the glob

Sometimes, all a little dog wants to do is run through the sprinkler when it’s hot outside. Can you blame them?

It’s been awhile since I posted a picture of the dogs. They are awesome as usual.

I’d read Erik Larson’s Devil In The White City a couple years ago and found it to be one of those light little books that went down quickly, so when I ran across Thunderstruck at a thrift store one day, I decided to pick it up. Written in a similar style (nonfiction pulled from historical records and then flourished with a touch of imagination), it’s another breezy sort of read that again follows a man trying to achieve a scientific breakthrough (in this case Guglielmo Marconi) and another who was a murderer (Hawley Harvey Crippen).

That description might not sound breezy, and although the book is definitely a quick read, perhaps that’s not quite the right description of the book. “Pulpy” is probably more apt, as it moves with a sort of brisk thriller feel that you could easily imagine being made into a movie (think something along the lines of The Illusionist). At any rate, Larson once again pulls intertwines the two stories in a way that at first doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but finally reveals the connection later on. The bulk of the book is alternately spent describing triumphs, setbacks, murder, marital breakdowns, a getaway, breakthroughs, capture (for Crippen), and ultimately a brief bit of success (for Marconi).

It’s one of those nonfiction titles that reads like a work of fiction, largely for the sometimes-flowery language that Larson uses. Definitely different than most recent nonfiction titles that I’ve read lately (in that it felt a lot more like entertainment than anything of real learning value), it was nonetheless a fun, quick read that I’d recommend to those looking for a good little potboiler (with a few nice historical references thrown in).

I stumbled across mentions of this book many moons ago after reading Freakonomics, but had it land in my lap as yet another Christmas present retrieved from my wishlist. In truth, it’s a little bit different that the aforementioned book, but somewhat similar in style. It’s certainly not a straightforward textbook, but instead Frank uses everyday examples of questions (most of which came from his students) to teach different concepts of economics.

Basically, it’s an excuse to learn a lot of random trivia while at the same time learning about how that applies to different economics principles. For example, in the supply and demand section of the book, a question is:

Why do new cars costing $20,000 rent for $40 a day, while tuxedos costing only $500 rent for about $90?

It’s all pretty basic stuff, and while some of the information in the book is certainly more enlightening than the aforementioned quote and answer, a lot of the knowledge in the book is sort of common-sense type of information paired with basic economic theory. At just over 200 pages, it’s a quick read, though, and if you liked Freakonomics, this might be worth a couple hours of your time.

It had been almost two years since I’d read a work of fiction, so at the beginning of the year I figured I’d break that drought as soon as I could. People who know me probably realize (and sometimes wonder why) I have a rather odd obsession with zombies, and I figured that a fine way to get back into fiction was through a book about the undead. As luck would have it, I’d received Max Brooks’ World War Z off my wishlist as a Christmas gift (which made for some funny looks), so it made the decision easy.

In short, this was the perfect first book for me to read this year. A quick read, it’s broken into short interview passages (almost identical to the style of Studs Terkel) with survivors of a massive global zombie outbreak that was somehow quelled. It hops all around the world, from a doctor who encountered “patient zero” to soldiers who fought in various battles to civilians that did their best to survive it all.

As with any zombie tale, one obviously has to overlook the scientific leaps of faith, but once you do World War Z actually reveals itself to be a well-researched book that touches on political, social, and environment concerns that have their own parallels with real-life situations (which is really the measure of any great zombie-story). Having recently read several books on different epidemics, the whole spread-of-infection angle seemed fairly plausible, and the book is not only funny at times, but downright creepy in places as well. Supposedly, the book is already being made into a film, and I honestly have to say I’m pretty stoked about that.

There are some things in my life that I’m oddly obsessive about, and one of them is writing down every book that I read; including the author, title, and number of pages. I keep a completely outdated list hidden away online, but also write things down in a little book that’s also caught scribbles, random thoughts, and other ephemera for some time now.

While writing down information for the most recent book I finished, I noticed that I’ve been keeping this data on books that I’ve read for ten years now, and so the small part of my brain that thinks it’s fun to write down these things also thought it would be a good idea to do a little retrospective to try and parse some of the data within.

In looking at the list, there were trends that seemed obvious at first, but upon further examination revealed themselves to be not quite so. When I first started the list, I was fresh out of college and barely knew anyone in the city that I was living in, and I spent a lot of time by myself with my head buried in a book. In the time since then, I met my future wife, joined a band, got a house, got married, gained a couple pets, and changed jobs. Like I said above, though, the data doesn’t completely add up all the time.

Without further ado, here are the first couple charts…

Chart 1: Books read per year

Chart 2: Pages read per year

These first two charts are fairly uneventful, and largely represent the same sorts of trends (duh).

First off, it’s interesting to note that the very first year I started keeping track is also the largest number. As I mentioned above, 1998 was the first full year that I was out of college and on my own. Although I had a very small group of friends, I didn’t have a lot of people that I spent huge amounts of time with. During this year, I also had surgery, and I specifically remember reading not only one, but sometimes two and three books during a single day when I was in recovery.

From there, the trends largely stay fairly similar, although the years 2000 and 2003 show significant dips. The former was the year that I met my future wife, but it doesn’t explain the dip in reading, as I didn’t meet her until later in the year. The lack of reading in that year was probably more explained by finally having a larger group of friends in the town where I was living, as well as more of my time being spent working on photography (I had an independent show that year and often shot 3 rolls of film a week or more). The dip in 2003 is more obvious, as that was the year that we both bought a house and got our first dog (Zoey!).

I have a hard time explaining the spike in reading for 2005, other than knowing that Marianas dissolved in the first half of that year. Most likely, I spent more time reading on many nights rather than practicing music.

Because of my current infatuation with non-fiction titles, I also decided to go back and chart every title that I’ve read over the past 10 years and see how my tastes have evolved in that time as well. In some ways, this information is also the most interesting.

Chart 3: Fiction / Non-fiction titles in the past 10 years

The complete disparity in fiction vs non-fiction in 1998 is easy to explain, as I not only tried to read a good portion of the fiction titles that I’d never been assigned in school (but felt were somewhat essential), but I also got stuck on certain authors (like Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and Kurt Vonnegut) and then plowed through a good batch of their books in a row.

A trend that holds true with this chart is that in the years where I read a lot more books were also the years that I read a bit more fiction. I’ll be the first to admit that I can read fiction titles a great deal faster than non-fiction, and it makes perfect sense that I’ve slowed down on number of titles the past couple of years (when I haven’t included a single fiction book).

I will also admit that I simply haven’t been as interested in fiction titles the past couple years, mainly because I feel like I gain a bit more from reading non-fiction titles in terms of knowledge. That said, my creative instincts may have suffered a smidgen by cutting out fiction work, and I plan to at least incorporate a couple fiction titles each year from here out.

If I dig a little deeper, I’m sure that there’s some more interesting stuff I can find here, but for now I will simply end with the aggregate numbers.

Books read 1998-2007: 175 (fiction: 80 / non-fiction: 95)

Pages read 1998-2007: 51490

My wife (and others) have been poking fun at me for some time now about my reading selection, but it wasn’t until I got about halfway through this latest tome when I realized just how weird my book selection has been the past half year or so. I’ve read books about what would happen to the world if humans disappeared, a poison gas attack, the assassination of a president, and a cholera epidemic. Needless to say, following it up with a book on the one of the worst pandemics in recorded human history seemed like a painful frosting on a depressing cake, but The Great Influenza was nonetheless next on my reading list.

As it turns out, this book by John M. Barry was a fascinating and often completely heartbreaking read. In terms of numbers killed, the estimates range from 40 all the way up to 100 million, and this damage was done in the incredibly short time period of roughly 18 months between the years of 1918 and 1919. The scale and scope of this particular flu was pretty much unprecedented, and due to bad decisions made by several different layers of both government and local officials, it spread completely out of control in a country that was trying desperately to maintain a patriotic fortitude while going into battle of the first world war.

Obviously, with so many people affected, this influenza wasn’t strictly limited to the United States, and while this book focuses in on domestic efforts to both combat (and seemingly ignore at the same time) the outbreak, it also spends a great deal of time talking about how it affected and spread around the world as well.

In leading up to the actual discussion of the pandemic itself, the book devotes entire chapters to the advancement of science and medicine in both Europe and the United States during the time period, giving a good background of how much progress was made in a short time. It’s this type of information that really makes the book an excellent read, capturing just how much progress was made in a short time (and under some fairly constricted circumstances in some cases).
Although it doesn’t go into great detail, the book touches on the fact that a pandemic flu could happen again at some point, and how we would be both better equipped (the evolution of science and industry to manufacture vaccines at a higher pace) and worse off (the greater prevalence of national and even world travel aiding the spread of the virus) in the event that it did.

In the end, the book was equal parts depressing and enlightening, with enough data and historical information to inform. With terms like “HN51″ and “bird flu” being thrown around every six months or so with sometimes panicked overtones, this is a good book for historical reference.

When I first read about the concept of The World Without Us, I was intrigued immediately. For some reason or another, I’ve had a strange sort of obsession with everything from the apocalypse to zombie films the past couple of years. Throw in a bit of true treehugger-style guilt about my (and the rest of humankind’s) footprint on the world itself, and this book by Alan Weisman shot to the top of my wish list when I read about it being released.

Essentially, the title tells the tale, as the book basically takes on all the different angles of what would happen to the world if humans were to completely disappear. Weisman doesn’t specify how this would happen (to keep everyone happy he mentions everything from the Christian description of Rapture to a virus that wipes out humankind), but that’s not really the point. Instead, he focuses on the decay of human-built infrastructures, chemical compounds that we’ve created and how long it takes for them to break down, animals we’ve displaced (and pushed to near extinction), and ecosystems we’ve changed and/or destroyed.

While there are a few hypotheticals, the great thing about the book is that Weisman has really done his research. In many cases, he’s had the ability to study different things firsthand, as in the Exclusion Zone of Chernobyl, which includes several cities that were basically left completely abandoned by humans and the humans took over. He also takes a look at the demilitarized zone in Korea, and in these places one can see the steady advance of nature as it reclaims space slowly at first but then with wide flourishes that are sometimes hard to imagine. One of the most fascinating sections of the book deals with what would happen to a city like New York, New York, which is built largely upon marshlands that require non-stop water pumps to function lest basements fill with water and support beams buckle and surrender to corrosion.

Of course, there is a lot to be depressed about in the book as well. In a chapter titled “Polymers Are Forever,” Weisman describes a state-sized (Texas, to be nearly exact) swirling mass of constantly breaking-down discarded plastic in the Pacific ocean that is not only threatening aquatic life in that particular area, but slowly filtering into the microscopic level as the plastic breaks down to such a small level that algae can ingest it (which then in turn moves up the food chain and eventually could cause what is essentially a bottom-up choking-off of the food chain).

Like many books I’ve read lately, The World Without Us made me think about how I live my life personally, and the changes I can make to affect at least the small part of the world around me. It’s not a book that speaks specifically to the individual footprint of a single person in this world, but it makes you feel like a vital cog in the larger scheme of things, and for that I would definitely recommend it.

Two weeks ago, I went to a work conference in Rochester, New York with four co-workers of mine to help present on a massive site redesign that I was but one small part off. Because I don’t discuss my job on this site, I will leave it at that, but feel like I need to document the story of our travel there for future reference.

Our journey to Rochester looked to be rather uneventful on paper, leaving the Omaha, Nebraska airport late morning, then arriving in Detroit early afternoon for a short layover before hitting the second leg to arrive in New York in the late afternoon or thereabouts.

Things were rough from the start in Omaha, as we got on the plane and proceeded to simply sit in place for nearly forty-five minutes without much of an explanation for why it was happening. Soon, the pilot came on and told us all that we were going to be waiting a bit longer because there was a repair that needed to be made on a door of the plane (something about a washer). So, we sat for quite a bit longer, and as I watched out the window of the plane, I saw pavement damp with rain slowly dry completely before another light shower came through and made small puddles again. After approximately an hour and a half on the ground, we finally rolled out onto the runway and took off without any issues.

About three-quarters of the way into the flight (after drinks and overpriced snacks had been served), the stewardess walked to the front of the cabin and picked up the phone to receive a call. Sitting in an aisle seat, I watched her as she talked and saw her eyes widen just slightly as it went on for a couple minutes. Within seconds of her hanging up the phone, the pilots voice came on over the intercom and laid out the scenario.

He stated that there was a minor problem with the plane, but just to be on the safe side we would be making an emergency landing in South Bend, Indiana. He said that there was nothing to be alarmed about, but that we should listen to the stewardess as she explained the procedures for said landing.

After he had finished, the stewardess was in the spotlight, and she became noticeably more nervous. We were told to remove our glasses if we were wearing them, take any pens or sharp objects out of our pockets, and to return seatbacks to their upright position and store everything we had under the seat in front of us. After she explained these things, she came back to the emergency exit rows (one of which was right in front of me) and removed the safety covers from the doors so that they could be removed in case of any issues. While explaining this to the people in the emergency row, she became increasingly excited and reminded them several times not to open the doors and thrown them out until she explicitly gave the order.

She then returned to the front of the plane and went through the proper crash-landing position for everyone on the plane. We were to hold our arms crossed on the seat in front of us while resting our heads on our forearms. Then she explained that if there were smoke or fire in the cabin, that the emergency exits and the paths to them would be lit. At this point, we were still twenty minutes or so from landing.

With everyone braced in their positions (a position that isn’t exactly easy to hold for fifteen minutes, I might add), the captain again came on over the intercom and repeated his words about the landing being more of a precautionary measure than a drastic one. There was a problem with one of the engines, so instead of risking things he was shutting it down and we were going to make a detour. He also told us that we shouldn’t be surprised or scared to see emergency vehicles on the runway when we land, as they were just there for precautionary measures.

With all this in my head, I tried to keep calm. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth while looking out the window and trying to gauge how long it would be until we were on the ground. I looked over at a co-worker of mine (who was buffered by another passenger I didn’t know) and made some lame joke about how I, “maybe should have ordered a rum and coke earlier” but nobody heard me and I was left to my own thoughts again while looking out the window and watching the ground get closer and closer.

Because of all the information that I had been given (and my own feeble deduction skills), I figured that the plane wasn’t going to simply fall out of the sky, but if anything happened, it would be when we landed. Thoughts in my head ranged from videos of planes skidding across runways on their belly’s to the scene in the movie Fearless where the plane breaks apart and catches fire. I thought about my wife and my family and my dogs and really just tried to stay calm. I could hear muffled voices saying prayers around me, and tried to listen for anything mechanically that sounded out of order.

With all this tension built up, I strayed from the crash position and looked out the window until we were several hundred feet off the ground, then finally turned my head away and braced myself with all my might for the moment of landing.

When it finally came, it was remarkably uneventful, albeit with a whole heck of a lot more wheel braking than engine thrust reverse (obviously). There was a split second where I imagined the wheels and landing gear ripping off due to sheer force, but they held and we eventually slowed down and taxied to the waiting emergency vehicles. Nervous laughter and sighs filled the cabin and there was a noticeable bit of euphoria in the air.

While waiting in the very small airport (which ended up turning into a saga unto itself), my co-workers and I watched as the flight crew (including the pilot and co-pilot) walked by us and we gave them a small round of applause. They were all very young (a quarter century or less by my guess), and they nodded a small acknowledgment and went on their way.

Personally, I wanted nothing more than to get in a car and simply drive home at that point, but we instead waited until the plane was fixed before finally making it to our initial destination (Detroit) nearly ten hours after we were originally scheduled to be there. The last legs of the journey were far less eventful, and despite the reality of a rather calm landing (and diversion), we became known by the end of the conference as “those guys whose plane just about crashed.”

It seems like this spring was rather mild in terms of the amount of severe weather that we got around these parts, but the past week or so has made up for things with an astounding blast of late summer storms. Monday night, we had massive gusts of wind that downed tree branches throughout the neighborhood, along with heavy rain and a portion of pea-sized hail. Last night, a massive, low-flying dark cloud turned things almost instantly from day to night when it rolled by, and I stood out in the backyard with a camera trying to capture the swirling edge of it with a camera as cracking lightning and instant downpours threatened.

Fortunately, the hail was not damaging to our garden or our property in general, and after a long three weeks of super-hot temperatures, everything seems to be going through a last-gasp of lush green before the heat tapers off and we head into fall (my favorite season).