The Nautical Chart (2000) Arturo Perez-Reverte
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

It took me awhile to get into The Nautical Chart. The other books I have read by Arturo Perez-Reverte have drawn me in immediately, but not so for this book. I started reading the book back in December, but kept picking up other books to read instead of going back to read this one.

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theomachy
noun (pl. theomachies) a war or struggle against God or among or against the gods.
origin late 16th cent. (denoting fighting against God): from Greek theomakhia, from theos ‘god’ + -makhia ‘fighting’.

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

via Stereo Describes My Scenario

I may have mentioned before that the Morgantownies page on my website gets lots of visitors in spurts, and then nothing.

Well, January has been a busy month. Since the 19th I’ve gotten nine e-mails for page, eight of them with suggestions of additions, which is a lot for my site. Consider that the last two e-mails I received were in November and October.

But what’s really cool is the number of people I have known who have found me because of that page. In the past week I’ve gotten e-mail from two people that I haven’t heard from in years–in once case since 1988.

There’s just something lovely about seeing names that you haven’t seen for years appear from out of the blue.

And Michael has not yet gotten any interviews, however it has only been a week, so I wouldn’t necessarily have expected him to get a call yet.

So if you know of any great jobs available in the Morgantown area, lemme know so I can point him that way!

Inside Appalachia again has several excellent pieces about mine safety and the recent mine disasters.

The first report talks about the Alma mine fire, and has an interview with a beltman at the Alma mine. If what he says is true, then the legislation that was just passed isn’t going to be nearly enough.

The miner interviewed claims that a similar fire happened at the exact same spot two days before Christmas. He also says that at that time, the fire fighting equipment didn’t work properly.

Supporting his claim is the fact that MSHA cited Massey twelve times since June for inadequate fire fighting equipment.

Additionally, a proposed rule to require belts like the one that caused the fire in the Alma mine, to be made of inflammable material, was killed by federal mine regulators in 2002.

Happy New Year!

It’s the Year of the Dog, which is my year, so I’m hoping that in 4703 my luck is going to be a little better than it’s been so far for 2006.

And for amusement:

THE METAL DOG 1910 AND 1970

Metal Dogs have extremely high standards and expect a lot of themselves and of others. They are loyal and hold a strong outlook about the direction they want their life to take. They choose their friends and causes with care, as they do not plan to ever not support these people and things again. Once they have committed themselves, there is little to no turning back. They are bold, unafraid to disagree out loud about anything they feel is unjust or unfair. Metal Dogs are easily stressed if a plan does not go accordingly. They find it difficult to relax when there are things to be done.

Michael’s response? “God! That describes you perfectly.” Mostly referring to the last three sentences I believe.

Some bits I’m just not willing to share with the entire internet.
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Friday Time Wasting: Serenity Quiz!

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Autism Spectrum Quotient Quiz

The test is interesting, but I don’t think I believe my score.
(more…)

You know, you read this as a plot in a novel, you’d say it was absolutely too ridiculous, and put the book back.

An Indian man has been living in a tree for the past 15 years despite passionate appeals by his mother to return home.

But wait! It gets better!

Kapila’s wife, Tulasi, began having “illicit relations” with his younger brother Babuan.

It’s got everything! Sex, family intrigue, AND living in a tree.

In case you were feeling good about your accomplishments, here’s a story of a ten-year old actor who is now directing his first movie.

I’ll give you an unusually long quote, because this was the part that struck me:

The film is about the street children who have no other address than the footpaths in India’s big cities.

“When I was six years old, I saw slum children selling newspapers at a traffic signal and I asked my dad why they are not like us. Why they do not go to schools.

“My dad said they do not have parents. I felt very bad and thought I must do something for them,” Kishan told the BBC.

“Then I wrote a short story and read it to my dad who narrated it to his friends as well. It was my dad’s friends who suggested that I should direct the film myself, as I had written the story.”

Wow. The best part is that he actually sounds like a good kid.

The Black Forest (2004) Todd Livingston, Robert Tinnell, Neil Vokes

We (or more rightly Michael) picked this up at the Bookshelf in early December. Robert Tinnell lives in West Virginia–apparently relatively close, as Jim talked about calling him to bring by more copies. Michael read it right away, but I decided to wait until I needed something short to read.

This story was not at all what I was expecting. The Black Forest evoked, for me, Eastern European folktales. And the vamipric creature on the cover made me think of dark fantasy. Thus, I was not expecting a supernatural World War I war story. (This is probably a good time to admit that I typically ignore or at best scan back cover copy. Yes, I regularly judge books by their cover. Following that, I look for positive blurbs by authors I know.)

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If MSHA hasn’t been doing anything wrong, you wouldn’t know it by the actions of David Dye, who walked out of the hearings, saying he had more important things to do. (NY Times, Charleston Gazette)

Additionally, the WV legislature passed a major piece of Mine Safety Legislation yesterday. (Charleston Gazette, Charleson Daily Mail) It creates a Mine and Industrial Accident Rapid Response System, to respond to mine accidents, would create an electronic tracking system for miners, and most importantly, imposes $100,000 fines upon mines that do not report accidents immediately. Delayed reporting occurred in both the Sago and Aracoma Alma mines.

There will also be SCSRs (Self-Contained Self Rescuer, which are oxygen tanks for miners to use when the air becomes unsafe) placed throughout the mine, so that miners should be less likely to run out of oxygen, such as happened in Sago.

We can hope that this legislation will be combined with increased vigilance at MSHA, to save the lives of miners in the future. We can also hope that these steps will serve as a guide to countries like China, where mine safety is now is where it was in the United States a century or more ago.

(For more mine news, see also The Logan Banner)

This is from last week, but describes today perfectly:

splenetic \splih-NET-ik\ adjective
: marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite

The Golden Key (1996) Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson, Kate Elliot

At 889 pages, The Golden Key is a very long book. Admittedly, I have not had a lot of time for reading, but even so, more than a week for me to read a book is really slow. Part of the reason is that the first third of the book was slow going. There are a good number of foreign words sprinkled through the story, and I didn’t find the glossary until I was nearly finished. As much as I hate flipping back a forth, checking the glossary from the start would have this book far easier to read. Well, that and a better knowledge of Latin/Spanish.

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There are two good articles in the Charleston Gazette today about Mine Safety. One, by Ken Ward and the other an AP article.

Senator Byrd has arranged Senate hearings that look like they will be focusing on Mine Safety, as well as the MSHA budget (not to mention whether there was a top down push to reduce vigilance.)

I also think that it’s important to note that both of these mines were non-union mines. Those who have read about the mine wars know what an important part the UMWA has played in coal mining. Hopefully they will be stepping forward again, to push for communication and safety equipment that MHSA has had seemingly little interest in since the Bush administration took office.

Two more mining familes have lost their loved ones.

To paraphrase Governor Manchin, now is the time for morning. Later, after we put mourning aside, that is the time for righteous anger, and for questioning why such things are happening.

As I am not completely oblivious to the world around me because of my own whining…

There’s a mine fire in Logan County, and two miners are still unaccounted for.

The only good news is that it appears the mine rescue teams got there quickly.

Michael’s office is closing March 1st.

Anyone who knows of any jobs in the Morgantown area for someone who is four classes away from his CS degree, has a CCNA, and is currently working as a technical support person, lemme know.

ADDENDUM the First:
By the way, he already has a Bachelor’s degree. However, it is in Forestry.

The bad news that was here will reappear tomorrow.

Unfortunately it didn’t go away permamently.

I am in search a copy of the Plumber skit from the Electric Company.

It was my all time favorite bit from the Electric Company, and I was reminded of it by a recent news bit on a gray parrot tattled on a girlfriend’s infidelity.

I especially loved the last bit of the CNN story:

(The ex-girlfriend) added to The Guardian newspaper: “I am surprised to hear he got rid of that bird.

“He spent more time talking to it than he did to me.”

But I still want to see that bit from the Electric Company again.

“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber, he’s come to fix the sink.”

Kushiel’s Dart (2001) Jacqueline Carey

I’ve read and heard a number of glowing recommendations for Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series. It’s a fantasy series written for a grownup audience, that focuses on the theme of sex and sexuality.

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When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
– Martin Luther King
Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence

As much as I appreciate cough drops, I really hate the way they make my back teeth feel fuzzy.

Paths Not Taken (2005) Simon R. Green

Okay. Wow. This book certainly took a different turn. And I’m not sure how much I care for the change. In this book John Taylor is, for lack of a better word, a complete asshole. I was going to say jerk, but that’s just not a strong enough word. He is simply not a nice person, no matter how much he tries to justify his actions.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

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