Lit City Blues

Okay: so, I started out strong, which is not all that unusual- but I picked up a nasty cold in the back half of the month that knocked me off my rhythm for a couple of weeks, but despite all that: I got on the old pink bike three times a week all month long. I did Kettlebell a couple of times this month (I need to work on that in February) and didn't manage to do any tai chi at all. Intermittent fasting too sort of took a hit when I picked up that cold- so I have to get back on that horse, so hopefully in February I can get back on that horse a little bit more effectively again. I think if I can get through February more consistently I'm going to try and take the next step. If I can control when I eat, then I have to start working on what I eat next. So January is in the books and it went...  okay. I got areas to improve on for February, but it wasn't a complete failure. Which brings us to the challenge. 1,556 miles from Duluth to Laredo (virtually, anyway) and here...

Kim Stanley Robinson has long been one of my favorite writers. I don't know if rolling your eyes and being like 'oh, it's science fiction' is something that people do anymore- but yes, he does write science fiction, so if you have hang-ups about genre fiction and get all snooty about it- just be aware. However: if you do have those hang-ups then I can recommend no better starting point for your journey of discovery into the awesomeness that is science fiction than with his Mars Trilogy. Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars chronicle the colonization and eventual terraformation of Mars. Red Mars starts with the journey out to Mars and the initial first one hundred colonists. They are mainly drawn from America and Russia- but there are some other countries represented as well: Hiroko Ai is the botanist from Japan, Michel Duval the psychologist for the colonists is from France. But really, this is a joint Russian-American affair and the key players begin to emerge. Joh...

The age of steam. Airships rule the sky and Victorian houses vie for power. In a dark alley two gentlemen meet. They adjust their monocles and tip their top hats cordially before drawing their sword canes. There can be only one. South of Canal Street was where the young and the rich went to party. The spires of the city loomed above everything, stretching high into the darkness above. The sound of the airship horns echoed dimly in the streets as the late night flights came to rest on their moorings at the grand air dock that had been erected out of the bay. It was a long, pyramid like structure that was always lit up- like a light house for ships of both water and air. Tucked in between Portland Road and Trinity Way was an alley. It was a fairly normal alley, if such a thing was possible. There was garbage, fire escapes, creaking iron balconies. Clothes lines strung between building on the upper floors. It didn't have an official name on the map, but everyone called it 'Blo...

Squawk Box this month features of a pair of excellent British imports, one of which landed on Netflix and the other on Hulu. I caught some buzz about Bodyguard from the Parentals who said they were excited for it to drop on Netflix over here because they were hearing excellent thing about it from extended family across the pond. Killing Eve , on the other hand I think I heard about through the odd Buzzfeed article about how awesome Sandra Oh was in the show. Turns out that both shows more than lived up to the hype. Starring Richard Madden as Sergeant David Budd, the titular bodyguard assigned to the 'tough talk on terrorism' Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), Bodyguard opens with Budd taking his kids back home to his wife, Vicki (Sophie Rundle) on the train. He wades into a possible terrorist incident, locating and then talking down and disarming a would be suicide bomber, Nadia Ali (Anji Mohindra) before getting his kids home safely. For the successful resolu...

If this cheerful prediction that it will take some kind of shutdown related disaster to get both sides talking and the government reopened doesn't make you incredibly angry, well then I don't know what to tell you- except that it's illustrative of a fact that, to me, anyway, is more of a threat to our democracy that the current occupant of the Oval Office: our legislative branch is increasingly moribund and ineffective. Yes, that's right. To me, the real and growing problem is Congress. I'm not the only one who's tuned into this problem. Joe Rogan had Lawrence Lessig on his podcast talking about much the same thing. Despite the dubious motivations* behind a lot of these think pieces- there's been a raft of 'plans to fix the Senate' floating around out there. The New York Times, doubled down on the reform proposals offers a two part proposal on how to fix the House. The ongoing stalemate over the government shutdown only throws the problems of C...

This Week In Vexillology, our tour of the counties of England continue and we move north from Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to take a look at our next two counties on deck, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Let's start with Norfolk: How do you get there? Well, find London and head northeast until you find Norwich and you're in the heart of Norfolk . It's more or less the tip of that big round thumb that juts out a bit into the North Sea. It's low lying, arable land- so lots of agriculture and if there's a claim to fame that sticks out to me, it's probably the fact that Iceni lived there and revolted against the Romans, lead by none other than Queen Boadicea herself. (There are probably other cool things too, but that's the thing that I liked the most.) Let's talk about their flag: Adopted on September 11th of 2014, the design of the flag of Norfolk dates back to the 12th Century and the first Earl of Norfolk, Ralph de Gael . Probably the most interesting thi...

A fantastic Christmas gift from the Missus, Loonshine Liquor is the first offering (launched in 2014-- though- they've done more since then) from Loon Liquor of Northfield, Minnesota. Just looking at the bottle, they already kind of had me: locally sourced organic ingredients? In a whiskey? Sure. I'm all in. Gimme. But when you go their website and read their story - it gets even better. These two guys launched a microfunding campaign that raised $11,500 which enabled them to get an SBA Loan and then in November 2013 they became the first two people in Southern Minnesota to get Federal permission to produce spirits in over 100 years. Organic. Locally sourced. And small, locally owned business that literally started as an idea two dudes had? What is not to love about this? Well, if the details don't get you interested I'm happy to report that their product more than lives up to the hype. Loonshine has a barley and wheat grain bill and is filtered through in-house cra...