The Nature of Things

Laos 1977. The Pathet Lao revolution has succeeded and the new Communist government is two years old. Unfortunately, it has not improved the lives of ordinary Laotians. The regime is bogged down in a mind-numbing welter of bureaucratic red tape. It seems impossible to actually get anything done. Some of the old revolutionaries who brought the new order into being are disillusioned with its results. It seems that a few may be so disillusioned that they are willing to throw the whole thing out and start over again. A coup against the two-year-old regime is being planned. All of this comes to light as the result of the death of a blind retired dentist. The man is run down by a runaway log truck on the streets of Vientiane. His body is brought to Dr. Siri's morgue. As the good doctor goes through his clothes, looking for identification, he finds a letter, written in code and in invisible ink. The enigmatic letters seem unfathomable. Siri and the local policeman Phosy take the letter to...

So now we know who all the candidates will be in the November presidential election. It's Obama-Biden for the Democrats and Romney-Ryan for the Tea Party Republicans. Three months of listening to the Randian Ryan and the robot Romney. It's going to be a long autumn. The two seem made for each other really. The inauthentic, espouse-any-position-to-win Romney and the phony baloney deficit fighter Ryan. Neither of them is a friend to truth. Paul Krugman has written extensively over the last couple of years about the Ryan budget and about the phony math which drives it. He had another post about it on his blog today, wherein he opines that the selection of Ryan as vice-presidential candidate was really about " exploiting the gullibility and vanity of the news media, in much the same way that George W. Bush did in 2000. " "...it’s because many commentators want to tell a story about US politics that makes them feel and look good — a story in which both parties are eq...

This short novel is a model of storytelling by a very accomplished writer. John Grisham is, of course, best known for his lawyer-mysteries/thrillers, but I've actually never read any of them. I have read  The Painted House  which I thought was wonderful and now I can add  Calico Joe  to my Grisham list. It's a fine story. The action of  Calico Joe  switches back and forth between the summer of 1973 and the close-to-present-day. The big story of the summer of 1973 was a baseball phenom for the hapless Chicago Cubs named Joe Castle. He was the most amazing rookie anyone had ever seen, in a sport that is known for some amazing rookies, most of whom quickly flame out. But Joe Castle was the real deal. In his first at bat in Philadelphia, he hit a home run. And he kept hitting them. He hit home run after home run, but even when he didn't hit home runs, he got hits. Baseball fans, especially young boys, all over the country idolized him, and Cubs fans were ecstat...

Koko and Yum Yum, the mystery-solving Siamese (well, Koko is anyway) are featured in this 18th in  The Cat Who...  series. There have been many other entries in the series since then and it has many devoted fans. I don't really count myself among them, although I have read a few of the books over the years. This book, however, was the August selection of my local Mystery Book Club and so I applied myself to reading it. It was a quick read, very light in tone, nothing to tax the brain. Jim Qwilleran, caretaker of the Siamese and a local newspaper columnist, also the richest man in his part of the world as we are reminded several times, is on the case of the missing millionaire, the thoroughly unlikable Floyd Trevelyan. Trevelyan was a financier who has disappeared at a time when millions of investors' dollars have also disappeared from his credit union. The two disappearances seem strangely linked. We learn that Trevelyan was a bully who was a tyrant to his family. He was a wom...

The Olympics have claimed people's attention around the world over the last couple of weeks. Not mine. I'm really not a big Olympics buff, although, of course, I am tangentially aware of the Games and I honor the efforts of the winners, as well as the also-rans. They are amazing people, representing some of the best that the human race can achieve in the realm of physical feats. Musing on the Olympics started me thinking about athletics and athletes in general and about the greatest athlete and the greatest athletic feat I ever saw. Since I am a big baseball fan - really my only sport - you might think it was a particular game, maybe a particular pitcher, but no. It was this. Secretariat had that race wrapped up early on. He could have let up a little, relaxed a bit, saved a little effort, but he didn't. He ran as if all the furies of hell were chasing him. He ran because that's what he was born to do and this was the race he was born to run. It was a magnificent perfor...

In the middle of the ninth century, the prayers of the English routinely contained the line, "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us." It was a time when the fierce Danes came down on British soil like the wolf on the fold. They were hungry for spoils and conquest. They raped and killed and took everything that wasn't nailed down and some things that were, leaving a wasteland and a destitute people in their path. It's a period of history that seems made for the story-telling talents of Bernard Cornwell and he doesn't disappoint. He has created a rousing epic adventure, as told by a young warrior who had intimate familiarity with both sides in the struggle. As a young lad in 866, our narrator was the second son of a lord of Northumbria named Uhtred. When the older son of the lord, who was also named Uhtred, was killed, beheaded by the Danes, the family name was passed on to the second son. He became Uhtred son of Uhtred. Still a child, he went with hi...

Remember in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security issued its report on the rise of hate groups in this country? You might not remember the report itself but surely you remember the phony outrage it engendered among the right wing nutjobs like Drudge, Breitbart, Limbaugh, Beck, and, of course, Fox News. The report, called "Rightwing Extremism," predicted that a troubled economy combined with the election of a black president could inspire a rise in racist hate groups and actions.  The report stated that “lone wolves” who embrace violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. The report further stated that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers identifying them and warning society of the danger. The report said that military experience could make such lone wolves p...