Shawn > Recent Status Updates

i like this family ;)

“Funny how the quality of sunlight changed from summer to fall. You would think sunlight would be sunlight no matter what, but it wasn’t so. The level of intensity, the angle, everything changed. You were more grateful for it in autumn, too. In summer, it burned your skin and heated everything to the point of unbearable. By mid-October you just wished it would play across your face a little longer.”

A lot of ethical issues raised here. I should pause here to remark that the author is very gender sensitive and progressive in this. I get it, and welcome the whole rainbow, but sometimes I get the feel that a certain culture, however new & novel & fair seeming, is being pushed on readers like me who kind of feel like they do not need to announce what pronoun they should be addressed by. I am a man. Nothing else.

Argh. Why is it that when I have a good e-book on hand and want to take my time with it, There is someone waiting in line on the Libby app so I have to rush read this!

Really appreciating this, not a lot of flashing bangs however it points to ethics about using such addictive and immersive technologies

You’re really talking about California public school system! I work at a school where all the students have a tablet to take home…

A re-read…been in mood for a saga, so

Whew, really satisfied w/this, every other paragraph contains substance, and his interpretations of the How and the Why are ver insightful and convincing. This is a 5-star read.

Gosh, just the Introduction chapter is eye-opening. I love his breakdowns. He’s explaining how Iran was not a feudal society, that the State did not depend on landlords & aristocrats. It was the reverse: The State could grant & dispense at will. No European power ever experienced such sovereignty. His terms ‘arid-isolatic’ and ‘arbitrary’ and ‘short-term’ society is explanatory & apposite.

“ The typical Iranian village, small, isolated and almost self-sufficient, was a product of the aridity of the land, the general scarcity of water typically putting a long distance between one village and next. The village first became an isolated self-sufficient social, too small to provide a feudal base:”

Enjoying this, once I gave in and immerse myself in the thinking of David Brin