TSP On This Day

Good morning!
Published On: March 18, 2021


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Published On: March 18, 2004

It’s been a while since I reported. I didn’t manage to make the time for reading over the weekend that I had planned, and a earlier in the week various other projects ate into my reading time.

  • I finally finished A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson’s wonderful layman’s overview of the current state of scientific knowledge. The structure of the book starts with an overview of what we know about the universe at large, then focuses on the history of the planet, and finally on the evolution of life on the planet, going from the widest possible perspective down to the very narrowest. Definitely worth a read if you’re at all interested in science or the history of science, and especially if you are not in fact a scientist yourself — Bryson’s prose style is conversational and very accessible.
  • Winterfair Gifts by Lois McMaster Bujold
    This is actually one of six stories in a collection called Irresistible Forces, which is some sort of SF/Romance crossover. I’m a huge fan of Bujold, so I had to get this as soon as possible — it was the first thing I picked up in the Boskone dealers room.

    This story is part of the Miles Vorkosigan universe and covers the period of his marriage to Ekaterin, but the story actually focuses on two minor characters, Armsman Roic, last seen slipping and sliding through gallons of bugbutter in his underwear in A Civil Campaign and Sergeant Taura, the genetically engineered soldier that Miles rescued from Jackson’s Whole in Labyrinth

    It was obvious early in the story where it was going, but it was an awful lot of fun watching it unfold. As kitanzi pointed out, it’s like really good fanfic, except in this case Continue Reading

And lo, there were shelves for the books to rest upon
Published On: March 18, 2003

One of the problems with a small apartment occupied by two bibliophiles is the matter of where to actually PUT all the books. There really just aren’t that many good places to put bookcases, if one is to have any other furniture in the place.

When I was visiting djbp and bardling last month, I got to admiring the wall mounted track shelving they had up for bookstorage in one of the upstairs rooms. It occurred to me that this could be the answer to our problem. Since it was wall mounted, I could simply have shelves cut to whatever length I wanted on that part of the wall, and since they didn’t have to reach all the way to the floor, they could be placed above other furniture.

Last night, I dropped by home depot and picked up some supplies. Rails, brackets, and a 1×8 cut into five 27.5″ pieces, which was the precise distance from the wall to the edge of the window in our computer room. This is the room where the guest bed is deployed when we have visitors, so we wanted to arrange the room in such a manner as to not require extensive shifting about to put the bed in place.

Things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked. I discovered rather quickly that the studs in the wall were made of metal, and as a result I made another trip to Home Depot to get some drywall-anchor screws so that the shelves could be mounted between the studs instead. Then I found that the particular drywall used here was so soft that if you weren’t careful, when the anchor finally was fully caught it would start to burrow through the wall. There are, as Continue Reading

Published On: March 18, 2003

It’s not surprising that people in the filk community respond to the upcoming war with songs, either of their own or simply by posting the lyrics of others.

As with many others, I wish for peace

WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE
by Bob Dylan

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I’s made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
Continue Reading