The Castle in the Forest

Norman Mailer’s last book, The Castle in the Forest, released before his death this year, is a portrait of the young Adolf Hitler and his family, told from a most unusual perspective: the demon who is assigned to cultivate Hitler as a “client.” Lots to think about in this book: the battle of good and evil, religion, and the scary parallels between modern events and the horrible conflicts of the last century.

The Pros and Cons of Coffee Drinking

The Pros and Cons of Coffee Drinking – Dumb Little Man

I think I should move to filtered Joe and supplement with calcium antacids, to max the bennies of the fiendish bean of caffeine. I do like the flava! I don’t think it’s hurt my recent weight loss, either.

Battle of the Blogs II: WordPress

December 14, 2007 12:43 AM

I fired up WordPress and busted out a blog about my son’s school, a private blog which requires a free WordPress account for members to read & post comments (or administer?). I invited family only, about 5 members. Let’s see what the activity level is like for such a small, but involved audience.

WordPress was having some CSS issues a little while ago, but these display issues seem to be fixed. Also, I was only posting to the Stratopress. Now, I have another blog, which I should keep an eye on … can I send emails to notify when I’ve posted? Or an RSS feed from a private blog? That’s interesting…

So, I’m liking WordPress. Interestingly, I composed this post in MacJournal, offline. But MJ has fullscreen, and I can be truly offline. It works with Blogger.com, too … in both cases, I have to finish my formatting in the blog posting form.

The Savage Wars of Peace

In the book The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power , Max Boot traces the US use of small expiditionary forces to influence foreign policy, starting from the Barbary Pirate wars to current activities in the middle east. Although he is an unabashed champion of the application of American imperial power, he does note the many ways that we’ve forgotten the value of small-unit counterinsurgency warfare — and this was written before Iraq turned into a quagmire. Of interest to Cpt. JM, perhaps.

Posted on December 14, 2007 1:03 AM