TIME FLIES · PRINT ENDURES
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The bird next door: the time an Oakland turkey rose to captivate the world
The wild turkey of Morcom Rose Garden became world famous for being beautiful, quirky, rather hostile, and definitely insane — not unlike Oakland itself.
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All cooped up
These three beauties showing how shelter-in-place is done. But their social distancing still needs some work.
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“Everybody Lies”
The Google search box is the new confessional box for a digital age. A place where deepest fears and forbidden wishes find new, unfiltered expression. In this new confessional, we don’t seek salvation— we seek information. And the questions we ask it often reveal things about us that were previously hidden, or misunderstood. Subtitled, “Big data, new data, and what the internet can tell us about who we really are,” this book was written by a former Google data scientist who uses “confessional” search data on a vast scale to draw new insight into the human condition. It’s a fascinating…
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“Rise of the Robots”
What I’m reading : “Rise of the Robots,” by Martin Ford. Humans have a love-hate relationship with automation. We love automation when it gives us dishwashers, washing machines, and robot vacuum cleaners to relieve the drudgery of menial labors. But we hate automation when it enables telemarketers to endlessly spam our phones, corporations to displace real people’s jobs, and tech companies to surveil our every movement. Pop culture is replete with nightmare visions of cold robot overlords taking over the world on one hand, and utopian dreams of effortless lives and limitless adventures supported by faithful robot servants on the…
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Books I skipped this week
I had every intention of reading these books, but after reading the first some-odd pages, I became consumed in other things, and skipped…. Is it acceptable to recommend a book one hasn’t read? That’s neither here nor there in this moment. I liked what I read in the opening pages of each book. For reasons, I didn’t have the time to read them all the way through. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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“A Gentleman in Moscow”
Imagine being a member of the wealthy aristocracy in a grand city in the early 20th century. Your days and nights are filled with social encounters and clever repartee in every breathing moment. Servants are all around you, never betraying any hint of resentment at their confinement to a lower station, nor anything but utter contentment and devotion to their task of tending to your every need. Even when confined to house arrest by the Bolsheviks after the revolution has wiped out the old social order and replaced it with a new one, your prison is a luxury hotel, as…
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Wheelbarrow full of books
I never pass up the opportunity to push a wheelbarrow full of books.
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“The Secret of Thunder Mountain”
The photos tell the story of this vintage adventure from 1952. Set in the deserts of the American Southwest, at the dawn of the nuclear era. A land of grit and desolation, where bold and wild characters search for rocks worth more than gold. Fran Striker’s journalistic writing style lends credence to the stark comic relief. Irony from another era. The descriptions and dialogue surrounding the gigantic main character, Gulliver bouncing over desert rocks in his customized jeep, are surprisingly entertaining. An unsung classic of the genre. The Secret of Thunder Mountain, by Fran Striker
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“Little Fires Everywhere”
Where do we follow the rules, and where do we justify breaking them? Do our pasts determine what we deserve in the future? And is it ever possible to leave your past behind? These are some of the questions I hope the novel raises. —Celeste Ng, from the Penguin Readers Guide Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
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“Lost in a good game”
Is it worse for young people to experience killing and death IRL (in real life), or in a video game? This is not merely an academic question. Deranged individuals now regularly commit IRL mass shootings using IRL weapons of war to murder innocent people. Yet those weapons of war only exist because they are used every day for the IRL official killing and death of people in less fortunate countries around the world. Are video games to blame for real deaths? Or are video games merely another vivid example of art imitating life? This book takes the latter view, and…
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“What is not yours is not yours”
I’m loving this collection of dreamlike short stories that turns on the idea of keys as a metaphor for our hidden perceptions. A refreshing stream of clear, evocative, sparse yet mesmerizing prose that ebbs and flows into ever deeper locks of subconscious meaning and insight as each story unfolds. The tales are interlocking, but in a wholly unexpected way, which adds to its brilliance. Not for the overly literal, despite its declarative style. A breakthrough, transcendent voice. Can’t wait to read more. “What is not yours is not yours,” by Helen Oyeyemi.
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“Barracoon”
The story of Oluale Kossola, survivor of the last known slave ship to cross the Atlantic, told in his own words. In 1927, famed anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston spent three months with the then-eighty-six-year-old Lewis to preserve his story. Kossola vividly describes being captured by a rival village in Africa as a young man, sold into slavery and shipped to America. He tells of his years in cruel bondage followed by chimeric emancipation after the civil war, and of being marooned for life in an inhospitable new world with no means to ever return to his home in…
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“The Soul of an Octopus”
Strange and beautiful, weirdly intelligent, cold yet emotive, octopuses are in a word, fascinating. Octopuses see and feel the world around them in profoundly different ways then we do. Each tentacle has its own network of neurons—a mind of its own. What I love about this book is how the author describes her interactions with captive octopuses in tanks, caressing them with her hands and arms, holding and being held by them. She documents each experience in lavish detail and with deep emotion, much to the book’s benefit. The book’s middle section sags when she dives into lengthy, sometimes boring…
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“The Man in the High Castle”
Conquered. Occupied. Stripped of power and privilege. Dick’s classic 1962 novel imagines life in an America that lost World War II. The Nazis and Japanese fascists have conquered the United States and divided it into territories, the spoils of war, over which they rule supreme. The Pacific States are controlled by fascist Japan– the South and East states, by Nazi Germany. The Rocky Mountain states lay in between, dismissed and overlooked, a no-mans land where the German and Japanese superpowers struggle for power in a diplomatic Cold War. Much of the action takes place in San Francisco and the west…
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“Cadillac Desert”
California has had abundant rainfall this year. Reservoirs are full and snowpacks are impressive. We’ve had so much rain that complaining about it has become de rigeur. So why am I reading this 30-year old treatise on “the American West and its disappearing water”? Partly because I recently spent a week in the Mojave desert where every inch of the landscape is a visceral reminder that water is precious, scarce, and fleeting—even when the desert flowers are in full bloom. And partly because our return trip brought us through the Central Valley, where water is the lifeblood of agribusiness that…
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“Zardoz”
A gigantic stone head levitates over a futuristic grass-covered landscape, spewing guns from its cavernous mouth to its bloodthirsty followers below. Sean Connery (a.k.a. the original James Bond) is among them as Zed the Exterminator. He’s bare-chested in a red loincloth, and sports a black ponytail and 1970s handlebar moustache. A dazzling menage of bizarre scenes unfolds from there, complete with freaky caves, macrame-clad “Eternals,” psychic probes, and trippy kaleidoscopic interludes. Through it all, the gargantuan stone head floats, god-like, in and out of the action to say and do terrible things. I picked up a pristine original pulp copy…
