IGX

Fat Cat wrote:Stick to your simplified reality. Life outside of the fishbowl would be overwhelming for a delicate person like you.

Q: Why did the psychology major cross the road?
A: To pick up 3 credits. And he got 3 more going back.

I was a religion major, and I don't get the joke.

shwog

Fat Cat wrote:Then what is its use? Can I be a sheepwolf?

Apparently you can at least be something in between- from the article:

"This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between."

Jack wrote:The Christian thing far from falls apart, the Falklands proves only that Brits love to kill and are a savage culture. Long before the Falklands the Brits were well known as hearty, exuberant killers. History supports this view.

I would disagree a bit. The British soldier is not so much a product of British culture as much as he is a product of the British military's culture.

To go further, the general occupation of being a soldier for any country (say infantry) requires a degree of savagery and aggressiveness that would shock their countries civilians.

I was taught tactics that on their face would horrify the average American civilian, but make perfect common sense from a military perspective and were needed if I and my fellow Rangers wanted to survive combat.

What makes the modern British and American soldier different from most other nations soldiers is the degree of accountablity they are held to when engaging in violence. England and The USA investigate and prosecute those soldiers that commit war crimes. What other nations cover up, ignore, or in some cases encourage, we prosecute.

The main reason that Argentinia got their asses handed to them is that Britain's army was a modern professional Army with a leadership that was mostly developed on merit. Argentinia's Army was the product of a 2nd world dictatorship and with a leadership built upon patronage and connections.

BB2/75

Batboy2/75 wrote:The main reason that Argentinia got their asses handed to them is that Britain's army was a modern professional Army with a leadership that was mostly developed on merit. Argentinia's Army was the product of a 2nd world dictatorship and with a leadership built upon patronage and connections.
BB2/75

Interestingly, their air arm, particularly their naval air arm, was very professional and top notch. We had Argentine exchange pilots fly with us in our training command (early 90s), and I got to know a few of them. If they had had a few more Exocets and better fusing for their dumb bombs, things could have turned out differently.

Hagbard Celine wrote:Baroque Cycle

finished this up over the weekend, great trilogy. Stephenson gave a good shake at how newton, leibniz etc may have acted and even thought. Not too shabs. Lots of fun, with a pretty reasonable level of "thinking" involved for a mass market recreational book.

I'm in the middle of the first book, Quicksilver, right now based on the recommendation of one of our denizens (Crusty perhaps?). I'm not sure what I'm reading or why, yet it's keeping my interest as a story and with tidbits of historical insight into a time about which I know very little.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:

Hagbard Celine wrote:Baroque Cycle

finished this up over the weekend, great trilogy. Stephenson gave a good shake at how newton, leibniz etc may have acted and even thought. Not too shabs. Lots of fun, with a pretty reasonable level of "thinking" involved for a mass market recreational book.

I'm in the middle of the first book, Quicksilver, right now based on the recommendation of one of our denizens (Crusty perhaps?). I'm not sure what I'm reading or why, yet it's keeping my interest as a story and with tidbits of historical insight into a time about which I know very little.

Yeah, the first book you scratch your head alot, then you get into it.

Continued from a ways back:

I just started "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War."

It fucking ROCKS so far. He's clearly seen every Z movie ever made, and is very familiar with both oral histories and the histories of major epidemics.
More to come.

GDG!

Jack wrote:

steamboatwillie wrote:The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz

After being totally brutalized by the Soviets and packed off to Siberia in 1941, this guy walked from a gulag several hundred miles north of Lake Baikal, south through Mongolia, etc., and ultimately to India.

Just went and purchased this book this evening, am on page 20 or so. What a story.

Jack,
I read this one enjoying it all the way, until I got to Mongolia. Sure, he doesn't say precisely where he was, but you can draw a line through the known co-ordinates. As I recall, he has Mongolians in sandals, poling sampan kind of things down slow deep rivers. Buildings made of stone.

OK, I was right in the area where he says he was.

Central Mongolia is not at all as he says. It averages 5-6000 foot in altitude. The rivers are like mountain rivers everywhere. Couldn't get down most of them in a kayak. No poling necessary. He didn't mention a single horse.

He didn't seem to notice that it is a horse culture: everyone on horseback, guys wearing distintive vests, cowboy type boots that curl up at the toe, living in canvas tents called Gers (like yurts.)

Some publication asked me to debunk this guy, but he was still alive then --- may still be for all I know --- and the book was fun reading, even if, in the end, I didn't believe it. And I didn't see any good karma coming out of beating up on a guy in his 90s.

I just went and got another copy of Gates of Fire, because as cool as 300 is, Gates kills it, IMO.

This is the third time I am reading thios book since 2003.

When I am done, I am getting Ceasar's Conquest of the Gauls and the book of Joesphus.

Skinny wrote:Fooled by Randomness. The hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and Life. By Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Great shit.
Whatever kind of fighter you are (markets, cage, ring, business, whatever) you should read that book to get the perspective right.
If you da bitch you can skip it.

I've changed my mind. The idea behind the book is thought provoking. The book itself offers very little except some random ramblings.

Hagbard Celine wrote:

DrDonkeyLove wrote:

Hagbard Celine wrote:Baroque Cycle

finished this up over the weekend, great trilogy. Stephenson gave a good shake at how newton, leibniz etc may have acted and even thought. Not too shabs. Lots of fun, with a pretty reasonable level of "thinking" involved for a mass market recreational book.

I'm in the middle of the first book, Quicksilver, right now based on the recommendation of one of our denizens (Crusty perhaps?). I'm not sure what I'm reading or why, yet it's keeping my interest as a story and with tidbits of historical insight into a time about which I know very little.

Yeah, the first book you scratch your head alot, then you get into it.

I'm getting hooked.

I was the Stephenson recommender: don't forget Cryptonomicon published before the Baroque cycle, but subsequent in continuity.

In the last two weeks I've read WWZ and the Long Walk. WWZ is a hoot, Max is after all Mel's son.

As for the Long Walk, I don't have seeahill's world traveler knowledges but I don't know that Rawicz needs debunked. I believe it is something like Castaneda's first book-- I think Rawicz believed it happened that way, and that, in itself, makes it wothwhile.

BeefHeart wrote: In the last two weeks I've read WWZ and the Long Walk. WWZ is a hoot, Max is after all Mel's son..

No shit? Huh.

Anyway, I finished it, read it again. Lots of fun, though he's not at his best when trying to do pathos or anything too far away from a "military" voice. Like the shell-shocked girl; that didn't work.

The chapter about N Korea creeped me right the fuck out. And I was surprised at the quality of the social/economic commentary in the account of how the US jumpstarted the war effort after the Battle of Yonkers and the Rocky Line.

Good bits all the way through; I'm a total sucker for a zombie apocalypse.

GDG!

Crypto was great, even funnier than Baroque.

NRS has a razor wit. I think Cryptonomicon was the last sci-fi book I ever read.

My wife is on a romance novel kick. It drives her nuts, but when she's done with each one I give it the quick scan and read just the sex scenes. Her admonishment to "read the whole book...it's really good" is wasted. Instead, I read the juicy passages out loud. with that intro, I'd like to review...

The Island by Heather Graham (who has written like 1,000,000 of these things).

Has something to do with some 20-something or maybe older single woman, high spirited of course, who is wary of men but gets seduced by some mysterious guy who may or may not be law enforcement, but is definitely a deep sea diver. They have sex three times in the book, that I could see. The first time is aboard a boat, and of course she is inhibited but her inhibitions are overcome in about a half a page as her voice turns husky and she "feels his manhood" in a tight embrace. While Heather doesn't actually come out and say it, at one point his kissing "brings her to an unknown ectasy while pushing the bounds of her propriety" which I take to mean he's doing some rug munching. Here's where it gets unrealistic. In *all three sex scenes" he brings her to climax first (probably by computing dive tables in his head) before knocking on the door to Shangri-la himself. Anyway, they end up getting married on the last page, so thinks worked out for them I guess. I give it 4 stars, recommend reading out loud for the wife.

Meh. Porn is easier.

Fat Cat wrote:Meh. Porn is easier.

You missed the obviously. This is wife porn...the fact that she read it first is about 90% of the pleasure of the whole experience. I find the books to be good jumping-off points for further discussion.

nafod wrote:

Fat Cat wrote:Meh. Porn is easier.

You missed the obviously. This is wife porn...the fact that she read it first is about 90% of the pleasure of the whole experience. I find the books to be good jumping-off points for further discussion.

Hmmm, further discussion eh. I wonder if this is a secret to getting a woman jump started. It's got to be better than "wanna bang".

Bitch Intel, I guess if you give a fuck what she thinks.

[quote][/quote]

BeefHeart wrote:I was the Stephenson recommender: don't forget Cryptonomicon published before the Baroque cycle, but subsequent in continuity.

In the last two weeks I've read WWZ and the Long Walk. WWZ is a hoot, Max is after all Mel's son.

As for the Long Walk, I don't have seeahill's world traveler knowledges but I don't know that Rawicz needs debunked. I believe it is something like Castaneda's first book-- I think Rawicz believed it happened that way, and that, in itself, makes it wothwhile.

Almost 3,000 pages of novel! It defies classification as you and others have stated but it was worth the effort and I learned a lot. I got Cryptonomicon in the buy two get one free section at B&N and will get to it sometime soon. Good recommendation.

I'm reading "A Fan's Notes" by Fred Exley for the 900th time. That one keeps giving.

Also, "Lolita," which pisses me off because English was not Nabokov's native language. Dat guy was a fucking genius, and I hate people smarter than I am.