Guest Review Over At Smexy Books

The lovely Mandi of Smexy Books finally got me to review a m/m romance from a female author.  It's only taken a year an a half.  I would love it if you took a few minutes to read what I had to say.  Here is the link for my review of Stolen Summer by S.A. Meade.

Focus

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention - Herbert Simon, psychologist.

This will be a short post. I'm having trouble focusing. Actually I was driving home the other day (my one hour commute) and thinking about how I used to feel I accomplished more. I seemed to read more, go to more movies, got together with friends and hung out. What am I doing with my time?

I definitely spend more time on the computer and it can be choppy - go read a book, but get up and check something. My concentration has diminished. There's a new term "executive function" which contains cognitive skills allowing us to control thoughts and impulses. I need to work on that.

There's so much information today and the world is changing rapidly. Our minds and processes have to evolve too. But there still are key factors: Pay attention, listen. I'll repeat that one -actually listen to someone if you are having a conversation. Read. Focus.

Oops ... gotta go check something.

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Favorite Fictional Character --- Cade Foster

I was going to do a final All My Children post, but once I sat down to do it, I cam up with a complete blank.  Not because I don't have any ideas, but because I have too many of them.  There are just so many characters that I love, that I could never choose one.  I thought about doing groups, but that was even worse.  So I scrapped the idea all together, but I will miss them all.  Instead I'm going to go with one of my favorite SciFi characters, and one of the hottest.  So with no further ado, I present Cade Foster of the show First Wave.

When Cade first appears on the scene he is a reformed thief who has been trying to get his life back together.  His new life comes to a screeching halt when he is unknowingly picked to be part of an alien experiment.  The Gua have been on Earth for years, experimenting on humans to see what it takes to make us break.  They kill his wife and set him up for the murder.  What they thought would be a study of human frailty under extreme conditions, created their downfall.

Once Cade learns of the plot he sets out to destroy them.  He is helped by a crazy hacker, a rebel leader (played by Traci Lords), and one of the Gua, who has become disillusioned with the cause.  The cool twist on what could have been a normal everyday SciFi show, was the use of the Nostradamus prophecies.  All of the experiments were predicted by the soothsayer.  It's an interesting structure that allows Cade and his friends to figure out what the Gua are intent on.

I love Cade because he takes what could have destroyed another man and turns it around.  At first it's simply for vengeance, he wants them to pay for what they did to his wife.  After a while though, it's because he cares about what happens to the planet and the billions of people living on it.  He slowly changes from the wrathful man into someone that most of us would look up to and follow.  He's the hero we all hope we could be if we found ourselves in the same situation.  Now if I can just make sure he's around when the real aliens decide to invade.

Moneyball Review: Catch It

Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis' fascinating book, is about the science of baseball and how the anemic Oakland Athletics in 2002/2003 managed to win games with an unlikely team and lousy payroll. Sound boring? Nope. Brad Pitt fills a perfect role. He's Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's.

Beane was a young gun with a full Stanford scholarship, who skipped college to play in the big show for the New York Mets. Unfortunately, he could never get all of his skills to connect. But he became a talent scout, thrived, and moved up the ladder. Now, as a forty-something GM, he was facing the loss of three big players (free agents) and had no money to buy replacements.

However, he did recognize some other talent - a young Yale economist graduate - Peter Brand (unassumingly played by Jonah Hill in a breakout role for him). This kid had statistics to back up player picks, looking at on-base percentages,etc. No picks based on physical looks, girlfriends, or star wattage. Strictly numbers. Billy rolls with the new method, is almost laughed out of the ballpark, until ... the A's start winning, and winning, and winning some more.

Moneyball is a modest, talks a lot film. It watches Pitt ponder and then sweat out his team's games. He battles the coach, played by a gruff Phillip Seymour Hoffman (always fabulous), and he helps Brand understand the glory of baseball, the dream, and that the key is winning that last game. Plenty of chuckles, angst, and baseball in this film. Brad Pitt ambles through it all with grace and all-American heart.

Here's to the start of a home-run hitting fall movie season.

(review published for the Little Paper of San Saba - a town without a theater)

State vs. Defense by Stephen Glain

Synopsis From Goodreads: 

For most of the twentieth century, the sword has led before the olive branch in American foreign policy. In eye-opening fashion, State vs. Defense shows how America truly operates as a superpower and explores the constant tension between the diplomats at State and the warriors at Defense.

State vs. Defense characterizes all the great figures who crafted American foreign policy, from George Marshall to Robert McNamara to Henry Kissinger to Don Rumsfeld with this underlying theme: America has become increasingly imperial and militaristic.

Take, for example, the Pentagon, which as of 2010, acknowledged the concentration of 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees inside 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories. The price of America’s military-base network overseas, along with the expense of its national security state at home, is enormous. The bill comes in at well over $1 trillion. That is equal to nearly 8 percent of GDP and more than 20 percent of the federal budget. (By comparison, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, the five countries Pentagon planners routinely trot out as conventional threats to the national well-being, have a cumulative security budget of just over $200 billion.) Quietly, gradually—and inevitably, given the weight of its colossal budget and imperial writ—the Pentagon has all but eclipsed the State Department at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

In the tradition of classics such as The Wise Men, The Best and the Brightest, and Legacy of Ashes, State vs. Defense explores how and why American leaders succumbed to the sirens of militarism, how the republic has been lost to an empire, and how “the military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower so famously forewarned has set us on a stark path of financial peril.
  
I don't have the knowledge or the expertise to review this book on the merits or on the facts, so I'm not even going to try.  For the most part, due to my world & political views, I tend to agree with every point this author is making about the disparity between the State and Defense Departments.  I agree that for too long this country has let it's military define our global footprint and I think it's time for the State Department to start doing it's job again.  Despite my inclination to to agree with the state purpose of the book, I'm afraid that I walked away from it with a sour taste in my mouth.  


What I did not like was the tone the author chose to take in discussing the subject.  I didn't like the obvious contempt the author has for many of the people he talks about in the book, it's contempt that I may share, but I don't think it's necessarily helpful.  Anyone who is coming at this book from the opposite point of view is not going to take it seriously.  They are, wrongly in my opinion, going to look at this is a work of the "liberal media" and dismiss it.  They won't take it seriously, something which I think this subject needs.  I think the tone did a disservice to the book, one that was avoidable.  I would have much preferred a book that laid out the facts, with no judgements made, in order for the reader to make up their own mind.  


I do think this is an important look at the players involved and the decisions that have been made in order for us to get to this point in our history.  The State Department has been sidelined too many times for the political or financial gain of those involved in the decision making.  I do think it's time that we allow the diplomatic community to take the reigns once again.  I just hope that this book, despite it's flaws, gets the idea across to enough people.

Cenários: "A Vingança do Lobo" III

  Sem entrar em spoilers, gostaria de partilhar convosco alguns dos locais reais usados nos livros e contos de "Crónicas Obscuras", desta feita: o Central Park de Nova York.



  Uma pequena mancha verde no meio da temível selva urbana. A combinação ideal entre natureza e betão para o primeiro acto da vingança do "lobo".

 

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