Category Archives: Library

Gov. Shivers’ jumbled papers

Posted on May 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Gov. Shivers’ jumbled papers

The past two mornings I’ve spent at the State Archives going through a small portion of the 561 cubic feet of materials from the 1950s administration of Texas Gov. Alan Shivers. I’m looking for some correspondence of importance to a book of Texana I’m putting together. Shivers played a minor but significant role in the story.

Alas, I haven’t found what I’m looking for. And no wonder. The materials are a jumble. The dates on some of the folders, in the four boxes I’ve been through so far, often don’t match the dates on all of their contents. At one point I asked the young archivist helping me if anyone, state or academic, has been through all of this stuff and indexed it in some manner other than just the (alleged) contents of the boxes. The answer was no, no one. It all came to the state in 1977 and has been largely untouched since then. What, I wonder, do Texas academic historians actually research these days?

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Posted in Library, Texana

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The Cryptonomicon

Posted on May 16, 2009 | Comments Off on The Cryptonomicon

Wow, what a sprawling book. Big enough to serve as a decent door stop in a minor gale. Characters and events galore. All tied together by the invention of the digital computer in WW2 for the Brits (using mercury) and the Americans (using vacuum tubes) and cryptology and cryptanalysis, then and  today, more or less, for the creation of an Internet data haven in a fictitious monarchy in the vicinity of Malaysia.

Along the way, there are submarines, gold bullion, Guadalcanal, Douglas MacArthur, lawsuits, computer hacking, and the harrowing creation of (and escape from) a granite crypt for the storage of stolen German and Nipponese gold. That ought to be enough to interest anyone. Although the author, Neal Stephenson, is generally considered a science fiction writer, there seems to be little enough of scifi in this tale. But it suffers not a bit for the lack thereof. Heckuva read.

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Posted in Library

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Oprah to promote disease

Posted on May 14, 2009 | Comments Off on Oprah to promote disease

I suppose it was inevitable. She gave up any pretense to impartiality last fall when she invited Barry on her show but refused to have Sarah. Now she’s gone off the deep end by agreeing to promote dingbat Jenny McCarthy and her conspiracy theory about vaccinations and autism. Oh, goody, more dead kids and adults from preventable disease, not to mention birth defects. Oprah, you are truly pathetic.

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Posted in Library, Obamalot, Science/Engineering

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Dildos are a Girl’s Best Friend?

Posted on May 12, 2009 | Comments Off on Dildos are a Girl’s Best Friend?

I know, I know. This is a family blog. More or less. But I couldn’t resist a post on the article by that title to be found on the Houston Chronicle’s new Web site. It’s supposedly a puffer for a Montrose boutique. What it really is (in addition to a first for Texas daily newspaper journalism) is a bid to make some money by pandering to the Web’s porn audience. Uh, like me, too? Why no, course not.

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Posted in Library, Texana

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The Diamond Age

Posted on May 6, 2009 | Comments Off on The Diamond Age

This was my first Neal Stephenson novel, but it won’t be the last. I did find the ending annoying. The book just seemed to run out of ideas and collapse into an easy lust. But it’s not hard to see some of society doing just that, when everyone (including the poor) have nanotech Matter Compilers and the Feed to draw on.

The nanotech, alone, is compelling. Some of it may even come true, though not, I suppose, in my or Mr. B.’s remaining lifetimes. I especially like Stephenson’s cities, his airships and his Vickys. The multicultural phyles make sense, if present trends continue. Hero Hackworth’s primer was more interesting, though, when Dinosaur, Duck and Purple inhabited it; less so when they were gone. But I’d still take the ride all over again, and may, one of these days.

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Science/Engineering, Uncategorized

Beetle In A Cocktail Dress

Posted on April 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Beetle In A Cocktail Dress

motoring-graphics-2_839550a.jpg

My year and my color of Karmann Ghia, though mine had a tan convertible top. First it was stove in on the passenger side by a distracted retiree in Palm Beach, FL, then the same door was rammed once more by a youngish driver in Austin. In between, the car hauled a trailer loaded with, mainly, books across the Alleghaney Mountains with the truckers (on the CB) making bets on when the engine would explode. It didn’t, which gives the lie to the second (ad) video at the second link above. But, add to all that a crumpled nose from the bumper of a backing-up pickup, and I finally got rid of it in 1980. Miss it yet.

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Posted in Library, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Daemon, the novel

Posted on April 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Daemon, the novel

I enjoyed Daniel Suarez’s new book Daemon, a novel, though I’m glad I checked it out of the library rather than buying it. It’s a trifle far-fetched, this takeover of the corporate world by distributed computing via the Internet, facilitated by automated automobiles and online gamers with a hunger to pull real triggers for a change. It seems to have become something of a cult book with techies, and, indeed, I first heard about it from a programmer friend.

Still… It ends, after a wild series of car chases, with the bad guys winning and the promise in the back pages of a sequel out next year. There’s already a Web site. Something tells me it will become a movie/television series. It has plenty of tough talk, kinky sex and gory violence, layered around the techy chatter, some of which goes on for page after page. Most of the tech is admirably explained, but doesn’t seem quite real. The government’s usual ineptness isn’t surprising, but the corporate greed is overdone. Only the little guys seem to have any principles, but, naturally, they’re on the run.

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Posted in Library

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