My Reading Adventure

I owe my love of reading to Scrooge McDuck, Tom Swift Jr., Lord Greystoke and John Carter of Virginia, Holmes and Watson, Kimball Kinnison, Podkayne Fries, Mithrandir, Steerpike and Fuschia, Conan the Barbarian, Cthulhu, Paul Janus Finnegan, Clark Savage Jr., and a host of other characters. Or, more properly, to Carl Barks, the Stratemeyer Syndicate,… Continue reading My Reading Adventure

Ebooks for Learning a Foreign Language

I prefer reading real books. I love their feel, their heft, even their smell–musty and old, or inky and new. Some books have beautiful bindings, dust-covers with wonderful artwork, high-quality paper and lovely fonts. They are a pleasure to read. Even the lowly paperback with its fragile binding and quickly deteriorating paper can spark joy.… Continue reading Ebooks for Learning a Foreign Language

Pirates of Space

Ed note: I wrote this post to provide some back story/rationale for my forthcoming (maybe) starship simulator app based on the Lensman series of Edward E. “Doc” Smith. I wanted to provide some exposition updating Smith’s pioneering use of the concept of “inertialess drive” in light of current physics. This opening parallels the opening of… Continue reading Pirates of Space

All the President’s Tapes

Richard Nixon’s downfall, a.k.a Watergate — a word whose suffix has become a part of the English language, has always fascinated me. In the summer of 1973, poised between graduation from college and the start of medical school, I spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the television watching the Senate Watergate hearings.… Continue reading All the President’s Tapes

Lanark — A Life in Four Books

Sometimes a statement that is ridiculed still bears a kernel of truth. The Internet really is a “series of tubes” — tubes that I tend to journey through frequently without a clear destination, much like the “mystery tours” my wife and I will sometimes take in our car. Sure, these wild expeditions may be considered… Continue reading Lanark — A Life in Four Books

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Maintaining Order in the Midst of Chaos

There are few jobs more chaotic than that of physician, at least based on my own experience. Yes there is a schedule of sorts: hospital rounds, procedures, office patients. Unfortunately things rarely go as planned. There is a particularly sick patient on rounds who needs a temporary pacing wire placed. There are more consults than expected.… Continue reading Maintaining Order in the Midst of Chaos

Man of Bronze

Unless you are an initiate, it is difficult to explain the appeal of literature from the era of the pulp magazines. In fact most literary high-brows would insist on putting that word literature into quotes when referring to the pulps. The heyday of the pulps was in the 1930s and 40s. Afterwards they quickly disappeared,… Continue reading Man of Bronze

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