Category: books

Game Change – a review

On By Rick McIn books, government, movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Many recommended this book:

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (2010)

… In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton—and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama’s partner and America’s face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin. …

It’s the definitive account of what happened.

You learn that you’d NEVER want to run for President of the USA. It’s ugly. It’s dirty.

Of the lead characters, John Edwards (in prison, I hope) and his wife Elizabeth (1949-2010) come off worst. A horror show.

Bill Clinton won’t be going to Heaven. I wouldn’t share a beer with him.

Michelle Obama comes out of the slime pit cleanest.

Actually, my opinion went UP for John McCain and Hilary. I personally campaigned against McCain in 2008, thinking him spawn of the Devil. He’s not as bad as I thought. I particularly liked how he backed Sarah Palin even after it became obvious that she was an insanely bad choice for VP.

Hilary would have been a great President.

If this stuff bores you to tears, you might want to wait on Game Change – the movie:

… an upcoming (March 2012) Jay Roach film based on the book of the same name by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. The film will primarily track the actions of the Republican Party during the 2008 Presidential Election.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Staring Sarah, I assume it’s a comedy. 🙂

absurdities of American politics

On By Rick McIn books, economics, government, product complaintsLeave a comment

Having read Game Change, two things jump out moronic:

1. Iowa … why (since 1972) has the first major electoral event of the nominating process for President of the United States been held here?

Though only about 1% of the nation’s delegates are chosen by the Iowa State Convention, the Iowa caucuses have served as an early indication of which candidates for president might win. It’s by far the most important State. Unfairly.

If you want to be nominated you try to win Iowa. And how do you win Iowa? You buy Iowa …

2. Super PACs (new since 2010):

… which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. …

Supposedly independent, both Romney and Gingrich have Super Pacs … run by former employees. They are a joke and a lie.

To mock Super PACs, Colbert legally formed his own — Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (also known as the Colbert Super PAC)

Here’s one of Colbert’s real TV ads. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Parliamentary Democracy of Canada is not perfect. But I like it far better than the system in the USA.

why Apple builds in China

On By Rick McIn Apple, books, economics, product complaintsLeave a comment

Thomas Lee for The New York Times:

… Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said …

How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

That article has been getting wide circulation. Not even an embargo of Chinese goods by President Newt is going to bring back manufacturing. Read the article to see why.

applying to work at Foxconn

Foxconn City has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. … many workers earn less than $17 a day. …

related – why you shouldn’t use the new Apple iBooks Author software 😦

why eBooks are the future

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, books1 Comment

Whether you love old fashioned books or not, I’m thinking they’ll be an expensive custom order product sooner than you think.

Why?

The traditional publishing industry is driving all but best selling authors to eBook.

Take, for example, Trey Ratcliff, author of A World in HDR, which deals with a new technology, high dynamic range (HDR) photography.

He got a $20,000 advance from the biggest photography publisher, Peachpit, and 15% of each copy sold.

Sounds pretty good — right?

Nope.

After that misadventure Ratcliff launched an online company called FlatBooks to self-publish and now earns an “80% profit margin”.

Read his story on GigaOm – Why e-books will be much bigger than you can imagine

In 2012 the interface for reading eBooks is still evolving. I don’t enjoy it. In the meantime, I’ll stick with audio.

Apple soon may be releasing new software to help put old publishing out of its misery. God speed.

Brother Fish – Bryce Courtenay

On By Rick McIn books2 Comments

Brother Fish (2004) is a story spanning four continents and eighty years though the story primarily takes place in Australia and Korea.

The story deals with the friendship of Jacko McKenzie, a native of the (fictional) Queen’s Island in the Bass Strait, and James ‘Jimmy’ Pentecost Oldcorn, an orphan American ex-soldier, who have been meeting at the Gallipoli Bar of the ANZAC Hotel, Launceston, Tasmania for 33 years, since their release from a prisoner of war camp in Korea. …

Amazon

Brother Fish is better, I think, than more acclaimed Courtenay’s The Power of One.

Fish perfectly skewers the “White Australia policy“, when African American war hero Jimmy wants to move to Tasmania. (Courtenay was born in South Africa 1933.)

And never have I thought so much about the Korean War. It was horrific. … Sadly, I mainly think of the TV show M.A.S.H. when it’s mentioned.

This is only the third book of Bryce Courtenay‘s I’ve read. It’s amazing. I highly recommend the audio version. Humphrey Bower (Narrator) is superb. He also narrated my favourite book all time, Shantaram.

I should simply buy all the books that Humphrey Bower narrates. He’s that good.

The Meaningful Life

On By Rick McIn books, philosophyLeave a comment

Shiro bought me a book written by his guru, Nikkyo Niwano, spiritual leader of Risho kosei-kai, a lay Buddhist organization out of Japan.

Published 1976, it’s still relevant today:

… Living with Nature
Self-confidence
Self-sacrifice
Expecting too Much
Expecting too Little
The Virtues of Work …

… you get the idea.

What I like about the book is what I like about Buddhism, it addresses a philosophy of life. How to live best. How to live the most fulfilling life.

Amazon

Climbing Redwood Giants

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

Rocco and Maureen recommend …

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (2007) by Richard Preston.

Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the largest and tallest organisms the world has ever sustained–the coast redwood trees, Sequoia sempervirens.

Ninety-six percent of the ancient redwood forests have been destroyed by logging, but the untouched fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods have trunks up to thirty feet wide and can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air.

Until recently, redwoods were thought to be virtually impossible to ascend, and the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, and the tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, a world that is dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored. …

Amazon

It’s a fantastic read. Or ‘listen’ as it’s available on Audio.

Click PLAY or watch it on TED – Richard Preston on the giant trees

related VIDEO – Clip of the Winner of the International Forest Film Festival – Climbing Redwood Giants

Life in Japan – the books

On By Rick McIn books, travel1 Comment

Shiro Tanaka gave me this book, insisting it’s the best available for the Gaijin tourist. Trying to get by in the Japanese language.

source

Dana lived in Japan. And recommends this hilarious primer for anyone going.

… Not since George Bush’s memorable dinner with the Japanese prime minister has the Land of the Rising Sun seen the likes of a goodwill ambassador like Dave Barry. Join him as he belts out oldies in a karaoke bar, marries a geriatric geisha girl, takes his first bath in public, bows to just about everyone, and explores culture shock in all its numerous humorous forms …

Dave Barry Does Japan

essential reading for Japan

On By Rick McIn books, travel3 Comments

Any gaijin traveling to Japan MUST read these two historical fictions first.

In fact, I recommend everyone read the entire Asian Saga (6 novels).

After that … get The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto.

The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

On By Rick McIn books, philosophy, travel1 Comment

One of the best books for those traveling Asia is Video Night in Kathmandu (1988), by Pico Iyer.

Quite similar is his follow-up, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto. (1991)

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today — not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.

All this he did. And then he met Sachiko.

Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese “salaryman” who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation — and misunderstanding — and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new.

I read it in Kyoto.

Pico, from the UK, studied at Oxford and taught at Harvard before becoming a vagabond. He ended up living in Kyoto, living with the lady of the book.

… “Japan is therefore an ideal place because I never will be a true citizen here, and will always be an outsider … “

These days he writes for Time, New York Review of Books, New York Times, National Geographic and others.