For some reason around Christmas time I decided I should learn more about American history. Because of that I named a few history based books from anyone looking for Christmas ideas. This year I got 1776 by David McCullough. I have always been interested in war history going back to reading a book about the German World War II flagship Bismarck. The 2 wars I decided on learning more about were the Revolutionary war and World War I. I knew a little about the American Revolutionary war but not much more than what you what you learn in grade school.

In an odd coicendence HBO also decided to cover the Revolutionary war with their miniseries John Adams based on David McCoullough’s book John Adams. While the miniseries was based mostly around the diplomacy around the Revolutionary war 1776 is based on the battles on the Colonial “Army”.

Some books on historical subjects can read like textbooks and become very bland. McCullough does a very good job of writing 1776 as a narrative. I always have a tendency to question the authenticity of that type of writing style when there can not possibly have been accounts that go to that level of detail.

1776 follows George Washington and the other primary officers of the colonial “Army” such as Henry Knox and Nathanael Green as well as William Howe the Commander of the British Army. I say colonial “Army” in quotes because it can barely be called an army. Generally it is a tale of a woefully disorganized and under-supplied colonial army. It does a wonderful job of fighting the Santa Clausification (to use a phrase I have heard a few times lately and loved) of George Washington and portray him as a real person with faults. It is hard to read this book without realizing that the history I was taught as a child has been terribly glossed over in the spirit of “History is written by the winners”

One of the more telling anecdotes was that Washington, a model southern gentleman, would always present himself in his full dress uniform which was crafted specifically for him. Most soldiers had no uniform whatsoever and those few who did were regiments for specific colonies that were left over from fighting the French and Native Americans. Washington felt that a leader should look like a leader even though his army looked nothing like an army.

Another thing that has stuck with me from the book is that not everyone was for independence. In fact it almost seemed like those for independence were in the minority. The only region that seemed staunchly against the British was Boston and Philadelphia while New York was very pro British.

Overall 1776 was a very worthwhile read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Revolutionary war or those who led it British or Colonist. It was more than slightly jarring that it ended so abruptly at the end of 1776 with no more than a couple pages of explanations over the end of the war. I suppose I can’t argue too much though given that the title so accurately should have prepared me for it With page upon page of bibliography at the end it is hard not to be impressed with the amount of work that must have gone into it and I will seek out more David McCullough writings with the next being “Mornings on Horseback” about Teddy Roosevelt.

This is impressive

I found it on Gibbon Jockey . As he says stick around until the last 2 minutes where he really wraps it up well. It’s amazing that this isn’t/wasn’t more of a story but we had to hear about crazy ministers and $150 dollar haircuts for weeks.

Vengeance is a novel by George Jonas detailing the Israeli counter intelligence department’s response to the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games. A group of Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic compound and took 9 Israeli athletes hostage. All of the hostages died either in captivity or in a rescue attempt. In response to this Israel undertook a covert operation to assassinate 11 people who were believed to have masterminded or been involved with the attack. The story is told from the point of view of the team leader Avner who is regular field agent but is none the less picked to lead this mission. The story is like a movie plot but since it is supposedly true it becomes all the more fantastic. The charge of the Israeli team was to kill the men in fantastic ways, not just to gun them down on the street but to kill them when they feel secure at home or among their peers. For example one way they devise is for a telephone to explode when it is picked up. The plan is not only to take revenge but to attempt to make terrorists paranoid as well as deter and disorganize them.

The story is wildly compelling. It begins with training and background on counter intelligence and covert operations. The firearms teacher tells them they never draw their gun to threaten only to kill. Once your gun is out your cover is blown and you are useless. The only real question is if you believe that it is true. The printing of the book I read had an epilogue describing the dispute over whether or not the book is actually true. You have to wonder why someone who is this undercover decides to come out and tell his story and it goes into what is likely the motivation behind that at the end of the book.

The book reads very much as a narrative and not just a recounting of events which is always nice for books based on historical events. I watched the movie “Munich” which is the Steven Spielberg adaptation of the novel while writing this review and was only half interested in it. It does a very good job of following the story closely but for some reason it didn’t capture me as much as the book did. Generally I try to watch the movies first and then read the book that way I enjoy both but failed on this one.

Overall if you like spy like material or are interested in the Mossad and Israeli counter intelligence then this is something you won’t be disappointed in.

I’ve always been a sucker for new hobbies, radio controlled cars, paintball, guitar/music, golf, baseball, programming are just a few examples I’ve actively pursued. There have always been some hobbies that I am amused by but will likely never follow through on. Model Trains, Lego models, woodworking a la New Yankee Workshop, computer animation are all things that are super interesting to me but will likely never be realized. Some hobbies I’ve stuck with and some have faded into the past. Despite not having any time to do the things I do now I’ve been thinking lately about how cool it would be to build a home theater. Of course I would love to have a home theater but half the fun would be designing and building it.

I don’t have the space or money to build one so I am firmly in the “design” phase at the moment. The thing that really got me thinking about this is this site where someone built a Pirates of the Caribbean theme. The theme is obviously cheesy so I don’t think I would go for a specific theme but I do like some of the details like the recesses arches and the nice double doors leading into it. The chairs he picked seem pretty standard and I haven’t decided if I would prefer recliners or nice couches. Maybe a combination…

So here are my thoughts on the whole idea of a home theater:

• I’m not going to use it all the time. I won’t watch TV there. I could see some benefit of having the ability to watch a cable movie channel down there but the majority of the time it is going to be a dvd or movie from some sort of online source.
• It has to have the ability to smell like popcorn.
• Projector, I can’t imagine giant Plasma/LCDs coming down to a price soon enough that I could afford one big enough for a room I would call a home theater.
• It has to have uber surround sound. I have never had a place where I could turn up the sound and watch a movie loud so I have never had even
  crappy surround sound. I would really like full surround with one of the acoustically transparent screens so the center channel is behind the screen.
• It has to have a candy counter. Some of the things people do like fake ticket counters and such are cheesy but a stocked candy counter and popcorn machine is functional and awesome.
• It should be dramatically lit and also have dimmer switches.
• It should have a piece of furniture that faces the screen so you can eat a meal somewhere other than in a chair.
• It has to have an air exchanger of some sort. An entirely interior room with no windows in the basement is going to get stuffy.

So that is essentially a brain dump of features. I will probably add more features and do more things like this essentially just for a record if I ever do build it. I often think like this in unordered lists so more feature lists will be incoming. Probably next will be features of a house in general.

Year end lists are cliche but to be honest I really like reading them and hearing them so now that 2007 is fully in the books here are my lists that sum up the previous year in entertainment and other things that I find amusing. Be sure to note that I didn’t get a chance to see everything so as this site has no real theme other than stuff I like and think these lists are merely things that I liked and I saw/heard/etc… I won’t spend the time to guess at what may be better had I had a chance to check it out. With that off we go. Lists are in no particular order.

Top 5 movies:

- 300
-Alpha Dog
-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
-Beowulf
-Superbad

Looking at that list makes me think I need to get out to see more movies. None of them would I feel good about giving favorite movie of the year status. Alpha Dog really surprised me. Generally I like movies that are happy and that one was not but still entertaining. I guess it was a slow year for movies If I had to give a top movie I would go with 300.

Top 5 Video Games:
-Portal
-Team Fortress 2
-Guitar Hero 3
-Bioshock
-Crackdown

This was a very good year for video games. Portal was easily the most innovative and funny but it was fairly short so I would give my game of the year to Crackdown. It was the first game I played Co-op over live and it was the type of games that screwed with my sense of reality. Once you really start jumping from building to building you start feeling like it may be possible. You start to dream about it and you start to think about doing it in real life. That is a winning game. I am really hoping for a sequel.

Best albums of 2007:
I am so bad about new music lately. I am years behind discovering albums that came out 2 - 3 years ago. The only timely thing I heard this year was Pinback Autumn of the Seraphs which I love. To totally punk out I will also name Rob Crow’s solo album who is the singer of pinback. I really need to get out.

Best NL Wildcard teams of 2007:
I can’t think of any. Perhaps they should try not getting swept…

Best Book I Read This Year:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - It’s hella nerdy I know but J.K. Rowling is a wonderful story teller. It takes real talent to write at a level that is interesting to both kids and adults and she is a master of it. I had always said I didn’t want to spoil the movies and reading the books has ruined the movies for me a little bit. I would suggest if you haven’t read them then just hang out wait for all the movies and then listen to the audio books read by Jim Dale. The guy is a genius voice actor and he does seperate voices for every character.

Best website I am using but dislike what it means I should make this facebook as I just recently started using it but I am going to give this to http://www.oobgolf.com. It’s a social networking golf site which has so many things wrong with the idea but it is actually pulled off fairly well. I am going to save a full explanation of this category for a post of it’s own.

That’s all I have for 2007. Next up will be goals and things I’m looking forward to for 2008. I don’t want to linger too much on the past so onward to the year of rat which actually doesn’t start until Feb. 7th. However, it’s never too early to name your years by a revolving list of animals.

Normally it takes a few recommendations on something for me to take them to heart especially if I don’t know the people doing the recommending. You can find someone out there to recommend anything it seems and I had heard of Stephenson off and on over the past few years. Most of the anecdotes revolved around him and his “tech” type fictional stories. Normally I don’t read that type of fiction but finally Pete recommended Crtyptonomicon so I decided to pick it up.

The story takes place in 3 major phases, two of which take place during world war II and one that takes place in the present day. All three stories are related to the origin of the personal computer as well as where currency derives it’s value and how that could change in a digital age.. The basis of the book is a present day company attempting to set up a data haven in the Philippines to be safe from government intervention and all traffic being heavily encrypted. At the same time the other two threads take place in somewhat parallel during World War II. The characters in the two time periods are family relation usually grandfather-grandson/granddaughter though this doesn’t play much role in the story other than they are dealing with similar subject matter across the generations.

The book is in the same vein as the Da Vinci Code in that it uses actual history as the basis for a fictional story and mixes true historical facts along with those made up for the story. One of the books characters is Alan Turing who was heavily involved with breaking German Cryptography during World War II and is credited with being one of the fathers of modern computing. In regards to Turing and other true historical characters and events the issue is that it can be difficult to know what is true and what is for the sake of the story.

I would recommend this book but under the caveat of a few things. This book jumps around a lot in a Lord of the Rings style. The story consists of multiple interweaving tales and can sometimes leave a thread for long periods. This can drop you out of the story while you are hoping the story returns to one of the more interesting tales. Also, Stephenson has a tendency to venture into R rated territory from time to time and it feels very unnecessary. The sections rarely add value to the story and it feels a lot like an adolescent boy trying to write realistic stories about sex before he has any real experiences to base them on.

Cryptonomicon is an intriguing story for those interested in technology and currency. I have already begun reading Stephenson’s trilogy The Baroque Cycle and the books in that series continue along the same vein.

Have you ever been sitting around with your Mom and your Aunt and everyone has a beveridge? You go to pick up your glass of Pepsi and instead on accident pick up your mom’s ice tea. You take a drink and nearly throw up because you expected fizzy sweetness and instead get bland Iced Tea. That is how I am if you tell me what is for dinner and then change it. I get preprogrammed for meals and I don’t know why. You could tell me at noon that tonight we are going out for dry bologna sandwiches, no Mayo, no nuthin and then take me to my favorite restaurant. I would still be disappointed because I had been gearing up for bologna.

On a complete sidenote how did you pronounce bologna in your head when you read it? Did you say baloney? I did when I wrote it. Something has gone terribly wrong.

See my review of last Friday’s Police show at Double Time Feel.

 OR  
It seems the Gears of War weapon the Hammer of Dawn has been made a reality and is being used on innocent bystanders in Denver CO. Also if you haven’t seen google street view it is pretty impressive.

See for yourself
Hammer of Dawn