thebiblioholic

Guess what this is

2008-10-14T01:56:09Z

Click on the photo for the answer.

Raku

2008-10-13T04:33:58Z

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9:01 pm - 9:34 pm

After a tiring day wandering around Washington D.C. we went back to Bethesda for dinner at Raku a Japanese restaurant where we demolished a large platter of sushi.

Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden

2008-10-13T04:29:44Z

Walking from the Air and Space Museum to the Washington Monument we made a brief stop at the Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden where I took a bunch of photos of cool sculptures.

We ended our walk at the Washington Monument:

National Air and Space Museum

2008-10-13T04:24:55Z

After spending quite a while at the National Postal Museum we walked over to the National Mall to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We spent a lot of time there on our last visit, so we only went to a couple of exhibits there this time, such as the cockpit of a Boeing 747, and the "How Things Fly" exhibit.

National Postal Museum

2008-10-13T04:19:46Z

We went to the National Postal Museum across from Union Station today. Lots of facinating displays. I enjoyed learning about the railroad postal service where they had mobile post offices on board to sort and deliver the mail. As the train went past a small town, they would hook a suspended outbound mail bag while simultaneously tossing out a bag of mail destined for the town.

I also enjoyed looking at their collection of rare U.S. and international stamps.

Can you spot the error in this sheet of stamps:

Jaleo

2008-10-12T04:36:44Z

Taking advantage of my daughter's three day weekend, I decided to take Monday off from work and we drove down to the Washington D.C. area. The drive down from NYC was surprisingly pleasant with hardly any traffic at all along I-95 and I-495 and we made good time. We visited some high school friends of mine who are living in Bethesda, MD. I also arranged to meet an old middle school friend I hadn't seen in 29 years! We decided to meet for dinner at a Spanish tapas place called Jaleo in Bethesda. We ordered a bunch of tapas, a paella and sangria. Yummy food! Good conversation.

Mr. Dixon Disappears

2008-10-11T03:38:53Z

Mr. Dixon Disappears is Ian Sansom's second book in the Mobile Library series. Very quick read, not a lot happened. Not much additional character development since the first book. Oh well. I borrowed all three volumes from the library, so I'll read the last one in the series, The Book Stops Here too.

The Case of the Missing Books

2008-10-09T04:00:30Z

I found a new mystery series at the library. Ian Sansom's "Mobile Library" series about "an English, Jewish vegetarian, corduroy-wearing mobile librarian on the north coast of the north of North Ireland." In the first book in this humorous series, The Case of the Missing Books librarian Israel Armstrong moves from his home in London and arrives at his new job at the Tumdrum public library to find it permanently closed. Instead he's told he's to be a mobile librarian, driving an ancient van full of books. One big problem though is that all 15,000 books have disappeared. So he sets out to solve the case of the missing books.

A farcical cozy mystery would be the best way to describe this book.

4096 noodles

2008-10-07T01:35:03Z

Making 4096 strands of noodles by folding 12 times. Yum! :-)

[via Boing Boing]

Ads on the train

2008-10-07T00:12:16Z

I noticed this evening on my ride home that there is advertising on the outside of the subway cars on the #1 train that I was on. That's the first time I've noticed that. Ads on the inside are common, though.

No Reservations

2008-10-05T20:57:45Z

I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain's television shows (A Cook's Tour, No Reservations), and his several non-fiction books, Kitchen Confidential, The Nasty Bits, and A Cooks Tour, so I got his latest book, No Reservations. Unlike his earlier books, this is not a collection of essays, but a collection of photographs taken during the taping of his show. There are introductory blurb about each location and captions to explain the photos. The pictures aren't stills from the show, but candid shots taken by various members of his film crew during the shooting of the episodes. This isn't a coffeetable book with brilliant photography, as they were mostly unposed snapshots, but the book is a nice companion to the TV show.

(Not so) Quicksilver

2008-10-05T20:38:02Z

I finally finished reading Quicksilver, volume 1 in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I started reading it in mid-August as my annual "summer project" in Cape Cod, but couln't finish it there, and the size of the book kept me from carrying it around as my subway reading, which is where I do most of my reading these days on my commute to work.

If I had to write a two-word review of the book, it would be "ridiculously long". I am elated at having finished slogging through it. Lots of interesting bits, many interesting historical characters such as Newton, Huygens, Hooke, Leibniz, Pepys, etc., and lots of fascinating detail into life in England and Europe during the 17th century, but at 900-plus pages so far, and another 1800 to go in two more volumes, logorrhea is the only way to describe the books.

Bruises by Chairlift

2008-10-04T16:48:08Z

When Apple announced the previous generation iPod they used Feist's 1 2 3 4 in their ads. I loved that catchy tune, as did many others apparently. Recently Apple announced the latest generation iPod nanos and their ads had a similarly catchy tune. I thought it might have been another song by Feist, but it turns out it is a song called "Bruises" by a Brooklyn group named Chairlift. Nice.

I Google Myself by Kara Luiz

2008-10-04T16:42:47Z

I saw this on a friend's blog.

Requiem for an Assassin

2008-10-04T04:29:04Z

Requiem for an Assassin by Barry Eisler is the sixth and last(?) in the John Rain series about a Japanese American assassin. The story arc reached its conclusion, though Eisler says he might write more books in the series in the future. His next book, Fault Line, is his first standalone book and is due out in February.

I heard about this series of books on a Judo web forum and I'm glad I found them at the library.

U.S.S. Intrepid returns to Manhattan

2008-10-03T05:00:03Z

The U.S.S. Intrepid (the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) returned to Manhattan today from Staten Island where it had been undergoing extensive repairs since 2006. I took the above picture as it sailed past my office window.

Moneygami

2008-10-02T02:48:46Z

Check out this Moneygami (dollar bill origami) site.

"Origami is the art of paper folding. The word is Japanese, literally meaning to fold (oru) paper (kami) and comes in many styles and varieties. This post is dedicated to models folded from dollar bills. The subtle genius lies in the way the artist incorporates the prints on the dollar bills into the facial characteristics of the finished figures."

[via Boing Boing]

How technology changed us

2008-10-02T02:42:47Z

A friend of mine emailed me the above picture.

AFRICOM

2008-10-02T02:08:52Z

From The Atlantic's October calendar:

Oct 1: The newest U.S. military command, AFRICOM, begins operations today—in Stuttgart, Germany. Africa had been split among other commands, but humanitarian concerns and antiterrorist operations warranted the upgrade. Not everyone is thrilled. Wary of U.S. intentions, no African country has yet agreed to host the command.

Reuters blogger Barry Moody writes:

President George W. Bush originally wanted Africom to be based in Africa, and Liberia has offered to host it. But the plan met with considerable hostility on the continent, especially from big powers South Africa and Nigeria and oil giants Algeria and Libya. Many ordinary Africans were also cynical, believing Africom would be a cover for Washington to counter growing Chinese influence and control vital oil supplies from West Africa — expected to provide 25 percent of U.S. needs by 2015.

The hostility forced Washington to rethink its plans and Africom, expected to reach its full complement of 1,300 by the end of next year, began work from Stuttgart, home of the existing European command, although officials clearly expect to open a base in Africa sometime in the future. It also pushed U.S. officials to emphasise that there was no hidden agenda, that Africom would not threaten the sovereignty of any nations and that a base would not be built in Africa without the full agreement of potential host nations. They also said half of Africom’s leadership would be composed of civilian agencies including the State Department. Africom’s stated aim is to help African countries face everything from natural disasters to terrorism and its targets will including drug trafficking, arms smuggling and the kind of piracy now plaguing the waters off Somalia. Experts say U.S. forces have been cooperating quietly for years with African armies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel where rebel and al Qaeda-affiliated groups operate. They say Africom got a bad press initially because it was associated with heavy-handed U.S. policy in Somalia and as part of the U.S.-led ”War on Terror”, but now Pentagon officials are treading more carefully, realising how sensitive Africans are about suggestions Washington is trying to dominate.

Hair Today...

2008-10-02T02:05:58Z

From The Atlantic's October calendar:

Oct 1: English civil- and family-court judges will ditch the more-than-300-year-old tradition of horsehair wigs and don updated robes (think Star Trek) today. Criminal judges chose to keep the curls, which provide dignity and a modicum of disguise when facing down criminals.

The Great Children's Read

2008-10-02T01:33:22Z

The New York Times' Great Children's Read is this Sunday at Columbia University.

Capistrano School District celebrates banned books week by banning Twilight

2008-10-01T11:04:30Z

It seems the Capistrano Unified School District in San Juan Capistrano, California's idea of celebrating the ALA's Banned Books Week was to (briefly) ban the
Twilight series of books by Stephenie Meyer from the school district's middle school libraries, supposedly for "age-appropriateness". They're classified as "Young Adult" though my middle school daughter's classmates have read the book and my daughter is waiting her turn for a library copy to be available.

See the OC Register for a story on the ban.

Incidentally author Meyer was in the news recently when a partial draft of the manuscript for the next installment in the series was stolen and posted online. She was upset by the event and has stopped working on the book.

The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri

2008-09-30T04:37:20Z

I just finished reading The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri by David Bajo. I don't know exactly how to describe this intriguingly weird novel. Math genius Philip has received 351 books from a former lover. She's a bookbinder and these were her books. She then disappears, perhaps commits suicide. As Philip reads these books, he finds messages from her and begins a search for her.

The book reads like a dream with flashbacks and scenes spliced together. Math, books, bookbinding, lots of sex, running, frisbee, Cervantes, Spain... The all meld together. I found it pleasurable to read, but was left ultimately confused.

Subliminal message on SciFi Channel

2008-09-29T04:00:21Z

I was watching a taped episode of Eureka tonight and just after the credits a brief message flashed on the screen. It barely lasted a fraction of a second and it took a fair amount of effort to catch the frame using frame-by-frame advance to see what the message said: "Watching us is hilarious. But copying us is dangerous. Don't do it."

Apparently I was not the only one to notice. There are some 62,000 hits for the phrase on Google. One blogger speculates it might be the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) trying to brainwash us into not copying shows. On another forum, a more plausible explanation was suggested that it was targeted to viewers of the next show on the channel, ECW wrestling, as some kind of (ineffective) warning against trying the wrestling moves at home.

Sorted Books

2008-09-28T20:12:03Z

Stories told in titles. Check out Nina Katchadourian's web site.

[via Boing Boing]