I Read Things: 1848–or 8000 BC—And All That
Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution. This is a detailed look into the revolutions that rocked Europe at the beginning of the “treason of the clerisy”–Deirdre McCloskey’s term for the intellectuals’ rebellion against European liberalism and embrace of socialism, nationalism, and nationalism. James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. […]
I Read Things: Bedtime Stories With the Kids
She-Hulk The Complete Collection. Our youngest (David) loves superheroes, and we’ve been reading Essential Hulk vol. 1 and a bunch of other stuff–origin stories, Little Golden Books, and so on–we’ve gotten at the library. She-Hulk is pretty interesting, but there are definitely parts that aren’t NSFLKBT (not safe for little kid bedtime). Preview and skip […]
I Eat Things: New(ish) Restaurants in Birmingham
One of the biggest increases in my standard of living in the last few years comes from the fact that we recently went from zero Ethiopian restaurants in the whole state of Alabama to two in Birmingham. Both are outstanding. There’s Red Sea on Green Springs and Ghion Cultural Hall at the Pizitz Food Hall […]
I Eat Things: Ghost Pepper Cheese at Carrigan’s Public House
It’s official: I no longer enjoy really spicy food. One of Birmingham’s better places is Carrigan’s Public House. They make a very, very good burger, but I’ve learned that the ghost pepper cheese option simply isn’t for me. On a recent visit, I got the burger with the ghost pepper cheese, and while the fries […]
I “Read” Things: Audiobooks and Webcomics
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. I found it bleak, honestly–a story about people with what seems like nothing more to live for than the next drink. I could be completely off base with this, but I’m reminded of Deirdre McCloskey’s description of the characters in La Boheme. Audiobook: if you don’t have Audible, you […]
I Read Things: Bedtime Stories
Essential Hulk, Volume 1. This is bedtime reading with David (our five-year-old). It’s interesting to read comics from the 1960s and see, among other things, one of the ways in which fear manifested itself in the early cold war. Rise of the Isle of the Lost. This is the third novel in the Disney’s Descendants franchise, […]
I Listen to Things: Led Zeppelin Since Led Zeppelin
I was that kid in high school who knew that Led Zeppelin was originally called the New Yardbirds (and that Jimmy Page had, with Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, been a member of the Yardbirds). When I got my first iPod in 2007, one of my first purchases was the complete Zeppelin catalog—a bargain at […]
I Play Things: Civilization Revolution 2
We got our first “real” computer when I was in high school. It had a two-speed CD ROM and a 435 MB hard drive. It ran Windows 3.11. And it was powerful enough to run Civilization and SimCity 2000. These were, as far as I was concerned, the peak of computer gaming (just as, in opinion, […]
Bust Your Writer’s Block
“I don’t know what to write about.” The affliction plagues us all. The blinking cursor mocks us. Everything else in our lives that needs to be done calls out to us, saying “don’t write right now. Watch a movie. Clean the kitchen. Aren’t you hungry? It’s a nice day for a walk. You’re tired—you really […]