"Night after night they played there in the great cabin with the stern-windows open and the ship’s wake flowing away and away in the darkness…."
I’ve read Patrick O’Brian’s entire Aubrey-Maturin series six or eight times, so this single sentence is sufficient to return me to it. But the rest of it is worth reading. By the way, I thought Crowe’s movie was awful.
Via TexasBestGrok
Israeli historian Michael Oren recommends five books, the oldest published in 1787, the latest in 1993, to understand the American-Arab encounter, from romance such as "The Sheik of Araby," to the Arabists who still are powerful in the State Department, until "9/11, the day the fantasy died."
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Posted in Iraq, Israel, Library, Scribbles, The War
Tagged "The Sheik of Araby", Arabists, Israel, Michael Oren
The Big Wedding was Al-Q’s code name for what we now know as 9/11. It was so-called for the suiciders who would fly or ride the planes into the buildings like bridegrooms going to their martyred marriages in heaven with their waiting virgins. "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road to 9/11," which recently won the Pulitzer Prize, delivers many such littleknown details, as well as a history of the men who created and still lead Al-Q. The O man, himself, is stranger than you may have known, certainly more so than I realized. A mass murderer who took an active part in the rearing and education of his more than twenty children from four wives. His pathology quickly becomes more disgusting than interesting, so the Arabic-speaking author Lawrence Wright weaves in the stories of the men and women of the FBI and CIA who tried to run him to ground. In the end, the tragedy of 9/11 was that so many parts of the government had sufficient detail of the coming attack to thwart it. But bureacratic jealousies, a few written and unwritten laws, and personality differences kept anyone from having the full picture. The CIA comes off looking the worst, as they knew two of the hijackers, both known members of Al Q, were in the country, but never told the FBI about it. A good read, hard to put down, told in narrative-style like a good novel, supported by hundreds of interviews and more.
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Posted in Library
Tagged 9/11, al Qaeda, Lawrence Wright, Osama Bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize, The Looming Tower, Zawahiri
This second novel in a science fiction trilogy by John Scalzi is almost better than the first, "Old Man’s War," although the central love story is pale by comparison to the one in the first book. Still, there is a lot of thoughtfulness on the issues of human consciousness and love. Like the first book, the second one was hard to put down, even though I was reading three other non-fiction books at the time. I simply set them aside until I finished. The novel also contains a preview of the last book, "The Last Colony," which came out last month. I’ll definitely buy it, when it’s out in paperback, to find out what happens next. I might not wait for paper.
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Posted in Library
Tagged "Old Man's War, John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony
Israel shot itself in the foot in several ways last summer when it responded to a Hez provocation by going to war in Lebanon. But the MSM did the rest, becoming a propaganda organ for Hez, according to a new Harvard study showing how…
"…the trajectory of the media [shifted] from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda."
This is something new. Almost in the "when pigs fly" category.
Mr. Boy and I have decided, having finished the Harry Potter books the same week as we saw the third installment of the Lord of the Rings movie, that Dumbledore, like Gandalf, will probably return to life more powerful than before–in the seventh book in the series due out this summer. Indeed, Mr. B. points out a similarity between Frodo and Harry. They both are marked, Harry with the forehead thunderbolt, and Frodo with the shoulder wound from the Nazgul. Both ache when the enemy is near.
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Tagged Dumbledore, Frodo, Gandalf, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 