Comments & Reading List

I am going to try to get this up so I can write each day. Getting myself into the habit is going to be a bit of a challenge. I suceeded in getting myself to work out each morning. It took time, patience, and a lot of grumbling, Bare with mea s I get this started.

Right now I am reading _The Complete Roman Army_ by Adrian Goldsworthy. It hangs together a lot of things I'd read elsewhere in several different sources. It's a pop history book so it should be taken with a grain of salt for possible mistakes, but so far it's been a good starter book.

Prior to this in Jan I read _The Diamond Age_. There were a lot of giggles in there. Chemists have pointed out to me that the rod logic hud makes for excellent explosives. Doh. However, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer has definitely caught my attention: my wife is pregnant and we're about to have a baby girl at the end of March.

Next I will be reading Jared Diamond's _Collapse_. It ought to be interesting. Ever the controversial author, Diamond often hangs onto theories that are dismissed by those in the anthropology field. I'll dig up an example and post it if anyone asks.

After that, I have a book on phytoremediation to read. Some friends and I are exploring a business in this area. It's long and prolly dull as dirt, but we'll see. My preference is to get back to reading books on rocket design, but that has a steeper $ curve than this does and I have more people interested in funding and working on this one. So! For the next 6 months I'm going to be swallowing and cross referencing bio books prior to writing the business plan.

I occasionally write as well. I have participated on Usenet for over a decade now - Yikes! - and in the last prolly 7 years I've participated in a counterfactual history group and spun some yarns. I currently have one I spinning, albeit slowly right now, about a surviving Byzantine Empire and Machiavelli's interaction with it. After this, I'm prolly going to shelve alternate history for a while. The future is looking a lot more interesting. Prolly before said baby has started me thinking very strongly about the future once again. I do ahve some partially finished books - as in written - that I should go finish.

At any rate, second post!