fire with her brain, etc.  And the story is long, but the author has balls and is actually telling the story of the end of days that Hellboy was prophesied to bring about.

     

    Valiant Everything (the new one) I came of age reading Jim Shooter era Marvel and Chris Claremont X-Men, were writers has years to weave dangling plot strands into a complete tapestry.  I watched Terra break Beast Boy’s heart and I watched Nathan Summers fly off into the future only to come back years later as Clint Eastwood. The new Valiant is telling those same kinds of stories with slow-burning arcs and identifiable, consistent personalities.  I’m in Act Four of the reading order, and so far everything has been on Unlimited.

     

     

    Magnus, Robot Fighter (the new one, no newer than that, the Dynamite one)  Magnus is cool – he punches robots. But now he’s infused with Super Dad Powers, which, as a Dad, I approve of.  I really, really enjoyed the first trade, but it is the only one on Unlimited. They want me to pay for the other trades… well, the problem is my BATANA is to just pick up another book I really like from Unlimited so that’s not going to happen.  Too bad. Maybe I’ll blow $5 on the next trade at some point, but I don’t think I will. Too many fish in the sea.

     

     

    Usagi Yojimbo Don’t let the fact that it’s a bunny fool you, this is a great samurai epic.  Usagi is one of the great comic book characters of all time. Love. Duty. Pain. Sacrifice.  Loss. Intrigue. It has everything you could ever want in a samurai story.

     

     

     

    Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: Man Or Monster? Some of the old Marvel titles are really hit or miss.  Pro Tip – don’t go reading old Iron Man stories. But early Hulk was a lot of fun. There are a fair number of silver age collections, and I enjoyed re-reading this one.

     

     

     

    So there you have it.  Comixology Unlimited – Try it for the 1 month free trial, and you should know within a week or two if it is right for you.

  • Ain’t My Bitch

    A question was posed, that got a lot of response:

    At which point it became apparent that nobody liked my suggestion.

    Later that week, it became apparent that nobody likes my music.  Sad.

    Surely, there must be somebody else around here with some level of discerning taste.

    *raises glass to Certified Public Asshat*

    Today is my review of beer that I picked because it got a song stuck in my head at the time of purchase.  I will post links, but given my audience, you have my word as a Spaniard that none of them will be Metallica.**

    First up, is this Belgian Style Ale from Victory Brewery.  I should be H/T somebody here, but to be honest I forgot who it was.  Here is the song.

    This is not half bad, and while I generally do like the Saison and/or Farmhouse style this one is a tad on the bitter side.  I think Boulevard does it better with their Tank #7.  Victory Golden Monkey Ale:  3.5/5

    Up next is Wells’s Banana Bread Ale (H/T: Riven)  I regret this one.  It is expertly brewed, but I believe I made my feelings for bananas clear in a previous review.  For this one, there can really only be one thing running in my head.  In the event you actually clicked that, and wish to murder me, consider that I only played you a clip.  Wells Banana Bread Ale:  2.0/5

     

    Left Coast Brewery VooDoo American Stout. This is a bit heavier than the run of the mill milk stout.  It has more coffee notes so think of this as more of the type like Guinness Extra Stout.   The song of course is something that also manages to be both heavy and mellow.  I played it as loud as the terrible speakers in my car could play.  Left Coast Brewery VooDoo American Stout:  3.8/5.

     

    Finally, this one was pretty blatant about the music choice.  I happened to like Deftones when I was in high school but they kind of fell off the face of the earth until that day I found this.  They were always just a little bit…different.  Anyhow, they picked an IPA and one that is particularly gruesome.  Lot of heavy citrus notes in this one, and as you can tell is very hazy.  A few of you will like the song, somebody here will like the beer, but nobody will like the price tag ($14 for  4-pack).  Belching Beaver Digital Bath IPA:  2.5/5.

     

     

    **Right, I’m no Spaniard, but none of the links were Metallica.  At least give me that.

  • You know what really grinds my gears?

    You know what really grinds my gears? Disappointment. Kind of like below:

    I will resist the urge to point out thst it is not I that lacks taste.  On some level I decided I should be open minded enough to write something objective about Unfiltered Sculpin….

    …but this article is about disappointment.  They had no Unfiltered Sculpin, therefore this is my review of Breakside Lunch Break IPA.

    Left: sickeningly sweet. Right: unsweetened.

    Seriously, though. How hard can it be to stock things and stock things correctly? I did the retail thing before and I get that its demeaning, menial work.  Totally suited for somebody with a philosophy degree. Then people like Starbucks have to go, and make things with pretty much the same label. For example, their Cold Brew Coffee comes in multiple versions but the one I get is Black. I get the Black Unsweetened. The problem is—morons, who hire other morons to design the format of their bottles, run Starbucks.  In short, Starbucks are a bunch of morons. Here’s what I mean.

    Notice how they look nearly identical? I am in a rush and want some coffee in the morning because like most of us, I have an addiction to caffeine. I don’t want the dizzying high and the spellbinding low that comes from the ensuing insulin dump that comes from drinking several spoonful’s of sugar. I just want the buzz.

    I can hear you now, “don’t they teach people how to read in Mexico?” I don’t know, but they did teach me to read in Arizona and yes, I can just read the label. This is my own damn fault and I recognize that; I really do. I am half awake, in a rush, and quite frankly I am not the only one that misses this, as I often find the sweetened coffee in the place of the unsweetened coffee. That tells me the morons that run the local Kroger are also in the business of hiring morons that think there is no difference between sweetened coffee and unsweetened coffee, to stock their refrigerated beverages section.

    The worst part is I always find out by opening it and taking a swig. I expect to get a blast of burnt coffee and then BAM! Instant tooth decay. This is an outrage, and something should be done to prevent morons from creating confusing labels, so other morons can put the wrong product on the wrong shelf. Something like this:

    Don’t tell me libertarians never have any solutions to societal ills.

    Its not rocket surgery, Starbucks, just make it green or blue or something, and I will stop calling you morons….okay I’m probably not going to stop calling you morons.  I will, however buy from somebody else.  Turns out Stōk keeps it simple by having a red label (sweetened) and a green label (not sweet).

    As far as the beer goes, its not bad for an IPA. In the grand scheme of things it is disappointing that I can’t find Unfiltered Sculpin at the moment but I probably wouldn’t really like that either. Breakside Lunch Break IPA: 3.2/5.