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Print Story I'll take books that end in O for $200
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By georgeha (Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 08:42:55 AM EST) Labor Day, games, discworld, 40rl (all tags)
Pus long lazy weekend, hierarchy of dorkdom, Motorhead, Brick, best BLT, aptly named Summit drive, cash for couches!

Poll: Favorite book that ends in O


That was a good, long weekend, very restful, and with few major accomplishments. Three days of doing little, and I enjoyed it very much. There was a list of many things I thought about doing, working on my bike, brewing beer, various household chores. I didn't do much of them, I did change a few light bulbs, replace the screen on the back door, and mow the lawn. Instead there was lots of lazing around, going out, and going to garage sales and flea markets.

Saturday, whilst garage saling in my old 'hood (the best finds were an astonishly ripe large tomato (more below), and one copy of The aMAZEing Labyrinth missing a few tiles), I got a call from an old friend who we had planning to meet out at the Bugjar while a third old friend's band. We agreed to meet at the Winton Road Distillery with an other old friend for dinner.

I had fish tacos (spicy tilapia), a pint of Victory Hop Devil and later a pint of 250th anniversary Guinness and caught up with old friends. The other just put his mom in a nursing home for Alzheimer's, that sucks.

The other old friend has a brother nearby, who isn't too much help, he spends most of his time doing SCA things. I recall we even thought him an odd duck in high school, I guess the heierarchy of dorkdom back then rated Car Wars, Traveller and D&D players above SCA types (who also played D&D and Traveller).

Then, the bugjar for an hour long set of 40 Rod Lightning playing country, including a countrified version of Helter Skelter and Aces of Spades (the other friend wrt nursing home just got an Ace of Spades tat, his first). I had a Rorhbach's Scotch Ale.

Finally, home in bed by midnight,

Sunday was another lazy day, we made it to the Rochester Public market, I found an unopened copy of Brick for $2, and we had a big plate of rice, beans and pork at the empanada stop. Then, we went to a street sale on the aptly named Summit Drive. Cynical old me was expecting Summit Drive to maybe have a summit within sight, if you looked between the pine tree and Dutch Colonial house. Nope, it appeared to be an actual summit, two dead end streets on the top of a glacial hill. It looked like a very nice street, about two houses from the Rochester city line, though the divinity school was at the one end of the dead end, and you know what they say about seminarians. Anyhow, in addition to a Funke book that thirteen is reading, I found a second copy of The aMAZEing Labyrinth, also missing a few tiles and cards. Together, I have one complete set, with spares.

Later Sunday I made the best BLT, ever! The bacon didn't look as fresh as it could, but it was still weeks before it's due date, and really, it's bacon. I went a little heavy on the mayo, found some leafy stuff in the garden that counted as lettuce but boy, it was that tomato, big enough so that one tasty, juicy pulpy slice covered the bread.

We got a play in of The A-Maze-ing Labrythine Monday afternoon, eight year old prefers Enchanted Forest, thirteen year old wants to play Scotland Yard. We did get our $2.25 out of it.

We have new neighbors, they have a Basenji, and perhaps part time kid[s]. I saw the mom carry a toddler to her car one morning. They have Grateful Dead stickers on their car, but then so do many late 20 early 30 years old in our neighborhood.

This weekend's reading was Jepoardy themed, though I haven't finished that DFW collection. It's books that end in "o".

What is Zero, a non-fiction book about World War II in the Pacific, from the perspectives of two Japanese, Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, and Masatake Okumiya, aircraft carrier staff officer in which they say the Zero was the most important weapon of the Pacific theater, prior to 1942 it was the best fighter in the Pacific Theater, it gave the Japanese air superiority that allowed them to conquer all they conquered. By 1942, new tactics and the P-38, F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair ended that dominance.

It's from their perspective, and very interesting. They claim the Japanese lost because they didn't understand total war, logistics, and the amount of resources the US and the Commonwealth could bring to bear. Additionally they didn't work fast enough on a successor to the Zero, said the F6F Hellcat was designed with major input from the Aleutian Zero (not true).

Highly recommended. Now I have to go through my emails with Japanese correspondents, and see if there are any common names. Then again, I don't know if can write well enough to express my abysmal ignorance of Japanese culture, my rudeness at asking about honored ancestors, my unworthy curiousity, and my dismay that two such great cultures had to clash.

What is JJingo, another Watch novel, with more Vetinari, Colon and Nobbs than usual, and less Carrot and Angua. An island appears in the Circular Sea between Klatch and Ankh-Morpork, a Klatchian Ambassador is shot, bringing the two to the brink of war.

In other media news, I rewatched Brick one night, including the deleted scenes. It's still great.

In political news, I'm pretty happy with my Tercel (42 mpg ) and Windstar, so I wasn't interested in Cash for Clunkers. However, the rips in our leather couch keep getting bigger, how about Cash for Couches to stimulate the hurting furniture industry?

In weekend news, not much planned. I have to sign up eight year old for swimming, and we may go to Buffalo on Saturday.

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Poll
Favorite book that ends in O
- Zero 50%
- Jingo 0%
- wipo 0%
- Story of O 50%
- Crito 0%
- Inferno 0%

Votes: 2
Results | Other Polls
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I'll take books that end in O for $200 | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)
WIPO by ad hoc (2.00 / 0) #1 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 08:46:14 AM EST
Story of O

You, of all people, to leave that one out!
--

Good catch by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #2 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 08:53:37 AM EST
though the subject doesn't hold a lot of interest to me.


[ Parent ]
So I understand Japanese culture is great by marvin (2.00 / 0) #3 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 09:02:40 AM EST
Ancient, dignified, tea ceremony, samurai code, etc.

What other great culture did they happen to clash with in WWII? The Chinese, certainly, but that was more of a steamrollering.

Vietnamese, English, American by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #4 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 09:04:37 AM EST
I would not dare suggest the great Warrior Culture of the Japanese could be subdued by anything other than a correspondingly great culture.


[ Parent ]
Big guns and atomic bombs? by Phil the Canuck (2.00 / 0) #6 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 11:01:15 AM EST


[ Parent ]
No, bulldozers by georgeha (4.00 / 2) #9 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 11:07:33 AM EST
as Stephenson alluded to in Cryptonmicon, and as Okumiya said in Zero.

The Japs were unable to make airbases as quickly as the SeaBees, since the SeaBees were mechanized, and the Japs had pick and shovel. Thus, the Japanese conducting air ops over Guadalcanal had to fly from Rabaul, hours and hours away, and they lost many pilots due to running out of gas on the way home. If they were able to make airbases between the two, Guadalcanal would have been much more difficult for the Allies.


[ Parent ]
The Dutch, by God. by ammoniacal (2.00 / 0) #13 Fri Sep 11, 2009 at 01:01:21 AM EST
There is no finer trim on this rock.

"To this day that was the most bullshit caesar salad I have every experienced..." - triggerfinger

[ Parent ]
Japanese names by ucblockhead (2.00 / 0) #5 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 10:11:09 AM EST
I'm not sure you can say much about Japanese name matches.  There are a lot of names that are as common as "Smith" in the English speaking world.  For instance, I have two entirely unrelated coworkers named "Kawakami", and the example names used in Japanese class keep coinciding with other coworker names.

It's also my understanding that you can have two different names that are pronounced the same, but use different characters and thus are not the same, and have differing etymologies.

In terms of the war, I think the big thing was that Japan had never in its history experienced a large strategic war.  In its history with the West prior to WWII, it only participated in wars in which it could manhandle its opponents, or achieve a quick victory.  There are specifics about what Japan did wrong or didn't understand, but I think the general cause was that Japan had never, in its 2000 year history, lost a war.  I think that, psychologically, they couldn't conceive of it.
---
[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

No Kawakami's by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #7 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 11:02:05 AM EST
but Takahashi showed up, which wiki sez is pretty common.


[ Parent ]
Aleutian Zero by anonimouse (2.00 / 0) #8 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 11:02:21 AM EST
IIRC the Aleutian Zero provided a great deal of information concerning tactics against the Zero. Whilst the Hellcat was probably designed without the information from the Zero, its possible that the engine upgrade prior to production may have been influenced by analysis of zero performance. 

I notice from a browse that even the F4F got good results against Zeros once tactics changed,

Girls come and go but a mortgage is for 25 years -- JtL
The Flying Tigers learned to fight Zeros by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #10 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 11:15:57 AM EST
and other Japanese planes by early 1942(maybe they just copied Russki tactics) by diving, shooting and running away, not dogfighting. The Thach Weave as first tested in combat at Midway.

I do like that the Zeros' performance was initially regarded as impossible. IIRC, in a Smithsonian Air & Space article on it, the designer (probably Horikoshi) was not happy with his initial design, so he retested the materials he was going to use (wiki sez they used a proprietary Aluminum alloy ,too) and found some materials were better than the material handbooks suggested.


[ Parent ]
Midway by johnny (2.00 / 0) #11 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 12:10:30 PM EST
As I think I remember reading somewhere, the very slow torpedo bombers from Midway Island itself, although they were actually trying to deliver torpedoes against Japanese vessels, ended up serving as decoys, drawing the Zeroes down from where they were circling above the fleet. All but one of the torpedo planes was shot down, and only one of them successfully delivered a bomb. But as a result, many of the Zeroes themselves got show down when the American fighters from aircraft carriers showed up above the fray, unnoticed.

Something like that?

She has effectively checked out. She's an un-person of her own making. So it falls to me.--ad hoc (in the hole)

[ Parent ]
More or less by georgeha (4.00 / 1) #12 Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 12:20:47 PM EST
My knowledge of Midway is not great, and it was more luck than it appeared.

The incoming torpedo bombers drew most or all of the overhead Zero's down to sea level to fight them. Way up high some US Navy dive bombers were running out of fuel, and through a break in the clouds saw a Japanese destroyer's wake, which led to the Carriers, which unluckily happened to have decks and hangars full of loaded planes, and various bombs and such that were improperly stowed (since the Japanese kept switching their planes missions from shore bombardment to anti-ship, or vice versa).

Enough USN dive bombers struck the Japanese carriers, which were in very unsafe states, to sink them.

On the whole Japan did not prepare for total war side, lots of skilled Japanese pilots and ground crews died, more than their replacement system could replace, so the Japanese skill level dropped.


[ Parent ]
Victory by miker2 (2.00 / 0) #14 Fri Sep 11, 2009 at 08:58:11 AM EST
I live about 10 minutes from their brewery.  Great stuff although they only bottle and distribute ~1/3 of the varieties they brew.  So far I've had 16 of them and I haven't even tried any of the darker beers.


WIPO: it's a tossup by lm (2.00 / 0) #15 Fri Sep 11, 2009 at 09:45:23 AM EST
Plato's Crito or one of Dante's big three (The Inferno, The Purgatorio,  and The Paradiso).

Also, there is a slim little book that I'm rather fond of simply for it's title. I don't remember who its by but the title was something like `What you know may not be so'' which is an absolutely brilliant title hearkening back to days of yore when works had better names such as ``The Refutation of the Knowledge-Falsely-So-Called'' and ``The Incoherence of the Incoherence of the Incoherence of Philosophy.''

Kindness is an act of rebellion.
speed of production by garlic (2.00 / 0) #16 Sun Sep 13, 2009 at 10:54:12 AM EST
speed of design to production in wwii really impresses me compared to our current defense design to production time lines.


I'll take books that end in O for $200 | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)

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