Update: Deb replies, in the comments!

Update: Both Lars and
Phil have responded as well. And Lars is right; I said I’d be a book by Wodehouse, and The Most of P.G. Wodehouse is indeed the right one. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Ian didn’t actually officially pass this along to me, but what the heck–my ears were burning anyway.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I doubt my memory’s up to it, but I think it would have to be something by P.G. Wodehouse–perfect silliness needs to be remembered just as much as Tolstoy and company. As to which…oh, I’d probably pick whichever book contains “Uncle Fred Flits By”.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

If by “crush” you mean, well, a crush, then I guess I have to say no. Though I do like seeing the hero get the girl.

On the other hand, the last time I got a crush on anyone was so long ago that it’s possible my memory isn’t to be trusted.

The last book you bought is:

Three: American Caesar, How Great Generals Win, and A History of Warfare. Don’t ask me why. I’ve read the middle of the three so far, and it was quite good.

The last book you read:

It depends on the meaning of the word “read”. I finished listening to John Cleese’s outstanding recording of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters on my walk this afternoon; and last night I finished reading Ngaio Marsh’s mystery Death of a Fool, which invokes the truly weird world of Morris dancing. I should have reviews of both up in a couple of days.

What are you currently reading?

I usually have several books in various stages of completion; but in fact the only book that’s really in play at the moment is called Echoes of Armageddon, 1914-1918, by a gentleman named B. Cory Kilvert, Jr. It’s about eight British soldiers who died in the trenches and fields during WW I. Kilvert started with eight medals (he doesn’t say where he got them) and spent twenty years tracing the men who were originally awarded them. More on that when I finish it.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

I hate this question; I have trouble limiting myself to five books for a week-long business trip, even though I know I’ll probably go book-shopping while I’m away. But let’s see.

1. The Bible. A deserted island sounds better than a monastery for getting back to basics.
2. The Lord of the Rings. If I’m getting back to basics, I might as well get back to basics.
3. The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant. It’s too damn long, and once he gets to the Renaissance Durant drops so many names per paragraph you’d think he was a social climber, but I confess I never finished the series. As Ian notes, this is cheating; oh well.
4. Ian suggests a Mark Twain collection; I’d agree, so long as it includes Life along the Mississippi and Roughing It.
5. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Perhaps with lots of time to read and nothing else to do, I’d actually take the time to learn to enjoy poetry.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why:

Deb English. Because she hasn’t sent me any reviews, or even a letter, in far too long, and it’s time she started pulling her weight again. Besides, I’m curious what her answers would be.

Lars Walker. Becausing I’m enjoying his blog posts.

And finally, Phil Wade, because after all Lars is posting to Phil’s blog.

The April issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line, with reviews by Craig Clarke and me. Enjoy!

This is latest of King’s Mary Russell mysteries to come out in paperback,
and it’s a worthy addition to the series. More a thriller than a
mystery, it takes Russell and Holmes to India to look for a missing
British agent named Kimball O’Hara. Kipling fans will recognize O’Hara
as the young hero of Kipling’s novel Kim, though by the time
of this story he’s a full-grown man.

The title of the book is a reference to the “Great Game”–a cold war of
espionage, bribery, and dirty tricks between Russia and England that
spanned much of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. The
nature of this war is simply put: England had India, with its wealth and
warm water ports, and Russia wanted it.

In two ways, the book’s title is a bit of wishful thinking on King’s
part. First, the Great Game was really pretty much over by the time
Russell and Holmes are supposed to have arrived in India, a few years
after WWI; but I suppose we can’t blame her for that. More seriously,
most of the action of the Great Game took place not in India but in the
shadowy regions to the North–in Tibet, in Afghanistan, and in that broad
stretch of Centra Asia known variously as High Tartary, Chinese
Turkestan, and Sinkiang or Xinjiang (take your pick).

Poetic license to the side, I must say that King did her homework. She does an
excellent job of capturing the feel and atmosphere of the latter days of
the Raj, especially as regards the odd sport of pig-sticking (she draws
on a treatise written by Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, of
all unlikely people); she also draws extensively from
Peter Hopkirk’s excellent history The Great Game,
which I highly recommend. Follow the link for our list of Hopkirk’s
books–interestingly, it’s the #1 Google hit for Peter Hopkirk. Just goes
to show, Hopkirk’s not nearly as well known as he should be.

Bottom-line: I liked it.

I hadn’t intended to post anything until after Easter; however, I stumbled on something pretty cool this evening. My old friend Rick Saenz and his son have spent that last several years learning to play and sing bluegrass music. They’ve gone to bluegrass camps and open-mikes and workshops, they’ve taken lessons, they’ve played gigs with other bands and by themselves, and they’ve practiced an awful lot; Rick’s written extensively about the whole process, and it’s been fascinating to watch. From a distance, mind you; I’m in California and they are in Tennessee and so I’ve never actually heard them perform.

So yesterday the two of them recorded fourteen tracks, and today Rick put the MP3’s up on the web. Bluegrass isn’t my usual cup of tea, not that I know anything about it; and anyway I gather that Rick and Chris’s flavor of bluegrass is anything but mainstream, looking back to the 30’s and 40’s. But I have to say, they sound really good. You can find the tracks here. Of the ones I’ve listened to, I recommend “This Weary Heart You Stole Away” and “Don’t Cheat in Our Home Town”.

Last December, scientists from the Hawaii Underwater Research Lab discovered the sunken hulk of a seaplane called the Marshall Mars, one of six giant seaplanes built for the U.S. Navy by the Martin Corporation during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser responded to fears of Japanese submarines preying on American shipping by suggesting that his shipyards turn out a fleet of flying boats. He eventually teamed up with Howard Hughes to build the Spruce Goose. The Martin Corporation ran with the same idea, eventually producing one of the largest planes ever built, a giant transport plane called the Martin Mars. The U.S. Navy bought six of them, named them after island chains, and used them throughout the war.

Two of the six planes–the Marshall Mars and the original Hawaii Mars–were destroyed during test flights; the former caught fire, and the latter crashed on landing. The remaining four planes– the Philippine Mars, the Marianas Mars, the Caroline Mars, and the Hawaii Mars 2 served valiantly through the end of the war and after, until they were retired by the Navy in 1956. At some during his Navy service my father flew on either the Hawaii Mars 2 or the Philippine Mars, possibly more than once (my memory is hazy).

On retirement, the four planes were purchased by a Canadian firm, Forest Industries, and converted for use as flying tankers, for fighting forest fires. By 1962 the Caroline Mars and the Marianas Mars had been lost, one in a crash and the other in a typhoon, but the other two continued in service.

And so it was that many years later, on a family vacation to Canada in the early 1970’s, we visited a place called Sprout Lake (which rhymes with “sprote”, not with “sprout”). And there, anchored in the middle of the lake, my father was bemused to see the Hawaii Mars 2 and Philippine Mars of familiar memory. We stayed at the lake for about a week, if memory serves, and more than once we took a row boat with an outboard motor around and about the giant planes. And each afternoon one of the planes would take off with a full load of water, circle the lake, and then dump the load right in the middle. It was an amazing sight.

The truly amazing thing, though, is that these two planes are still flying, and still getting the job done. Click on the link to see more–and when you look at the pictures and videos, remind yourself that these beasts have a wing span of 200 feet.

Whilst I was at the bookstore some weeks ago I decided, for some
unaccountable reason, that I wanted to learn more about military
strategy. I cast about to see if I could find something like
Military Strategy for Dummies or
Warfare for the Compleat Idiot, but those titles were
conspicuously lacking. This book doesn’t quite meet that need, but it
goes part of the way and it was an interesting read besides.

Alexander begins by observing that “The rules of war are simple but
seldom followed,” and that attacking a prepared position usually results
in slaughter for the attackers. Instead, “great generals strike
where they are least expected against opposition that is weak and
disorganized.” The remainder of the book is a series of
case studies of great generals and how they won their greatest battles:
How Hannibal Barca won at Cannae and how his nemesis Scipio Africanus
finally defeated him. How Genghis Khan and his generals conquered the
geographically largest empire the world has ever seen. How Napoleon
Bonaparte won his early battles. How Stonewall Jackson used his small
force to neutralize far larger Union forces. How William T. Sherman won
the Civil War by doing in the South what Stonewall Jackson wanted to
do in the North, had he not been killed in battle. How Sir Edmund Allenby
stopped the Germans in the Middle East, with a little help from T.E.
Lawrence and his Arabs. How Mao Zedong led the Red Army during the
Long March. How Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein, and Erwin
Rommel realized what tanks were really good for, and the use they made
of them. How Douglas MacArthur won at Inchon and why he failed
spectacularly afterwards.

The book ends with a summary of the principles discussed throughout the
book:

• Operate on the line of least expectation and least resistance. Figure
  out where the enemy doesn’t expect you to go–and go that way. France
  fell so quickly at the beginning of WWII because no one thought the
  Germans could bring tanks through the forest of Ardennes.

• Maneuver to the rear of the enemy. Your enemy’s morale will suffer
  when he realizes that you’re sitting across his supply lines; and if
  he’s too far from home his army might just disintegrate. That’s what
  happened to the North Korean army in South Korea after MacArthur’s
  invasion of Inchon.

• Occupy the central position. That is, if your enemy has two forces,
  maneuver to a point directly between them. This ensures that you can
  deal with either one before the other joins with it, thus “defeating
  the enemy in detail”. Napoleon was a master at this in his early
  days; once he became emperor, though, he lost his subtlety and tried
  to win all his battles with brute force.

• Follow a “plan with branches”. Uncertainty and misdirection are your
  allies. Therefore, maneuver in two or more columns, keeping the columns
  far enough apart that the enemy can’t guess what your true objective is, but
  close enough together that they can support each other at need. The
  enemy won’t know what to defend, and will likely end up dividing his
  forces to defend a number of spots. No less than three times during Sherman’s
  march north from Atlanta the Confederates split their forces between
  the two cities his columns appeared to be approaching; and in each case
  Sherman marched his troops right through the middle and captured a
  third, undefended city.

• Don’t attack prepared and well-defended positions. Instead, make the
  enemy leave their positions and come to you. Scipio Africanus conquered
  Carthage not by a frontal assault on the city, but by marching into and
  burning the city’s agricultural hinterland. The Carthaginian army was
  forced to follow after, or else the city would starve.

• Don’t get pinned down in fortifications. If you’re holed up in a fort,
  you’re effectively out of the battle.

• Where the enemy’s army isn’t is often more important than
  where it is.

All in all it’s a fascinating book, and for my purposes useful as well.
I recommend it.

My friend Rick Saenz has recently posted quite a few thought-provoking essays about “living the simple life“; I commend them to you.

Rich reminds me of something Uncle Screwtape says to his nephew Wormwood, which unfortunately I cannot quote because my copy of The Screwtape Letters has wandered off. Screwtape says, in effect, that there was a time when men knew fairly well whether a thing was true or not; and that if you proved to them that they were mistaken, they would change both their beliefs and their behavior accordingly. I think Rick exemplifies that latter phrase better than anyone I know–he’s changed his beliefs and his behavior both in the time that I’ve known him several times, and has pursued the logical end of his beliefs with vigor and apparent fearlessness. He’s ended in a place that might seem alien to many of us, but I’ve learned never to discount the things he finds important.

Over the last few years, Rick and his family have sought the simple life by moving to the country and starting a family business–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But where Rick’s been something of a rolling stone, I’m a well-rooted tree, both in my home (I’m raising my four children in the house in which my parents raised me and my three siblings) and my career (I’ve been at JPL for almost two decades). The challenge for me, then, is how to seek the simple life here, in my current home, in my current job, without seeking more fertile soil elsewhere. On the other hand, though it hasn’t generally been my goal to lead a simple life many of the things Rick says resonate with things that we’re already doing–or, as it might be, not doing. I’m curious to discover the extent to which I’m already leading a simple life. I’ve clearly got some thinking to do.

This is a “country” mystery; that is, it’s similar to a country house
mystery except that the venue has expanded to include an entire
neighborhood and all of its colorful characters. A resident is killed
while angling in the stream and is found dead with another man’s catch
at his feet. Inspector Alleyn is called in by the local Lady of the Manor
to trawl through the red herrings.

I’m normally very fond of Marsh’s work, but I’m afraid I thought this one
a bit tedious. Possibly I just wasn’t in the proper mood for it; but on
the other hand, I seem to recall thinking it tedious the first time I
read it as well. The ending surprised me, though, and there are some
memorable characters, so it wasn’t a total loss. I especially liked
Nurse Kettle, who reminds me of a recorder player I know.

This fascinating book is a new translation of Plato’s dialogues, a
translation done with two objects in mind. The first was to convey the
spice of the original Greek text. Apparently the first English
translations of Plato were done in a polite and bowdlerizing era, whereas the Greek
text was rather less polite and occasionally outright lewd. The second
was to condense Plato’s more elaborate rhetorical flights so as to make
his philosophical arguments plain and easy to follow without losing
any essential nuances.

I predict that this book is going to start a fairly large number of
arguments. In the first place, I rather expect it will
disjoint the noses of quite a few academic purists. I’m sure that many
philosophy departments will ring with the question, “Have you seen the
new Reader’s Digest version of Plato?” accompanied by snickers and
giggles.

The larger number of arguments, though, will be among the groups of
people who actually read the book. Now, I have to preface the following
remarks by saying that I am not a philosophy major, nor do I speak
classical Greek, nor have I read all that much Plato in English
translation (and that little almost twenty-five years ago). In short,
I am no judge of whether Quincy’s condensation is as faithful and nuanced
as he claims. On the other hand, I think I can fairly say that it makes
for good reading. In the dialogs that I’ve read so far (Lysis,
Euthyphro, Crito, Apology, Phaedo, and
Gorgias) I found myself following Plato’s arguments without the
least bit of difficulty and finding lots of spots where I wanted to argue
with him. What’s not to like?

And that’s why I think the book will start lots of arguments. Because
Plato’s line of reasoning is so clearly presented, it becomes easier
to take exception with it. And as different readers are likely to
take exception to different parts, I’d expect discussion to flow fast
and furious. In the preface, Quincy notes that he’s taught from this
translation, and “only in my Plato class have I had to break up a
fistfight between students.” I expect a book club could have great fun
with it.

The dialogs are presented in order of composition; each begins with
a historical note (sometimes quite lengthy) about the situation in
Athens at the time the dialog supposedly takes place. These are also
likely to raise eyebrows, at least for those familiar with Plato and
Socrates and not with wider Greek history. We’re accustomed to thinking
of Plato and Socrates as two of the “good guys”; like almost all
human beings, their actual conduct was less than saintly.

Although Quincy claims that his condensed translation captures every
important nuance of the original Greek text, he is quick to point out that
this book is not intended to replace standard translations of Plato’s
work, but rather is intended to be an aid to understanding them. In
fact, he recommends reading each dialog at least three times: first in a
full translation, then in his condensed translation, and then in the full
translation once more. For philosophy students I suspect that this is
wise council; for the generally curious reader, though,
Plato Unmasked stands perfectly well on its own.

Part of my doctor’s recent prescription, co-equal with the diet, is the mandate to go walking for at least 30 minutes a day and to be more active in general. This is a bit difficult, as I’m sedentary by nature and don’t much care for going outside and working up a sweat. I dislike jogging, running, hiking, football, basketball, and most other sports. Tennis requires a partner, and anyway I’m no good at it. Golf, well, golf is a possibility, but it’s also expensive. Going out for a walk is cheaper, and I don’t need to keep score.

There is, however, one kind of physical activity (other than walking) which historically I’ve actually enjoyed, and that’s rollerskating. Forget skating rinks–what you need for good skating is a few miles of reasonably smooth, sparsely populated concrete. Rinks are too crowded, and before you can build up any speed you have to turn. But a long concrete path is heaven. Back when I was in high school I spent most summers in Long Beach, which has many suitable areas; I had a pair of rollerskates and skated all over the place just for fun.

I should point out that this was before the in-line craze; my skates were the old-fashioned kind, with four wide eurethane wheels in a rectangular pattern. I gather they call them “quads” these days. About eight years ago, during an earlier attempt to be more active, I hearkened back to those glory days of yesteryear and decided to try skating again. I wanted to get a pair of quads, but all I could find for sale were inline skates, so that’s what I got.

I hated them. I practiced several times a week for several months, and never got comfortable with them. And eventually, of course, they got put away and never used again. But thanks to my doctor the issue arose once again, and this time I found that things were a bit different. I still hated my inline skates. I still couldn’t locate a store in my area that sells quads. But I found any number of stores on-line that sell them, in a wide range of styles and prices. This was food for thought.

So today my family sallied forth to try an experiment–we went to a roller rink about forty minutes from our house, and rented skates for everyone in the family but the baby. Our goals were two: to see if Jane and I could still skate, and to see how well the kids did on skates. The results were mixed. Jane and I can still skate, though it took me a couple of turns around the rink to be comfortable on skates again. The kids, well, the kids need practice. Lots of practice. LOTS of practice. They need practice just to be able to practice. But if they can figure it out, we could have some outstanding family outings.

So it’s likely that we’ll be investing in skates, so the kids can practice in the backyard. And then, who knows–perhaps we’ll take a drive down to Long Beach and explore the waterfront.