Posts filed under “Books”
Ebook piracy
I read a lot of books – especially short novels – on my ipod or my computer. It’s easier to carry around my ipod than a book, and downloading a book is faster and easier than going to a bookstore or waiting on the mail. You’d think the internet and ebooks would be great for […]
Morality
From Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett: ‘Good and bad is tricky,’ she said. ‘I ain’t too certain about where people stand. P’raps what matters is which way you face.’
Ayurvedic update – Failure #2
A very kind reader sent me The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies, and I’m trying the migraine remedies it recommends. The first remedy (yawning in a funny way) was a failure at treating migraines, but feels good. 2d Structure of Tyramine. Image via Wikipedia The second thing I tried was to eat a breakfast […]
The frustrations of ruling a kingdom
Back down on the plains, if you kicked people they kicked back. Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off. How could a king go down in history ruling a people like that? You couldn’t oppress them any more than you could oppress a […]
Gods’ games
It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a […]
Doing something about migraines
Migraines get in my way. I’ve canceled on seeing the same person three times in the last week alone. Migraines don’t happen randomly – people with migraines have triggers. Some people have lots of triggers, some people have few. Some triggers are obvious and some are really hard to figure out. One thing that makes […]
This tired earth
After only a week in the fields listening to the farmers, we realized that the crop substitution program, a key component of the American effort to eradicate coca, was a fantasy. Harvested by hand every four months or as often as six times a year if fertilized and sprayed, coca outperformed every other agricultural product […]