March 23, 2005
The Face I Wallow Toward...
Activities in Syracuse have resumed their normal course, somehow with renewed fervor. Upon arriving back from West Virginia, I found a job offer in my inbox. More money than I can shake a stick at to work as a computer security researcher at Rome Labs. The offer has left me nervous, as suddenly a vision of the future of staying here fills my mind. I'd like warmer climes, and soon.
For now, snow will suffice, along with the odd meetings of people that happen in Central New York. Taking my own advice lead me to a great discovery -- Alice Fulton. Talking much about the drawing force to the reading would be a violation of the Aussie Protocol (instantiated after a friend pointed out the oddity of that, especially with Google's power).
It's been a long time since I've been into the poetry scene, and I was never really in it. I went to coffeeshops and met people with notebooks filled with blood and tears, love notes laying under suicides with blank spaces where names should have been. In my high school days there was Down to Earth in Mt. Holly. In my undergrad days it was Happy Endings. Places that don't exist anymore combine with a changing appetite.
There is definitely a difference between the coffeehouse poet and the professorial type. Years ago I would have brushed Fulton off as another of what Abbey would have called a 'literary cricket's Real Doll', the classic one-way communication death-of-the-author type with no soul. Far from it; she has something I haven't seen or heard before. Some different explanation of the psychological ideas that have clung to my brain since listening to recounted therapy sessions of old friends. Some comedic view on Apollo(/Athena's?) technology and information fetishism. It's new to me, a little more dense. And my brain wants more.
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Further back...
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Previous Trips...
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee follows famous physicist Ted Taylor in this piece that was -- and probably still -- ahead of its time.
Originally published in 1973, McPhee outlined the coming security and environmental issues surrounding the plutonium enrichment processes. For the most part, though, McPhee invites the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, although he does point out the ease with which any number of people could obtain the material (though not necessarily the manufacturing prowess) to make an atomic weapon.
The question still sits in my mind after reading -- are we being too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
Rated 
by reid
on October 01, 2007
by reid
on October 01, 2007
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Zodiac
Zodiac touts itself as an 'eco-thriller,' and it is just that. Told from the first-person perspective of ST (or Sangamon Taylor), the book recounts a roughly six-month period of his life busting big corporations for violating environmental laws.
Not the tree-hugging political activist type, ST is equipped with chem labs, scuba divers, maps, and an organization (GEE International, the Group of Environmental Extremists) that masterfully brings the press into the fold to scare the public with the very real dangers posed by illegal dumping. It's sort of a Sierra Club member's wet dream -- a band of ecowarriors that actually get things done.
ST finds something odd happening in Boston Harbor during his tale: a new form of pollution that could poison everyone on the planet in a matter of weeks. His quest to uncover exactly who and what is causing the latest spike in toxins goes all the way up to the President of the United States, and could end up costing him his own life.
While a neat and fast-paced tale, the novel drags on a bit toward the end, begging disbelief from even the most forgiving sci-fi folk. While not as good as his latest offerings, it's still a great read for those that enjoy a good Stephenson novel (or even those who don't).
Rated 
by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005
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Cat's Cradle
A few years ago, I attempted to woo an online datee, and she immediately criticized me for my politics. I protested the war on Iraq, which was "a shame." She defended her position of complete noninvolvement by standing behind Vonnegut.
It may seem odd to open a review that way. My assumption is now not that she was an idiot, but that she had only read Cat's Cradle, and only with a rather odd viewpoint.
Cat's Cradle looks at a cold-war world where the personifications of religious, political, and scientific single-mindedness collide to destroy the world.
Vonnegut tells a masterful tale, but it makes me wonder what one person's indifference would do to prevent us from all dying? So for now I will continue to unblindly stop unjust wars, even while I'm only reading.
Rated by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005