ROBERTWMARTIN.COM
  • Show Notes (Archive)
  • Gaming
  • Long Form
  • About

Show Notes - Week of April 20, 2020

26/4/2020

0 Comments

 
Greetings from 53.5° north latitude where spring has finally sprung and people are once again able to get outside. Let's hope they stay isolated so that our COVID cases don't spike in a couple weeks. 

The week that was was long and repetitive, with double-digit meetings each work day. The reading was good, as was the guitar playing. If I thought the picture would be clear, I'd take a picture of my left fingertips to show the budding callouses. 

The tl;dr for this week is: Two books finished, four beers drank (three from the previous week), a book discussion recorded and posted on YouTube, and a bunch of new words.

Let's get on with it, shall we?
Reading Pile:
It was a productive week for reading, with two books finished and a new one about one-quarter completed already. 

Book #15 for 2020 was a young reader series mystery that I finished with my younger daughter. "Panda-Monium" by Stuart Gibbs is a first-person narrated story of a middle school sleuth who helps solve the mystery of a missing panda. Teddy Fitzroy is a bit like Encyclopedia Brown, but in a modern setting and in a full-length novel format. The book was really well done and had a couple absolutely hilarious scenes. If you are looking to hook a young reader on the mystery genre, this is a good choice. 

Book #16 for 2020 was "Ancillary Justice" by Anne Leckie, a science fiction story revolving around a multi-millennium old AI hellbent on revenge. It was a great concept, and ultimately it came together really well, but I did lose interest for a while about two-thirds of the way through. To be fair, that might have been a symptom of mental fatigue and quarantine overload. It was definitely good enough to make me seek out the second book in the series. 

Leckie wrote an excellent quote near the end of the novel that could have been equally applicable to today's world.
If you've got power and money and connections, some differences won't change anything. Or if you are resigned to dying in the near future ... It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all. What you call no difference is life and death to them,
Picture
I mentioned above that I am already one-quarter through another book. That one is a historical account of some seriously interesting cyrpto work done over 200 years ago. I suspect I'll have a good summary of it done for next week's entry. In the meantime, here is a tweet related to that book.

Thanks to the book "The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes" by @MarkUrban01, I learned that shrapnel is named after a certain Henry Shrapnel who made fragmenting cannon balls in theate 18th century.

There, now you learned something today as well.

— Robert Martin (@robertwmartin) April 25, 2020

Lastly, I have commented multiple times since mid-December about the War and Peace Reddit reading group that I am part of. I highly encourage you to read War and Peace, and if you do, a chapter-a-day reading habit is a great way to do it, especially if you augment it with Brian E. Denton's Daily Meditations on each chapter. 

Denton has been actively lurking on the subreddit this year and invited myself and others to record a session where we talk about Book 1, Part 1. It was a really good discussion, and it was great to put faces to names of some of the most active contributors to the subreddit. The full video is linked below, and a few of my points are linked here [1, 2].

New Beers:
Four new beers for the past fortnight - I didn't feel like posting a beer update last week - and it was a fairly forgettable bunch unfortunately. It started out well with the Collective Arts Hazy State. Collective Arts do like their hazy IPAs. This one was very hazy and never did settle or clear in the slightest. There was a big waft of pine and a nice taste. (3.75 / 5). The next was also from Collective Arts, but this was a bit disappointing. It wasn't bad or poorly done, but just didn't live up to my expectations for a sour from Collective Arts. (3.25 / 5). 

Next was the Wild Beer Company Millionaire Salted Caramel Chocolate Milk Stout. This had a nice boozy flavor without being overpowering, but I didn't taste much of the salted caramel or chocolate. (3.25 / 5).

Last up was the Lech Premium Pale Lager. When you are on a personal quest to drink one of every beer in the world like I am, you will eventually have to drink benign lagers from  big macro breweries, and this was one of those times. This was decent, but wholly unremarkable. That's all I am going to say. (3.0 / 5)
Picture
New Words:
Quite a few words this week, with a couple being repeat offenders.

shabrack
[ˈSHabˌrak]
NOUN
historical
  1. a cavalry saddlecloth used in European armies.

antipathetic
[anˌtipəˈTHedik]
ADJECTIVE
  1. showing or feeling a strong aversion.

sobriquet
[ˈsōbrəˌkā, ˈsōbrəˌket]
NOUN
  1. a person's nickname.

perfidy
[ˈpərfədē]
NOUN
literary
  1. deceitfulness; untrustworthiness.

epistemic
[ˌepəˈstemik, ˌepəˈstēmik]
ADJECTIVE
  1. relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation.

inveterate
[inˈvedərət]
ADJECTIVE
  1. having a particular habit, activity, or interest that is long-established and unlikely to change.

anthropoid
[ˈanTHrəˌpoid]
ADJECTIVE
  1. resembling a human being in form.
NOUN (zoology)
  1. a higher primate, especially an ape or apeman.

somnolent
[ˈsämnələnt]
ADJECTIVE
  1. sleepy; drowsy.

extirpate
[ˈekstərˌpāt]
VERB
  1. root out and destroy completely.

bluestocking
[ˈblo͞oˌstäkiNG]
NOUN
derogatory
  1. an intellectual or literary woman.

newel
[ˈnü-əl  , ˈnyü- ]
NOUN
  1. an upright post about which the steps of a circular staircase wind
  2. a post at the foot of a straight stairway or one at a landing

antiphonal
[ˌanˈtifən(ə)l]
ADJECTIVE
  1. (in traditional Western Christian liturgy) (of a short sentence or its musical setting) sung, recited, or played alternately by two groups.
0 Comments

Show Notes - Week of April 13, 2020

19/4/2020

0 Comments

 
Greetings from 53.5° north latitude. If my weeks had themes, this week's theme would have to be "The Triumph of the Introverts". I could see the struggle and the fatigue in the faces and hear in the voices of my friends and coworkers this last week. What seemed like a holiday a few weeks ago, a chance to hang out, try some new tech, ignore the commute, turned this last week into the slog of quarantine. The fact that we haven't hit the peak yet, that we have a significant amount of time before isolation ends, the fact that we should mentally prepare for another wave in the fall, has all taken its toll on those around me.

But not everyone is doing poorly. Some of us, the introverts especially, are faring much better. One might even argue that we were made for these times. If you have a deep-seated need to be in physical contact with someone, you are going to be in a much worse place right now than if connection via video conference is sufficient for you. Mental health issues will be paramount while and after we deal with the physical issues. I'll point out the same mental health support videos that I highlighted in last week's entry. Watch them for yourself and those close to you, and share those with others in case they might benefit as well. Even if you are doing better than most because of your innate personality and genetic makeup, it is highly unlikely that you are immune from mental health concerns. Take care of yourself. 
Picture
There were a few other COVID-related items worth highlighting this week. The first was this combination sun hat and face shield. My spouse is looking seriously at getting one, but for some reason I just cannot take it seriously. The company selling these hats has various other "Health Protection" items for sale, but the main categories of their products on their web site include "Spring Fashion" and "Accessory and Beauty" so I can't help but feel that this is nothing more than a cash grab.

60 Minutes broadcast an interview with Peter Navarro, who US President Trump appointed to lead the initiative to distribute Personal Protective Equipment. Watch that interview for a quick lesson in deflection and redirection, and to see pushback in action instead of leadership. In the end though, 60 Minutes comes out on top with this interview with their mic-drop moment when they highlighted their previous reporting on pandemic response after Navarro openly challenged their role and leadership. 
Picture
And speaking of a lack of leadership, take a read of this article and a look at the picture below to see what happens when poor leaders lead poorly. Note the vitriol of the Trump supporters with their MAGA hats and their "Don't Tread on Me" flags, all because of the American cellular-level need for loudly protecting personal freedoms, rekindling the "age-old U.S. debate over government regulation vs. personal liberty", fueled by a leader who just cannot lead. 
Picture
You can almost see the respiratory droplets coming out of their gaping mouths.
Picture

There is more to life, well my life at least, than COVID, so let's talk about something else for a while, shall we?

​Cybersecurity is important to everyone, and I would be remiss if I did not pass on this note about CIRA's new Internet protection service they call "Canadian Shield". CIRA touts their DNS privacy service, ransomware blocking, and pornography filtering service as "enterprise-grade protection for all Canadians". It is super easy to setup and free. If you are Canadian and don't already have access to a similar service or commercial offering, there is no reason why you shouldn't configure your home network using CIRA's Canadian Shield settings.

Picture
Reading Pile:
There was a lot of reading in my life this week, and I was able to finish one small book. Book #14 for 2020 was Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor", the third book in our social science reading group hosted by Adam Greenfield. We only read excerpts of the first two books, but this week we read the whole book from Sontag. To be fair, it clocked in at a paltry 88 pages, but I will count it as a full book regardless. 

There was a lot of very powerful language in this book; language that made me think about the social "value" of diseases, and how two diseases can be viewed so differently. A lot of the book is focused on tuberculosis, and early in the book, Sontag discusses how the consumption and wasting comes from TB has lead to the skinny mindset in the twentieth century. 

​Twentieth-century women's fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Sontag then contrasted the new waifish chic brought along by TB with how their male contemporaries stereotyped themselves. 
​Gradually, the tubercular look, which symbolized an appealing vulnerability, a superior sensitivity, became more and more the ideal look for women—while great men of the mid- and late nineteenth century grew fat, founded industrial empires, wrote hundreds of novels, made wars, and plundered continents.
I'm glad we read Sontag's book, but I couldn't help but feel it was dated. The book quotes Kafka a couple times as he ultimately died from TB in 1924. One quote from him from 1920 said that he had an illness of the mind that had moved to his body. Sontag's book was written in 1978, meaning there is a span of 58 years between his quote and Sontag's book. At present in 2020, there have been 41 years since Sontag wrote this book, which is getting close to the gap between Kafka and Sontag. Think how much has changed in collective thinking in those 41 years, and it seems that a 2020 Sontag book on the same topic would arrive at new conclusions.

It is unfortunate that Sontag passed away so many years ago, as it would be insightful to read a 2020 version with a new foreword by the author. 
New Words:
Lots of new words this week from a combination of War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, Sontag's book discussed above, and a new science fiction book that I will hopefully be able to finish this week. 

corvée
[kôrˈvā]
NOUN (historical)
  1. a day's unpaid labor owed by a vassal to his feudal lord.

hortatory
[ˈhôrdəˌtôrē]
ADJECTIVE
  1. tending or aiming to exhort.

etiology
[ˌēdēˈäləjē]
NOUN
  1. (medicine)  the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.
  2. the investigation or attribution of the cause or reason for something, often expressed in terms of historical or mythical explanation.

enervate
[enervate]
VERB
  1. cause (someone) to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken.
ADJECTIVE
  1. (literary) lacking in energy or vitality.

garret
[ˈɡerət]
NOUN
  1. a top-floor or attic room, especially a small dismal one (traditionally inhabited by an artist).

parvenu
[ˈpärvəˌn(y)o͞o]
NOUN (derogatory)
  1. a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth, influence, or celebrity.

rachitis
[rəˈkīdəs]
NOUN
  1. old-fashioned medical term for rickets.

philippic
[fəˈlipik]
NOUN (literary)
  1. a bitter attack or denunciation, especially a verbal one.

autophagy
[ôˈtäfəjē]
NOUN (biology)
  1. consumption of the body’s own tissue as a metabolic process occurring in starvation and certain diseases.

laity
[ˈlāədē]
NOUN
  1. lay people, as distinct from the clergy.
  2. ordinary people, as distinct from professionals or experts.

exemplum
[iɡˈzempləm]
NOUN
  1. an example or model, especially a moralizing or illustrative story.

orgone
[ˈôrɡōn]
NOUN
  1. (in the theory of Wilhelm Reich) a supposed sexual energy or life force distributed throughout the universe that can be collected and stored (in an orgone box) for therapeutic use.

apposite
[ˈapəzət]
ADJECTIVE
  1. apt in the circumstances or in relation to something.

semiotic
[ˌsemēˈädik]
ADJECTIVE
  1. relating to signs and symbols.

lacuna
[ləˈk(y)o͞onə]
NOUN
  1. an unfilled space or interval; a gap.
  2. (anatomy) a cavity or depression, especially in bone.
  3. a missing portion in a book or manuscript.

orthorexia
[ˌôrTHəˈreksēə]
NOUN
  1. an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy.

perspicacious
[ˌpərspəˈkāSHəs]
ADJECTIVE
  1. having a ready insight into and understanding of things.

pediment
[ˈpedəmənt]
NOUN
  1. the triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico of columns.
0 Comments

Show Notes - Week of April 6, 2020

12/4/2020

0 Comments

 
Greetings from 53.5° north latitude where it is unbelievably, and frustratingly, still winter. 

This week saw the world surpass 1.8 million confirmed COVID cases, and the US going over the 20,000 mark to become the country with the most confirmed COVID-related deaths globally. Here in Alberta, we hit 40 deaths so far, but that is a far cry from the estimated range of 400 and 3,100 deaths as modeled by AHS and presented to the public by the Premier (video below). We are only 10% of the way to the best-case scenario right now, which is really staggering. 

Is there a bright side to all of this? Is there something positive we can take away? I think there is, whether it be the wonderful in-home concerts we can watch, the positivity from so many people, or the companies around the world retooling so they can focus on creating life-saving equipment. Plus so many of us are finding ways to stay connected even if we are alone.

I remember back in my twenties hearing for the first time that there was a difference between being alone and being lonely. If we can stay alone or at least only together with our household while still finding ways to stay connected, we can come out of this okay. Don't get me wrong, the world will be changed, and mental health will be greatly impacted in addition to the more obvious physical issues. But that doesn't mean the world will be or has to be worse than it is now. 
Reading Pile:
​I am taking advantage of as many opportunities as possible to do something new. The most obvious at this point is a reading group I joined hosted by author Adam Greenfield. This isn't a typical book club or even a contemporary international reading, but rather a group reading about specific theories and books in the social sciences.
Our first book was "Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly" by Judith Butler. My proviso for this is that I didn't read the whole book like the rest of the group. I thoroughly read about ten percent and then skimmed the rest. Butler's reputation of writing obtuse and hard-to-read prose is apparently well-deserved. Not that I knew about Butler's reputation, or even Butler at all, prior to the group discussion. 
Our second book which we delved into this week was "The Wretched of the Earth" by Frantz Fanon. Again, never heard of him but his writing was much more consumable albeit dated. Written in 1961, Fanon wrote in the language of the day: Man this, man that, women as an object. Trying to get past that, we focused on the chapter "On Violence" which discusses the need for the colonized to stand up to the colonizer. 
At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. --Franz Fanon
I am grateful for the opportunity to be exposed to different thinking, different intellectuals, and completely different discussions, but I am concerned with my ability to contribute to the ongoing discussion. That said, I did propose that we discuss the use of the "war" moniker and metaphor in our COVID responses and that received enthusiastic support. Cue up some Susan Sontag!
Picture
Switching over to the "listening pile" for a minute, I was able to find time to dive into the recent Longform interview with science writer Ed Yong. Yong had just completed a great article on COVID for The Atlantic, which is definitely worth reading in addition to or instead of the Longform interview. While the whole interview was enjoyable, my favourite part was in the first few minutes as they were getting settled and Yong compared his COVID-reality life to a combination of "Groundhog Day" and a Michael Bay movie: stunningly mind-numbing repetition followed by scare-you-out-of-your-seats moments. Yep, pretty much sums up the last month.  

The last bit of non-fiction reading this week was a throwback to 1997. Back in January, I commented on the Longform interview with Kevin Kelly, former editor at Wired. This 1997 article was co-written by Kelly and comments on the soon-to-be demise of the browser and the coming wonders of push technology. 
Picture
It is interesting to read something from twenty-three years ago, especially given that the Internet as we know it was barely a couple years old at the time of publication. A lot has changed, of course. Talk of T1 lines seems antiquated, even though I can remember being proud to commission my first T1 installation not long before that article came out. 

We can expect a billion Web pages by 2000. Some of them will even be worth reading. -- Wired, March 1997
Where the article was most prescient was its predictions regarding technology pervasiveness and the dependency content producers would have on advertising. At one point, the authors predict that this new world of push technology, which has somewhat been replaced with notifications, will be "gentle, in-your-face, intermittent, in the background, or always on." The always-on-ness of our world these days is definitely one of our defining societal problems. See my comments from last October regarding Michael Harris's book "Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World". As for their other prediction, some form of the word "advertising" appears eight times throughout the article. Maybe the authors were afforded a crystal ball and could see their magazine's web page covered in ads from their parent company and lifestyle brand, Condé Nast. 
Picture
On to fiction. First, I am continuing to read "The Count of Monte Cristo" and am thoroughly enjoying it. It holds up quite well at nearly 200 years old. One of my favourite lines so far in the book came in the penultimate paragraph of Chapter XXX, and it really sets up the revenge section of the novel.
I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!  --The Count of Monte Cristo, Chapter XXX
Picture
I also finished another book this week. Book #13 for 2020 was "Seraphina", by Rachel Hartman. This was a wonderful and unique Young Adult novel, that earns the YA moniker in all the best ways. The eponymous protagonist was not an orphan, which is of course the single worst trope in YA novels, plus was part of the solution but realized she could not cannot do it alone. No pushy teen sidestepping the lame-brained adults in this novel. There was a great message about the importance of family and friends and how solutions are best solved together and not alone. I'm not an expert on the middle ages, but the setting seemed to be a realistic, wealthy monarchy set in a middle ages equivalent world. Hartman was able to introduce IRL middle ages items and terms, such as houpelandde, oud, and sackbut (see the New Words section below for all three), and added to the dragon mythos with new words like saar, saarantras, and dracomachia (you will have to read the book to get definitions for these). All in all, a great novel worthy of your time and energy to read whether you are in the YA time frame or just like a good novel. 

New Beers:
Three new beers this week from three different Canadian breweries, Collective Arts, Alley Kat, and Moosehead. The first was the Collective Arts No. 12 IPA which was a nice hazy IPA with a lot of citrus and a refreshing taste. (3.5 / 5). The second was the Alley Kat Westminster Tabby from their Back Alley Brews line.  This Extra Special Bitter benefited from the authentic British malts, and according to the label Alley Kat even replicated the minerals in the water from Burton Upon Trent in the UK. It is a shame this is a limited edition beer that isn't sticking around. (3.75 / 5)

​Last up was the Moosehead Pale Ale. A pale ale is by definition pale which implies not a huge amount of flavor or aroma. Moosehead's Pale Ale was a decent representation of a style that doesn't have a lot going for it, in my opinion. Decent, drinkable, but pretty forgettable. (3.25 / 5)
Picture
New Words:
Lots of new words this week, partly because I caught up with all of the words from "Seraphina", but also because of the Fanon, Butler, and Monte Cristo readings. 

phlegmatic
[fleɡˈmadik]
ADJECTIVE
  1. (of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.

probity
[ˈprōbədē]
NOUN (formal)
  1. the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.

postulant
[ˈpäsCHələnt]
NOUN
  1. a candidate, especially one seeking admission into a religious order.

superadded
[ˌso͞opərˈadəd]
ADJECTIVE
  1. added to what has already been added.

houppe​lande 
[hüˌpländ]
NOUN
  1. a loose belted overgown of the 14th and 15th centuries usually with long wide sleeves, dagged edges, a fur lining, and full-length skirt often with slits in it

oud
[o͞od]
NOUN
  1. a form of lute or mandolin played principally in Arab countries.

sackbut
[ˈsakˌbət]
NOUN
  1. an early form of trombone used in Renaissance music.

auto-da-fé
[ˌôdədəˈfā]
NOUN
  1. the burning of a heretic by the Spanish Inquisition.

tonus
[ˈtōnəs]
NOUN
  1. the constant low-level activity of a body tissue, especially muscle tone.

puerile
[ˈpyo͝orəl, ˈpyo͝orˌīl]
ADJECTIVE
  1. childishly silly and trivial.

hieratic
[ˌhī(ə)ˈradik]
ADJECTIVE
  1. of or concerning priests.

enchiridion
[ˌeNGkəˈridēən, ˌenkī-]
NOUN (formal)
  1. a book containing essential information on a subject.

ab ovo
[ab ˈōˌvō, äb]
ADVERB
  1. from the very beginning.

salutary
[ˈsalyəˌterē]
ADJECTIVE
  1. (especially with reference to something unwelcome or unpleasant) producing good effects; beneficial.
  2. (archaic) health-giving.

mot juste
[ˌmō ˈZHo͞ost]
NOUN
  1. the exact, appropriate word.

apotheosis
[əˌpäTHēˈōsəs]
NOUN
  1. the highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax.

prevaricate
[prəˈverəˌkāt]
VERB
  1. speak or act in an evasive way.

redoubt
[rəˈdout]
NOUN (military)
  1. a temporary or supplementary fortification, typically square or polygonal and without flanking
0 Comments

Show Notes - Week of March 30, 2020

5/4/2020

0 Comments

 
There are those words that you say without thinking about, and then one day you think about them, and all you can think about is how weird that word is. "Hunker" is definitely in that category. We are definitely into the "hunker" phase of our global COVID response, in which we are, to use the North American use of the word, taking shelter in a defensive position. See the full definition in the "New Words" section at the end of this post. 

With that, greetings from 53.5° north latitude, in a spot in the world where it is still solidly winter with cold temperatures, snow, and ice that can cause both the short of cycling mishaps that rip through two layers of pants and at least one layer of skin, and an intensely beautiful vistas. 
Picture
Picture
The world zipped past 1,000,000 confirmed cases of COVID earlier this week, and passed 1.25 million this morning. There is a growing realization that we will be in this state of isolation until the end of June and that some form of public health measures will extend for some time beyond then. 

Even with all of the news, the messages from public health officials, the pleas from celebrities, there are still people who just won't get it. The blistering editorial this week in the Thorsby Target from Thorsby Mayor Rod Raymond this past week was a welcome read. It seems Mayor Raymond does not mince words. Pin heads, indeed!
​To the pin head who returned from vacation without going into 14 day isolation, and came into the town office to enquire about their water bill; YOU exposed our staff and forced the closure of the town office. To the other Pin Head who returned from Africa and came to buy a furnace motor; YOU risked infecting a pregnant woman!!! For the people who returned from Mexico and wandered around town; YOU are potentially are spreading the virus. What is the matter with you people? Don’t you care about anyone else but yourselves? Fortunately, no one encountering you, has shown any symptoms, yet. 
Picture
Thorsby Mayor, and Speaker of Plain Truths, Rod Raymond
I talked about the economic impact in the last two weeks [here, and here]. The Edmonton Chamber of Commerce released some staggering survey results this week. Nearly half of Chamber members surveyed feared that their business would not survive, and a quarter surveyed do not have cash to meet their next payroll. ​
Picture
The world will change as a result of this. The world is changing as a result of this. It will be imperative to engage to do as much as possible to influence the changes to be positive and inclusive. If we fail to that, what we are living in now may be the real-world equivalent to the prequel to a haunting dystopian science-fiction story. 
Reading Pile:
I had a good week as far as reading goes. I dove into "War and Peace" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" and should be caught up in the respective Reddit reading groups in a few days. Monte Cristo is revealing itself to be a beautiful book filled with evocative imagery and phrases. Below are two of my favourite from my readings this last week. The first one is strangely recursive, discussing how a heart can break and then itself causing hearts to break. 
​The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.
The second is darker, highlighting a fatalistic view on the world and the thoughts that maybe the world should just be burned down. 
​If only the sky would rain gunpowder for two days and fire for an hour, and we could have done with it all.
Picture
Beyond those two novels, I did finish another novel this week. Book #12 for 2020 was "Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich. This was a book that I thought was wonderful as I was in the act of reading it, but as I stepped away from it I reflect on a few flaws. There were a few plot points dropped in and not explored, such as the massively changed fauna (sabre-tooth cat, anyone?). I also would have liked to have the role of the theocratic church explained more, and how the monitoring and surveillance technology was a surprise and also so surprisingly effective. I still don't know with certainty which characters in the book were "good", but I suppose that is no different than real life, where every person we encounter is both wonderful and flawed. 

But ignore that. You should read this book even with its flaws. The timeliness of a novel where the protagonist is locked away and isolated is certainly worth reading right now, as are the hints at how quickly and how completely our world could change for the worse. Don't take anything for granted, even those crummy gas station granola bars, and especially the rights of the individuals. 

And since I am apparently big on quotes this week, here is one from this book that can hopefully remind us of all that exists that is worth fighting for. 

I think we have survived because we love beauty and because we find each other beautiful. I think it may be our strongest quality.
New Words:
More reading this week, and therefore more new words as well. Plus leading off with that word that seems really weird when you really think about it. 

hunker
[ˈhəNGkər]
VERB
  1. squat or crouch down low.
  2. (USA) take shelter in a defensive position.
  3. (hunker down) apply oneself seriously to a task.

​chiaroscuro
[kyärəˈsk(y)o͝orō]
NOUN
  1. the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting. An effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something.

funereal
[fyəˈnērēəl]
ADJECTIVE
  1. having the mournful, somber character appropriate to a funeral.

enervate
[enervate]
VERB
  1. cause (someone) to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken.
ADJECTIVE
  1. (literary) lacking in energy or vitality.

gravid
[ˈɡravəd]
ADJECTIVE
  1. (technical) pregnant; carrying eggs or young.
  2. full of meaning or a specified quality.
0 Comments

    Archives

    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019

    Categories

    All
    Afro
    Alberta
    Autobiography
    Beer
    Beers
    Birds
    Book
    Books
    Canada
    Capitalism
    Censorship
    China
    Climate
    Club
    Coffee
    Comics
    Covid
    CRISPR
    Cryptography
    Cycling
    Data
    Daylight
    Disaster
    Drawing
    Drugs
    Economics
    Edmonton
    Equality
    Family
    Festivals
    Fire
    Fishing
    Food
    Freedoms
    Fundraising
    Games
    Gaming
    Genealogy
    Goals
    Healthcare
    History
    Hockey
    Holidays
    Humanism
    Hunting
    Idiot
    Information
    Innovation
    Intelligence
    Internet
    Interviews
    Introvert
    IT
    Kickstarter
    Knowledge
    Language
    Law
    Lawsuit
    Leadership
    Lego
    Life Lesson
    Longevity
    Morals
    Movies
    Music
    Nature
    Negotiating
    Nuclear
    Philosophy
    Phonetic
    Podcast
    Politics
    Prediction
    Pride
    Privacy
    Quote
    Quotes
    Racism
    Ramen
    Reconciliation
    Reddit
    Religion
    Research
    Retraction
    Russia
    Satire
    Science
    Security
    Skills
    Sociology
    Space
    Speaking
    Star Wars
    Stream
    Surveillance
    Tea
    Theory
    Throwaway
    Tour
    Transit
    Us
    Vacation
    Volunteering
    Vote
    War
    Weather
    Wisdom
    Word
    Words
    Work
    Wrestling
    Writing
    Youth

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Show Notes (Archive)
  • Gaming
  • Long Form
  • About