Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

My esteemed colleague, the The Whited Sepulchre , had a post the other day that continued a chain of discussion around the concept of the Anti-Library: the books you own that you haven't read. The beginning of this was a quote from the The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable , by Nassim Nicholas Taleb : Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as (you can possibly afford to) put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. I'll let you read his post to get the background (why bother with my mangled summary when you can go there and see it yourself). After listing his own favorite unread books, he invited several folks (including me) to reveal their anti-library. My unread books fall into the following broad categories: Tech/Computer books I use as reference material but don't rea...

Today is my oldest son's birthday: he turned 22 (around 2:35 this afternoon, to be exact). We have butted heads on numerous occasions in the past, primarily because we are both intelligent, independent people, but there is no end of the joy I take in him and the person he is slowly growing to be. John, you make me proud as I watch you spread your wings and struggle to be the person you want to be. Like most parents, there are things I wish I'd done differently. I can offer as my only defense that much of the time I had no idea what I was doing. I think I did a few things right as well -- not as many as I wish. Good luck in the year to come! Work hard and don't forget to have fun. Love, Dad

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and say it. Experts agree: Bush is a war criminal. Writing in the preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives , retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the 2 star general asked by the army to investigate the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, says: After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. What is even more shocking than this report is the fact that the toothless news media, currently little more than an entertainment division of the Media Conglomerates, has watched this unfold and chosen to busy itself breathlessly reporting on Britney and Paris's latest shenanigans instead. The full report, entitled Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and...

Firefox 3 launches today , and it is well worth the download -- faster, more stable, numerous other worthy features. The Firefox team is trying to set a Guinness world record for one day downloads, so get your copy today! The release started at noon CST today and was, predictably, a meltdown for the download servers for the first hour or so. Things have improved, but because of the clustered server environment, make sure you are downloading FF3 and not FF 2.0.0.14. It is blazingly fast and a joy to use. When I last checked (around 4:20 PM, 4 hours after it was released) over 1,280,000 downloads had been recorded. Late breaking update : at around 6:30, 18 and a half hours after release, over 6,063,737 copies have been downloaded.

The Spousal Companion, not prone to bouts of excessive sentimentality, considers Father's Day pretty much yet another marketing tool of the greeting card companies. What can I say -- the woman's a cynic. Despite the fact that she probably has a point, it is good to occasionally have a reason to think about things one might not normally take the time to consider. My father and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. I've heard him tell the same old Navy stories until I can almost recite them verbatim. But every important thing I've learned about how to be a good person I've learned from him. He taught me tolerance though he was raised in a place and time where intolerance was the norm. He supported my decisions even when he feared he'd sired an idiot. He was good natured and funny and showed me, through his relationship with our extended family, how families love one another. I can never, ever, recall him having a fight or argument with my mother He is the...

I was reading the Dallas Morning Snooze this morning and happened to flip to the letters to the editor, where I read the following from 'Bob' of Irving: "In your editorial that demeans large vehicles, you admit to a limited use for SUVs and pickups, e.g.: "People have to haul stuff." There are also other reasons, one of which is primary in my decision to continue to drive my Hummer. I consider the premium that I pay for its 10 to 12 mpg over that of a mini-vehicle's 35 to 40 mpg to be a part of my family's health insurance. If you in your Yaris or ForTwo try to occupy the same space that my family's H2 is occupying on Stemmons Freeway, I win. You will most likely spend your gas savings on CareFlite and in a local intensive care unit, while, on the other hand, I will look in the mirror to see just what that speed bump was." You win? As when you allow this automotive obscenity to careen into some poor innocent who made the mistake of buying a sens...

In the interest of presenting a little balance to my left-wing screeds, here's a message from the other side. Remember, you knew it was dangerous to come here in the first place.

Dallas has made great strides over the last 40 some odd years, transforming itself from the City of Hate to the City of Pretentious White Arseholes (I say this in the Spirit of Christian Love, of course). There is a rather unseemly stretch of road in Big D called Industrial Boulevard which has the Better Element (read: white business community) feeling a little embarrassed. You know -- rundown businesses, strip joints, massage parlors, bars that don't cater to the expense account crowd. Every city has these eyesores. The Great White Godfathers' solution: rename it. Maybe they are hoping the cost of getting new letterheads and business cards with the new address will be enough to push these marginal operations over the economic edge, so they can swoop in with a sub-prime loan, buy the offending property up and ($$$). It's hard to say what goes on in those inscrutable little brains of theirs. To build a little public support, they sponsored an online poll, foolishly thinkin...

The Southern Baptists are meeting in Indianapolis this week (they've been slowly creeping North for years) and playing "What Would Jesus Do?" They've decided He wouldn't be a fan of Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth (where they tolerate me, despite my decidedly UnBaptist views). The delegates approved a proposal by William Sanderson of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, North Carolina, to declare Broadway not "in friendly cooperation" with the SBC, a quaint way of putting things. Normally, they would have just voted to kick out Broadway's delegates, except none showed up to be kicked out. That must have been frustrating. How unfriendly and uncooperative. The fact that Broadway has openly gay members and hasn't been swallowed up by the earth or destroyed in a rain of fire and brimstone must be especially irksome to ol' Bill and the crowd in Indy. We did have roof damage a couple of years ago after a hailstorm. Does that count? I am reminded...

Stephen Colbert had Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr on his show last night. It was a smooth move by Barr, the former conservative Republican. Appearing on the show was a risky proposition, since Colbert can skewer a guest with amazing speed. Barr came off surprisingly well -- folksy, plain-speaking, reasonable and good-natured. Much less of a crank than, say, Ralph Nader. Favorite quote: "I do like brownies. I don't know whether it had hash in it or not." As the The Whited Sepulchre has pointed out, Colbert is a genius. Here's the clip:

As a followup to my own adventure in making limoncello, here's a great site on that subject, http://www.limoncelloquest.com , written by someone who obviously suffers from a form of divine madness. If the idea of making your own appeals to you, this site is a must see. I will absolutely be consulting it as I continue this experiment. I found it because Ben, the maintainer, put a comment in my original post. Ben has a scientist's approach. He has suffered so you will not have to, with inferior results and the rigors of testing. I salute you, sir!

I spent the evening with Robert B. Parker the other day. Of course I had to vie for his attention with several thousand of his other admirers in Bass Hall. I was in the Mezzanine (Italian for nose-bleed) with my dad, who had scored the tickets to hear him. Dr. Parker (he has a PhD in English Lit from Boston University) is, of course the best-selling author of the Spenser detective novels, and is often mentioned in the same breath as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. I've read a few of his books in my time. My dad has 28 of the thirty odd Spenser books. As might be expected, Parker was funny, charming, and not full of false modesty. After a conversation/interview with host Jeff Guinn, Parker took questions from the audience. At the conclusion of the event, Border's hosted a book sale/signing of his latest novel, due to be released nationally tomorrow. Depressing (at least to me) was the news that he wrote essentially one draft--no rewriting. Given that I...

Noted briefly: Alexander Courage , who composed the Star Trek theme, passed away on May 15. While best known for the Star Trek theme, he worked on hundreds of other television and movie scores. The Washington Post story linked to above is worth a quick perusal.

Whilst thumbing through the Academy ad flyer this morning, I happened to turn to the back page where they had the guns. Today's hot special was obviously the Taurus Millennium Pro 9 mm automatic. In addition to all of this weapon's other fine qualities, Academy (or Taurus) was offering a Free One-year membership in the NRA . I shit you not.

My down the street neighbor, Lee, whose Republican leanings I've come to accept (as he has cheerfully accepted my Liberal Democratic status), occasionally joins me for an Adult Beverage at the end of a long day. One evening while doing the same at our common next-door neighbor's house, he arrived bearing a bottle of ice-cold Limoncello , which I had never tasted before. Damn! Was that ever good! Later, as I grew close to polishing off my own bottle, I did a little Wikipedia research and discovered how (seemingly) easy it is to make. As one who made balloon wine in my closet while in high school (thank you, Whole Earth Catalog), I had to try making a batch myself. Now, there are a number of recipes out on the web, but the Wikibooks Cookbook is representative : put the zest (outer peel) of 15 lemons and a fifth of vodka in a gallon glass jar, let it stew for a while, add sugar syrup and more vodka, stew a little longer, then strain and bottle. It sounded easy. First obstacle ...