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So whatcha reading?


Ralphie

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I am doing the parallel book thing again. Slow Medicine and Regis Philbin's How I Got This Way. 

I feel a little guilty aboot the Hollywood thing, but I have always enjoyed reading bios and ottobios of tv stars. Regis starts off with how he loved bing Crosby and the great story of how he finally met him while he was second banana on joey bishops show, which I never knew he was. I loved joey bishop!  

Slow medicine is pretty cool too. A female doctor describing her experiences.  I look forward to reading it. 

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I just finished this:

lucky-666-9781476774855_hr.jpg

Follows the standard formula of focusing on the main characters of a particular mission, starting with their childhoods and following up through their times in the service.  I found it read easily and it was interesting.  What nearly spoiled the book for me was the one sentence that called American servicemen 'racist' for the way they fought the Japanese. 

This is how the plane returned from the mission

Old-666-1024x682.jpeg

 

I'm still plowing through the first book (of two) of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  I find it a difficult read due to the style of writing and, to some extent, being unfamiliar with current events, places, and people of the 1770's to which Smith refers.   On the whole I find it worth continuing because I'm seeing applications of economics that still remain true today.

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I have Elizabeth Warren's A Fighting Chance unopened on my shelf and I'm halfway through Ben Bernanke's The Courage to Act.

I also have all five of Douglas Adams' A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books on my Kindle Fire: I saw the movie, but never read the books. When I need so light, twisted comedy, I'll begin them.

But right now I'm stuck in the 1700's to 1800's range in my chess rating and want to get to 2000. I don't expect to get to chessmaster (2200) level, but 2000 is doable, I think. Using my Advanced Teaching Certificate training, I assessed my weaknesses and realize I need to see tactics patterns better and make better attacking and calculation decisions.  So I'm working Tactics Trainers (Chess Puzzles tailored to what you need to do to improve) and reading/studying Simple Attacking Plans by Master Fred Wilson, The Chess Attacker's Handbook by International Master Michael Song, and Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation by Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard.

Anyone who says age 67 is too old to improve on complicated mental tasks, check out my 2017 progress in Standard Tactics Ratings at chesstempo.com, where you are confronted with ever-more-difficult problems the higher your rating gets. I began the year floating around 1500 and hit 1766.4 today:

5a11fe845a95c_TacticsRatingChesstempothru2017_11.181763.3.thumb.JPG.772e51a1a03587d5ceacbe18761041ed.JPG

 

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3 hours ago, Digital_photog said:

Do you want to go to the Winter Camping Rendezvous  Feb 1 - 5, 2018  in Northern Wisconsin with me?  Will be taking the heated tent, snowshoes, toboggans, fat bikes.

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Prepare for temperatures between -30 and +35

 

When my boy was in scouts, we were doing a winter camping trip, temps were expected in 20's and dove down below zero. Somebody from the scout administration drove out to open the headquarters building for us. We were the only troop there, and just doing an unsupported tent trip.

Nobody used the building. I was glad to have it open though, some of the boys didn't have the best gear, and I was a bit nervous.

The boys handled the cold by building a big fire and sitting around it all night.  

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18 hours ago, Digital_photog said:

Do you want to go to the Winter Camping Rendezvous  Feb 1 - 5, 2018  in Northern Wisconsin with me?  Will be taking the heated tent, snowshoes, toboggans, fat bikes.

Prepare for temperatures between -30 and +35

I love the idea of bringing "the heated tent".  Man, that is sooo awesome.  

Tom

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2 hours ago, Zephyr said:

I am re-reading John Douglas' "Mindhunter" on the development of FBI Criminal Profiling.  Read it years ago and picked it off the shelf again after watching the Netflix series that is loosely based on it

Are the results of the criminal profiling better or equivalent to the results from remote viewing?

Tom

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5 hours ago, Dunning Kruger said:

517FnN+Xs5L._SX310_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

 

The Project Gutenberg 'book' here, for anyone else that may want to read it:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

 

Welcome to 1859:

"In the modern world, the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation between spiritual and temporal authority (which placed the direction of men's consciences in other hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs), prevented so great an interference by law in the details of private life; but the engines of moral repression have been wielded more strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism."

A tip of my hat to DK!  :nodhead:

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22 minutes ago, Thaddeus Kosciuszko said:

 

The Project Gutenberg 'book' here, for anyone else that may want to read it:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

 

Welcome to 1859:

"In the modern world, the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation between spiritual and temporal authority (which placed the direction of men's consciences in other hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs), prevented so great an interference by law in the details of private life; but the engines of moral repression have been wielded more strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism."

A tip of my hat to DK!  :nodhead:

Was that the longest sentence ever written?

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An amazing lady sent me this book. I just started reading it today because it was delivered yesterday after my wife got home from work and we didn’t remember to go out and get the mail. So far I find the book fascinating. I’ll be starting back up with my Autism boy the beginning of December. I had to take a break while my shoulder heals.

 

3EA1C44A-D4F6-46B2-A577-6D5B4E4054C5.jpeg

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  • 4 weeks later...

After finishing Volume 1 of The Wealth of Nations, I decided to take a bit of a break from the 18th century.  So I picked this up:

 

md21803296571.jpg

 

OK, OK, I admit to skipping over some of the derivations and formulas because the book was originally intended as a textbook for a class.  But so far it's been a good overall treatise on the subject, and I've learned a good deal.

Two things I liked in particular:

The book contains several references to and pictures from hydropower plants within easy cycling and driving distance from my home; places I've seen a number of times.

The book itself is 90 years old, which may not seem all that remarkable.  But for being 90 years old, the book has held up extremely well, exhibiting no signs of such age.  Also I found it interesting that while the equipment itself has advance technologically, the concepts and application of engineering principles remain essentially the same.  Reading about state-of-the-art electrical equipment from 90 years ago was fun.  Some of the stuff I'd never heard of, and some of the the stuff I've seen similar equipment still in use.

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