Day: August 1, 2006

Ever since I read about Clearwire a month ago, when the company raised $900 million (!), I’ve been laughing silently at the name of the company. (Yes, I have a strange sense of humor.) The company bills itself as a “Wireless Broadband Internet Service Provider” which makes one wonder about the, ahem, wire in their name. Their logo, though, at least hints at the irony.

I simply must read more Carl Hiaasen. Just plain damn fun. Skinny Dip (2004) has his usual mix of violence, corruption, sex, and just oddness — all set in South Florida, where something drives people crazy (the heat?).

The plight of the Everglades plays a starring role, without ever slowing the story down. Hiaasen almost has too much fun making Chaz Perrone, the incompetent villain, a poster boy for stupidity. What could be crueler than laughing at a would-be killer? Maybe leaving him naked and bleeding in the Everglades, accompanied only by a Vietnam veteran living off the land and suffering flashbacks?

A tangential note: Hiaasen’s Miami, and the Keys, are an era ahead of the west coast of Florida as depicted by Pete Dexter. Hardly feels like the same state…but maybe that’s part of the reality, where urban Florida is truly different than the rest of the state.

I’ve read a few of Patricia Cornwell’s novels about Dr. Kay Scarpetta, most recently The Last Precinct. From an airport book exchange, I picked up Blow Fly (2003), as a big paperback to fill some time on the plane a couple of weeks ago.

Blow Fly did the job quite well, and I left the novel on a bench in Logan Airport for the next reader. Worst part? The idea that someone could escape from death row in a Texas prison so easily. Talk about artistic license. But I read every page just the same. Blow Fly returns to the characters from the Point of Origin (1998) return to haunt Scarpetta and her usual foils. I’ve read that one, too. The titles never stick in my mind, but the general plots do.

Note: Website is all F#$#%ed-up, where F#$#%ed = Flashed. Instead of having a simple URL for each book Cornwell has written, the website throws the entire oeuvre into a single work.html, where you navigate (with difficulty) through a poor scrollbar (part of the 99% bad, per Jakob Nielsen). I’m sure some of this was done as a DRM measure, because the website lets you read the first several pages of each book by flipping the pages in Flash-powered “book” — but the price is too high.

For a book published in 1966, and with a low profile, there are no neutral places to link. So, I’ll skip that step as I try and catch up with the reading I was able to do over the past fortnight. Alan Moorehead’s The Fatal Impact, An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840 is a history of the impact of Western civilization on three Pacific locales: Tahiti, Australia, and “the Antarctic.” The thread tying these places together for Moorehead is Captain James Cook. Cook is the reason I read this book, as I remain fascinated by the great explorers in the golden age of sail. I can’t imagine the foresight, self-control, bravery, focus, stoicism, and drive which powered these men.

Moorehead’s tale is more of a tragedy, though, as you might guess from his use of the word “invasion” in the title. Cook and many (but not all) of those who followed him were not malicious, but culture clash was inevitable. In Australia, the aborigines fared especially poorly, and even today, the legacy is clear (or it was a decade ago, when I visited).

This isn’t a lively read, but it’s not bad for making a point.