Infectious Diseases

Thanks Apple. That's exactly what I needed. Really - I just spent all of last month going, "Gee there aren't enough songs in the world to get stuck in my head. Maybe Apple will use an incredibly catchy song to promote it's new Nano and then I can get THAT stuck in my head as well."

So, yeah. Thanks for that.





Woo Hoo...

Viva Voltaire

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~Voltaire

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.” - Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

6 days before he was set to arrive I stepped out of my apartment this morning and was greeted by that annual friend Autumn. So early, he must be as eager to get here as I am for him to arrive. Cultures have been celebrating the beginning and the end of the harvest season for as long as we’ve been an agrarian people. By the end of winter I’m blue and depressed, but Autumn brings out the best in us. Our windows have been open all weekend and the steadily cooling air has been immensely refreshing.

Autumn brings two things to mind: new beginnings and food. Thanksgiving, Christmas, football, harvest…these things bring different associations to different people but better or worse they mostly make me think of food. Thanksgiving is turkey and stuffing; Christmas ham and mom’s egg bake; football wings and nachos, harvest corn, apples, and bread.

I tried very hard to think of something else, but all I could think about this morning was the eggplant I have in the refrigerator, the beans and ham that I’m cooking tomorrow, where I can find the best recipe for apple pie, the fact that I didn’t buy any sweet potatoes, when I can invite people over for a roast. Cranberries, walnuts, sour dough bread, loaves of whole wheat bread, potatoes, carrots, squash are all going through my mind like a stock ticker.

In the comments section, feel free to let me know what foods you associate with Autumn. I’ll leave you with a few quotes I dug up from a post last year, plus a few more.

“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” – Jim Davis

Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people. ~Elizabeth Berry

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you! ~Tommy Smothers

Ultimate Road Trip?

What makes a good road trip? The single most important requirement of a road trip is driving. Outside of that there seem to be wildly conflicting points of view. My beloved Merriam Webster defines road trip as: an extended trip in a motor vehicle. Somewhat lack luster. Wikipedia on the other hand, that wildly verbose collection of the “worlds wisdom” has multiple pages of definitions, examples, guides, and references, all of this plus a definition of road trip with 8 separate sub-types.

How’s one to sift through all of these competing views and articles to discover the real truth about what a genuine road trip is? Simply read the next line.

A road trip is any trip where the primary reason for going is the journey. There’s a saying that has become seemingly ingrained in our collective conscious that goes, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” Despite the cliché nature of this aphorism its sentiment sums up the essential requirements of a road trip.

After establishing this truth technicalities can be added such as requiring a vehicle (not hiking, sailing, or flying), or sub-definitions definitions such as: speed run, park hopping, regional, international, etc. And those are all great things to think about if they lead to further interest in road trips, but ultimately a road trip must stay about the journey.

Having said all of that, a road trip typically has an ostensible “purpose”. This purpose helps to inform the itinerary, map out way points, and provides motivation when the generic concept of “going out and driving for 2 weeks” starts sounding too vague to get excited about. With that knowledge it’s easier to understand why the first step of a road trip would be to choose a destination, even though it’s really about the journey.

Interested in some good locations? How about going on a road trip to see 3 of the wildest holes you’ll ever see? The link below lists 7 of the most extreme holes in the world, 3 of which are in the US. If you want to drive to Canada or Central America (Belize/Guatemala) you could do a road trip to see 6 amazing holes (second link).

http://deputy-dog.com/2007/09/09/7-amazing-holes/
http://maptrot.com/mapView.jsp?mapId=a0a236bc-c3e7-49d5-bc17-48b6255e3ae4

Not interested in ridiculously large holes, then why not drive route 1 or route 66. Maybe do an east coast tour or just take a drive to see each of the house you’ve lived in? So many possibilities…

Community Book Shelf: RIP

Well, the grand experiment that was the Community Bookshelf never really took off. I think for that to work requires a critical mass of people such that whenever any given person logs on whether after days or weeks since checking there is something new to look into. With less than 50 members (less than 25 that were contributing members) it was hard to reach that point. The biggest thing that I miss about the bookshelf was the ability to post a short topic and get people's opinions. I can do that with the blog, but it's a bit of a side step from the usual, "self-indulgent inane claptrap dealing with naught but daily minutiae". I suppose my scattered readership will have to deal for one day.

Less eulogizing and more discussion I suppose.

I have been interested in building my library again recently. I'm going to post (below) the books that I'm most interested in reading right now, which largely fall into categories of classic literature, classic christian literature, and for lack of a better term fantasy (but "fantasy" used in the classical sense...more mythopoeia, not the more modern sense). In other words this isn't an exhaustive library list, but rather a books a "haven't read yet but want to"-list.

However, in addition to posting my list, I'm hoping that in the comments section I might hear back from some of you with what books you think I should add to my list and or what you think of any of the books on the list. Have you read some of them, did you like them, think they were terrible? Do they make you think of other books I should read?

There, I suppose that is verbose enough. Discuss :)

C.S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
The Allegory of Love
A Preface to Paradise
Lost Studies in Words
The Discarded Image
Letters to an American Lady
Letter to Malcolm

George MacDonald
Phantases
Lilith
The Light Princess
The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and Curdie

G.K. Chesterton
The Everlasting Man
The Man Who Was Thursday
Orthodoxy
What's Wrong with the World

St. John of the Cross
Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul
Living Flame of Love

Herman Melville
Moby Dick

Tolstoy
War and Peace