Saturday, April 15, 2006
Well It's Been A Long Time But Life Sometimes Catches Up With You
It's been a long time since I've put in an entry. Contrary to some rumors, my absence is wholly unrelated to the Stanley Cup. (Are they playing the Stanley Cup Playoffs yet?), I haven't been abducted by aliens, nor have I done the wise thing and given up on blogging. All I can say is that life sometimes catches up and more mundane things have to be attended to. In this case the other things involve doing research for a new car, (since bought) getting details ironed out about taxes (since filed), and learning all the ends and outs about scooter lifts: interior-exterior, powered-manual, (still to be determined).
In addition to these amazingly exciting activities, I've been catching up on reading. Two books, not surprisingly, are about Iraq. The third, more surprisingly is about the bible.
The first book, America at the crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, is Francis Fukuyama's look at the neoconservative movement. Fukuyama's book takes both a historical and analytical look at the neoconservative political movement and declares it a suicide. Fukuyama, an academician type, is not an academician type writer, meaning, reading this book was an absolute joy, not a trudge through deep swamp. It's clean, concise and refreshing short--and yet the analysis is subtle. I'd highly recommend it.
The second book, Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon (free registration required NYTimes), of the New York Times, and General Bernard E. Trainor, ret. USMC. Cobra II is a dense book, looking into every nook and cranny of the Iraq invasion. From it's planning to execution and the beginning of the occupation. After reading this book you will fully understand why US Generals are calling for the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld. It's another book I'd highly recommend.
The third book, Misquoting Jesus, is a book by Bart D. Ehrman. Bart Ehrman, chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman's history is rather fascinating, he started out as a biblical literalist that started his religious education at strongly fundamentalist educational institutions. He learned Greek, Latin and various other languages necessary to read the ancient text, and discovered much to his surprise that 1) no one has the original text and 2) the text we do have suffers from mistranslations, changes, edits and errors. Ehrman's conclusion? If there was an original text of the bible, we sure in the world don't know what it is now and really have no means of discovering it. Ehrman is now an agnostic. Read the book if you have a chance, you're unlikely to be disappointed.
I will be blogging more in the near future and I will probably touch on energy policy and transportation policy a bit more in the future. The car buying decision forced me to do research on those issues *grin*
In addition to these amazingly exciting activities, I've been catching up on reading. Two books, not surprisingly, are about Iraq. The third, more surprisingly is about the bible.
The first book, America at the crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, is Francis Fukuyama's look at the neoconservative movement. Fukuyama's book takes both a historical and analytical look at the neoconservative political movement and declares it a suicide. Fukuyama, an academician type, is not an academician type writer, meaning, reading this book was an absolute joy, not a trudge through deep swamp. It's clean, concise and refreshing short--and yet the analysis is subtle. I'd highly recommend it.
The second book, Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon (free registration required NYTimes), of the New York Times, and General Bernard E. Trainor, ret. USMC. Cobra II is a dense book, looking into every nook and cranny of the Iraq invasion. From it's planning to execution and the beginning of the occupation. After reading this book you will fully understand why US Generals are calling for the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld. It's another book I'd highly recommend.
The third book, Misquoting Jesus, is a book by Bart D. Ehrman. Bart Ehrman, chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman's history is rather fascinating, he started out as a biblical literalist that started his religious education at strongly fundamentalist educational institutions. He learned Greek, Latin and various other languages necessary to read the ancient text, and discovered much to his surprise that 1) no one has the original text and 2) the text we do have suffers from mistranslations, changes, edits and errors. Ehrman's conclusion? If there was an original text of the bible, we sure in the world don't know what it is now and really have no means of discovering it. Ehrman is now an agnostic. Read the book if you have a chance, you're unlikely to be disappointed.
I will be blogging more in the near future and I will probably touch on energy policy and transportation policy a bit more in the future. The car buying decision forced me to do research on those issues *grin*
# posted by Strange Anomaly : 10:23 AM
