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Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

Started by Thurnez Isa, December 03, 2006, 04:11:35 PM

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Faust

Quote from: Phosphatidylserine on May 30, 2012, 03:27:05 PM
Quote from: Faust on May 26, 2012, 08:17:50 PMThe other side of it is the self congratulatory wank, how he insinuates inspiring such titles as the dark knight returns and watchmen while agreeing they are among the best comics while at the same time attacking them and calling them the dark age of comics.

I didn't catch that at all while reading it. I remember that he said he gave Watchmen a terrible review, and then Alan Moore turned around and gave Arkham Asylum a terrible review. However, I got the impression that he was claiming that comics of that era were dark for the sake of dark, and that he was a part of the problem. In other words, I interpreted Supergods as the comic book equivalent of the Heiroglyph Project announcement, and his work on All Star Superman appears to be in-line with that.

Speaking of comic books, has anyone else seen GM's work on that other franchise named 'The Avengers'? I scored the first issue, but it finished while I wasn't looking and so far as I can tell it hasn't been released as an anthology yet.
He insinuates it repeatedly for several different writers not just Moore. Though his "negative review" was pretty funny in that it comes across as a terrified fear that it nearly destroyed superhero comics forever. He describes it as an intricate cold perfectly constructed attack on superheros which to be honest seems like a misconception of both it and Miracle man.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Salty

Mike Meyers' COMPTIA A+ Certification Tomb. 

I strongly suspect he writes these with the intention of keeping people OUT of the tech world. There's no other reason for setting up an education book in this fashion. 

"No rule says how many USB ports a single host adapter may use." pg. 689

"Each USB host controller supports up to 127 USB devices..." pg. 691

:nuke2:

That's pretty fucking indicative of how many ports it can have DOESN'T IT?
The world is a car and you're the crash test dummy.

minuspace

Quote from: Phosphatidylserine on June 10, 2012, 09:25:50 PM
Later, I plan to attack House of Leaves again, now that I have it in dead tree.

Late summer nights vacation reading House of Leaves in dead tree is excellent.

Pope Pixie Pickle

Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on May 27, 2012, 08:45:34 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on May 27, 2012, 08:25:57 PM
Just started Delusions of GenderHow Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Very good so far and I'm enjoying how it nails to the wall the female brain/male brain dichotomy. I always thought that was a little fishy.

Ooh, that sounds really promising!

woah, I just got the delivery for that yesterday, I ordered it literally the day after Garbo posted and just recommended it to Nigel in another fread. :D

Don Coyote

Re-re-re-started Don Quixote.
Started the Unincorporated War.

Placid Dingo

Quote from: Guru Quixote on June 14, 2012, 01:09:38 AM
Re-re-re-started Don Quixote.
Started the Unincorporated War.

Yeah, first half of book one is a bit challenging. I found the rest good, and it's certainly a work that sticks with you.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.

Juana

While offline, I finished Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: the Riddles of Culture by Marvin Harris. Although there are a few sort of problematic things, I still learned a ridiculous amount, from why big men and potlaches make sense to the reasonings for messanic cults that Palestine was riddled with around the time of Christ (and why, even though he absolutely was not, Jesus seems different than his contemporary charismatic cult leaders).
Coyote, I think you might be particularly interested, since I recall you saying something about how you thought that misogyny is to some extent linked to who militaristic a group is, which is pretty much 100% backed here.

Also annihilated Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of the Two Sexes by Dr. Gerald N. Callahan. He constantly uses sex and gender interchangibly even though he recognizes they're different, which is annoying, but otherwise it's an excellent book.

Quote from: Pixie on June 14, 2012, 12:46:52 AM
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on May 27, 2012, 08:45:34 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on May 27, 2012, 08:25:57 PM
Just started Delusions of GenderHow Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Very good so far and I'm enjoying how it nails to the wall the female brain/male brain dichotomy. I always thought that was a little fishy.

Ooh, that sounds really promising!

woah, I just got the delivery for that yesterday, I ordered it literally the day after Garbo posted and just recommended it to Nigel in another fread. :D
I haven't finished it 'cause I'm ADHD like that, but apparently there's some ridiculous shit. Read it critically.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Don Coyote

Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on June 15, 2012, 08:35:42 PM
While offline, I finished Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: the Riddles of Culture by Marvin Harris. Although there are a few sort of problematic things, I still learned a ridiculous amount, from why big men and potlaches make sense to the reasonings for messanic cults that Palestine was riddled with around the time of Christ (and why, even though he absolutely was not, Jesus seems different than his contemporary charismatic cult leaders).
Coyote, I think you might be particularly interested, since I recall you saying something about how you thought that misogyny is to some extent linked to who militaristic a group is, which is pretty much 100% backed here.

Also annihilated Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of the Two Sexes by Dr. Gerald N. Callahan. He constantly uses sex and gender interchangibly even though he recognizes they're different, which is annoying, but otherwise it's an excellent book.

Quote from: Pixie on June 14, 2012, 12:46:52 AM
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on May 27, 2012, 08:45:34 PM
Quote from: Secret Agent GARBO on May 27, 2012, 08:25:57 PM
Just started Delusions of GenderHow Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Very good so far and I'm enjoying how it nails to the wall the female brain/male brain dichotomy. I always thought that was a little fishy.

Ooh, that sounds really promising!

woah, I just got the delivery for that yesterday, I ordered it literally the day after Garbo posted and just recommended it to Nigel in another fread. :D
I haven't finished it 'cause I'm ADHD like that, but apparently there's some ridiculous shit. Read it critically.

I'll check that book out.

Cain

Going through Daniel Hopsicker's Welcome to Terrorland at a good rate.

Hopsicker is an independent investigative journalist who, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, went to Florida to find out what he could about the hijackers, and in particular about Mohammed Atta.  While a pretty skeptical guy, I don't think he was quite prepared to go that far down the rabbit-hole...

Hopsicker gets some real scoops in this book.  For instance, he is the only person I know of who managed to interview Amanda Keller, Atta's American girlfriend.  He interviews Atta's ex-landlords, people who worked at the bars he attended, students who attended flight-school with him, and a very odd picture of Atta emerges.

He's a nasty bastard, no doubt about that.  Keller tells how after she broke up with him, he killed her kittens and left their dismembered body parts around the apartment.  But she also tells how he was a party animal, into expensive drinks and drugs.  She saw him doing coke more than once. He seemed to have an inexhaustible income, from unknown sources.  Expensive suits, expensive drinks, expensive living arrangements.  He also had a lot of German friends, who have gone unidentified to this day.

Much more disturbingly, Hopsicker shows the FBI timeline for Atta's movements in Florida to be completely and utterly wrong.  He also investigates the flight schools that he attended, and finds some serious discrepancies.  For instance, both the schools were bought by Dutch nationals, only a couple of months before Atta arrived and trained there.  One of the school "owners" had no experience as a pilot...but plenty of experience in smuggling high-tech goods, for which he was investigated by various US agencies.  It also turned out he wasn't the actual owner of the school...and the man who was had been investigated by the DEA, because his planes were bringing in massive amounts of heroin from Venezuela.

Neither of the flight schools, nor the man backing them, was making any money.  Yet they lived extremely lavish lifestyles.  They also moved in odd company.  A Portland-area Mafioso who helped bilk a mafia-union linked to Bill Clinton's campaign, with help from a company linked to Bush Jr's campaign.  An ex-CIA, native Russian pilot.  And a whole cast of Iran-Contra extras, inexplicably in the vicinity of Venice, Florida, during the period when Atta was training there.

And this is just the cliff notes version of what Hopsicker unconvered.  Given he cut his teeth in investigating drugs, organised crime and political figures in the US, he goes into much greater detail.

I'm about two thirds of the way through, but I'm fairly convinced, regardless of the known events of 9/11, something dodgy as hell was going on in Florida during Atta's time there, and that he is connected to all these corrupt, criminal figures is probably not just coincidence.  And also that the Saudis are up to their neck in this as well.  Hopsicker mentions how the House of Saud have links with certain American crime groups, and some of his suspicions seem to match up with the more recent revelations that some US senators suspected Saudi Arabia helped sponsor the 9/11 attacks.  At the very least, there appear to be two overlapping operations here: the drugs operation, and then the terrorist operation.  The question is, how do these two interact, and what the hell went wrong? Atta seems to have been protected at least in part by someone in the US - he shares a name with a Palestinian terrorist, which should have, at the very least, gotten him flagged on his first entry into the US.  Except....those checks are often waived for Saudi or Saudi-affiliated nationals.  The flight schools Atta attended were reported to the FAA a ridiculous amount of times for so many violations of good practice, of corruption...and yet, those who lodged complaints were told to drop them, that those involved were protected.

And then you have the FBI driving around Florida, seizing documents (not just copying them, taking them) and telling all witnesses to shut up and not talk to anyone.  Not to mention the several witnesses who then went missing...

LMNO

What are the chances of two parallel plots going on here?  One for drug running/tech smuggling, one for terrorism?

Cain

Hard to say.  Smuggling routes aren't just useful for smugglers, after all. On the other hand, dealing with terrorists is certainly a good way to end up in the wrong sort of reports, and being looked at by the wrong sort of people.

I'm struggling to come up with a plausible, coherent theory which accounts for all of this, but at the moment I don't have all the data.  It looks like Mohammed Atta may have been acting as a pilot for a protected number of individuals smuggling drugs into Florida (Amanda Keller said he had certification to be a pilot in other countries, and he at least once took another student out on a flight with him supervising).  He may have gotten into the USA via one of Bin Laden's brothers, who had pilots for the Saudi airforce sent specifically to the company in Venice where Atta "trained", but that only partially explains the Saudi connection.

How it went from that to a terrorist plot is a very, very good question.  And the same goes for the gold, which an unidentified but obviously wealthy Saudi man brought to a friend of Atta's, who has since (unsurprisingly) gone missing.

Gold.  Drugs.  Oil (money).  Organized crime.  Terrorism.  That's a dangerous and complex situaiton wherever those things come together. 

Rococo Modem Basilisk

I am 94 pages into Slajov Zizek's Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?! (yes, that's actually the title), and thus far he has told me that:

  • Hamlet and Oedipus Rex have the same story
  • Manon de la Source has the same story as Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, but only in the remake
  • Hitler was a satirist
  • Christianity is essentially communist while Judaism and Buddhism (and anything with a concept of karma) is essentially capitalist
  • Zizek buys Celestial Seasonings brand tea
When I have to stop reading a book and go back to House of Leaves for lack of sense, that's a bad sign, but Zizek remains entertaining in long form.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Zamatayin's We, Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas, Fort's New Lands, and The I Ching. I recently finished The Apocalypse Codex, which is about as expected for an entry in Stross's Laundry series, and I bought a biography of Mad King Ludwig (which is surprisingly hagiographic).


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

minuspace

In lieu of formal debriefing, I'm skimming travel documents to alien worlds.

Reeducation

Some books written by Julius Evola, Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon.



I am very calm

Placid Dingo

Finished The Prankster and the Conspiracy as part of my research.

Reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.