reviews

When I finished reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, I immediately started reading it a second time. I can count on one hand the number of times I've immediately reread a book, and two of them were on similar topics, so before I tell you what I thought of the new book, I'll tell you about the other two so we can see how they relate.

When I was in school, I frequently asked my parents for recommendations of what to read for book reports. They had an extensive collection of classic speculative fiction, so I read famous titles including The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis; The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, and War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells; Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

Update: All three books in the series are now available as audiobooks on YouTube, or you can download them as a torrent

I got an email a few days ago informing me that I'm in the top 5% of users of a service called Pocket -- I've used their free service to read more words on more Web pages than 95% of their users.  This is a totally unpaid and unasked-for endorsement, but chances are you haven't even heard of this service, so let me introduce you to why I use it so much:

This is a response to a blog post called "When will White People Stop Making Movies like Avatar?" by Annalee Newitz.  The post made me upset when I first read it, but I hadn't seen Avatar yet, and besides, her argument is protected by the good old rhetorical ploy, "If this makes you feel defensive, you must be a racist."  Now that I've seen the film, I disagree more strongly on a number of po

Soon after I bought my first recumbent bike, I became a devotee of chain wax instead of oil.  When I was a kid, we always used 3-in-1 oil on our chains, but it only took one application of that stuff to the long dangly chain of a Bike-E to make me realize my error -- oil got all over my leg!  I had to remove all the oil with a rag and replace it with wax.  I was so sold on wax that once when I took my bike to a small-town shop for unrelated work and the well-intentioned mechanic thought my chain looked "dry" and oiled it for me, I made him wipe the oil back off and gave him a

Back in September, I wrote about our frustration in trying to follow Consumer Reports' guidance in buying appliances, including a dehumidifier.  Then in November I reported on the energy consumption of our appliances, including the dehumidifier, which was the number one energy hog in the house, costing us an estimated $593.09 per year to maintain the relative humidity at 50% (dry enough to keep mold from growing).

Many of my friends in Fairfield, Iowa, are in an uproar right now about a new cell-phone tower that, unlike the existing two towers on the outskirts of town, is near homes and a few blocks from an elementary school.  Here's some of the existing press about the controversy:

I knew I'd have to buy a bunch of appliances shortly after moving into the house, so I subscribed to Consumer Reports' online edition.  Although it's been better than nothing, it was not as helpful as I had hoped.  Here are my experiences so far.