Dye Junior

Cory Doctorow Gives Away New Audiobook

2010-12-12T07:28:00.001-05:00

I love the open-source, DIY direction of Doctorow's fiction. He has self-published this new book of mostly re-released short stories under Creative Commons. It's downloading now and is next on my list of audiobooks (once I've finished 1984.)

Here's the link: http://craphound.com/walh/about/with-a-little-help

Bankers: beatniks, pyromaniacs, and gangsters

2009-01-26T21:04:00.002-05:00

The cover story of today's Wall Street Journal quotes a prominent German politician as saying, "most of the bankers are competent and responsible, but there are also some beatniks, pyromaniacs and gangsters".

xkcd

2008-12-11T21:42:00.005-05:00

I just "discovered" xkcd.com. Best stick-figure online geek comic strip ever! I spent 45 minutes viewing random comic strips and saw several that I really liked.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

2008-12-11T21:24:00.001-05:00

Funny, sexy, sad. I never had so much as high school Spanish, so some of it went over my head.

Learned the term culocracy and a lot of recent Dominican history. This book worked for me on a lot of levels. I love that Diaz won the Pulitzer for it.

Highly recommended.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

2008-12-11T21:19:00.001-05:00

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

This is a very funny novel. The comparisons to A Confederacy of Dunces are inevitable because it shows us the world through the eyes of a fat, crazy, brilliant protagonist, but Absurdistan really stands on its own.

Go Snack Daddy!

Read this book. You'll like it.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2008-12-11T21:13:00.001-05:00

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers is another great Gladwell book. This one particularly spoke to me because it largely revolved around an idea I've been pushing for years: practice is where the learning happens. I think Gladwell has a gift for the art of the example. In Outliers, he gives us some wonderful examples of why the motivation and opportunity to practice are the biggest differentiators between the wildly successful and the rest of us. Not to ignore the graveyard (we still love you, Taleb!), we also see how the man with the highest IQ in America basically failed to make anything of himself. Ironically, Outliers could be his big break.

The psychology of plane crashes; why the Beatles made it big; why Asians are good at math; how to get really good at anything; it's all in here and it's all fascinating.

Gladwell is a meme machine. You're going to be hearing these ideas everywhere. I heard the term "outliers" on political talk TV today. Yesterday my Gmail window had the quote, "The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win." The book is #1 on the NY Times hardcover nonfiction list. People will be talking about it for a long time.

I listened to this as an audiobook. It's read by the author, and I highly recommend listening to it.

Stupid is among the least negative of their many character flaws...

2008-12-03T19:25:00.001-05:00

This Daily Show segment on the Mumbai attacks hit just the right note with me.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The End by Michael Lewis

2008-11-26T18:56:00.002-05:00

This article by Michael Lewis is the best explanation I've read of how Wall Street created the current financial fiasco. It's really long, but worth the read.

First Person Plural by Paul Bloom

2008-10-20T18:11:00.002-04:00

This great article in this month's Atlantic Monthly really got me thinking. It's just the sort of psychology meets philosophy that I really enjoy. I'm going to check out Paul Bloom's books, too. Descartes' Baby looks pretty good.

I Hate the New iGoogle Layout

2008-10-16T20:22:00.004-04:00

Hey Google! Don't move my tabs down on the left where they take up all this extra room without giving me any choice in the matter!

That's just.... evil.

Constantine's Sword

2008-10-11T08:41:00.003-04:00

This sober documentary is partly a memoir of James Carroll, a Catholic priest who left the church out of protest against its support of violence and discrimination, and partly the telling of the historical foundation upon which the current church policies were built. It goes all the way from Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in 312 A.D. to George W. Bush's War on Terror. Carroll's earnestness about the subject keeps it both personal and urgent. I learned a lot of history and current affairs from this documentary, and it changed the way I see what's going on now.

Worth watching.

Up the Yangtze

2008-10-11T08:07:00.002-04:00

I feel a little guilty--like a callous, spoiled westerner for saying so--but his is the sort of documentary that I would ordinarily avoid for fear that it will be depressing. I mean, it's about poor Chinese people who are being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam. How happy can that be?

It's not particularly happy, but it is a beautifully shot film that follows the lives of a young man and a girl who go to work on a cruise ship on the Yangtze. The young man is cocky and spoiled. The girl is from a desperately poor family who will soon be forced to move from their riverside shack as the water rises. I hate to be cliché, but seeing their life made me thankful for all that we have.

I recommend this movie.

"Caroline: Pull a Cheney!" An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy (head of the Obama VP search team) from Michael Moore

2008-08-21T21:16:00.001-04:00

Dear Caroline,

We've never met, so I hope you don't find this letter too presumptuous or inappropriate. As its contents involve the public's business, I am sending this to you via the public on the Internet. I knew your brother John. He was a great guy, and I know he would've had a ball during this thrilling and historic election year. We all miss him dearly.

Barack Obama selected you to head up his search for a vice presidential candidate. It appears we may be just days (hours?) away from learning who that choice will be.

The media is reporting that Senator Obama has narrowed his alternatives to three men: Joe Biden, Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine. They're all decent fellows, but they are far from the core of what the Obama campaign has been about: Change. Real change. Out with the old. And don't invade countries that pose no threat to us.

Senators Biden and Bayh voted for that invasion and that war, the war Barack ran against, the war Barack reminded us was the big difference between him and Senator Clinton because she voted for the war and he spoke out against it while running for Senate (a brave and bold thing to do back in 2002).

For Obama to place either of these senators on the ticket would be a huge blow to the millions that chose him in the primaries over Hillary. He will undercut one of the strongest advantages he has over the Hundred-Year War senator, Mr. McCain. By anointing a VP who did what McCain did in throwing us into this war, Mr. Obama will lose the moral high ground in the debates.

As for Governor Kaine of Virginia, his big problem is, well, Obama's big problem -- who is he? The toughest thing Barack has had to overcome -- and it will continue to be his biggest obstacle -- is that too many of the voters simply don't know him well enough to vote for him. The fact that Obama is new to the scene is both one of his most attractive qualities AND his biggest drawback. Too many Americans, who on the surface seem to like Barack Obama, just don't feel comfortable voting for someone who hasn't been on the national scene very long. It's a comfort level thing, and it may be just what keeps Obama from winning in November ("I'd rather vote for the devil I know than the devil I don't know").

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we've known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all.

That person, Caroline, is you.

I cannot think of a more winning ticket than one that reads: "OBAMA-KENNEDY."

Caroline, I know that nominating yourself is the furthest idea from your mind and not consistent with who you are, but there would be some poetic justice to such an action. Just think, eight years after the last head of a vice presidential search team looked far and wide for a VP -- and then picked himself (a move topped only by his hubris to then lead the country to near ruin while in office) -- along comes Caroline Kennedy to return the favor with far different results, a vice president who helps restore America to its goodness and greatness.

Caroline, you are one of the most beloved and respected women in this country, and you have been so admired throughout your life. You chose a life outside of politics, to work for charities and schools, to write and lecture, to raise a wonderful family. But you did not choose to lead a private life. You have traveled the world and met with its leaders, giving you much experience on the world stage, a stage you have been on since you were a little girl.

The nation has, remarkably (considering our fascination with celebrity), left you alone and let you live your life in peace. (It's like, long ago, we all collectively agreed that, with her father tragically gone, a man who died because he wanted to serve his country, we would look out for her, we would wish for her to be happy and well, and we would have her back. But we would let her be.)

Now, I am breaking this unwritten code and asking you to come forward and help us in our hour of need. So many families are hurting, losing their homes, going bankrupt with health care bills, seeing their public schools in shambles and living with this war without end. This is a historic year for women, from Hillary's candidacy to the numerous women running for the House and Senate. This is the year that a woman should be on the Democratic ticket. This is the year that both names on that ticket should be people OUTSIDE the party machine. This is the year millions of independents and, yes, millions of Republicans are looking for something new and fresh and bold (and you are the Kennedy Republicans would vote for!).

This is the moment, Caroline. Seize it! And Barack, if you're reading this, you probably know that she is far too humble and decent to nominate herself. So step up and surprise us again. Step up and be different than every politician we have witnessed in our lifetime. Keep the passion burning amongst the young people and others who have been energized by your unexpected, unpredicted, against-all-odds candidacy that has ignited and inspired a nation. Do it for all those reasons. Make Caroline Kennedy your VP. "Obama-Kennedy." Wow, does that sound so cool.

Caroline, thanks for letting me intrude on your life. How wonderful it will be to have a vice president who will respect the Constitution, who will support (instead of control) her president, who will never let her staff out a CIA agent, and who will never tell her country that she is "currently residing in an undisclosed location."

Say it one more time: "OBAMA-KENNEDY." A move like that might send a message to the country that the Democrats would actually like to win an election for once.

Yours,

Michael Moore

My Secret History by Paul Theroux

2008-08-16T08:42:00.000-04:00

My Secret History by Paul Theroux

This is a (slightly?) fictionalized sexual tell-all from a guy with a lot to say. I'm becoming a big fan of Theroux these days, which is great because that gives me a lot of books to read.

The part of the book where he describes writing The Great Railway Bazaar while on the outs with his wife really got to me for some reason. Next, I need to read The Great Railway Bazaar.

View all my reviews.

The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi

2008-08-03T08:54:00.004-04:00

I've been enjoying Matt Taibbi's articles in Rolling Stone since he first hit my radar a couple of years ago with a story about buying discount prescription drugs at Mexican border town pharmacies. What you'd expect to be a revealing piece about the high cost of the American health care system and the rewards reaped by the drug companies turned into a gonzo tale of this young guy wandering around town gobbling pills and trying to score something that would get him high. It's not everyone's idea of good journalism, but it is mine. I've been telling everyone who would listen to me that this guy is the Hunter S. Thompson for the 21st century.

The Great Derangement is the first of Taibbi's books that I've read. It alternates chapters between tales of his adventures infiltrating John Hagee's Texas megachurch with equally irreverent observations about the U.S. Congress, which he covered for Rolling Stone. The book also takes a short detour into the 9/11 "Truther" movement, which opened my eyes to the stupidity of this group's arguments.

The book's premise is that Americans have given up on hearing the truth from the government and media and have instead decided to figure out what's really happening on their own. A discouragingly large number of people have figured out (with the help of the Internet) either that Jesus is coming back soon or that there's a vast international conspiracy that orchestrated the acts of 9/11. The even scarier truth that Taibbi puts forward is that our government has been thoroughly hijacked by wealthy organizations who care much more about their own bottom line than they do the public good.

Taibbi's accounts of his encounters with these insane organizations, written with his inimitable mix of disdain and self-deprecation, is laugh-out-loud funny a lot of the time. This book most certainly didn't change my mind in big ways about any of the issues Taibbi discussed. For me, it was more about the adventure of this dyed-in-the-wool liberal trying to pass in rooms full of holy rollers and seeing what he could get away with. That, and his over-the-top indignation over the total ineffectiveness of our elected representatives makes for an entertaining read.

The Taste of Tea

2008-07-13T07:57:00.003-04:00

Watched The Taste of Tea (Japanese title: Cha no Aji) last night and liked it a lot. There seem to be a lot of these quietly weird Japanese movies, although this is one of the weirder ones. Some of my other favorites that would fit this loose category have been

Doctor Akagi (Kanzo Sensei)
The Eel (Unagi)
After Life (Wandafuru Laifu)

Anna Tsuchiya, the star of Sakuran, also had a small role in this film. I predict a big career for her.

UNIQLO

2008-07-13T07:25:00.003-04:00

I love UNIQLO, which is a casual clothing store sort of like the Gap in Japan. I've got a bunch of t-shirts and other stuff from there that my wife and I have bought on trips to Japan. Their only US store is in NYC. Everything is very well made and it's rare for UNIQLO clothes to have a visible logo, which I like a lot.

Check out the UNIQLO website. It's not going to win any usability awards, but it's a cool Flash site.

The Happy Isles of Oceania

2008-07-10T22:04:00.002-04:00

This is my first time reading any of Paul Theroux's travel writing, and I'm really impressed. This is the kind of writing that makes me want to be a writer. It's not the sort of book that I'd usually have trouble putting down, but I was waking up in the middle of the night and squeezing in a few pages before dozing off again. It just kept giving and giving.

Without a doubt, I'll be lining up the Theroux books on my Bookmooch wishlist.

The Tipping Point

2008-07-10T21:13:00.003-04:00

It seems like I was seeing references to Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point all over the place and, having read the book, now I see why. Gladwell's idea is an elaboration of what people have long called critical mass, but with some new terms for the individuals who are involved in the distribution of ideas. The book was hugely popular and influential, so I don't feel like I need to describe it at length. What I'd rather do is look at why this was such a popular book (why it "tipped", as it were) and where its effects are being felt.

Gladwell is a good thinker. He has a solid idea and elaborates on it appropriately for a book of this length. I think the key to his success, though, is that he gives good examples. The Tipping Point is in many ways a business book. Gladwell uses the time-honored tradition of the case study to make most of his points. And we readers love a case study. It's a story, after all. It's fun to read the stories of how Airwalk and the Ya Ya Sisterhood lady hit it big. It's interesting to hear about how some people are connectors and mavens and it rings true when we think about the people we know. I realized, reading this book, that I'm a wannabe maven. All along, this blog has been about sharing the things that I like with the rest of the world.

This article about growing crime rates in medium-sized American cities makes me think that the nation's thinkers have long since digested Gladwell's ideas. I finally understand why companies pay some people (cooler-looking people than me, I assume) to order their drinks in bars now, too. I'll have to look for Freakonomics vs. Tipping Point essays about legal abortion vs. "broken windows" explaining the crime drop in NYC (though why not both)?

I know nobody much reads this blog, but if you're here and have an idea or link, please share it in a comment.

trailer envy

2008-07-02T20:37:00.004-04:00

Main Entry: trailer envy
Pronunciation: \ˈtrā-lər ˈen-vē\
Function: noun
Date: 2008

: painful or resentful awareness of an imaginary advantage enjoyed by those with less responsibility than oneself

He had trailer envy after driving home from yet another 12-hour workday.

Sakuran

2008-07-01T21:04:00.003-04:00

I just watched Sakuran, an indeterminately anachronistic period movie about Japanese courtesans, and liked it a lot. This ain't Memoirs of a Geisha, folks. There's plenty of nudity, catfights, and general weirdness. There's very little info online in English about this movie, which I kind of like.

If you like off-the-beaten-track Japanese movies, Sakuran is worth checking out.

Moveon's Baby Alex Ad

2008-06-28T08:14:00.001-04:00

I guess I'm just a big sap, but I've watched this five times now and I get choked up every time...

Paul Theroux Quotes

2008-06-28T06:59:00.003-04:00

I've just started Paul Theroux's Happy Isles of Oceania (thanks, Hanneke from Bookmooch!) and have already come across two quotes so good I had to copy them down.

"Travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite. Nothing induces concentration or inspires memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. Much more likely is an experience of seeing clearly a serious mistake. But this does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present. What makes the whole experience vivid, and sometimes thrilling, is the juxtaposition of the present and the past..."

This is a man who knows more than a little about traveling.

"Sluttish comfort is one of the most corrupting things of all, and it easily becomes a dependency, even an addiction. ...After even a short experience of luxury, anything else is like punishment."

This great quote would almost be trite were it not for Theroux's inspired use of the adjective sluttish. "Sluttish comfort" is my new meme. Like "goddamn seagulls", the two words will be inextricably linked in my mind from here forward.

Why No Wai Wai ?

2008-06-27T22:43:00.002-04:00

It appears that in a craven act of self-censorship, the Mainichi Daily News has discontinued its wonderful Wai Wai column. It was too good to last. I get the sense from the explanation the paper provided that the staff writer in charge of the column had essentially run amok. He was publishing more and more scandalous articles, was eventually revealed through reader complaints and severely dealt with.

I'll miss the RSS feed on this blog and on my iGoogle page. The ex-staff writer was a hell of an alliterator. I well remember how easy it is to lose one's sense of political correctness when living the gaijin life. Good luck to you, sir!

Dad's Blurb Books

2008-06-27T21:16:00.005-04:00

My dad has been making books on Blurb. He showed me the first of them today, and they're pretty neat little books. The only shortcoming I could see was that the shipping is too expensive.
Japan
Monkey Do

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2008-06-07T08:11:00.002-04:00

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I listened to Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as an audiobook. The book is John Perkins' story of his rise through and eventual repudiation of the "corporatocracy" -- the American big-business collaboration between oil and engineering companies, the World Bank, IMF, and U.S. intelligence and military -- as an employee and eventual partner in the Chas. T. Main engineering and consulting firm. I felt like I should have liked this book more than I did.

Perkins tells his story chronologically, starting with his experiences as the child of teachers at an elite private school, going through his college bar fights, Peace Corps stint, and eventual hiring by Main and training as an Economic Hit Man (EHM). I had a hard time believing the part where he describes his initiation into the ranks of EHMs by a mysterious and beautiful teacher. If you don't believe that part, all you're really reading is the story of a guy who juked some economic forecasting reports so that his company would get bigger engineering contracts.

I guess what really hurt this book in my eyes is that I couldn't identify with Perkins. Outside of his own story, it was no big news to me that we'd cut a Faustian deal with the Saudis and screwed over the Indonesians, Panamanians, Ecuadorians, and Colombians. Perkins himself is supposedly tortured by the knowledge of his wrongdoing, but continues to do wrong for decades. Poor guy. I felt like his embarrassingly earnest list of ways for us to "get involved" at the end of the book left out an explanation of how he was returning his ill-earned gains (and the revenue from this bestselling book) to the poor people of the world he'd exploited for most of his life.

If you're walking around blissfully unaware of the extent of the malfeasance that goes in the U.S. public and private institutions in the name of nothing more than filthy lucre, this book will blow your sweet little mind. If you've already read your Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Greg Palast, John Perkins won't have a lot more to tell you.

View all my Goodreads reviews.

Flashmob Prank in Japan

2008-06-03T18:28:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Jeff in Tokyo for this clip from Japanese TV showing how to have fun with 100 friends.

Some translations:
2nd clip: "Tsunami da!" (Tidal wave!)
3rd clip: "Aistu da! (That's him!)
5th clip: "Abunai!" (Look out!)

The Thai Temple

2008-05-31T06:37:00.002-04:00

For a while now, we've been hitting the Sunday lunches at Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Buddhist temple on the Palm River in Tampa. The temple members have a bunch of food for sale out on a wooden deck and they've got a woman giving haircuts and a small produce and plant stand. It's a little disorganized, which makes it all the more authentically Southeast Asian. It smells like Thailand.

It's a fun scene for a little not-so-local flavor. I thought they did it on Saturdays and Sundays, but the articles I found online all just say it's on Sunday.

Here's a map

A Thousand Splendid Suns

2008-05-31T06:29:00.000-04:00

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Further confirmation that life is tough in Afghanistan. Just as good as The Kite Runner.

View all my reviews.

The Head Trip

2008-05-26T07:10:00.001-04:00

Head Trip by Jeff Warren

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I listened to this as an audiobook. It's a fairly interesting pop science book about how our different experiences of consciousness are intertwined. I thought that the beginning of the book, which was concerned with sleep, was better than the rest.

View all my reviews.

Shantaram

2008-05-26T06:58:00.002-04:00

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the mostly true story of an Australian bank robber who escaped from prison in Australia and fled to India. This is an amazing story and I'm surprised the book isn't better known in the States.

View all my reviews.

The above is the auto-generated HTML from a review I just added to Goodreads. Not bad, I think.

Matter by Iain M. Banks

2008-04-26T07:04:00.005-04:00

Iain M. Banks is still writing some of the best science fiction in the world. I eagerly pre-ordered his latest novel, Matter, from Amazon. Once it had arrived, I forced myself to wait three full weeks to begin reading it so I'd be able to read it on a trip to Japan. I found new reserves of self-discipline within myself as I pulled neighboring books down from my bookshelf and left Matter alone. In case it's not clear: I really like this writer.

Matter is a Culture novel. If you're unfamiliar with Banks' work, the Culture is his utopian vision of the distant future of humanity. No doubt because utopias are notoriously boring, very little of the action in any of the Culture novels takes place within the Culture itself. The Culture characters are usually outsiders, and as often as not members of an elite organization called Special Circumstances. Special Circumstances is the part of the Culture that's allowed to actively interfere with other civilizations, usually when they're on the verge of becoming difficult.

Matter reveals a few more details of the Culture, gives us a glimpse into Banks' vision of interstellar diplomacy, goes into detail about an impressive galactic civil engineering program, and tells a good old-fashioned story about succession in a royal family after a classic act of treacherous regicide.

If you're a science fiction fan who hasn't yet read Banks' Culture novels -- lucky you! I'd start with The Player of Games and read them in order. You don't really have to, but why not? If you are a Banks fan, you've probably already bought and read your copy of Matter. If you bought Matter when it came out and still haven't started reading it, you're stronger than I am.

Japan Photos

2008-04-13T19:35:00.001-04:00

Here is a slideshow of my photos from a recent trip to Japan I took with my wife, daughter, father, and brother.

Dad's Japan Photos

2008-04-13T19:33:00.001-04:00

Here's a slideshow of my Dad's photos from our recent trip to Japan.

Donkey, Ass, Mule

2008-03-12T18:03:00.012-04:00

If you're like me, you've had this discussion dozens of times: what's the difference between a donkey, an ass, and a mule?

Wikipedia, as usual, clears up the problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey

Here's the executive summary:
Donkey is just a nice way of saying ass. They're animals in the horse family. People often think of donkeys as being small asses. A male ass is a Jack, a female is a Jenny.

A mule is the offspring of a male ass and female horse. A male horse and female ass produce a hinny.

Here's the formula:

♀ horse (mare)	+	♂ ass (Jack)	=	mule
♂ horse (stallion)	+	♀ ass (Jenny)	=	hinny

Any questions?

The 4-Hour Workweek

2008-02-23T06:04:00.007-05:00

Here's a confession: I sometimes listen to self-help audiobooks. There's probably a term in the publishing business for the slightly subversive type of book I'm drawn to, such as Fire Your Boss by Stephen M. Pollan or The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I find that these unfailingly positive, imperative-laden guidebooks to escaping the corporate grind somehow make me feel better while I'm driving my sensible Japanese sedan to and from my cubicle.

I was reading about the 4-Hour Workweek online before it had been published, no doubt due to the tireless Web promotion of its author. You're practically compelled to find out more about this book once you've seen the title. This, of course, is the point of the title. But is there anything to it?

Well...

Ferriss's basic idea is that by combining radical efficiencies (a sort of Getting Things Done on performance-enhancing drugs) with a revised set of priorities, you can do a lot of things that you assume are impossible. He uses these ideas, along with his own story, to tie together a whole bunch of otherwise disconnected essays about topics such as starting a small business, working from home, traveling on the cheap, and how to spend all this time you've now got on your hands. He has a lot of good ideas and interesting opinions. Much of the book consists of references to books and websites, which doesn't translate well to the audiobook format. You can follow up on the book's companion website, though.

The idea from this book that resonated with me was that retirement is a worst-case scenario. While it's only prudent to plan what you'd do if you became physically unable to work, it shouldn't be your goal in life. Rather, you should figure out what you really want to do and then figure out how to do it. Ferriss uses the term mini-retirements for an idea I first heard in John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels. Why save retirement for when you're too old to appreciate it? It usually boils down to money. So how to solve the money problem?

There's a good section about how to test the market for a product and start a Web business for very little money. It was nicely illustrated with a couple of imaginary case studies, and it spoke to my inner geek and cheapskate. In the tried-and-true self-help tradition, the 4-Hour Workweek is better at reminding you that such a thing is both desirable and possible than it is at telling you how to actually do it. The numerous references are meant to take up where the book leaves off.

In retrospect, what I liked most about The 4-Hour Workweek was its author's story. Ferriss is a highly successful, highly opinionated 30-year-old guy who has done some interesting things with his life, culminating thus far with making himself an expert in a field of his own creation and publishing a bestselling book on it. Reading his book, I pieced together the progression of ideas and events that led him to writing it. No doubt about it, the kid has moxie!

Snow Monkey Livecam

2008-02-08T22:32:00.000-05:00

Here is a link to the live webcam of the world-famous Japanese snow monkeys. This is not very interesting during the Japanese nighttime.

Bonus feature: click Home, then English for some amusingly over-literal translations. Below is an excerpt.

Spring has come for the excrements of the monkey.
Main food for the monkey at the beginning of spring is young leaves, young sprouts, young weeds, flower and flower buds. Specially, they prefer to eat buds, young leaves of beech, spicebush, maple, and elm. Flowers and flower buds are soft and sweet, so it is very delicious for the wild monkey. Probably these foods are very nourishing. Unexpectedly, the monkey eats stone fruits too.

Terro Liquid Ant Killer

2008-02-03T06:43:00.001-05:00

Our home here in Florida is periodically invaded by ants of all sizes and dispositions. Repeated applications of Raid had a negligible effect other than worrying us that we were poisoning our daughter. The little plastic baits didn't seem to help, either.

Enter Terro Ant Killer. This stuff is decidedly old school. I think it's just a mixture of Borax and Karo syrup. You squeeze a big drop of it onto a square of thin cardboard and put it where the ants will find it. Ants love it! For a day or so, they form their little lines carrying this delightful treat back home to their loved ones. And then...

...no more ants.

Fallows Explains China

2008-01-27T15:36:00.000-05:00

James Fallows is the #1 reason I subscribe to Atlantic Monthly. He's a columnist who currently lives in and writes about China. This article about how China came to finance $1.4 trillion of the U.S. national debt is the only good explanation I've heard. It's also scary as hell.

This older article describing a scenario in which the U.S. economy collapses is even scarier.

The Wai Wai Page

2008-01-27T08:32:00.000-05:00

I recently rediscovered the Wai Wai column, a weekly segment in the Japanese English-language newspaper the Mainichi Daily News that aggregates and translates the most shocking articles from the tabloids and men's magazines.

The fact that this is a deliberately skewed window into Japanese culture doesn't detract from the culture's alienness. From the sympathetic profiles of train gropers to alarmist conjecture that oversized crows might start stealing babies from their strollers, the Wai Wai serves as a regular reminder to gaijin that they're far from home.

Stumbling on Happiness

2008-01-27T08:11:00.000-05:00

I listened to this audiobook during my daily commute. Daniel Gilbert's main idea in Stumbling on Happiness is that we're very bad at predicting what will make us happy. This meshed very well with the ideas in The Black Swan, which postulates that we're bad at predicting everything.

Gilbert makes a good and thorough argument for his idea, and he manages to be fairly funny in the process. I particularly liked a section in the beginning of the book where he compares our future selves to our children looking back and resenting the old-fashioned choices we're making for them for their own good.

The book fizzles toward the end, as many books built around a single, interesting idea tend to do. I very much liked that this was not a self-help book. Gilbert explores what happiness really means and why we fail to find it, but leaves it up to us to figure out how to be happier.

Recommended, especially as an audiobook.

The Perfect $100,000 House

2008-01-26T06:31:00.000-05:00

Karrie Jacobs was the founding editor of Dwell magazine, so she's got some street cred in the housing game. She wrote this book during a period of time she spent without fixed abode after quitting her job at Dwell.

As someone who has trouble accepting that houses have to cost what they do and look how they look in the U.S., this book spoke to me. It's just about equal parts travel journal, analysis of the housing industry, and profiles of innovative architects and builders. I learned a lot about the economics of house building and spent some quality hours checking out the websites of the people she met. Here are some of them:

Brett Zamore Design
KRDB Design-Build
Alchemy Architects
LOT-EK
Treehugger (shipping container housing)
Shipping Container Repository
SG Blocks

Manga from Tahiti

2008-01-19T08:14:00.001-05:00

A BookMooch update: Yesterday we received a package of Japanese-language comic books all the way from Papeete, Tahiti. The BookMooch member who sent us this lovingly assembled package even included a postcard from her exotic home. We got a real kick out of it.

I've also been corresponding recently with another BookMooch member who lives in my old stomping grounds of Osaka. He was kind enough to throw in a bunch of Japanese kids' books that his son has outgrown along with some books we mooched from him.

Bottom Biting Bug

2008-01-17T19:47:00.000-05:00

This video is huge in Japan. My daughter watches the DVD over and over. Here's a little more explanation.

No Country For Old Men

2008-01-03T21:35:00.003-05:00

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I'm a big fan of the Coens, and they didn't disappoint. Though I haven't read this one, I've liked the Cormac McCarthy books I've read, too. David Kushner's recent articles in Wired and Rolling Stone piqued my interest in McCarthy. Apparently, he spends a lot of his time hanging out at the Santa Fe Institute with Nobel Prize winners, Al Gore, and Google execs when he's not writing hard-boiled western novels with confusing dialog attribution.

A Slideshow

2007-12-29T08:29:00.001-05:00

FineTune

2007-12-20T08:50:00.000-05:00

I spent the better part of an hour creating this FineTune playlist this morning. Their AIR desktop application is super cool. You can download it along with the AIR platform here.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

2007-11-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

I loved this book. I know the whole hard-boiled alcoholic cop/chess novel set in Alaska-as-Israel has been written to death, but Chabon manages to make it seem like a brand new genre. If I were you, I'd put it on my BookMooch wishlist now. As of today, there are already 176 people ahead of you.

The Black Swan

2007-11-09T06:40:00.000-05:00

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one Lebanese guy with a chip on his shoulder. Among the people he targets in his broadside of a book: philosophers, economists, statisticians, financial professionals, and the Nobel committee, just to name a few.

Taleb is a really smart guy who has spent most of his life working on this one idea and getting pissed off at people who don't get it. And almost nobody gets it. He explains how we're practically hardwired to oversimplify the causes for events, to make terrible predictions for future events, and to fail to see how bad we are at making predictions. That's the gist of The Black Swan; the whole book is devoted to expanding this idea.

I listened to this as an audiobook and I liked it. It made me think. I liked that Taleb has spent his whole life on this idea. He had another book about the same idea, but more specific to finance. This article by Malcolm Gladwell explains Taleb's investment strategy, which is interesting, too.

BookMooch

2007-11-03T07:27:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, I signed up for BookMooch, an online book-swapping site. I remember that it appealed to me because there is no money involved; you get a point for each book you send to someone else and spend a point each time you mooch a book. After signing up, I lost interest for some reason and failed to pursue it further.

A few Saturday mornings ago, I read something online about BookMooch. I pulled a bunch of books I didn't want down from my bookshelf and listed them on the site. I was excited about all the free books I'd soon be receiving and wondering why I hadn't done this sooner. By listing ten books, I'd earned one point. I could now mooch a book. I imported my Amazon wishlist of 20 or so books and discovered that none of them were available. I didn't have a clear recollection, but I began to suspect that the reason I hadn't done anything about BookMooch the first time was related to its shortage of books I wanted to read.

While I was still looking for a book I wanted, I received an e-mail from a book moocher. I agreed to send her the book, sealed it in a bubble mailer I had handy, and promptly took it to the post office on my way out to run some errands.

By the time I returned from my errands that Saturday afternoon, there were nine more e-mails from book moochers in my inbox. I was starting to think I'd made a mistake. This was going to be expensive. I spent $6 on Sunday for more bubble mailers, then about $20 Tuesday for postage. I was $28 in the hole and didn't even have a prospect of mooching any of the books I wanted.

What did I do?

I lowered my standards. The BookMooch selection tends toward bestsellers from years past. By browsing through the list of available books, I was able to find some that interested me. I mooched away. While I was waiting for my books, I received several e-mails thanking me for the books I'd sent. That was nice. When the books started arriving, it was even nicer. Every day or two, I get another book in the mail. I realize now that people aren't in a big hurry to ship these books, and I let go of my sense of urgency, too. The automatic response when you accept a mooch says, "Thanks for mooching from me! I'll be sending the book soon." When it's free, "soon" is specific enough. I'll go ahead and keep my BookMooch wishlist updated, too. Hopefully some newbie will list a bunch of good books some Saturday morning when I'm online and I'll get the jump on all the other moochers for some books I really want.

Colombian Devil's Breath

2007-10-21T17:02:00.000-04:00

This is the scariest video about a deadly mind-control drug that I'd never heard of that I've watched all year. Some of the video is too dark, though.

Click here to watch

The Glass Castle

2007-10-20T07:57:00.000-04:00

This is a book that I'd picked up and put down at the bookstore half a dozen times. "Chick book," I'd tell myself each time. Bestselling memoir about a woman with really bad parents. No thanks.

My mom buys me this book thinking I'll like it, and she's right. Jeannette Walls had some terrible parents. Dad was a drunk; mom was breathtakingly negligent. They had their moments of redemption, though, too. It's the kind of story where the sad parts make the funny parts funnier.

As bad as her parents were, Jeannette Walls and her brother and sisters turned out all right. One of them is even a bestselling writer. When I think about similar books -- Angela's Ashes and The Liar's Club come to mind, not least because their authors are name-checked on the cover of this book -- the recurring theme leading to the redemption of all these kids seems to be that they read a lot of books as children.

Hey, I read a lot of books as a child, too! Maybe I can write a bestselling memoir!

I wasn't molested, starved, or even neglected much as a kid, but none of that is the reason I haven't written a funny, sad, and poignant memoir. The reason: I watch TV instead of writing it. It's probably your reason, too. William Gibson, who watches very little TV, thinks he has spent about as much time writing as the average adult his age has spent watching TV. It's something to think about, especially when you consider that writing is his full-time job.

Setting aside self-recriminations for a moment, I recommend this book. Go ahead and borrow your mom's copy.

Sasuke

2007-09-30T06:06:00.000-04:00

I've recently become addicted to Sasuke, a Japanese obstacle course TV show that is televised on G4 as Ninja Warrior. My in-laws in Japan think it's hilarious that I watch this show. They sent me a DVD recording of the latest contest, which I'm seeding as a torrent. This may be of interest to Americans who

a. can't wait for the subtitled version on G4 or
b. are curious about the Japanese telecast.

Standalone DIVX DVD Player

2007-09-29T08:01:00.001-04:00

I think I may have finally solved my problem of how to play my digital video files on my TV set. I'd tried transcoding and burning DVDs (too slow) and was more recently using a 50' RCA cable from the TV-out video card on my old XP PC (a hassle). Last week I purchased a Philips DVP3140 DVD player. The electronics manufacturers had solved my problem for me while I wasn't watching. This flimsy little thing will play my AVI and WMV files without transcoding, which allows me to clean them off my hard drive and watch them on my TV set. It turns out that was all I needed.

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

2007-08-19T13:23:00.000-04:00

I like Richard K. Morgan's style. He writes grown-up escapist science fiction with a few big ideas worked in. It's mostly about style, though. With Thirteen, he returns to a gritty near future similar to that of Morgan's Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies. Morgan's previous novel, Market Forces, was a nearer-future departure from this formula and wasn't as successful. I was glad to see him returning to what he does best.

The Big Idea in Thirteen is that late-21st-century experimentation with the human genome has revealed a previously-extinct strain of humanity. These so-called variant thirteens happen to be just the sort of nonconformist amoral badasses that Morgan loves to write about (see Takeshi Kovacs.) Our new protagonist is a thirteen named Carl Marsalis. The future populace is so distrustful of thirteens that they have all been interned into camps or exiled to Mars. Marsalis is the rare thirteen who is allowed to travel freely on Earth, but only because his business is hunting down renegade thirteens and, for the most part, killing them.

Morgan, who is British, has fun describing the descent of most of the U.S. into a third-world fundamentalist backwater that outsiders refer to as Jesusland. There are some plausible descriptions of the terraforming and colonization of Mars. SF fans yawn -- nothing groundbreaking here. But this is about style, remember? Morgan's characters are too busy screwing and killing one another to spend much time yakking about his ideas. It's beach reading for the Wired set, and it does the trick nicely.