Month: August 2008
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Book: Rollback
From Vin, he of Sportscolumn and Favorite10 fame, I received Rollback, the best Robert J. Sawyer novel I’ve read to date. Per usual, simple premise opens rich exposition of some eternal questions. The narrator’s wife Sarah decoded an alien message (a la Carl Sagan’s Contact) long ago. Now, another message has arrived. But Sarah is…
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Book: Gates of Fire
Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire was an airport pickup. As you might expect, this historical fiction re-telling the tale of the battle of Thermopylae got a boost from the successful movie 300. This book didn’t improve upon the movie, but history needs personality to stay alive, and this “first person” account keeps the basics straight…
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New CNET redesign fully live
After the original announcement on June 23rd, and some revisions tested starting July 14th, CNET’s redesign is open to all as of yesterday, August 27th. See for yourself at CNET.com, CNET News, and CNET Download.com. Congrats to all who worked on it. I’ve had my say kibitzing from the outside; I also know how much…
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Movie: The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight is still packing the IMAX theater here in San Francisco. We finally made it to the film. Big, long, full, and bold. The “excursion” to Hong Kong was a bit Jason Bourne-ish (which I like, but not in character) but otherwise, quite a headlong story. Whomever has to play the Joker in…
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Movie: Pan’s Labyrinth
I have not cancelled my Netflix account, so I was able to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, the DVD I’ve had out for months. (I missed the shipping fun by just a few days.) The mélange of history and fantasy shines. The division between the saturated color of the imagination and the stark faded light of Franco’s…
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Book: Hybrids
Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer is the third and final book in The Neanderthal Parallax, exploring the imagined interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens via parallel universes. Hybrids completes what began in Hominids and continued in Humans. Once again, Sawyer delves into where science and religion mix, this time “finding” the God organ in the…
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Book: Humans
Humans by Robert J. Sawyer is the second book in The Neanderthal Parallax, a set of three novels exploring interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens via parallel universes. Humans picks up from its beginnings in Hominids. The story is a bit dialog-heavy. The conversations between the Neanderthal male named Ponter and a human woman named…