John's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 41-60 of 186).

Sorry to have led you astray! It's definitely not Hobb's best work, though I apparently was able to wade through it more easily than many (but then, I also loved all of Moby Dick).

There were 15 workshop participants, plus more or less three instructors (2-3 were working at any given time) and one couple came partway through who had already been through the workshop. At most, then, we had 20 people working (plus, I should add, 2-3 people plus kids helping in the kitchen, keeping the cobbing machine fuelled).

We didn't plaster it, but I'm pretty sure the strawbale wall will take the earthen plaster as well as the cob wall. Now, building this way we dipped the bales in a clay slip to help integrate them into the wall. It definitely sped things up, though, and should be good to insulate that north wall somewhat.

Brian, are you documenting your building process photographically? I read The $50 and Up Underground House and was fascinated by the ideas there, so I'd be really interested to see them put into practice.

In any case, we're right there with you wanting to build an earthen oven! My best friend built one and there is no better way to cook pizza! I love baking bread, too, so it's a natural fit for us. While we were at the cob workshop, we picked up Kiko Denzer's Build Your Own Earth Oven and can't wait to build one.

Over the course of 10 days or so, we did a lot of the building of a small two-room house, minus the foundation work (already done, though we did some work on the foundation for another building to get a feel for that) and the finish work (no time). Hopefully you can see what we did here: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=58244586... I put that together to show it to non-cobbing friends, but it shows the progress we made. The experience was really good, though we were getting a little weary of the early morning cobbing every day (though I'm sure it's better than doing the same amount of cobbing later in the day!).

Solo?! Yikes! I would be doing everything I could to get friends interested in alternative building! It's amazing what you can get friends to do for a good meal and some sociability, and cob's so labor intensive that I'd want to have as many building parties as possible. Besides being good for the do-it-yourselfers, cob is good for the never-done-this-before friends!

One good thing about cob workshops, over and above the experience, is the network of people you can build who may someday help you with your project (assuming you're willing to do the same for them!). Of course, the problem with that is that, since most of the cob workshops seem to be in Oregon, many of the attendees are on the west coast. Still, I bet when we get around to building, we'll get at least a few cobbers out to help us.

I'm sure we'll use cob, but as I said under another discussion, I don't know that we'll go exclusively cob. Strawbale has some appeal, particularly if we decide to go with a code-approved house. I've considered underground and earth-sheltered houses, as well as earthships. In any case, I think we need to find a piece of land before we decide. Much as permaculture depends on the particular features of the land, I feel like building decisions need to take such things into account as well. The more flexible we can be, the better.

We've taken to heart the oft-repeated advice to start small, and that's our plan. We're really interested in clever design elements that maximize space and convenience.

One idea we picked up on our honeymoon was using small loft bedrooms with little more than sleeping space, using a larger bathroom that incorporates closets for the family's clothes, so that instead of bringing dirty clothes downstairs to launder and then taking clean clothes up to the bedroom, dressing, undressing, and laundry can happen in one place. Clever storage using what's often dead space is also good stuff.

We're thinking very much along the same lines, Brian, reducing energy usage and using solar and wind. Depending on the land we end up with, we'd also look at micro-hydro if there's enough flowing water. Mo, I found methane digesters to be an interesting idea, but I've also heard a few horror stories of methane digesters gone wrong--then again, I think those were all pretty old systems, so they may well be safer now.

When we build, we'll be looking to a house that consumes less energy for heating and cooling, whether that's cob, strawbale, some kind of earth-sheltered house. If we can start with a house that doesn't consume much energy, limit our needs and wants, we should be off to a very good start.

I also want to look into rainwater catchment systems in more depth. A lot will depend on the particular piece of land we end up finding.

Mo, thanks for the invite to the group.

My wife Lauren and I spent our honeymoon at the House Alive cob workshop in Oregon--it was a pretty unusual honeymoon by most people's standards, but for a couple who spent a March spring break (we're teachers) in Maine at The Shelter Institute (diy homebuilding focused on post-and-beam and stick-frame houses, but very good, comprehensive introductions to all the systems of a house).

I'm sure we'll incorporate cob into our house when we build one, but we're not sure whether we'll build cob walls or not. It depends on how much attention we end up paying to building codes, which in turn depends on where we end up getting land.

We're currently living in Pennsylvania, but we're moving to Indiana, where Lauren will be teaching and I will be doing some freelance work and building up a skill base to enable us, eventually, to raise the majority of our own food (that's the plan, anyway). We're looking either to buy land in Indiana or upstate New York, in the Finger Lakes region where a friend of mine is already developing a homestead.

Mo, I'm right there with you, ready to get DOING.

Judging by my own experience with British friends and marmite, I would guess that a marmite author must be someone that British folks love (perhaps because their mums read it to them when they were kids) but that we Americans just plain don't understand the appeal of, even if we've heard of them or--especially--tried them.

But that's just a wild guess. :)

I actually heard a minister start a wedding ceremony "Marrwiage is what bwings us togevah today. That Bwessed awangement, that dweam within a dweam!" The bride and groom were big fans and talked him into it. Not the best wedding I've ever been to, easily the worst reception, but certainly the best START to a wedding.

A few (rather scattered) thoughts about Michael's post. If the vision Baltar&Caprica represent the gods of Kobol (Greek), well, that's a bit strange, isn't it, considering that Caprica is always talking about God (singular)? That's not to say that she couldn't be mistaken about her role, but considering the directness with which she operates, telling the truth about things that Gaius (or the physical Caprica) couldn't have known, she seems like a pretty direct representative of whatever divinity is out there. You're right, of course, that the Kara we see after she dies is much less self-aware. The distinction you seem to draw is that angel-Caprica/Gaius are more direct, so they're more like Greek Gods, while Kara wasn't given direct information, which is more like the Christian God. But then, if you take seriously Christian mythology as expressed in the Bible, that hasn't always been the case. Some of God's prophets were spoken to directly by God and seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to do, even if--like Baltar--they were too weak to always do so or tried to avoid their fate (Jonah as the most obvious example). So I tend to believe they were all instruments of unified divine whatever (if it doesn't want to be called God, it will just have to settle for "divine whatever").

Also, I'm not sure I buy that Cavil was really "ultimately religious." Although he sometimes played a minister, it was pretty clear that he understood that as a cynical sham. He seemed to be presented as the most consistently atheistic character. In fact, what he represented was a particular kind of atheism in the way that he viewed himself as a machine. Human beings can also view ourselves that way, as simply programmed by our genes for certain limitations (remember Cavil's ranting at Ellen about this?) and behaviors. He basically sees himself the way that many of the humans view the Cylons: machines with little or no freewill. That isn't Moore's vision of either humans or Cylons: in fact, we're basically the same. Our genetics may give us certain predispositions, but we have free will to choose what we are. Consider the Cylons as a case study: they're set up as being "identical" within a particular model, but over the course of the series, this has fallen apart, most notably with the 6s and the 8s, where their life paths have taken them down very different paths. The Cylons who DO stay identical do so because they've chosen to in one way or another, they've embraced the idea that that's what they're SUPPOSED to be (i.e. Cavil's way). I'm coming around to your basic reasoning for why Cavil kills himself, though: he doesn't believe in real creativity or growth, so he doesn't believe in his or the other Cylons' ability to rediscover resurrection (I also suspect it's something of a cop-out: wrapping up that side of the storyline on the one hand and condemning atheism--or at least that materialist-determinist [straw man:] atheism).

From a personal perspective, I read because my parents read to me and my parents read on their own. Between those two, I've always loved reading. Once I picked up LotR and Chronicles of Narnia in 4th grade, I was a non-stop reader of fantasy and sci-fi up through the end of high school (as an English major in college, I switched to more "serious" "literature," but after graduating rediscovered SF&fantasy and realized just how good some of this stuff is).

Now that I've taught English for 8 years... I still can't say for sure whether kids read more or less. I've taught at two different private schools. At one, an all-boys school, very few of the boys read, either what they're assigned or other books out of class. They don't read over the summer, they don't read, period. At the other school, which was a top-notch school, kids read a lot more. Many of them didn't have much time to read anything that wasn't assigned during the school year, but many of them were voracious, passionate readers during the summer and breaks (by no means was that all of the students, however). Now, were these kids on the whole better students because they read? Did they read more because they'd been raised to be readers and diligent students? Tough to say, but as a general rule the kids who have read more by the time they get to high school are better readers and writers and have stronger verbal skills. By the time they get to high school, it's hard to make up for the reading they didn't do at a younger age.

On that note, I tend to believe that a lot of my students who "don't like reading," don't like it at least in part because they aren't very good at it (because they haven't done much of it--vicious circle!). If you can't read well, how likely is it that reading is going to be able to compete against TV, movies, video games, or anything else, for your leisure time?

It may be a completely unjustified hope, but I'm hoping that GRRM just basically has a block with some aspect of the novel/series right now and that once he works through that, the series will get cooking again. I'm hoping that once this hypothetical problem gets solved that the final books will almost write themselves.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Going back to the question of keeping Pegasus vs. keeping Galactica, I just went back and have been watching season 3. I'd forgotten the details, but the original plan was for Lee to take Pegasus and the few remaining civilian ships and keep looking for earth while Bill took Galactica to try to rescue the people on New Caprica. Galactica was getting blown to hell in the rescue mission when Lee came charging to the rescue after all, despite being the one to argue for not putting all their eggs in one basket. He threw Pegasus into the center of the fray to draw fire from Galactica so they could jump away. I don't know that they made a conscious choice of Galactica over Pegasus so much as it just worked out that way--it became too late for Pegasus to get out and Pegasus was easier to fly with little or no crew anyway, so they abandoned Pegasus and let its momentum carry it into a collision with a basestar, destroying both.

Put in another vote for MBotF. I've been reading WoT since it first came out back in, what, 1990? There's another point in the Erikson's favor: I have every confidence that he's going to finish this series, given the evidence of his steady progress to date.

Really, though, the reason is the relative depth of the two series, and MBotF is hands down the deeper, more complex, more thoroughly engaging series, IMO.

Re: A Dance With Dragons, Amazon had a similar release date for fall of 2008 up for a while and it didn't happen. I'm not sure why they put up a date like that with apparently no justification, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Cheri, my apologies for taking so long to respond to this question (or to the last message you sent--it's been busy busy busy on this end). Part of my problem with rating this book is that I spread its reading out over the course of about a year. I had it as an eBook, which I think discouraged me from reading it, since I had to use my computer to do so.

That said, I can still offer some comments. Brown's book is an ambitious work. It outlines the problems facing the world at this turning point in history, from energy issues (peak oil, peak natural gas) to environmental degradation (climate change, over-fishing/collapse of fisheries, looming water shortages, constant loss of topsoil and need for fertilizers, deforestation... other things that I'm not coming up with). That part of the book is basically a first-rate guide to where to focus your sense of doom and gloom. The world's in bad shape.

Now, when it comes to solutions, Brown is very hopeful that the world can be saved for civilization, and he lays out a comprehensive plan. Largely, this seems to be a top-down approach, outlining what governments need to do in order to fix our problems. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot for individuals to take away from this in terms of individual solutions (notice the subtitle is about *mobilizing*, because we need big action). Perhaps that's fair enough: perhaps the problems are just so large that the actions of individuals will be insufficient. On the other hand, if you're skeptical about the ability and will of the government to mobilize, then there's not much to take from this book, beyond a few tidbits that may prove useful.

I just received my copy last week, but it will probably be a while before I can read it. I'm tempted to re-read The Prince of Nothing series before getting into this, but I haven't decided.

Brian,

There isn't a main character as such. Martin is writing a truly epic style of fantasy in which the events are larger than any one (or two or twelve) characters, so while each plays a part in the broad sweep of history and each occupies our attention for a time (some longer than others), no one character is large enough to be the true center of attention. As a consequence, the characters are on a more human scale--no one needs, through greatness or prophetic specialness or amazing coincidence, to be present at every important event.

That does make it harder for many readers to get into it, and it also leads to the slow start you've noted, but each of the characters does become involved in events that are happening more and more quickly, so I'd say that yes, the pace does pick up.

Robin, that's the way I read it... "once there were brook trout...." Although there's something beautiful about the passage, I really don't know that it's particularly hopeful.