Twelve Black Code Monkeys

In The Omnivore’s Dilemm a, journalist and author Michael Pollan takes us on a journey through four of the main kinds of meals that are generally get eaten here in the U.S.: a fast food meal; an “industrial organic” meal; a meal from a non-industrial, sustainable, local farm (self-labeled “beyond organic”); and finally a meal for which Pollan provides the majority of the ingredients himself - by hunting and gathering. The book is not only about the meals and their ingredients and preparation, however. Rather, Pollan tries to take us from the very beginning of how the components of each meal, to the end product. Thus he traces the cow, chicken, or pig from its origins and life on the farm (or forest) to its slaughter, preparation for sale or cooking, and final preparation by the Pollan himself or McDonalds. He also traces other parts of the meal, most notably corn (for the fast-food meal) and mushrooms (for the hunter-gatherer meal). Along the way, we Pollan gives us the history of various kinds of agriculture, discusses much of our historical and prehistoric relationship to food through the anthropological record, and even how animal and plant species have evolved to defend against predation but also to survive with the help of humans or other animals. The book is not purely one of information, though, but also a very personal account of Pollan’s own journey as he immerses himself in the details of what most of us take for granted as simply the food we buy and eat every day.The title of the book refers to the fact that humans, like some other primates, rats, pigs, chickens, bears, and a bunch of other species, are “omnivores,” meaning that they (we) are generalized feeders that can eat both animal meats as well as plant foods for our nourishment. Other species have a more specialized diet, and can only survive by either eating meat (carnivores) or plant foods (herbivores). While being an omnivore gives distinct advantages, allowing for a wider assortment of nourishment, the flip side of this increased number of choices is the problem or dilemma of what to eat. Koala bears know they can eat eucalyptus leaves, and that’s it. Omnivores have to figure out what they can eat, making sure not to eat something poisonous, and also trying to determine the most nutritious animals or plants (or parts of these) so that they don’t waste their limited capacity to consume and fill up on ones that aren’t as very nourishing. Also, since we’ve developed culture, language, philosophy, and religion, we also need to deal with the decision of what we should eat. Should we eat meat, for example, or is that “immoral.” Should we eat by the rules of kosher or halal? Should we eat organic or conventional? Should we eat something that authorities tell us will eventually be detrimental to our health despite no immediate or obvious danger? These questions, although they perhaps only infrequently come up for most of us, are ones where we differ from other species, and Pollan demonstrates throughout the book that these decisions can be at times very difficult ones if one really chooses to contemplate them seriously.

The first section of the book details industrial agriculture. Specifically, it describes everything about the biggest single crop that the U.S. produces - corn, or more accurately the species zea mays. The history of corn is a fascinating one as Pollan tells it. He describes how in the last fifty or so years it has become part of an absurdist spiral that has bankrupted huge numbers of farmers, made the U.S. one of the most obese countries on the planet, and has usurped the vast majority of our arable land. Most of this, Pollan writes, is due to government subsidies that compel farmers to grow corn over anything else. Government regulations also favor corn, industrial methods of farming, and the largest of operations. These regulations are no doubt affected by the lobbying dollars spent, and campaign contributions given, to government officials on behalf of the manufacturers of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and huge industrial farms.

Corn has become such a cheap commodity, Pollan tells us, that new ways are constantly being devised to deal with the ever-increasing yields and surpluses that would otherwise rot on the silo floor. So corn goes into all processed foods for various purposes - bulking, sweetening, preserving, or adding this or that quality. Sweetening, of course, is one of its main functions, as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in soft drinks and desert foods and in many other non-desert foods that one wouldn’t expect it to be in. The escalating consumption of soft drinks with HFCS has been proposed by many as a major causal factor in the U.S. epidemic of obesity and diabetes - especially childhood diabetes.

In addition to corn, Pollan also tracks a steer he purchases that will eventually be slaughtered in a factory farm, or has the industry calls it, a Confined Area Feeding Operation, of CAFO. The steer gets to have a happy few weeks with his mother, eating a natural diet of grass, after which he is shipped to the CAFO and subsequently made to eat a completely unnatural diet of corn, soy protein, and the fat from fellow slaughtered cows. Corn is the carbohydrate of choice, of course, because it is so cheap, but also because it fattens the cow very quickly (not unlike how it fattens us), and produces the marbling affect that the USDA uses one of its two main variables in how it rates rate cuts of meat. Such cows are routinely given antibiotics as part of their regular diet due to the unsanitary conditions of the industrial feed lot as well as their unnatural diet. They are also pumped full of hormones to speed their growth even more.

Aside from the humanitarian, health, and economic issues involved, there is even one of geopolitics. This is because industrial farming is based around petroleum, and according to Pollan accounts for 20% of the United States energy expenditure! Not only does this industrial system involve shipping food products across the vast distances of our country, but the fertilizer itself requires a great deal of petroleum to produce. While technology like genetically modified organisms and new farming methods have made the yield per acre of corn very high indeed, the efficiency of producing it in terms of resources needed is still low. According to Pollan, it takes something like 50 calories of energy (mostly from oil) to produce a single food calorie from corn. Of course, all this government subsidizing, and hence cheapening of corn, means that corn and the animals raised on it have become much cheaper to eat. But, Pollan argues, there is a tremendous hidden cost, or costs, the two major ones being public health and our increased dependency on foreign oil.

The second part of the book is devoted to “industrial organic.” This might seem like a contradiction in terms and Pollan argues that this may be the case. He describes the origins of the organic movement in the 60’s and 70’s and how part of the tenets of the movement was about “sustainability” - the ability for a farm to sustain itself without a significant amount of outside “inputs” - chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc.) The first farms of this movement grew haltingly, but eventually took off, mainly in the 1980’s, after which their products were in such high demand by national chains like Costco that their demand could not be bet via the original ideals of organic movement. So a more “industrial” approach was adopted. Still, neither the animal feed nor the crops grown for human consumption via industrial organic can use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Antibiotics can only be used in case of an illness rather than as a preventative, and hormones cannot be used at all. While this takes care of many of the problems of pure industrial farming, it does not deal with the problem of sustainability that was a major part of the movement’s initial focus.

The third part of the book centers around the self-labeled “beyond organic,” movement, which aims to reinvent the original movement’s ideals, although some of its origins hark back even further to the 1940’s, when industrial farming was really starting to get started, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides were starting to be used. The movement preaches sustainability and imitating nature in the closest way possible within the confines of a managed system. The practice is exemplified by the colorful farmer Joel Salatin in his 100-acre farm in Swoope, Virginia, about two and a half hours west of me here in the Washington DC suburbs. Salatin has been a tireless crusader for the rights of small farmers like himself, who are often given the short end of the stick because they do not have the lobbying dollars of the industrial organic sector, let alone the non-organic industrial. Pollan actually spends a week working at Salatin’s farm, “Polyface ,” for a week, involved in many of the aspects of farming, even including the slaughtering of chickens. As Pollan describes it, just about everything at Polyface is sustainable. The Cows graze on a given pasture and fertilize it with their manure, then they are moved to another pasture and chickens are brought in as a “clean up crew” eating the larva that has been growing in the manure. The chickens in turn deposit their own waste, and in another day or two the grass has grown back to the point where another group of cows can be brought in to feed. This cycle where different plants and animals participate in a system that helps all involved without the need for external materials or forces (except the farmer to move the animals) is such a huge savings in terms of fuel, raw materials, etc., that one can really see how incredibly wasteful the industrial systems are in comparison.

The final part of the book concerns itself with Pollan’s efforts to make a meal that he has hunted and gathered himself. A friend mentors him both in hunting feral pigs as well as finding wild mushrooms. Much of this portion of the book is devoted to Pollan’s own philosophical and moral meanderings about whether he can justify killing an animal and eating it. Pollan corresponds with Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation , and has debate both with Singer and with himself about whether eating meat is justifiable. He does end up going on his hunt, and we get to experience the exhilaration that this brings, as well as the disgust when it comes time to dress his kill. Foraging for mushrooms, does not elicit any moral dilemmas, but does provide some interesting information about an organism completely separate from both that of the animal and plant kingdoms, and one which we apparently know comparatively little about.

On the whole, The Omivore’s Dilemma is a fascinating book that will make many people rethink their entire relationship with food. The vast majority of us think little about food other than perhaps the cost, the calorie content, the taste, and occasionally the number of grams of fat or carbohydrate contained in it. This book provides some great insights into aspects of the food chain that most of us know little about, perhaps enough to prompt those who read it to start thinking and caring how the food on their plate got there enough to ask more questions about that food, be it from a grocery store or a restaurant. Perhaps some will even start to demand more from the restaurants and food shops they patronize. And perhaps some will even ask themselves more about what they are willing to sacrifice in an effort to eat what they think will be healthy for them, the country, and the planet.

As much as I enjoyed The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I did have a couple of problems with the book, and I’m apparently not alone, given some of the reviews on Amazon.com . Let me first mention that I listened to this book as an audio book downloaded from Audible.com , so my experience is, I’m sure. slightly different from those reading the book in paper form. Nonetheless, one of the main complaints about the book I would have to agree with - I think Pollan could have gotten his point across within 3/4 of the pages it actually took, perhaps even less. The first parts about industrial non-organic, and industrial organic, are very informational. In the third part, Pollan puts himself into the story, which in itself is fine and gives us some of his personal insights by letting us experience what he did on the farm, but at a certain point, especially around the issues of killing, Pollan becomes so entangled in his own conflicting emotions and tortured thinking about it, that eventually gets repetitive and you feel like you are reading the diary of a tortured soul. This continues and perhaps even worsens in the final part of the book, where Pollan debates vegetarianism with himself and with Singer, tries to deal with the guilt over having fun while hunting and killing his pig and his revulsion during the dressing of the animal. Although these moral musings aren’t prevalent in the chapters on hunting for mushrooms, Pollan seems to find other things to wax philosophic about, fluffing the pages out way beyond what they should be, especially at the end of a long book.

Aside from the length issue and some inaccuracies and inconsistencies pointed out by other reviewers on Amazon, my other major issue with Pollan’s book is one that might not be an issue for most. It relates to Pollan’s ridicule of restricted carbohydrate diets - Atkins in particular - and disdain for fat in general and saturated fat in particular. I find it disappointing that Pollan can debunk so much of the standard line about food, even about the “organic” label that marketers would have you believe is the healthiest food there can be, yet he seems to accept all the old dogma about low-carb and saturated fats despite there being tremendous evidence that supports the healthfulness of that way of eating. Instead he more or less calls Atkins a “quack” and bases this, it seems, on the oft-repeated erroneous claim that Atkins eliminates an “entire food group” - by which he means carbohydrates. This of course is incorrect, but Pollan, like many, seem to have a bias against diets, and specifically towards Atkins that clouds objectivity and careful research. This bias seems to infect other ideas of Pollan’s. The most blatant example of this bias (perhaps also combined with some sloppiness that Pollan shows elsewhere when dealing with other technical subjects) is when he claims that the human brain can get glucose only from carbohydrates. Any first-year biochemist will tell you that this is false, and that protein can easily be converted to glucose as well - Eskimos have survived for hundreds of years on a diet of pure protein and fat (from seal and caribou) for hundreds of years.

Finally, as at least one Amazon reviewer points out, Pollan doesn’t really fully deal with the issue of the price of doing things in an organic and sustainable way. Organic, and “beyond organic” foods are generally much higher in price than their conventional competition. That’s not to say they aren’t worth that price for those who can afford them, but Wholefoods, CSA’s, and Farmers Markets are often more patronized by those on the upper end of the income scale. Those who make minimum wage, or even a bit more, would probably have to spend a huge portion of their paycheck in order to buy most of their food as organic. They simply don’t have much choice in the matter. Pollan suggests that Pollyface’s customers didn’t seem like the well-healed customers of Wholefoods. Still, Swoope is a pretty rural part of Virginia, and so those more well-to-do people just aren’t there in large numbers, and those who are probably are not trying to stand out as such.

Theoretically if the government would stop subsidizing corn and instead used that money to support small sustainable farmers so that their food could be sold less expensively and locally(but without the regulatory requirements that often come with such funding), the food supply might be turned on its head. This of course, is a pipe dream. I’d love for it to happen, but how practical is it in a country as large as ours? Can all the farmland be reconverted into lots of Polyfaces that could serve the entire country? Even if it could be done, the monumental market forces needed for getting this change to occur just aren’t there. It would take a huge rethinking on the part of most of citizens of this country about the food they eat. Even if everyone read Pollan’s book (which I don’t think is a bad idea), there would still be plenty of hold outs who simply don’t care about their own health, let alone the health of others, the environment, or the health and well-being of the animals they eat. I think the best we can hope for, at least for the foreseeable future, is just a level playing field, where small farmers are given the same rights and opportunities as the giant industrial ones and still get to produce their crops and livestock in the way they choose with as little regulation from the government as possible. This is all that Joel Salatin wants, according to Pollan, and I don’t think it’s something unreasonable to ask for, even from those who couldn’t care less about “organic,” “beyond organic,” or any other fancy label we might choose to give our food in the future.

I grew up in New York City, home to thousands of wonderful, and not-so-wonderful restaurants, food stores, diners, coffee shops, fast food joints, hot dog stands, and just about any other kind of eatery you can imagine. Luckily, my parents took us with them to eat out starting from an early age, and this continued until I left for college. When I got to college, I learned that we ate out much more often than did others - particularly those growing up in the suburbs. This was back in the 80’s, and even 70’s, so things were a little different then today. I think kids generally eat out much more than they do. But city living seems especially conducive to this, especially in New York, where there are so many wonderful choices.Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl’s fourth and latest book and it describes her six or so years as the restaurant critic for the New York Times in 1990’s. She had previously worked at the LA Times and as she writes, was more interested in reviewing a wider range of cuisines and price ranges. Up until then, she contends, the reviewers concentrated mainly on the very high-end restaurants like Le Cirque or La Caravel. While this may be the case, I found it a bit odd, since 90% of the places she talks about in the book seem to be expensive to super-expensive.

Reading Garlic and Sapphires wasn’t quite like a trip down memory lane, since so many of the restaurants were the very high-priced ones that we never ate at growing up, or they were simply restaurants that were established after I left the city or that I’d never happen to patronize. The one exception to this was Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. I went a few times back in the 80’s for special occasions, but only for brunch, which I believe was much cheaper than their dinner menu. Also, as Reichl explains, Windows On the World was renovated and received a new chef and emphasis after the first World Trade Center bombing in the early 90’s. So for all practical purposes I ate at a different restaurant.

Despite the fact that I have little chance of eating in most of the establishments described in the book, it was wonderful, as a foodie, to listen to Reichl describe in poetic detail how various foods would melt in her mouth, revealing layers upon layers of different, sometimes subtle, sometimes very blatant flavors. Reichl also gives us many of her own recipes (she was a chef and co-owned a restaurant in Berkeley in the 70’s), some of which sound great. The book is also nice for those simply interested in New York City, as Reichl describes a good deal of it - not just the restaurants - in this book.

But this isn’t just a book about food or restaurants. It’s also one about human nature. Reichl describes at the beginning of the book how she’s spotted by someone who works for a restaurant on one of her first flights to New York when she is preparing to move. She’s told that every restaurant in New York probably has her picture taped inside the kitchen with a reward for spotting her. Because of this, she decides she will enlist the help of an old acting-teacher friend of her mother’s to create new identities. She is given wigs and makeup and different clothing to transform herself into everything from a sexy blond divorcee to a meek, impoverished older lady, to even a replica of her own brash and demanding mother. She uses these disguises to try to understand how others may experience the same meal. And she discovers that, as we expect, that restaurants (especially the high-end ones) do play favorites and discriminate quite liberally in how they provide service to different people, and even whether they will permit someone to patronize their establishment.

Along with exploring how waiters and other diners react to her in her various disguises, she also has revelations about herself. She admits to being able to assume particular personas very easily. It’s almost as if she is channeling different aspects of her personality, some of which may be well hidden and seldom seen. Through this she has some self-discoveries and eventually decides to leave her post at the Times.

We also get to read about various political maneuverings within the Times, stories about her husband and son, and about coworkers and friends who accompany her to restaurants. There are also memorable parts where she is both fooling the restaurant, but also fooling her guests, who are unaware of whom she really is.

In general, I found it a very enjoyable read. There were times where I thought she might be exaggerating some things for effect, or even making some stuff up (they just seemed too “perfect” or “predictable” in a kind of theatrical way), but for the most part these were few and far between.

I actually listened to an unabridged audio version of this book via Audible.com which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). Bernadette Dunne does a good job of narrating the book and I don’t recall any pronunciation errors in all the descriptions of food, restaurants, or place names in New York. Although I will admit I didn’t care for her rendition of Reichl’s young son. Reichl also narrates an abridged version of the book if you’d like to hear the author read her own book, New York accent and all. The book is available in print as well, of course.

SAMS Teach Yourself … in 24 Hours series of books is designed to give a first, somewhat basic understanding of a subject, and Scott Mitchell’s Teach Yourself ASP.Net 2.0 in 24 Hours is no exception. This book will probably be fine for anyone who is comfortable with computers, and has used a basic set of office programs to create documents, presentations, etc. You do not need programming experience. Those with extensive programming experience would best be served with something more advanced.My background is web development, but I chose this book for a few reasons. One is that it got some good reviews on Amazon.com, and no really bad ones. Secondly, I bought it knowing that I would be taking a week-long training course in ASP.Net 2.0 in a few weeks. I wanted a book that was easy enough that I would have a good chance of completing it in a couple of weeks, and I also didn’t care if I got the most in-depth understanding of the subject. As long as I got some familiarity with it, that would be good enough as a foundation should the class go at a faster pace than my brain can process information!

Generally, what I have found is that there are three or four basic types of computer book. You have books geared towards absolute beginners which walk you through every little step, every mouse click, over and over again ad nauseum. Then you have books geared towards programmers, which are written in such a way that if you don’t have a formal knowledge of this subject, you will probably eventually get a lost. Of course for those without any programming experience or knowledge, these books will quickly go over one’s head. Most of these books are about a particular facet of a programming language or environment, but some are exhaustive studies of everything, almost to the point that they are reference books themselves. Finally, there are reference books, which sometimes double as instructional texts as I intimated, and sometimes are simply streight-forward information about the various features and functions of a given language or system.

Teach Yourself ASP.Net 2.0 in 24 Hours, of course, fits into the first category - that of one geared towards beginners. I often wish there were books that kind of bridged the gaps between beginners and more experienced programmers, and occasionally there are, but they are few and far between. What I have in mind is something that walks you through some fundamentals at least initially, but soon stops repeating the same steps, challenging you to remember them yourself, and also getting into some of the more advanced aspects a little. Teach Yourself ASP.Net 2.0 in 24 Hours doesn’t do this. That being said, it’s still a good book for what it’s for. You just need to understand it’s target reader so that if you have experience programming, you can just skip the repetitive parts, or parts that you already know (control structures, conditional statements, html markup, etc.).

Like many in the field of web development (at least those of us who’ve been at it for close to 10 years or more), I came to it without formal study. When I started, there were no books on html, let alone classes on it. Through the years I taught myself how to program in more sophisticated ways using Perl, then Cold Fusion, JavaScript, and ASP. But while I understand how to use all these tools to create dynamic websites, I’m not sure if I have the same “programmer mentality” that I see in others who mastered C++ or Java in college, high school, or even earlier! In my opinion there’s a kind of middle-tier market out there of those of us who came to programming in adulthood, too late to substantially effect how our brains work. We can understand programming, but are not “native speakers.” We can program, but books written “for programmers” can still start to sound like Greek if we don’t concentrate hard and perhaps reread some sentences a few times!

In any case, Scott Mitchell’s book is a good start for anyone like myself, or those who are just starting out in the field and want to gain some familiarity with what .Net is about. It will take you through many of the things you will do as a developer in creating dynamic sites - including connecting with back-end databases, form validation, file uploads, site navigation, and more. You will not get much understanding about the Visual Basic or C# languages used to manipulate business logic or to do more advanced stuff with data binding, etc. But for me at least this was a good primer before going on to read more advanced books and reference guides about ASP.Net 2.0. I think it created a great “bridge” between my familiarity with plain old ASP and what I know is going to be a much more powerful and deep environment to program websites in.

The other nice thing about this book is that it comes with Microsoft’s “Express” edition of their Visual Web Developer 2005. This is basically a paired down version of the Visual Studio software that is used by professionals not only to build ASP.Net websites, but also to develop stand-alone Windows applications. However, this will let you develop any ASP.Net website and test it locally on your machine - it comes with a version of Microsoft’s SQL Server Database, and a web server. You can easily take the files you develop on it and upload them to a hosted server on the internet or a corporate intranet server behind a firewall, etc. You can download this software for free from Microsoft, but it’s nice having the CD that you can use to do a quick install and avoid having to go find it and download it from MS’s site, especially if you don’t have a fast Internet connection.

Assassination Vacation is the latest book by author, columnist, and public radio personality Sarah Vowel. It is about the three U.S. presidents who were assassinated within 40 years of each other, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Sarah takes us on her “pilgrimages” to various sites relating to not only these unfortunate presidents, but also to their killers and co-conspirators. Along the way, we get to learn a great deal about the circumstances in which they were shot, as well as the often interesting events after those shots rang out.

Sarah Vowel has written several books, and this latest one repeats some of the same themes of American history that her previous book, A Partly Cloudy Patriot, started. Vowel is a self-proclaimed “history geek” and also presidential-assassination-obsessed. A lot of what she wrote about in the past was about personal experiences, and that is what she talked about on the radio as well. In this book, too, there is a lot of this. It’s not just an historical text, but also partially an autobiographical journey with Vowel to various places of historical significance where she interacts with the tour guides and other tourists, and also the friends that she drags grudgingly to almost every one.

I listened to an unabridged audio version of it via Audible.com, which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). If you’ve ever heard Vowel speak, you know she has a very distinct voice. You may have even heard her without knowing - she played Violet (the daughter) in the animated movie The Incredibles. It’s high and nasaly, which you would never think would be something you’d want to listen to for 7 hours, and yet at least some of us find this voice strangely hypnotic. I’ve heard her speak a couple of times in DC, once as part of a live This American Life, and a second time as just herself. The second time, she was late. She doesn’t drive, and so was taking the train up from her home in New York City. The train lost power. The woman handling the show was talking to her on her cell phone while she was rushing from the train station in a cab and actually put the phone up to the microphone. Sarah managed to keep us laughing and still did a great job once she got there in person. It’s a testament to her appeal that 99% of the audience stayed over an hour after she was supposed to be there for her to arrive. The book is available in print as well, of course.

Vowel’s dry humor runs throughout Assasination Vacation, catching on oh so many ironic twists of history, so many outlandish actions or quotes that they seem downright hilarious sometimes. She also repeatedly pokes fun at herself for her peculiar geekiness about historical minutiae, her morbid fascinations, and her various allergies and phobias. The book contains not only her own voice, but also that of a number of others - actors, writers, comedians - who ad a little spice to the mix. They recite quotes from the principal characters - presidents and assassins alike. Included are Steven King, John Stewart, Conan O’Brian, and Brad Bird (whom I think was my favorite as Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau).

While I enjoyed listening to the book, and believe I picked up some knowledge from it, I’m afraid that as with most books about history, I will soon forget many details (if I haven’t already). Even with the fairly narrow subject matter, there are still lots of facts involved with each assassination, not to mention a bunch of background information about the lives of each president and their various family members, friends, colleagues, and of course their assassins and co-conspirators. Also included is information on the wars, scandals, and other events that took place before or during the time of a given president. Of course Vowel makes a lot of this stuff more memorable by adding her own humor and passion for the subject, which makes it more memorable, but I still think many of the details will slip away despite this. Then again, this isn’t a history text, but more a kind of biographical/autobiographical journey through a few singular parts of history, as well as a journey in the present day to some of the odd memorials and museums for both the presidents and the assassins - ranging from the high reaches of the Adirondack mountains to Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas, a small tropical island 70 miles west of Key West, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean.

That being said, while I certainly enjoyed Assassination Vacation, I personally preferred A Partly Cloudy Patriot. Either book is a great listen from my viewpoint, and this latest one kind of follows from the last. I also think that this book might grow on you and slowly infect you with at least a little of that same geeky obsession for these assassinations that Vowel has herself. Then again, while I’m a geek, I’m not much of a history geek, and so I’m not sure I’ll have the dedication (or time) to devote to something as relatively arcane as 19th Century U.S. presidential assassinations!

This latest book from George Carlin consists of many, many short riffs about language, skits involving lots of profanity and potty humor, and commentary about various things that for the most part just piss Carlin off. I listened to an unabridged audio version of it via Audible.com, which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). The audio book is over 7 hours long and is read by Carlin himself. The book is available in print as well, of course. I’ve found that Carlin is great in short doses, and so I found myself only listening to 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, etc. Maybe the longest listen was an hour. I find some of what Carlin has to say very insightful, and some of it is also very funny, but not all of it, of course. A lot of what he has to say is also meant to be fairly offensive. You can tell that Carlin is trying to push buttons mostly with a lot of his shtick. For example, there’s a lot of what could be deemed as sexist jokes, but there are also parts of the book where Carlin talks about how women are superior to men in most ways and are also crapped on throughout the world for the sole reason that they aren’t as physically strong.

I would say a majority of the book is about language and specifically about euphemisms, which Carlin finds repugnant, because they “water down” the language and make a lot of things “meaningless” by couching them in kinder sounding words or phrases that don’t impart truth or real meaning. There’s a lot of truth to this, but Carlin does belabor the point, and after a while I was starting to say, “Ok, I get the point already!”

He also has a lot of these little “skits” where he will make up a conversation among a couple of people. Some of these are funny, some aren’t. A lot are graphic, gross, “dirty” or in various ways the opposite of “political correctness.” As I said, he definitely is out to try to offend just about anyone.

There’s also some insightful stuff about politics, the irony of various political issues, how politicians are constantly trying to deceive us, and a lot of times doing so by use of language.

Of course there’s a lot about various things, not all language-related, that simply piss Carlin off. Some of these are just silly and obviously not to be taken seriously, some are things that most of us would probably find annoying, or at least will once Carlin enlightens us as to why they are so dumb.

I’ve mainly seen Carlin in some older stand-up routines, a couple of movies, and one other book, Napalm and Silly Puddy, so I don’t know if I’m familiar enough with his stuff to comment on how this book compares to earlier work. It was an interesting listen, one with some laugh-out-lound moments, no doubt, but also some interesting thoughts, and a lot of expounding on random stuff that made it a bit repetitive. I wonder if for books like this, a very strategic audio abridgement might actually make it a much more solid listen?

David Sedaris is a humorous writer and speaker who got his start on the radio. He really gained recognition with his reciting of his writing on the public radio show This American Life. He subsequently has come out with a number of books and also writes articles for The New Yorker.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is Sedaris’s penultimate book (his latest being Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules). I listened to an unabridged audio version of it via Audible.com, which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). Sedaris’s books, in my opinion, are best listened to rather than read. He has a unique, high-pitched voice with a slight hint of an accent from a childhood spent in North Carolina. As with his brand of humor, I’m sure his voice is something of an acquired taste, as most “unusual” things are. But in addition to the voice itself, the comic timing, intonation, impersonations, etc., all are helped greatly by this author who is used to performing for audiences be they radio or live theater audiences. Of course, you can still buy the book in print if that’s more your cup of tea.
Most of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is about Sedaris’s odd family. Stories about them are accounted both from his childhood and adulthood. Sedaris is gay, and often makes fun of his clichéd feminine proclivities growing up. Even so, this oddness seems to pale in comparison to the personalities of some of his (heterosexual) brothers and sisters. Possibly it’s because we are all used to these clichés by now from TV and movies, but even so, the Sedaris clan all seem to be exceedingly odd. One can scratch ones head and wonder a bit about this, but then most families have their oddities, and sometimes that accounts for most of the family! Of course Sedaris makes even the most bizarre and repugnant characteristics cutely funny ones.

A few of the stories Sedaris relates are about his current life with his partner in France, and while I loved his stories in “Me Talk Pretty Some Day” about his trying to learn the French language, and just trying to make sense of French culture, in this book, I preferred the family stories to these. The main exception to this was his relating how he uncovered the Dutch version of Santa Clause and how bizarre he seemed compared to the U.S.
version. This particular story, as well as one or two others, was taken from recordings in front of a live audience, as opposed to the rest of the book, which is your normal, studio-produced audio book.
In the end, if you love Sidaris, you’ll probably love this book, and if you hate him, you’ll hate this book. If you’re unfamiliar with him, here is a selection of audio featuring him on Nation Public Radio.

This was the first book I’ve read of Pat Conroy’s, author of numerous books made into movies, such as Prince of Tides, the Great Santini, and Beach Music. Unlike those books, which were either mostly fictional with big chunks of Conroy’s persona thrown in to thinly veiled autobiographical works, My Losing Season is straight autobiography.

It was largely an entertaining read. It covers Conroy’s history as a basketball athlete from
the first time he handles a ball (at 10 or so) to his last game as a player for his college, The Citadel. While it’s primarily about basketball, including lots of play-by-play reporting using sports lingo which isn’t always explained but still understandable, there’s
also a lot of about Conroy’s life that has nothing to do with basketball per se - his incredibly cruel father, his discovery of literature and finding his own voice as a writer, his ordeals as a Plebe at The Citadel, and much more. I like the way Conroy mixes in some poetic flourishes into hid descriptions book - kind of like dabs of florescent color on an otherwise straightforward, albeit very interesting picture.

I listened to this book via my subscription to the online audio book service, Audible.com, which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). The book is available in print as well, of course. The narration is skillfully handled by Chuck Montgomery, who is also an actor and composer in addition to narrating many audio books.

I only have two minor quibbles with My Losing Season. The first is that about halfway through the book, I realized that Conroy loves superlatives. Everything is “the best” or “the most” of his life. Most of this has to do with a particular game standing out in some way or another, or a particular performance by himself or another player. Someone I mentioned to, said something to the effect of, “well of course he loves superlatives, honey, he’s Southern!” This was said by a Southerner, of course.

The second qualm is that the ending takes a little while to come. Conroy doesn’t just end on his last game at the Citadel, but goes on to talk about players and coaches in subsequent years. The book was written in 2002 and his last game was in 1967, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. He talks about the history of his relationship to The Citadel, about his changed relationship with this father over the years, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I was certainly interested in finding out about all of these things, but there’s gotta be over an hour, maybe two of this “afterword” stuff. I suppose when you’re reading a book, you can see clearly something marked “afterword” and you understand that it’s seperate from the book itself. But listening to it, either it wasn’t marked as such, or I missed it.

These two complaints are pretty minor and I’d definitely recommend it to most people. I know almost nothing about basketball and never watch it, but it does give you a great deal of appreciation for the game and even a desire to learn more about it - although the book is more about how the game was played in college in the 1960’s rather than how it’s played today, either in college or in the pros.

I listened to this book via my subscription to the online audio book service, Audible.com, which has various plans allowing you to purchase full, unabridged versions of a huge-selection of books (many best-sellers) for as little as $6 each, and download them for immediate listening either on your computer or onto a large selection of compatible players (including iPods). The book is available in print as well, of course.

For those who enjoy non-fiction, Mountains Beyond Mountains is a fascinating look at a Doctor who’s devoted his life to curing disease in one of the poorest countries on the planet - Haiti. Dr. Paul Farmer and his organization, Partners In Health, have been involved for 15 years or more not only in Haiti but in treating multi-drug-resistant TB in Peru and Russia, as well.

The author, Tracy Kidder, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Soul of A New Machine, covers Farmers life growing up, going to college, and his initial experiences in Haiti. He also covers the perspective of some of the other principles of Partners in Health, including the director, Ophelia Dahl, and others. The different personalities of these people as compared with Farmer (who it seems is a unique individual), makes for some interesting interpersonal reporting, so it isn’t just a story about a saintly doctor who came to a poor country and made everyone well.
I didn’t really know much about this book when I started listening to it, since it was one of my wife’s selections. I just started listening and thought if it was interesting, I would continue. I did. The narrator, Paul Michael, does an excellent job as usual - he narrated The Da Vinci Code, and as with that one he has lots of fun with the various accents from different nationalities in the book.

I’ve never been one to watch the commercials for charities showing all the malnourished kids. I find them incredibly depressing, and the underlying issue to be one of such huge proportions that it’s all but insurmountable. While this book was similarly depressing in some ways, it was also very hopeful. It detailed many of the improvements going on in world health, concentrating on those pushed ahead by Farmer’s group. I found myself routing them on like a sports team, even though I haven’t been a real sports fan since I was a kid and following the New York Yankees in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

As for Farmer, his life sometimes does seem at times to be that of a saint. On the one hand you admire everything he does, but on the other hand you sometimes wonder if he’s actually human. While he’s someone you would might want to emulate, his selflessness, courage, and dedication are so superlative as to be almost unatainable, at least by most of us.
It’s probably a great listen for when you might be feeling a bit sorry for yourself, and realize that there are so many people who are living in such wretched conditions that you should be grateful to live in a country where all your creature comforts are taken care of - even if you happen to be within the poorest 10% of us. On the other hand, it also could induce a lot of guilt for not wanting to devote your life, or at least a fair chunk of your time and money, towards helping those who are so less fortunate for the simple reason that they were born in a horribly poor and mismanaged country…

Todd Cochrane from Geek News Central has been talking about an upcoming announcement on his podcast for weeks. Well this morning I finally listened to his show #64 that he had been touting with great fanfare. The news, as it happens, is that Todd has teamed up with Wiley Publishing to produce the first of what will sure soon be an avalanche of books about podcasting. The book is titled Podcasting: Do it Yourself Pirate Radio For the Masses.

From what Todd spoke about, it seems like this will be a very detailed book about all aspects of podcasting and how to go about creating your own podcast. In other words, a tremendous resource in one package instead of having to go and grab bits and pieces out of individual websites. The technology will likely be changing and allowing for easier and easier production, but at least for the foreseeable future, this book should provide a great foundation if not a complete (or just about) picture of the world of podcasting.

Congratulations, Todd, for being first out of the gate with this one! I can’t wait to take a look at it myself, even though I don’t have any real intentions of creating a podcast myself. Not that I haven’t thought about it, but at this point I’m not ready. Maybe Todd’s book will give me the inspiration to really consider it in a serious way.

Those who’ve read my blog for a while will know of my long-time membership with Audible.com, which provides audio books in the form of digital files you download from their site, kind of like MP3 files, but with copy-protection. Initially, one could sign up for a subscription that would give you five audio books per month for $30 or so, only $6 for each book! Nice deal except that unless you spend most of your waking time listening to the stuff – maybe if you’re a truck driver or something similar where you always can listen while doing other things – eventually you’ll probably get behind on your pile of books!

Eventually, as Audible grew, they dropped the book total down to where it is now – two (alternately you can get one book and one “subscription” to a radio show, magazine or newspaper transcript), for $20 per month, or $10 per book. Still not bad compared to the exorbitant rates you see for books at a Borders or Barnes and Noble – anywhere from $15 to $100 depending on how long the book is and whether it’s abridged or not. Books you buy via your subscription at Audible are based off of your monthly “credit” meaning the equivalent of $10, no matter the length. However, the problem is that you are limited to those two books. If you want to purchase more in a given month, you can, but you have to pay the higher Audible price, which is just a more discounted version than what you would pay in a bookstore, or what the book is listed for. So it’s still a savings, but you can also end up paying $50 for one book, if not more.

Once in a while, Audible has sales, and today Audible happens to be having a type of sale that I’ve only seen once before, maybe twice, in the last year or two. This sale entitles any Audible.com member to buy as many books as they want at a flat rate of $10 per book. There are so many great books on Audible’s site, that I have a hard time keeping my wish list under 400 titles, so this will help me out. Later today I’ll probably by a bunch of titles I’ve been eyeing for a few months now. Trust, me, though, it will still be a tiny fraction of my wish list!

Apparently, you can sign up for Audible.com count today and take advantage of the same sale for customers – this according to Audible.com customer support. One can sign up without a yearly contract, but what I have done in the past is take advantage of a deal that Audible has that gives you $100 off of a whole series of devices that can play audible files, including iPods, Treo 600’s, and many others. A third option is to sign up for a year and get a free Muvo MP3 player to play your music on.

In any case, if this entry does end up motivating you to start an account with Audible (“leviwallach”), all I ask is that you enter my audible ID as the referrer, as this will give me an extra book credit or two. Again, this sale is only for today – September 15, 2004, so if you are reading this even a day after, you’re already too late, sorry, but Audible is still worth a look if you like Audio Books and don’t want to deal with the hassle of tapes, the expense of retail price, or the inconvenience of library borrowing.

Update: Oops! This sale is not one day as I mention above! Maybe the last one was just a day and that’s what confused me. This one turns out to be 10 days! It lasts throug September 24. Sorry about that!