Shan took off this morning to a wedding of his friend in California. He'll be gone for almost a whole week, during which I'll have the house all to myself. I can strew my books all over the floor, keep my knitting projects all over the couch (not on the floor, mind you) and fart and burp as much as I please, thus returning to the times before vigilant consideration entered my life. I wonder how that will feel.
After a few weeks in the field in 1999 with my geology co-student Jakob I was so thouroughly rid of any civilized streak I'd burp mid-sentence and hardly notice. Let's hope these days of solitude won't have that effect this time. Then again, I think Jakob may have contributed to the un-civilizing, seeing as he thought nothing funnier than farting big time once he was safe in his sleeping bag, then unzipping the bag and fanning the gases over my face. Trust me, field geologists are bizarre creatures.
They're having a party next door and shouting like some prairie Indians going to battle. Cornell undergrads are bizarre creatures too.
laugardagur, júní 30, 2007
miðvikudagur, júní 27, 2007
Books
It's been too warm lately for knitting (for some reason I only knit wool) so I've returned to my old habit of devouring books. Here's what I can recall reading recently:
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. I actually read this in the Philippines in January and enjoyed it immensely. Probably one of the best novels one will ever read. Very complex and dark and beautiful.
Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs, is awful. An astoundingly overrated book.
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Equally hilarious and frightening. I didn't need convincing that mixing religion and politics is a very bad idea and I loved Dawkins' unapologetic writing style. I especially loved the last chapter which aims to show us why a personal God is unnecessary to experience consolation and fulfillment in life.
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris. Finished this one last night. It addresses similar concerns as The God Delusion but from a philosophical perspective. The sarcasm is more heavily reined in here than in The God Delusion but no apologies are made either. Recommended, although the chapter on torture left me a little cold.
Thinking in Pictures. Stína will know all about this one. By Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has managed to overcome substantial obstacles to participate in the world more than most autistic people. The book is very interesting but frequently goes off topic too much for my liking.
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. Wow. This one blew me away. Granted, it was written in the 60's and some parts are hopelessy dated, such as the part suggesting autism is caused by "refrigerator" mothers. But the insight into the nature of the "problem with no name" is crystal clear, and the analysis of the root of the problem lucid and frightening. It just doesn't cease to amaze me what women of the past, such as Friedan, have accomplished in fighting for the rights of women. We owe those ladies a lot.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards. This one ended up being the chosen one, which I brought with me on the Colorado-Utah bike adventure to while away the hours spent in the huts resting my tired limbs. Good choice, I have to say (except that I was done with it in 4 days even as I restrained my access to the book! Should have brought a longer novel...). The event which shapes the story is about as unconventional as you can find in a novel and the author tackles it pretty well, portraying all the characters with fairness and creating an intensely readable book from a storyline that at first sight doesn't seem to invite much excitement.
Hinir sterku, Kristján Þórður Hrafnsson. An Icelandic novel. Somehow the style of the author first seemed odd to me, like he was too used to writing poems to not be hopelessly formal in prose. Either I got used to it or it changed, because after a while this didn't bother me anymore. Interesting story and morals, characters maybe a bit too shallow.
Sendiherrann, by Bragi Ólafsson. Another Icelandic novel. I liked the one previous novel from the author that I've read, and I really liked this one as well. However, I'm not sure really where the author is going or what he's trying to tell. I just know that it's a tragic and comic and well written story. It'd be nice to have read this one in Óli Odds' Icelandic class in MR...
Waiting to be read:
My name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Ines of my Soul/Ines del alma mia, Isabel Allende
Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
The Road, Cormac McCarthy Update 07/01/07: finished
Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
and about a million others...
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. I actually read this in the Philippines in January and enjoyed it immensely. Probably one of the best novels one will ever read. Very complex and dark and beautiful.
Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs, is awful. An astoundingly overrated book.
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Equally hilarious and frightening. I didn't need convincing that mixing religion and politics is a very bad idea and I loved Dawkins' unapologetic writing style. I especially loved the last chapter which aims to show us why a personal God is unnecessary to experience consolation and fulfillment in life.
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris. Finished this one last night. It addresses similar concerns as The God Delusion but from a philosophical perspective. The sarcasm is more heavily reined in here than in The God Delusion but no apologies are made either. Recommended, although the chapter on torture left me a little cold.
Thinking in Pictures. Stína will know all about this one. By Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has managed to overcome substantial obstacles to participate in the world more than most autistic people. The book is very interesting but frequently goes off topic too much for my liking.
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. Wow. This one blew me away. Granted, it was written in the 60's and some parts are hopelessy dated, such as the part suggesting autism is caused by "refrigerator" mothers. But the insight into the nature of the "problem with no name" is crystal clear, and the analysis of the root of the problem lucid and frightening. It just doesn't cease to amaze me what women of the past, such as Friedan, have accomplished in fighting for the rights of women. We owe those ladies a lot.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards. This one ended up being the chosen one, which I brought with me on the Colorado-Utah bike adventure to while away the hours spent in the huts resting my tired limbs. Good choice, I have to say (except that I was done with it in 4 days even as I restrained my access to the book! Should have brought a longer novel...). The event which shapes the story is about as unconventional as you can find in a novel and the author tackles it pretty well, portraying all the characters with fairness and creating an intensely readable book from a storyline that at first sight doesn't seem to invite much excitement.
Hinir sterku, Kristján Þórður Hrafnsson. An Icelandic novel. Somehow the style of the author first seemed odd to me, like he was too used to writing poems to not be hopelessly formal in prose. Either I got used to it or it changed, because after a while this didn't bother me anymore. Interesting story and morals, characters maybe a bit too shallow.
Sendiherrann, by Bragi Ólafsson. Another Icelandic novel. I liked the one previous novel from the author that I've read, and I really liked this one as well. However, I'm not sure really where the author is going or what he's trying to tell. I just know that it's a tragic and comic and well written story. It'd be nice to have read this one in Óli Odds' Icelandic class in MR...
Waiting to be read:
My name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Ines of my Soul/Ines del alma mia, Isabel Allende
Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
and about a million others...
þriðjudagur, júní 26, 2007
Last Dollar Pass and then some more
The end of the first day was hard. Shan lugging his bike up to the hut at 10,950 ft elevation (that's over 3000 m a.s.l. for the metric gang). No wonder Butch Cassidy rode a horse over that pass as he fled town after his first bank robbery, he'd never have made it over on a bike!
föstudagur, júní 15, 2007
fimmtudagur, júní 14, 2007
þriðjudagur, júní 12, 2007
Blogopause
I'm having a blogopause these days. It happens to bloggers that have been at it for veeerrrryyyy long. Thus the random pictures.
In the wake of whining and howling about lost pay and paycuts and whatnot I have decided to go on a spiffy sumer vacation!!! What else is there to do (other than, perhaps, NOT go on a summer vacation)? It begins tomorrow with a flight to Salt Lake City. My luvly cohabitator (Dork#2 below... or was it #1??) and I are going to bike from Telluride, CO to Moab, UT over the course of 7 days. If we don't a) perish from exhaustion or heatstroke, b) get eaten by a mountain lion, c) get lost or d) decide to leave it all behind and become Abbey-ists out west, we should be back in about 10 days.
Before I forget. Last night while having dinner I saw a young woman breastfeeding her baby on the next table. Nothing unusual about that, except she was wearing a giant blanket hooked around her neck, so that the baby was completely covered. In my limited perception of things, a society that labels breastfeeding too morally upsetting to be carried out in the open is seriously screwed up. Not that I hadn't realized that before, but I always find it equally disturbing.
In the wake of whining and howling about lost pay and paycuts and whatnot I have decided to go on a spiffy sumer vacation!!! What else is there to do (other than, perhaps, NOT go on a summer vacation)? It begins tomorrow with a flight to Salt Lake City. My luvly cohabitator (Dork#2 below... or was it #1??) and I are going to bike from Telluride, CO to Moab, UT over the course of 7 days. If we don't a) perish from exhaustion or heatstroke, b) get eaten by a mountain lion, c) get lost or d) decide to leave it all behind and become Abbey-ists out west, we should be back in about 10 days.
Before I forget. Last night while having dinner I saw a young woman breastfeeding her baby on the next table. Nothing unusual about that, except she was wearing a giant blanket hooked around her neck, so that the baby was completely covered. In my limited perception of things, a society that labels breastfeeding too morally upsetting to be carried out in the open is seriously screwed up. Not that I hadn't realized that before, but I always find it equally disturbing.
mánudagur, júní 11, 2007
fimmtudagur, júní 07, 2007
föstudagur, júní 01, 2007
"Showing 2 out of 592 references"
I just finished (as in, 5 minutes ago) cataloging my substantial collection of scholarly articles. Now they are all neatly tucked away in folders, one for each author, in the filing cabinet. Endnote and the office supply cabinet have come in very handy here, providing me with a framework for organizing this mountain of paper both in real space and cyberspace.
The title of this post refers to the number of papers returned when searching my database for "author=Schopka". I've obviously got some ways to go!
The title of this post refers to the number of papers returned when searching my database for "author=Schopka". I've obviously got some ways to go!
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