Steampunk Animals

From artist Jessica Joslin's site description of her new book, Strange Nature:

The creatures that make up Jessica Joslin's world are specimens of unknown species, captured from the collision of myth and science. They are constructed and formed through an intricate fusion of bone, brass, antique hardware and other delicate fragments. This finely wrought craftsmanship is displayed with exquisite full-color photography throughout. Jessica Joslin: Strange Nature is an opportunity to enter this artist's eccentric and wonderful world.

I've never seen anything like this - way way too cool. (original link via boing boing.)

How Texas affects everyone else's textbooks

This article on the battle over evolution in Texas textbooks is a bit worrisome:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

This would be no big deal to the rest of us (except of course that it is annoyinig) except that Texas has a lot of power over textbooks nationwide:

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

Grrrrreat. Now we have to worry about stupid Texas on top of everything else.

Truancy, by Isamu Fukui

Have you ever cut school? Would you if you knew that if you were caught, you’d be killed? This is the world that Tack lives in—school is truly totalitarian, and the punishment for even small transgressions (talking back to the teacher, questioning the rules) is severe. Truancy by Isamu Fukui follows Tack’s journey as he realizes that the current system is not the only way, loses someone important to him, and joins the Truancy, the resistance movement with the goal of freeing the City’s children from the wrath of the Educators.

Written when the author was 15 years old and extremely dissatisfied with the education system (he’s 17 now, and has just graduated from high school), Truancy looks at what goes wrong when one group has too much power over another in a near-future nameless City. It’s also packed with action —Tack is trained (both mentally and physically) and mentored by Umasi, a boy he meets in an abandoned sector of the City, and then soon becomes second in command to Zyid, commander of the Truants. Their missions include supply raids, assassinations, and all out battle with the Enforcers, all with the hope of bringing the Educators, the Mayor, and their oppressive system down.

Tack is not a straightforward character—he doesn’t join the Truancy because he’s bullied at school by both other students and by the teachers. His first motive for joining the Truancy is revenge—someone he loves was caught in the crossfire during one of the Truancy’s actions, and was killed. Tack vows to find the assassin who killed with seemingly no emotion, and make him pay. Once he’s involved in the organization, he starts to learn about the goals of the Truancy, and begins to sympathize with the cause. He eventually has to make choices about where his true loyalties lie.

Find out a little more about the author’s inspiration and creative process (he wrote the novel in a month over summer break) in this NPR interview, and visit Truancy’s official web site here. If you enjoy the book, you’ll be happy to know that a trilogy is planned, Fukui is working on a prequel, Truancy Origins, to be published in early 2009, and will start on a sequel shortly thereafter. He plans to complete his work while still involved in the educational system (he plans to attend NYU). Fukui is worried about losing his anger at the system which inspired Truancy in the first place once he’s no longer entrenched in it. I was happy to hear that Fukui will be revisiting this world for a few reasons—whenever I read a dystopian novel, I always crave more information as to how the society got that way—was it a slow, almost imperceptible shift, or did change happen suddenly? Was resistance present from the beginning, or did the anger and frustration take a long time to build up? I’m also very curious about the backgrounds of Umasi and Zyid, and how they came to their very different belief systems and methods of resistance.
A good read for anyone who's already dreading going back to school in the fall.

Do Chemistry at Home!

From Geek Dad, this sounds like one wicked cool book:

The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments is a hefty tome with over 400 pages. The initial chapters focus on preliminaries such as maintaining a laboratory notebook, safety, as well as two huge sections on equipping a home laboratory with glassware and chemicals -- remember, you can't rely on a set to give you everything you need. Next comes a laboratory skills chapter, covering measurements, filtration, separations, and so on.

It goes without saying that the section on lab safety is as robust as it is necessary. However, Thompson took it a step further by making a conscious decision to leave out any illegal content such as explosives and meth labs. "Obviously, there's a very real danger involved, and I'd feel terrible if a kid blew himself up," Thompson explained. And of course, in today's world, an author has to pay attention to legal liability issues, both for himself and the reader. "Back 40 years ago when I was a teenager, the local cops pretty much looked the other way when kids played around with explosives. Making explosives nowadays is a sucker bet. You're going to get caught, and you're likely to face federal charges. It just isn't worth the risk."

And then Thompson jumps into the experiments. They start off easy -- the author targets middle schoolers with the initial projects. Here are my favorites:

10:1: Reduction of Copper Ore to Copper Metal -- smelt'em if you got 'em! I always wondered how this was done.

16.1: Produce Hydrogen and Oxygen by Electrolysis of Water -- never again worry about running out of rocket fuel and air on those long space voyages.

However, one of the most tantalizing sections is the one on forensic chemistry. The final chapter, it's kind of a sneak peek at Thompson's next book, which will be about home forensics experiments. It includes such experiments as detecting blood, testing for drugs and revealing latent fingerprints.

Classics. Audio. Free.

Admit it, one of those words above is more exciting than the other two.

I don't know what it is about summer, but something about the shift in seasons triggers my desire to read more classic books. Weird, I know, but there you have it. In casually bopping around I stumbled onto this site called LibriVox which provides (here it comes again) free audio book readings of titles in the public domain.

Which means a lot of classic books over 85 years old.

At LibriVox the readers are all volunteers which can make for some interesting choices and voices. Shorter poems, for example, have several versions by different readers. Walt Whitman's O Captain! My Captain! has no less that 13 different readers tackling it. And with Joyce's Ulysses (all 32-plus hours worth) "pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as creative group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text." Well, that sounds intriguing!

Finding my way through the catalog I stumbled on at least half a dozen titles I've wanted to read and never got around to. The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood by Sabatini to start, and there are a couple of Dickens titles I haven't read yet. Ooo, and some Kafka! Plays by Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare get full-cast readings that could helpful for some students -- yes, I do advocate listening as a legitimate form of reading, so long as it is a complete text.

In fact, I can't think of a better way of dealing with all that downtime commuting to and from summer jobs, or during lunch breaks, than with some fine classic book recordings. Forced to hang with extended family over the Fourth of July or Labor Day Weekends? Disappear into a quiet spot with some audio books. Can't stand the eye strain of reading in the bright sun at the beach (or prefer to look less nerd-like with a pair of ear buds)? Want something to do after you've built yourself that hammock? Here you go.

Sure, there are lots of ways you can get free audio books. The local library has audio books that you can upload onto your computer or MP3 player of choice, but why not remove a step? LibriVox has it set up for easy downloads, things went to my iTunes with a single click, and it took no time to load.

Another thing about LibriVox that I thought was cool: you can also participate by volunteering to read chapters from books.

Worth a look-see.

Harry Dresden, Wizard for Hire.

At the moment, I have two guys in my life who are totally addicted to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. One of them is my husband, aged 34 -- he just finished the most recent book in the series. The other one is a patron at the library, aged 14 -- he's desperately waiting for the third book so he can devour it as he has the other two.

And really, how could they not be addicted? Harry Dresden has the voice of a hard-boiled detective AND he's a magic-user. His allies include Bob, a lecherous spirit housed in a human skull; Karrin Murphy, a super-tough homicide detective; Michael, a Knight of the Cross; a vampire named Thomas; and Ebenezar McCoy, a wizard who lives in Hogs Hollow, Missouri. As Harry can hardly walk down the sidewalk without getting into trouble, he has run-ins with vampires, werewolves, the Senior Council (the ruling body of wizards), faerie folk and a plethora of supernatural beasties. The books are smart, hilarious, action-packed and very hard to put down.

If any of that sounds remotely interesting, go ahead and pick up the first book -- you won't be disappointed. I promise.

If you're still waffling, go and read Jim Butcher's mini-bio at his website. That was what hooked me in the first place.

Links to my write-ups of the first five books:

Storm Front
Fool Moon
Grave Peril
Summer Knight
Death Masks

Because we can never read enough about WWII

A. Fortis has some thoughts on two books set during WWII that you might have missed. First, The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho:

Three main characters: a British investigator trying to mask his background as a German Jew; Karsten, an eighteen-year-old German prisoner of war detained in a camp in North Wales; and Esther, a seventeen-year-old Welsh farm girl whose life changes both drastically and subtly in the aftermath of the war. The story itself is musing and pensive in tone--much of the drama takes place within the characters themselves. This is not a novel of battle action, but rather a nuanced portrayal of rural life at the end of the war.

And second, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief:

Told from a unique point of view--that of Death itself--The Book Thief relates the story of Liesel Meminger, a girl from a poor German family who goes to live with a slightly less poor foster family in the outskirts of Munich during the Second World War.

Read this book and save the world

Jackie on Cory Doctorow's Little Brother:

Basically, in the wake of a massive terrorist attack, Homeland Security swoops down into an already security-conscience San Francisco and starts abusing their power, treating citizens (especially teens) as suspects. Marcus Yarrow, your average, everyday computer genius teen, having been kidnapped by the government, tortured, and let go, has sworn that he will fight Big Brother and return freedom to his city. More or less. Mostly he's just pissed that he got tortured, and that no one knows where his buddy is.

Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury

Eddie Okubo lives an idyllic life in Hawaii. He plays baseball, hangs out with friends, and helps with the family business. But then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, and everything changes. Eddie and his people are the enemy, and everyone is suspicious of them. Nevertheless, Eddie loves his country and wants to fight for it. Except he's too young. And too Japanese.

With the help of a friend, Eddie finds a way to enlist in the service. He is stationed on the island with other new Japanese-American recruits. But in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government finds the new soldiers more of threat than a help. After being kept under armed guard, they are shipped off to the mainland. They endure a long train ride to the Mid-west and then are transported to the Gulf coast. There they become part of an experimental program called Dogs for Defense. Dogs for Defense is predicated on the assumption that dogs can smell the difference between a Japanese person and a non-Japanese.

Over the next several weeks, Eddie and the other Japanese-American soldiers are virtual prisoners on Cat Island. They undergo arduous training meant to turn the dogs from family pets to vicious attack animals and to turn the Japanese from soldiers to bait.

Sure to reward its readers, Eyes of the Emperor is a powerful, poignant historical novel that echoes current events on the battlefield and in our society. For more stories about the same characters, check out Salisbury's House of the Red Fish and Under the Blood-Red Sun.

Abu Ghraib by Gourevitch

From the Publisher's Weekly review:
"Drawing from Morris's lengthy interviews with the soldiers who photographed and participated in prisoner abuse, the authors render in clear detail the horror and inhumanity of Abu Ghraib, for prisoner and guard alike: 'Inexperienced, untrained, under attack, and under orders to do wrong, the low-ranking reservist MPs who implemented the nefarious policy... knew that what they were doing was immoral, and they knew that if it wasn't illegal, it ought to be.'
...A thorough, terrifying account of an American-made 'bedlam,' the latest from Gourevitch is as troubling, and arguably as important, as his 1998 Rwanda investigation 'We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families'." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Gourevitch is an amazing writer - "We Wish to Inform You" is one of the most powerful books on war that I have ever read; I'm sure this new book will be equally significant.