Mike > Recent Status Updates

H.G. Wells stories The Time Machine & The Isle of Dr Moreau are two of the first stories I read and loved as a child. I read both several times. The Invisible Man & War of the Worlds were included in the same compilation but they didn’t interest me. Now, as an adult, I’m finally getting around to The War of the Worlds.

I read this book my first semester in college for a mythology class. Returning to it now, I still take the same morals and themes away from the writing, but it feels less purely academic and more emotional. The more you live, the more you experience the more filters you acquire for interpretation.

I’m using this textbook for a high school government class I’m teaching. So far it’s good. Grammatically it’s easy to follow. It features a lot of examples, pictures, graphs and diagrams.

I’ve not felt this curious reading nonfiction since I read Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature, which is my favorite book.

So far it’s a solid biography. Honest and informative with just enough pretty prose to keep me hooked, I’m enjoying it.

As I’m familiar with the modern LDS take on the history of Joseph Smith, polygamy, and Mormon Fundamentalists it’s almost a Copernican turn for me to hear a journalists well researched explanation of the same stories. I’ve been speechless, pausing to research aspects he shares that turn my preconceived understandings into feble propaganda. This is one of the most engaging books I’ve ever experienced.

Fascinating. In the first few chapters he explains that the balance of IQ and an innovative mind, as well as several hidden advantages that are often left out of the conversation, such as being born at the opportune time to take full advantage of a new technology or being affording the time to practice and become efficient rather than work long hours for low wages. I’m hooked.

Audio booking this while doing chores. So far Aslan explains how the ideology of a terrorist organization and the counter war on terror is a war against evil. This means no one can really win or loose and it will continue on indefinitely until the ideology changes.