March 31, 2004

Sony Cybershot-U digital camera

Two things happened that turned me into a shutterbug. Cameras became digital, which made it fun to take and process photographs, and they got small, which made them easy to carry at all times. I don't go anywhere without my $200 Sony Cybershot-U, a two-Megapixel camera that's as long as a credit card, and about 3/4 the width. It was great to have when I was in the South Pacific last year.

There's nothing fancy about this camera - no zoom, no microphone, no firewire, no MP3 player, but the pictures turn out nice and it's easy to use. I use iPhoto, and it has no problem recognizing and importing photos from the camera.

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March 26, 2004

Full Moon, by Michael Light

To create this book of 130 photographs chronicling a manned mission to the Moon, Michael Light went through over 30,000 NASA photos. He scanned the actual film used by the astronauts, and the resulting photographs are stunning. I remember the first manned moon landing, and nearly 40 years later it remains one of the most exciting things I've ever experienced. I think this book conveys some of that excitement to my six-year-old daughter, who will probably never get to witness a live Moon landing.

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March 25, 2004

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson manages to make any subject he cares to write about interesting, and I'll happily follow him wherever his mind leads us. This time Bryson decided to write about "nearly everything." His definition of "nearly everything" is the scientific history of the universe (especially our planet) and the history of scientific discovery.

If that sounds like an awful lot for one book to hold, you're right, but Bryson is very good at picking out the most interesting bits. His minibiographies on the lives of scientists are great ways to feel the pulse of different eras, and his adjective-laden descriptions of potential cataclysmic fates for our planet gave me the spooks like no horror movie I've seen.

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March 24, 2004

Amazon's New Comics and Graphic Novels store

Amazon has announced a new section that deals with comics and graphic novels. This is great news. I don't see much in the way of real comics, though. They are dealing mostly in anthologies. Link

March 22, 2004

The Eudaemonic Pie, by Thomas A. Bass

After reading my review of Bringing Down the House, Madpro pal Stefan Jones reminded me about a similar book called The Eudaemonic Pie, by Thomas A. Bass, describing it as "Chaos theory wonks build shoes with computers hidden in them to predict roulette wheel results. Highly recommended." I agree. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it being deeper and more thought-provoking than Bringing Down the House. Buy from Amazon

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Richard Ferber

I was trying to think about what book has had the greatest effect on my life. I thought about books I'd read in college that seemed to carry a lot of philosophical weight at the time I'd read them, and then seemed like junk upon re-reading them later, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or The Fountainhead. So, I asked myself again, what book has really changed my life? Then it hit me: it was, without a doubt, Richard Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems.

We have two kids, one age six, the other 11 months. When our six year old was a baby, we put her to sleep by holding her and rocking her. She would wake up every couple of hours, crying for us to come back and rescue her. We finally gave up and let her sleep with us. It was the only way we could get any sleep. To this day, she demands that one of us crawls into bed with her until she falls asleep. (Fortunately, she no longer wakes up in the middle of the night crying for us.)

When we had our other daughter, she would cry for us every hour at night. The whole family was exhausted from the ordeal. Would we have to suffer this ordeal for three more years?

Some friends told us to "Ferberize" her and we'd all be able to sleep soundly. We were skeptical, but we bought the book and followed the instructions faithfully. In a nutshell, Ferberization entails putting your baby in her crib, kissing her goodnight and walking out of the room. She'll cry, of course. After five minutes, you walk in and reassure her, then walk out again. This time you wait ten minutes. You repeat this, adding five minutes between return visits. It sounds cruel. As a parent, your instinct is to run to your baby as soon as she starts crying. But in this case, not following you instincts is the best course of action. It took exactly two nights to Ferberize our baby. She has learned to fall asleep on her own, and when she wakes up at night, she knows how to fall back asleep on her own. Best of all, she is happy, confident, and well-rested. And so are we. We have our nights, and as a result, our days back. Truly a life-changing book.

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March 20, 2004

Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War

Uncovered is a documentary about the way the White House distorted the truth in an attempt sell the American public and the rest of the world on its pre-emptive war on Iraq. I already thought that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of that gang were being sneaky about it, but this DVD nailed it for for me. The reason Uncovered is so persuasive is that the director wisely chose to interview only "insiders" for the documentary -- CIA analysts, weapons investigators, Pentagon officials, and former White House counsels. Their comments on the administration's exagerations and spin are devastating. According to the director, even people who support the war in Iraq become angry after watching Uncovered, because it exposes the Bush administration as a pack of thoroughly corrupt liars. Buy from Amazon

March 19, 2004

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

This is a story about a group of MIT students who came up with a system to win lots of money at the blackjack tables. These well-educated Asian American kids used a standard card counting system to do it, but the real genius in their system was employing confederates to throw off the ever-vigilant security teams that casinos hire to catch card counters. Ben Mezrich's story has all the makings of a Hollywood thriller, complete with sleazy casino bosses, wild parties, and the consequences of living a double life. Buy from Amazon

March 18, 2004

Laid Bare, by John Gilmore

If you're interested in the fast crowd Hollywood scene and music from the 1960s, you'll love Laid Bare. This true (almost too good to be true) memoir, written in a highly engaging style by a former bit actor who hung out with likes of Janis Joplin, James Dean, Hank Williams, Errol Flynn, Lenny Bruce, Ed Wood, Jr., and Vampira, is loaded with juicy sleazy anecdotes about youth-culture heroes gone wild. At the same time, Laid Bare really gave me a feeling for what things were like for the drug-eating, fast-driving, young and beautiful scenesters of the 60s. Buy from Amazon

March 12, 2004

Illustration Magazine

I like magazine, book, and ephemera illustrations from the 1920s - 1960s. The artists really had their technical chops down, and had wonderful imaginations as well. Illustration Magazine is the best place to read about these illustrators and see their work showcased in a lovingly-produced format. A few issues back, they profiled Frank Frazetta, as well as Norm Saunders, the guy who painted the lurid Mar Attacks bubblegum cards. mars attacks (You can buy most back issues, including the one featuring Norm Saunders and Frank Frazetta, from the magazine.)

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March 11, 2004

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horiwitz

Blue Latitudes is author Tony Horiwitz's modern-day re-exploration of the voyages Captain Cook took in the 18th century. He starts by going out to sea as a crewmember aboard a replica of Cook's ship, where he has to deal with extreme seasickness, fear of heights (any secret desire I may have had to climb a 100-foot mast that's rocking back and forth was killed by reading this chapter) and sleepless nights. He travels on to Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii, Alaska, Tonga, and even England, mingling with the locals and trying to figure out what kind of influence Cook had on them. Horowitz is a natural when it comes to sniffing out the local color and getting to the heart of each country's culture. What a great gig! Buy Blue Latitudes from Amazon.

March 10, 2004

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man, by David Maurer

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man is the book that inspired the the movie, The Sting. The book's author, David Maurer, was a linguist who studied the jargon of different professions. He was so captivated by the charm of con men (who befriended him and opened up to him completely), he decided to write a whole book about their lives and their ruses. If you've seen The Sting, then you have the basic idea of how a big con works. It's basically a theatrical production with elaborate sets and costumed actors for an audience of one. But the audience member thinks the production is real, and ends up losing his life savings by the time the curtain closes. The two most surprising things I learned from reading this book: one, the con men, who work so hard to set up a con and take the mark's money, usually blow their cut immediately by gambling it away, and two, the victims of cons often return to the con men to get fleeced again, even when they know they were conned the first time. Buy The Big Con from Amazon

March 09, 2004

Music to Make Models By, by The Silly Surfers

In the mid-60s, Weird-Ohs were the cool toys for boys. These freaky monster men, with hanging tongues and bloodshot eyes, rode surfboards and drove cars with gearshifts that stuck way out of the car. You could buy Weird-Ohs as ready-made toys, or as glue-together models. I remember the older brothers of my friends having shelves full of assembled Weird-Oh models. I wonder how many of them had this album from 1964, called "Music to Make Models By." This collection of innocuous novelty surf and drag racing songs would certainly be good accompaniment to model making. It's also great for review writing. Free MP3s Link

March 07, 2004

Two Zombies Later

Two Zombies Later is a 2-CD set of a modern "oddio" music, a genre that encompasses all sorts of oddball music -- lounge novelty tunes, obscure soundtracks, exotica, space age pop, moog music, etc. The selection here, by various artists, is great, and best of all, you can download all 30+ songs plus the beautiful art for the discs and covers for free. And it's even legal, so the RIAA won't be able to sue the pants off you. Link

March 06, 2004

Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt

Joe Matt has been writing and illustrating his cartoon biography for over a decade. I was hooked the instant I started reading his work, which was orginally published as a comic series by Drawn & Quarterly. Matt is very open about his idiosyncracies -- his love of porn videos, his habit of urinating into jars so he does't have to talk to his housemates, his love-hate relationship with fellow Canadian comic book artists Chester Brown (Yummy Fur) and Seth (Palookaville), his nearly self-destructive parsimony. He lives a pretty miserable life, it seems, but it makes for fascinating reading. I also like Matt's clean drawing line; he's quite an accomplished artist. This anthology, titled Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt, is a fine introduction to his work.

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March 05, 2004

Walt Disney Treasures -- Silly Symphonies

This two DVD set of 31 Disney shorts (over five hour's worth of cartoons) is a cornucopia of wonderful storytelling and animation, from Ub Iwerk's "Skeleton Dance" (a black and white clasiic in which skeletons in a graveyard play on each other like xylophones and rearrange their bones in grotesque forms) to the Academy Award winning "The Old Mill."

These cartoons are the polar opposite of The Simpsons -- if you turned the sound off on The Simpsons, you wouldn't understand what was happening. But you could turn the sound off on a Silly Symphony short and have no problem figuring out what was going on, thanks to the activity, gags, and pantomime. We've watched these cartoons dozens of times and we're still not tired of them.

Includes some interesting supplemental material, such as commentary by Leonard Maltin and Disney animation documentaries.

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March 04, 2004

Ed Emberly's Drawing Book of Animals

Ed Emberly's Drawing Book of Animals Artist Ed Emberly has written a bunch of instructional drawing books for kids. His Drawing Book of Animals is one of my favorites. He provides step by step instructions on how to use simple shapes to draw very cute animals. My six-year-old daughter and I have a great time at the kitchen table using this book, some color pens, and a stack of cheap paper.

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March 03, 2004

You Can't Win

You Can't Win is the utterly compelling autobiography of Jack Black, a thief and a hobo who grew up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I've never read a better book about the criminal underclass. Black's unsentimental writing style is superb. His descriptions of how he cracked safes, sneaked into houses to steal money from under the pillows of snoring victims, and survived miserable prison experiences had me turning the pages wide-eyed in bed at 2 a.m.Black never tries to make you feel sorry for him, and he greatly regrets his crimes (in his later years he became the librarian for a San Francisco newspaper), but you get the sense he enjoyed the thrills and risks of being a crook during the turn of the century. I felt kind of guilty for rooting him on as he broke all kinds of laws, but he's such a wonderful storyteller and a well-mannered crook I couldn't hellp myself.William Burroughs, who wrote the introduction to the latest edition, says You Can't Win is his favorite book. If you've read Junky, it's easy to see that Burrough's writing style was greatly influenced by Black's.

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March 02, 2004

When the Tripods Came/ The White Mountains/ The City of Gold and Lead/ The Pool of Fire

My sixth grade teacher read this science fiction trilogy (The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire) to our class and it had a profound influence on me. I was thrilled and mesmerized, and when I reread it recently, I was even more impressed.

The story, written by John Christopher in the late '60s, takes place in the future, after giant creatures (called Tripods) have colonized Earth and are using people as work animals. When children reach a certain age (I think it's 10), the creatures surgically attach a cap to their heads, rendering them docile, uncreative, and unquestioningly obedient to the tripods. People live like they did in the 18th century before the industrial revolution. The populace has even come to believe that capping is a good idea (because their thinking is too muddled to really question anything) and have developed a celebratory ritual around capping.

But when the hero of the trilogy gets "capped," the mechanism that's supposed to make him obedient doesn't work, so he is able to clearly see that people are slaves to the cruel aliens. He also learns that there are others like him, and they set out on a journey that they hope will take them to a place where the Tripods don't exist.

You can read these books as metaphor for cultural brainwashing that comes with adulthood, or as straight adventure, or a combination of both. Either way, the series makes for great reading. I just learned that there's a relatively new fourth book in the series, which is a prequel to the trilogy.

Buy from Amazon (ignore the hideous cover art)

March 01, 2004

Understanding Physics by Isaac Asimov

I took a lot of physics classes in college, but I never had a good understanding of the subject until I read Asimov's "Understanding Physics." This edition (which is out of print, but can be purchased for as little as $1.95 from Amazon's marketplace) is an anthology of three volumes that were previously published seperately: "Motion, Sound & Heat," "Light, Magnetism & Electricity," and "The Electron, Proton & Neutron." Yes, there are formulas in here, but they aren't difficult, and on the whole, this 800-page book is very readable. I've never been a big fan of Asimov's fiction, but he is a terrific science teacher. He turned on a lot of stubborn light switches in my head (like the one that explains "escape velocity').
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Give 'Em Enough Rope by The Clash

On one of the music mailing lists I subscribe to, a British DJ reported that he's been spinning discs for people's 50th birthday parties. He writes: "They love their Punk Rock, the last one I did there was a bunch of BBC middle managers leaping around to the Pistols and the Clash. That's your Punk Rock demographic." I'm not 50 yet, but I'm definitely in the Punk Rock demogrqphic. I've been revisiting my punk rock collection, and one album that still sounds fresh is The Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope. Following their raw and wonderful debut album, Give 'Em Enough Rope is more polished, yet more energetic than the their first. From the first drum bang of "Safe European Home," this album tells me more about the punk era than anything else, including the Sex Pistols (which were really a fake band like the Monkees, assembled by Malcom McLaren after he saw the first punk bands from New York like Richard Hell & the Voidoids and The Ramones). Give 'Em Enough Rope may not be as artistic as The Clash's follow-up album, London Calling, but to me, it's the zenith of punk.
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