Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Reviews

Review – Heavy Metal Inspired Beer

Iron Maiden Trooper

I picked it up despite its $5.99/can sticker price mostly due to my being a sucker for good marketing. Apparently, Bruce Dickinson happens to be an “ale enthusiast.” At least this is the message listed on the can. I interpret that as Bruce is really an aging 1980’s, metal-god who happens to be British. I am absolutely shocked–SHOCKED–to find out he drinks a lot of beer. I went through my iTunes playlist of other Maiden songs while I tried this out. In the off chance you do not have any Maiden on your playlist, here’s a link.

The song, of course, is about the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War, and the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. I never studied the history behind this war, but skimming the surface appears to be the usual, completely avoidable conflict between European powers. To oversimplify: Russia wanting some control over the area took advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s weakness but for some reason was not the aggressor—that was the Ottomans. The Russians won the first round handily. France joined the conflict over what appeared to be nothing more than pride from losing to the Russians at Waterloo in 1812. Britain engaged in hostilities because of the Ottoman’s strategic location, with the Ottoman regime being their access to India at the time. Further background on this can be found at this link here.

How is the beer? It’s a traditional English Extra Special Bitters (ESB) Ale. If you’re into the ‘proper’ English ales or even understand why our British cousins use that adjective for everything, you’ll probably find this enjoyable. Perhaps not as enjoyable as the music, but I’m pretty ambivalent about the beer. It has the traditional full bodied texture, heavy malt character, and an ever so slight nutty aroma. Some reviews on the internet also claim there is a hint of lemon, but I cannot taste that. It does what it needs to do fairly well, but not enough for Bruce to quit his day job 2.8/5.

AC/DC Rock or Bust

It is easy to lob all the verbal jabs at the Thunder from Down Under for their remarkably simple riffs and their ability to sell millions of albums filled with songs that all sound the same. When you do that for around 30 years, those jabs start to fall short. Their beer in question shares this remarkably simply quality that tastes like every other mass produced pale lager in existence. I will respect the beer more if they manage to sell it in large quantities for as long as they have filled stadiums. Until then, I probably should not have wasted my time mentioning it here 1.9/5.

Megadeth A Tout Le Monde

This one comes with a backstory. At the UFC Fight Night in Phoenix last January I got a sample of this for free. If I bought one I got a ticket to meet Dave Mustaine, who also happened to go to the fight but I imagine got better seats than me. My parents owned a store I worked at while growing up that he frequented. By most accounts, he is a nice guy and I have to agree. Since I met him before I gave the ticket away to a random fan. The beer is a Saison, made by the same brewery that makes Fin de Monde. Given that pedigree, one might assume it is pretty damn good. It does in fact, live up to those expectations.

It has a nice foamy head, that holds up for quite some time. The scent is a sweeter citrus, like tangerine or orange, but it finishes with a muted lemon. I was disappointed they sold it with a twist cap when I bought it at the store but it is hardly a deal breaker.

Way better than the swill AC/DC slapped their name on and held up way better than BJ Penn’s face. Much like the Ottomans, that guy rather handily got his ass kicked.

A Tout Le Monde weighs in at 4.2 /5.

September 23, 2017
Romania Craft Beer: It Is… Alive!

When it comes to imbibing beverages with a non-negligible fraction of ethanol, Romanians can hold their own. In fact, we are known to often go above and beyond the call of duty. According to some ranking or other, we are 5^th in Europe in drinking per capita, equal to the Czech Republic. Off course, keep in mind it is hard to keep track of all the home made hooch in Romania, as a lot consume țuică and wine of their own production. So we might be even higher. Off course the same is probably the case in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania and other countries near the top of the list.

Generic beer picture is generic

Romania was traditionally a wine and plum brandy country, but that changed significantly in the last 50 years. Beer gained a prominent role in the drinking hierarchy, estimated at 80 litres per capita, 7^th in Europe. Sadly, most of this beer is generic and profoundly mediocre, even if drinkable (then again on a hot summer day, most beer is drinkable, even that Bud Light thing you Americans have). The market is dominated by a few brands, which while having some tradition in Romania, are now bottled by large multinationals – SABMiller, Heineken, Carlsberg or Molson Coors- and are almost interchangeable. There is a bit of scandal going on about using corn and special enzymes to speed up the fermentation process, but in the end, there is no proof either practice is harmful, and the result is still mediocre.

But times they are a-changing and the hipster they are a-coming. So Romania, like many a country, the craft beer movement started and it is gaining steam. It was a timid start, mind, as craft beer tends to be on the pricey side and Romanian incomes are still on the scant side. But a start is better than nothing. I want to do a quick overview of the scene here, although I will avoid reviews, tasting notes and the like for this post. This is just the cliff notes, in case any Glib runs into some Romanian Beer – the odds of which are similar to being hit by lightning or election fraud, very low.

The first wave of the “craft” movement started by making standard style beers, slightly better, but not by much. These were Clinica de Bere – which made a beer called Terapia, Nemteana, Zaganul and a few others. They all were fairly similar; they had a pale lager beer, an amber one and usually a German style wheat beer. I rarely drink these, as they do not bring much to the table.

The second wave got into the ale style beers, producing some standard ales and some very hoppy IPAs. Now, while I don’t want to get controversies started (kidding, I totally do, I measure the worth of my posts by the number of comments they get), and while I am reasonably fond of IPAs myself, there is a slight tendency to over-hop these ones. Although the results were pretty good, it was also a way to hide imperfections in the brew. More hops do not automatically a better beer make, just like more oak does not always mean better wine.

Among the more mediocre of this wave is Sikaru. Among the better ones is Ground Zero, which actually produced the first decent Romanian craft beers I have tasted.

Being hipsters, one of the things craft breweries have in common with other countries is the silly… ehm let’s say creative, actually, names. But hey, they try, and that’s not nothing. And I like their beer overall, although the prices tend to be a bit high. They have a good pale ale – Easy Rider, a decent IPA – Morning Glory (which is actually good as a Sunday morning drink), an pretty good imperial IPA – Imperial Fuck (not bad, but I like beer lower in alcohol) and a dark Gypsy Porter (racist? I don’t know). They also have seasonal stuff like autumn spiced ales. Overall, very solid effort for our fair country, and recommended for drinking should you find yourselves on our distant shores.

After the modest success of the second wave, a bit of increased prosperity and the growing fashion in craft whatever, the third wave came with a significant increase in the number of craft brewers. I haven’t had the chance to taste all, but there is some good stuff and an encouraging amount of experimentation.

To highlight one that is worth a taste, Hop Hooligans – stereotypical name, I know, craft beer has almost metal band level of names – were among the first more experimental ones. They had, for example, the first coconut stout which I tasted. Didn’t like it, didn’t expect to, really, but I appreciated the effort. I have yet to gather the courage to try Coconut Vanilla Smoothie IPA, whatever the bloody hell that is. They started with Summer Punch (American pale ale) and Crowd Control (IPA) and branched quite a bit. I won’t list them all, here’s a link for the curious.

Other brewers are Hophead Brewing – again with the hops, that’s original; Perfektum which I found underwhelming compared to others; Amistad Beer and Bereta which I have not tasted yet.

One of the signs the movement is still in its infancy is the low availability of these beers in the market. Except for a handful of bars and one or two hard to reach specialty stores, you will find it difficult to purchase these. Although availability is increasing, it is doing so slowly. But we take what we can get. A lot of bars have deals with Big Beer – either brewers or large distributors -and are generally reluctant to get the craft stuff. But as the customers appear, so will the purveyors.

You can get craft beer in a few places, although mostly by the bottle. I only saw craft on tap in one pub, which is specialized on beer and almost nothing else – I think they have beer and tap water.

I would also find it interesting if the brewers themselves opened tap houses, and if more pubs or restaurants in the country would start brewing their own house beer. Just to have something special for the customers. In the meantime, I just drink the stuff by the bottle, mostly at home, and am pleased that it exists in the first place.

September 21, 2017
Review – Rogue Sriracha Hot Stout

If you ever had Cave Creek Chili beer, you probably agree with the popular opinion that it is dreadful. It didn’t help that when Cave Creek came out with the beer it was several years before novelty beers became more popular. So when I received this as a gag gift at the office Christmas Holiday Party, I decided I would be as objective as possible. After all, I like beer. I like sriracha sauce, the combination should be okay, right?

Let’s start with what is right about this. Sriracha sauce or its parent company Huy Fong foods was founded by David Tran, a Vietnamese Immigrant. Legend has it, the former ARVN officer stowed away on a freighter in the early 1980s. Having survived the trip, he found himself penniless, without hot sauce to his liking, and worst of all in California. He made the sauce first by hand, selling mainly to Chinese restaurants and his company grew from there by word of mouth. The company is named for the freighter that brought him to America.

The beer is not hopped at all as far as I can tell but it does not matter because there is no balance to this at all. This reminds me of the Lindt chocolate bars with chile or those candies from Mexico. There is a sweet full bodied beer behind it but it is overpowered by flaming cock sauce. Mexican Indians drank something similar. Cacao trees are native to the Americas and were believed to be a gift from the Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom. It was originally prepared as a beverage; evidence of fermenting cacao seeds to make alcohol suggests the practice was in place as early as 1400 BC. To this day, it is still prepared as a hot frothy beverage mixed with spices that is believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Powerful, like this guy:

The peppers are somewhat muted by the stout but not nearly enough. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that my ancestors engaged in human sacrifice and cannibalism, but quite frankly, I can only see myself eating this with Thai curry or Pho. Even then I would probably only do it on a dare.

I was at a loss as far as glassware. That Gordon Biersch glass (they call it a Willibrecht) is as neutral a glass that I own but I typically use it for Amber and Pale Ales. IPA, Barley wines, Trappist, and Brown Ales I opt for the Chalice or a Tulip Glass. Lagers go in a mug. Stouts and Porters go in a Pint glass. The spices are so intense, it doesn’t suit any of my glassware.

If you are going to spend the five days following the winter solstice, holed up in your house while waiting for the gods to finish deciding whether to end the world or let you live for another year…you might like this. If you like covering yourself with black mud to celebrate the god’s gift of a new year…you might like this. If you plan on ripping open the sternum of one of your enemies, beheading him and eating his still beating heart…you might like this. If you have achieved a higher plane of consciousness, climbed into your pyramid and flew back to your home planet…you may like this. For the rest of us, I leave it by saying that it is not for everyone. I couldn’t finish the bomber, instead I pulled out a Four Peaks Kiltlifter to round out my evening. 2.2/5.

September 16, 2017
Review – My Antonia Imperial Pilsner by Dogfish Head

I typically don’t buy from this brewery. For some reason they think rather highly of themselves despite the fact they produce exactly one beer, an IPA. They just make it with a varying amount of hops, which means they get to sell them in packs of 4 for what might normally be the price of 12. Another reason I avoid them? They reside in a state whose most famous resident is a bit of a creeper and likely would be considered a racist in a sane world. That day was different and I picked it because Imperial Pilsners aren’t all that common and I remembered a book I read in high school with the same name.

My Antonia is a tale that begins when Jim, the novel’s main character, meets a woman by chance on a train that happened to have a mutual friend named Antonia. Jim and his contact agree to exchange a memoir of sorts of their experiences with Antonia. The novel is intended to be Jim’s submission to his contact on the train. This makes the novel an unusual read because it is not written to follow a discernable plot line, rather it is a collection of “books” from Jim’s point of view. Jim was orphaned at the age of ten and goes to live with his grandparents in Nebraska; the first book begins on a train to Black Hawk which also has the Shimerda’s, a Bohemian immigrant family with a daughter slightly older than Jim, as passengers. It is obvious from the start that Jim has a thing for the Bohemian girl next door.

Her family just so happens to live on the property adjacent to his grandparents. Later, Antonia meets Jim by a creek, where she inquires on several pronunciations to certain words in English. As a token of her appreciation, Antonia offers Jim a gift. The entire scene is broken up when her father awkwardly arrives and gives Jim an inquisitive look. This language barrier comes up repeatedly as a plot device as the Shimerdas are constantly screwed over by another Bohemian immigrant from whom they purchased their property. Jim and his family to their credit were always willing to give them a helping hand. Ironically, Jim’s grandparents had a bilingual farm hand, Otto, who could’ve solved most of these language issues but didn’t even bother because he happens to be Austrian.

I was 14 when I read this book, and even then, I questioned why the author wrote Otto in as a character or even made him a German speaking character at that?

Antonia herself seems almost bipolar, depending on the season. Eventually her father kills himself because nobody in Nebraska wants to hear him play his violin, Jim goes to Harvard and becomes a lawyer. Academics for some reason think of this as a tale of “the west.” It is your typical coming of age story written by an early 20th century feminist.

Predictably, the male protagonist, in a book full of terrible sexual metaphors–fails to score.

At least, I would have remembered if he did, but to be honest I didn’t finish the book. It is unclear whether Jim’s contact on the train sends her manuscript, further giving the reader the impression that Jim is an archetypal beta-male of some sort. I imagine him penning this manuscript for a random lady on a train, reminiscing about a girl he once knew while naked on a cold New England evening. Rewriting it numerous times because of the unreadable black streaks from the tears wiped away from his parchment.

Right…the beer. As you can tell from what is not my photo, is not quite amber in color. It has a nice foamy head with some citrus notes. Saaz hops which are Czech in origin are extremely prevalent, which makes no sense because the girl is not from that region. Wouldn’t Hallertau or any German variety be more appropriate? People notice details like this, Dogfish, and I only grade on a five-point scale. The Saaz hops leave a dry aftertaste on the back of the tongue. I like that they chose to go with the original Czech style, rather than the German styles that Americans are accustomed to, but for the most part these aren’t all that different. The Imperial Pilsner variety is of course similar to any Pilsner style lager, with the obvious contrast of an insane amount of hops tossed in the mix. The hop’s assault on your palate is reminiscent of this Czech SWAT team.

https://youtu.be/ygGEpl0EJRw

This video is fitting because why arm a tactical team only with pistols? Why name a libation like this after a book?

Bottom line, this book sucks and under no circumstances should you take anyone seriously that says otherwise. The beer however, is good. I give it a solid 4.2/5.

September 9, 2017
Roger Waters at the Greensboro, NC, Coliseum

It’s been awhile, and life is changing considerably. Last I wrote was regarding living in a self-sufficient manner on a bit of acreage. Since then, my mom came closer than pretty much ever to meeting eternity (septic shock, recurring cdiff infections, congestive heart failure, and other stuff, all at once). As in was down to 68 lbs (though she is technically a homunculus at 4’9″). We took the first half of her inheritance from her aunt passing, got all of the debt except the mortgage paid off, and figuring this was probably the last time for it, splurged on a summer for myself, my sister, and my nieces to remember while mom is still mobile and, well, alive. I am also moving back to Austin, TX, at the end of this month. The fiancee is graduating in some kind of bio-chem/genetics voodoo Frankensteinian field. The second half of the inheritance goes to fixing both houses so that we can sell them, so my sister can buy a house outright in town, or wherever she wants to.

We rented a beach house for 3 weeks on Tops’l Island (the property we own is just south of Pinehurst, NC, and borders the SW corner of Ft Bragg, so that is our favorite beach to visit) for an obscene amount of money (worth it). We also spent a REALLY obscene amount of money on 5 tickets for the Waters show, as we are all huge Pink Floyd freaks.

Waters is very hit and miss in the post-Floyd days (1985 in ATX on the Pros and Cons Of Hitchhiking tour, the guitarist was not able to do either Gilmour or Clapton, it was out of place for the music), so I researched on YouTube his shows from recent years. I went back to the last stages of the recent Wall tour, and the early shows from this one. He sounded good, the show looked good (as opposed to a few years ago; see the embarrassing performance on YT with Eric Clapton, ’05 or ’06), the production looked like old Floyd Wall-era goodness. I pulled the trigger at $200/ticket. This was the 12-y/o and 8 y/o nieces’ first concert. We were 2/3 of the way back on the first row of arena seats, and I could see directly into the front of house sound/light console area. This being my main focus after the TBI residuals from Iraq finally killed off 30+ years of second-nature guitar playing, which is now like trying to learn Chinese for me.

We got to the show fully aware that we were in a very liberal college town at the center of the BS transgender bathroom wars, and that Waters is pretty much a far left, racist, authoritarian ass. He did a full 3 hour show, with a 15 minute intermission and only 3 songs from his solo album, so about 2.5 hours of Pink Floyd stuff.

Me, the minions, and my sister at intermission…

Light show was top notch, merging in digital effects in camera from the digital video cameras around the stadium with the projected animations from Gerald Scarfe going back all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon tours. The updated pig from the ’77 Animals tour flew around. New footage for Dogs and Sheep of Battersea with a whole mess of pro-Palestinian, pro-BLM, anti-Trump footage projected in for the appropriate songs…

As a side note, though there was the predictable frothing cheering from the proggie contingent on his strangely out-of-place proggie excursions, there was the almost audible sound of eyeballs rolling back into heads during those parts. A lot of it.

I got into conversations with people several rows around me, including the libertarian-ish thread of what exactly his message was. I didn’t even start it. What exactly was his message, when he’s calling out Trump but not Clinton, Obama, et al? How are you going to crack on capitalism while charging $200 per ticket anywhere below nosebleed, and starting at $40 for a t-shirt? The phrase transparent hypocrisy was used more than once.

He even brought out local black kids (wearing orange GITMO jumpsuits) to dance (which they then ripped off for the solo to reveal RESIST! shirts), and then lip-sync the second verse of Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2. There was very much a Victorian “White Man’s Burden” feel to that whole bit (Oh look at the noble savages) that came off as pretty damned awkward.

So, enough of that. Musically, it was as good as any show I have ever seen. Rush, The Firm, Van Halen in ”79, the first show I saw him in (in his prime), this was as good if not better. He finally got a guitarist who did credit to Gilmour, the backup singers killed it on all of their parts and did great service to Claire Torry’s vocals on DSOTM for The Great Gig In The Sky. His backup guitarist handled Gilmour’s lead vocals, different and a bit less strong than DG, but it really worked well. Waters’ voice was in better shape than the Animals tour in ’77. He seemed “trained not to spit on a fan,” unlike one show on that tour. The energy was fantastic, and most of the audience was my age to mom’s generation (Boomers) and there for the Floyd show.

The light show was completely Pink Floyd from their Animals/Wall heyday, and then some. He had a metallic sphere drone (helium-filled?) that was covered in GoPro cameras, which tooled around trough the show. I surveilled it back of course. The pyramid of lasers with the rainbow of lasers was perfect for Eclipse/Brain Damage, and Comfortably Numb was VERY well done as the finale.*

The proggie political stuff was expected and annoying, but in no way diminished one of if not the best show I’ve been to.

*I still want to see Gilmour though, as it is his fault that I started playing guitar, and now have a self-custom built FrankenStrat and pedalboard with boutique and self-built EFX pedals covering the Meddle through Final Cut periods, and why I went into seriously studying sound/recording engineering once the brain/eye/hand communications issues got bad.

July 25, 2017
Spiderman: Homecoming Review/Rant

Alright, so I just saw the new Spiderman the other day. I’m mixed on my thoughts. On one hand, I want to praise it for giving us the first decently done villain since Loki all the way back in the original Thor. We get some quick backstory on him at the start and it gives him a decent reason why he turns into a criminal. It was also nice to not get yet another origin story on Peter Parker. He was already bitten by a spider, and there was no sign of any Uncle Ben, so presumably he’s already dead. It was also nice to see that Peter has his own lame homemade Spiderman costume and only can get the nice fancy suit from the resources available through Tony Stark, rather than somehow being able to make such a nice fancy suit himself like the previous Spiderman movies. Also liked that he had to create the webbing himself, rather than it being a power given by the spider. Never was a comic book reader, but I know that’s how it was in the Spiderman cartoon which is what I grew up with, so that’s how it’s supposed to be as far as I’m concerned.

So, now to the stuff I didn’t like. I think they made him too young. I really think Marvel would’ve been better served having Peter be at the end of High School, beginning of College, like the Sam Raimi Spiderman did. There was a little too much focus on teenage angst and relationships with his fellow students for my taste. I also think Tony Stark should’ve taken the fancy Spiderman suit back sooner, so we would have to see the home made suit for more of the movie. Especially since Tony gives him back the fancy suit at the end of the movie, so this will likely be the only movie with him using his own suit.

Alright, to the real issue that bothered me. Really, Marvel? Please don’t tell me you’re going to start pushing your SJW crap into your movie universe. Do you really want to turn what’s been a cash cow for you into box office flops? So, what am I talking about? Well, there wasn’t a huge amount of the crap in the movie, fortunately, but there were a few standout issues. All of it that I can recall came from one particular character; Michelle. It starts with the scene when Peter’s group is gathering for a trip to Washington D.C. Michelle makes a comment about wanting to protest. Alright, just a one off, vague comment about protesting, but not what she wants to protest. Okay, fine. A bit later, we get to the group visiting the Washington Monument. Their group leader mentions not wanting to split the group and Michelle says how she doesn’t want to enter a structure built by slaves. Really? There were a couple other instances of social signaling by this specific character in other points of the movie too, if I recall correctly. Oh, and guess what we find out about the girl at the end of the movie? This is MJ. Yup, Parker’s future love interest is no longer a pale redhead like she always has been. Nope, now she’s a mixed race social signaling SJW.

So, I really wanted to love this movie. Growing up I regularly watched the Spiderman cartoon, it was one of my favorites. So I was kinda disappointed with this. It wasn’t bad, but it was slightly above average, really only because of an actual interesting villain. But I really hope this isn’t the start of Marvel trying to replicate the crap they’ve been doing in their comic books in recent years into their movie series. I’m interested in the upcoming Black Panther film, and, surprisingly, I’m interested in the new Thor. (I was surprised by that, given how rather boring I found Thor 1 & 2 to be). Hopefully this will be a one off deal, and not the start of a trend.

July 23, 2017
On reading old books – The Compleat Angler

The title is taken from C S Lewis I think, although it has been used multiple times on multiple people. I like the sound of it and the message – old books can be quite underrated these days. First of all, there is something purely of age, as people like old things. At the very least withstanding the test of time shows that there is a bit of quality. But mostly, if one is interested in humanity and human nature, it is a small view in the minds of past people.

History taught in Romania schools can be very limited from my point of view, concentrating on some major events which are considered notable. It is mostly rulers, battles, and lots of dates to be remembered for no particular reason. Also dates must be constantly converted from Julian to Gregorian calendars, because why the hell not. As a result most children don’t like history class and often do not learn history at all. I like history, but learned most of it outside school. School history annoyed me like it did most of my mates. And I always liked to read what was known for a given time period about how people lived and though, the laws the culture the economy. Not whoever was the big boss.

Old books can help a lot in understanding past people, sometimes more than histories. History books, while valuable, can be highly biased. Most chroniclers were paid by this king or that lord and wrote to please the patron. There is much boasting, exaggeration, and general nonsense.

Now, while it may be interesting to have actual old books, dusty ancient tomes of forgotten lore (I just wanted to use the word lore) around, I do not have any. But there is project Guttenberg and a new invention of the ebook reader. So making due.

Case in point:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/683

Many or more accurately most old books that were written and survived to our modern days are religious or philosophical texts, myths or epics, chronicles of whole nations. But once in a while there is a book that is none of that stuff. But a quiet book, more reduced in scope but not in insight. It is simply on how to fish and live well, a fragment of Merry Olde England, of the 1650s, give or take. Which is why I like it, being a non-fishermen and all. Fishing, to be blunt is boring. It takes a long time and you don’t catch anything. But it can be of use if catching is not the point, but it is more of a form of meditation. I like to stare at a lake or river sometimes, to empty my thoughts, but usually I skip the rod in the water bit.

Now where was I? Right, back to the book. The author is one Izaak Walton, an innkeeper ‘s son by origin, an ironmonger by trade, and a writer by vocation. He lived through the English Civil War, a somewhat hectic and troubled time – oft covered by the standard histories and history classes. You learn of the Roundheads and their 7 game series against the Cavaliers, you learn dates and battles, laws and beheadings. Of Cromwell (MVP) and parliaments, and maybe what happened in Ireland. But what do you learn of the correct way to snag a trout or cook a chub, I ask you?

After said hectic times, old Izaak retired to the countryside, and spoke about the slow life, calm, quiet, contemplative. Fly fishing was an art and a form of quiet meditation. Also, to paraphrase the philosopher Ron Swanson, you get to kill something.

The book is, mind you, a bit pastoral fantasy, a walk through the countryside of the time that is more than slightly idealized.

There really is a lot about fish. Which time of year a certain type bites, what bait to use, how to make artificial lures (apparently, duck feathers work differently from pheasant feathers.) He talks also of over-fishing and environmental protection, and references the tragedy of the commons – a problem, he states, with rivers being that which belongs to all belongs to none. He also covers the subtle difference between making and enforcing legislation– there were types of fishing nets that were illegal to fish with since 1400s, but still were sold in most markets.

The book is in the form of a conversation, and it is not, to be fair, what one would call an easy read, if one does not like the style. It is the type of conversation where many lines are actually long speeches, so it is not necessarily a natural conversation, unless that is how people conversed at the time. The main characters are the fisherman Piscator and the hunter Venator meet early in the morning while walking from the city towards the countryside, and are glad of company and conversation, as the road can be lonely. The plot –so to speak- is Piscator teaching Venator angling, after the hunter was somewhat dismissive of the fisherman’s pastime, considering his passion more noble and interesting. By the way of conversation on the road he is won over by the angler, who begins teaching craft and life philosophy (and why otters should be made extinct, as they eat too much fish).

Throughout the book they travel the English countryside, looking for good bits of river and good clean houses, with honest landladies. A good house had clean rooms, clean bed-sheets smelling of lavender, and the landlady should be able dress (as in cook) your fish and make good ale. Ale was essential back then and not made industrially. Each house made its own ale. These houses were not the large inns of fantasy literature or RPGs, but smaller affairs with a few rooms to rent, and each traveller knew a few good ones.

As always, not all fish were appreciated in 1600s England, the trout and eel being considered the best, the chub one of the worst. This is where cooking- how to dress your fish- became important, as almost any fish could become a good meal if you knew how. The key, as far as I understood it reading the book, was lots of butter – a quarter pound or more – and some fragrant herbs, maybe some wine in the sauce. But mostly butter.

For each fish covered, chub or perch, trout or carp, eel or pike, the standard chapter tells you when it is in season, how to catch it and how to cook it. Maybe braised in wine, baked in the oven should one be available, or roasted on a spit, often stuffed with herbs and mushrooms and oysters. Do remember the quarter pound of butter though.

I liked reading about the European carp, as it is a very widely eaten fish in present day Romania, and some of the things in the book still apply. It is mentioned that the fish caught in running water is better than from still water. At Romanian fish mongers, the price and quality ranks are similar, wild caught carp is better than farmed, river caught is better than lake/pond fish. The best is considered the Danube carp, usually at least twice more expensive the farmed one. Another thing casually mentioned in the book as anecdote is how Jews eat the carp roe because their religion forbids them sturgeon roe. I understand from this that Englishmen did not eat carp roe, but present day Romanians do, usually mixed with mayo and onion. Althoug pike roe is proffered for this preparation.

In the book mister Walton speaks highly of good ale, but also on the importance of moderation. He usually has one glass in the morning as his breakfast drink, and he will not drink another until dinner (midday meal), and maybe one or two more in the evening, with good company and good conversation. In the beginning of the book, the travelers plan a stop for the morning pint at a good, honest house – you needed to know of one nearby anywhere you were – before heading to the fishing grounds.

Anyway I shouldn’t go on about it too much. I recommend the book, it is free and available, and so give it a read if it sounds good to you, might be an interesting view of 350 years ago, give or take.

July 11, 2017
What are we reading? June 2017

*looks up from book* Oh, it’s you. *frowns slightly, returns to reading*

SugarFree

Finished Mira Grant‘s Newsflesh trilogy–Feed, Deadline, Blackout–and the various in-universe short stories collected in Rise. All the novels and a few of the shorter pieces in Rise were nominated for Hugo awards so there has been quite a bit of buzz about this series since Feed came out in 2010, but they are set in a post-zombie apocalypse and I have been suffering rather severe zombie-fatigue. Set 20 years or so after a viral zombie outbreak that killed around a 1/3 of Americans, crusading bloggers are chosen to be in the press pool for a charismatic young Senator running for President of the United States. The CDC basically runs the country through strict containment laws and thick layers of security theater. Complications on the campaign trail ensue, as they always do.

The set-up is a bit derivative, stealing a bit of Bug Jack Barron via Transmetropolitan, but Grant does a pretty good job convincing even a cynic that such a thing as a honest reporter can exist. And that a public who is trying to survive in a much more deadly world would actually care what a reporter had to say. But in a literary universe where the dead walk, some suspension of belief is required up front. And the general anti-government and individualist outlook of the work will be pleasing to the libertarian mindset.

Grant is a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, who also publishes under her real name. The Newsflesh material is her one big hit and the in-universe short stories show her milking it for all it’s worth, and as a result the stories are generally-enjoyable-shading-to-disposable. But, overall, I look forward to reading more of her work.

jesse.in.mb

Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day: Always looking to up my baking game a bit, especially since the doctor I work for (a former professional chef) was convinced by his partner to get back into baking. I was actually led to Reinhart by Warty suggesting I make a struan. That shit’s tasty, yo. Artisan Breads Every Day does a solid job of simplifying some of the techniques he presented in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice although I’d like more details on prepping a wet sourdough starter into a stiffer biga or pâte fermentée. It’s times like this I was working with a paper book so I could math in the margins.

Ender’s Game Alive: A solid full-cast recording of Ender’s Game, I listened to this while frittering time in a Tucson hotel. It’s been a long-ass time since I read Ender’s Game and it made me want to try reading Speaker for the Dead again, but I remember picking it up getting bored as fuck and putting it back down almost immediately last time, so maybe not. Bonus points for it being under Audible’s gratis options.

Beach Lawyer by Avery Duff: This ended up being my Kindle Firsts choice and it was ideal airplane reading. The two attractive male alpha lawyers jockeying for position plot was a bit tired, but it’s always fun reading a novel that’s set in your stomping grounds and Duff’s descriptions of locale are vivid and right on.

JW

JW is currently reading his palm…wait, that’s not reading! Jesus, dude, get a room.

Old Man With Candy

SP gifted me with a copy of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature, which has been reviewed and discussed so many times… wait a minute, it looks like she’s talking about it below. Damn, I can’t step on her toes or I’ll be catbutted.

And I am plowing into a couple of sci fi books that SugarFree gave me, starting with Up the Line by Robert Silverberg, a time travel novel which, unlike Heinlein’s later efforts, does not involve sex with the protagonist’s mother and daughters. But there IS plenty of sex because, after all, Robert Silverberg. The writing is slick and vivid.

Riven

In our last installment, I mentioned that I was still working on cracking the cover of Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison, recommended to me by SugarFree. I have since read every book and short story in “The Hollows” series except the lately published prequel, The Turn, which I only just started yesterday morning. It was a fun and satisfying series: fantasy elements made modern, tastefully written smut scenes that only occasionally take place in bedrooms, and a bit of a who-dun-it feel. I haven’t been able to put them down since I started–even the short stories are compelling. The characters don’t always act in predictable ways (to the reader or to other characters) and wacky hijinks abound from misunderstandings, magical anomalies, and the like. You could argue that the books tend to be a little formulaic as time goes on: trouble rears its ugly head, tension builds, our plucky protagonist Rachel finds that the trouble is actually worse than we’d previously thought, but somehow, someway… everything ends up being alright. Or, y’know, especially difficult problems get carried over into the next book. Ongoing issues don’t just fade away; Harrison neatly wraps them up, sometimes in a book or three, sometimes spanning the entire series. Overall, this was a grand adventure of a series, full of capers and intrigue, a principled protagonist who stuck to her guns, and I’m sorry to see it end–even though I know it can’t go on forever, which is a lasting message from the series, itself.

Brett L.

I slogged my way through The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland and — how can I put this… Take the least interesting parts of The Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle and all of the knowledge dumping of Seveneves without the cool final two chapter payoff and that’s this book. If you have the rest of the summer to kill and don’t mind wandering through poor staging/narrator choices and far too many nerd jokes, this is a two-star effort from a five-star writer. The short, non-spoilerish version is that magic waned until a bright MIT guy invented a chamber where the quantum wave function can’t collapse (for those of you who know quantum mechanics, just stick with me here) like the Schroedinger Gedankenerfahrung that everyone has heard enough about to use as a plot device. Anyhow, time travel, not nearly enough adventure, and quasi-immortal German bankers. Its actually worse than it sounds. Seriously, don’t read it.

On the other hand, I just picked up Mark Lawrence’s latest work Red Sister, which is already better. If you’re not familiar with his post-apocalyptic, semi-magical Europe double trilogy (two trilogies telling two complete, but overlapping stories), I highly recommend them. Look for a more complete review next month.

SP

This month I’m deep into The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. I’ve followed Pinker for many years on edge.org and he’s always fascinating.

Also reading The Haywire Heart by Chris Case, John Mandrola MD (an electrophysiologist I follow online), and Lennard Zinn. This is a very interesting look at how intense physical training can bring on arrhythmias in endurance athletes as they age. (I don’t personally need to worry about this particular problem.)

And, YEA!, the new Scot Harvath novel, Use of Force, from Brad Thor arrived. You should get it.

sloopyinca

Sloop is reading The Neverending Story and contemplating Xeno’s paradox.

Gojira

Gojira gets enough fiction from movies, and is currently re-reading one of his top 3 favorite non-fiction books, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia.

Heroic Mulatto

Summer reading for an upcoming project:

Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems and Natural Language Processing with Python: Analyzing Text with the Natural Language Toolkit.

WebDominatrix

I am currently re-reading The Dictator’s Handbook, which has shifted the way I approach business and marketing, as I’ve seen a lot similarities in the business world.

I’m also reading Hit Makers about how trends happen.

June 30, 2017
Book Review: Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

I can’t remember when I last wrote a book report! I’m a big fan of Thomas Sowell, and I’ve been buying up his audiobooks on Audible whenever they’re having a 2 for 1 sale. Compared to some of his other titles, I wasn’t super excited about Intellectuals and Society, but even the least interesting sounding book from Dr. Sowell has to be ten times better than the drivel Audible usually recommends for me.

Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society

Generally, I find Thomas Sowell’s writing a bit repetitive. He uses the same examples and phrases extensively through any writing he does, and it becomes a bit boring. I don’t know whether this is a problem with the audiobook format or whether reading the book would result in the same boredom. Either way, it’s usually just small pockets of repetition sprinkled in generally great writing.

In Intellectuals and Society, Dr. Sowell takes aim at “professional” intellectuals: those academicians, politicians, “journalists,” advocates, and public-facing social engineers that steer society from “on high.” Early in the book, Sowell outlined two different worldviews, the “tragic” worldview that views life as a series of minute tradeoffs versus the “anointed” worldview that views life as a top-down progression toward perfection. On a high level, he equates the “anointed” view with big-government liberalism and the “tragic” view with small-government conservatism. This is where I take slight issue with his generalization. I think that these views are more cross-spectral strata than split by political ideology. To an extent, progressives are more susceptible to “daddy gubmint” mentality (the “anointed” view) than conservatives, but both sides are quite willing to rely on experts, “verbal virtuosity” (a phrase Sowell coined to describe the virtue signalling elites do to get their way), and logical fallacy.

He then spent some time describing the techniques intellectuals use to pull the wool over the eyes of their society. This section was a bit repetitive, because every single technique was an “argument without an argument” and “verbal virtuosity.” Nonetheless, Sowell’s detailed analysis cuts the legs out from under the most common and relied upon tactics of the misinformative intelligentsia. The most lasting concept from this section was the idea that these people aren’t intentionally lying, but are happy to stop at the most superficial analysis of their worldview when the so-called evidence confirms their biases. Rationalization sweeps away any non-conforming data. From there, the “vision of the anointed” adds a moral tinge that stops them from rethinking their worldview when the evidence mounts against it. Besides stylistic criticism of this section, I have no other criticisms. Sowell nails the pseudo-intellectualism that only tangentially relates to reality.

After setting down his framework, Sowell proceeded to step through multiple examples, each of a massive failure of the intelligentsia to grasp reality, resulting in widespread harm to society. Sowell’s magnum opus is his detailed and excoriative dressing down of the intellectuals that agitated for disarmament in the interwar period in the early 20th century. In authoritative fashion, Sowell steps through the accumulating evidence against pacifism, the continued headlong dive into pacifism by the intellectuals of Britain and France, and the graphic unraveling of their belief system in World War II. In going through their flawed worldview, Sowell didn’t shy away from showing the modern branches thought still relying on the flawed assumptions of the 20s and 30s.

While Intellectuals and Society wasn’t as good as Basic Economics as a whole, Sowell’s utter dismantling of the interwar progressive pacifists is the best I’ve ever read from him. The book is also short enough that you can finish it quickly. The repetition didn’t annoy me nearly as much as it did in Basic Economics. Overall it’s a good read, and Sowell’s take on interwar appeasement is worth the price of admission on its own. I give it four trash can lids out of five.

June 24, 2017
Review of Cold Mountain (the book and the movie)

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.

Cold Mountain. Dir. Anthony Minghella. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Jude Law. Mirage Enterprises, Bona Fide Productions, 2003. DVD.

This novel, and the well-received movie based on it, can safely be said to belong to the canon of antiwar literature, though Frazier is enough of a storyteller that the lives and stories of his characters always hold center stage. This is no didactic Ayn Rand novel. As a civil war obsessive, I’m going to be giving some attention to the historical angles, but my review won’t capture the finely-crafted human story created by Frazier, and also by the film adaptation, which remarkably manages not to totally screw up the author’s vision.

Frazier comes from Western North Carolina, where not only does half the action take place, but it’s the longed-for destination of the male protagonist.

Let’s go back a bit and try to provide some setup. To put this story in Hollywood pitch-meeting terms, it’s like The Odyssey

Ulysses, by Anna Chromy, Monaco Harbor, 2011

meets bizarro Gone With the Wind meets a chick flick.

W. P. Inman (Jude Law in the movie)

Jude Law

is a Confederate soldier from, of course, Western North Carolina. He’s fighting at the Virginia front, defending Petersburg, Virginia from Union besiegers. Inman is homesick for his sort-of sweetheart Ada (played in the movie by Nicole Kidman).

Nicole Kidman

It’s complicated – at least in the novel the two aren’t formally committed to each other, but he’s managed to stick with the war, until he participates in the Battle of the Crater. This is an actual battle (July 1864) where the besieging Yankees manage to undermine the Confederate position and create a crater penetrating the Confederate front. For some reason, the federals then rush in to the steep-walled crater, as if they’re chivalrously giving the Confederates a chance at target practice. A nasty and bloody business, in which Inman is wounded. He’s sent back to a Raleigh military hospital to recover, and he decides, “screw you Confederates, I’m going home.” (In the movie, he gets a letter from Ada begging him to come home, a realistic touch since many wives, sweethearts and family members wrote soldiers begging them to desert so they could come home and help on the farm and preserve the family from starvation).

Then begins Inman’s treck west, back to his home county. He has to keep on the lookout for Home Guards – state troops who, exempt from going to the front themselves, are supposed to chase down deserters and draft-evaders and send them to the front (or sometimes just kill them). The organization generally referred to as the Home Guard was established by the state legislature in the middle of the war, though in the movie the Home Guard has been set up at the war’s very beginning. Hollywood has to do its part to avoid strict historical accuracy.

To be fair, the English Home Guard in WWII didn’t show the same cruelty to draft-dodgers, probably because there weren’t as many as in Civil War NC

Although North Carolina contributed a disproportionate share of Confederate troops, the state also had a disproportionate share of deserters (who walked away from the army like Inman). In addition there were the draft evaders (who refused to join the army when summoned).

In many parts of the state, including the mountain West, deserters and draft evaders “lay out” in the woods, or in holes in the earth. A lot of them just objected to fighting, period. But some thought they were being called on to fight on the wrong side. Many young men with such views navigated the mountain trails to Tennessee to join loyalist Southern units of the U. S. Army. North Carolina had a good number of Union sympathizers (“Red Strings” or “Heroes of America”), and a peace movement (trying to get the South back into the union with slavery intact), and a state government which distrusted the Jefferson Davis administration and insisted on protecting states’ rights against the Confederates (the Confederacy weren’t actually as states-rights-ish as one might think given their rhetoric).

Jefferson Davis in 1874

But getting back to the plot –

Not knowing where Inman is, Ada makes do as best she can in Appalachian North Carolina. And at first she doesn’t do very well at all. She grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, apparently with slaves to attend to her needs, until her minister-father went on a mission trip to this rural Tar Heel community, taking Ada with him. When Dad dies, Ada is alone on a farm which she doesn’t know how to care for.

Then some sympathetic neighbors ask a young woman named Ruby to take care of Ada. Here is where the movie had every opportunity to screw up embarrassingly. The movie’s Ruby, played by Renée Zellweger,

Renée Zellweger

is a sharp-tongued, no-nonsense rural Southern woman who had to learn self-reliance when her father was too busy drinking and playing the fiddle to raise her properly. Normally, Hollywood would find an actress to do a cringe-worthy performance with a character like this. Somehow, Zellweger manages to do a more or less convincing job in her role. It probably helps that she grew up in Texas (according to Wikipedia). Zellweger manages to remember at all times that her character has a Southern accent, something which sometimes slips the minds of the other actors.

So Ruby teaches Ada how to manage the farm and its livestock and grow crops. We get a bit of a training montage in the movie. Meanwhile, the two women try to keep away from the local Home Guard, with its commander, Creepy Bearded Fad Dude, and CBFD’s top aide, Scary Blonde Guy Who Wished He’d Been Born Later So He Could Have Joined Hitler’s SS.

“Is true, blondes haf more fun, ja?”

The pro-Confederate Home Guard are the main bad guys. But just to underscore the point that this book and movie show the dark side of war itself, not just the evils of one side, there is a scene of federal soldiers behaving very badly.

The movie has a scene where –

BEGIN SPOILER

– the Home Guard kills a farmer and tortures his wife in order to make her reveal where her deserter sons are hidden. They put the woman’s thumbs under a fencepost and Scary Blonde Guy stands on the fence to make the pain worse. Scary Blonde Guy shoots the sons dead when they run out of the barn where they’re hiding in order to rescue their mother. This scene is based on actual incidents in North Carolina during the dirty war between Confederate forces (regular troops and Home Guards) and draft-resisting “outliers.”

END SPOILER

Neither the book nor the movie has a lot of black people in it. Those who make brief appearances don’t have real speaking roles, and one of them is unconscious. Given Hollywood’s awkward and embarrassing record on race, we can only imagine the sensitivity and delicacy with which they would have treated black characters if they had more screen time and more lines – which was no excuse not to try, of course. In any case, the limited number of black characters is arguably reflective of the comparatively small black population (whether slave or free) in North Carolina’s mountain counties during this time. To many nonslaveholding whites, the war was fought by slaveowning planters who wanted to keep their slaves but not to fight for that privilege, given the wide availability of draft exemptions which rich planters, but not poor subsistence farmers, could take advantage of. “A rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,” many called it. To be fair, some rich planter types rushed to join the Confederate army without being drafted – chivalry and all that. They were generally able to come into the army as officers, though, not as lowly privates.

Inman’s journey back to home and to Ada has plenty of echoes of Ulysses’ journey back to home and Penelope.

Penélope Cruz

Inman does Ulysses one better because he doesn’t wait ten years before coming back – It only takes about three years before he realizes that his duties to his home community override his duties to a collapsing slave republic. Like Ulysses, though, Inman meets plenty of monsters on his homeward journey.

As if to balance out Ada’s dad the good minister, the narrative introduces an evil preacher – Veasey – whom Inman meets on the road. The wolf in sheep’s clothing is played in the movie by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

BEGIN SPOILER

Here is where the movie is a disappointment compared to the book. In the movie, Veasey has gotten a slave girl pregnant. Seeking to cover up his behavior, Veasey is about to throw the girl into the river to kill her when Inman comes by and puts a stop to Veasey’s evil. In the book it’s the same set-up, but the pregnant girl is a white woman named Laura Foster. This is sort of an Easter egg which Frazier, the novelist, planted for folklorists and aficionados of the ghoulish. Laura Foster was a real person in western North Carolina. One of her real-life lovers, Tom (“Tom Dooley”) Dula, was hanged for her murder soon after the Civil War.

END SPOILER

So, like a modern Ulysses, does Inman reach home and Ada? I’ve done enough spoilers, so I won’t add another.

But I’m not gonna lie, this is not the feel-good hit of the summer. Whether in book or movie form, though, it is a compelling story.

June 20, 2017