Nimble Books LLC

The ripples from Katrina reached my front door step this morning when two Katrina kids — evacuees from New Orleans who just moved into our apartment complex, Arbor Village – showed up at the spot where I wait with Parker for bus 125, which takes him to Bryant Elementary at 8:15 every morning. A very noticeable event from my strictly parochial point of view since it amounted to a 166% increase in the number of 5-year-olds at the bus stop, from 3 to 5.

Kudos to Arbor Village for providing housing for three Katrina families.

Update: Ovell is in Parker’s class!

Uncategorized Kudos, YA, Zimmerblog General

Book Review-Secrets of the Widow’s Son - Codes & Cyphers: “Secrets of the Widow’s Son follows clues from Dan Brown’s codes in his other novels to develop a hypothesis about the about the plot of the next Brown novel (tentatively titled The Solomon Key).

Shugarts starts the book by sharing with his work history as a journalist who specialized in aviation for several years. He discovered what he considered to be ‘flaws’ (others might call it artistic license…) in The Da Vinci Code. When challenged to find other ‘flaws’ and ‘inconsistencies’ he did so, and some of these are documented in Secrets of the Code. One of the authors of Secrets of the Code contacted Shugarts and asked him if he had heard about the code on the dustcover of The Da Vinci Code. The solving of this code and other codes from the prior novels by Brown are included.

Shugarts followed the trail of questions and clues to uncover hints about the next Brown novel. Brown confirmed in a speech that the setting will be Washington and focus on Free and Accepted Masons.”

Not a bad review, but suspect she is a little too kind. My guess, having myself written one of these “what will it be about” books, is that we’re all way off.

Uncategorized Dan Brown, Law, The Solomon Key and Beyond

Leonardo Da Vinci: “Recently I found myself reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown. I had earlier in the week read Angels and Demons and enjoyed it. So thought I would see what all the fuss about ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was. Seeing as it had been on the bestseller list for what seemed like an absolute eternity. Anyway, the first four people I mentionned the fact that I was reading it too all said the same thing to me.

‘Good book. But it’s got a lousy ending’.

And unfortunately they were right. I won’t spoil it for you. But suffice to say that reading it is rather like eating a stale bar of chocolate that you find hidden in an old coat pocket after a month. It definitely retains some ‘must eat’ qualities; but all wrapped up with a rather unfortunate after taste that rather makes you wish you hadn’t bothered.”

Harsh!

I don’t quite agree. The thing I likied most about the book was the series of well-constructed puzzles. The problem with the ending is that the ending is also largely intellectual in nature … yes, Langdon has a feeling of reverence, etc., but it’s not quite the same as a book where everything is constructed to lead to a crushing emotional revelation at the end.

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to The Solomon Key and Beyond: Dan Brown News at 10/06/2005 09:55:26 AM

Uncategorized Dan Brown, The Solomon Key and Beyond, Zimmerblog General

Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 10/06/2005 08:27:06 AM

Tags: Proliferated, SF, Zimmerblog General

Uncategorized Proliferated, SF, Zimmerblog General

http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=NUKELABS-10-05-05&cat=WW: “Consolidate nuclear-bomb-making plants, panel says

By JAMES W. BROSNAN
Scripps Howard News Service
October 05, 2005

WASHINGTON - An advisory panel is telling the Department of Energy to consolidate its nuclear-bomb-making facilities into one isolated, secure site to make a new generation of warheads.

The recommendation from the Energy Advisory Board, if adopted by the administration and Congress, would mean a loss of jobs from some of the nation’s historic weapons laboratories, including Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore.

The report also questions why the department needs three expensive supercomputers, Red Storm at Sandia, Q at Los Alamos and Blue Gene at Livermore.

The nuclear-weapons complex is now spread among five different facilities, including the three design labs, Sandia and Los Alamos in New Mexico, Livermore in California, and two production facilities, the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas.

‘All of the production elements are quite old and antiquated and we propose that all should be replaced,’ said David Overskei, chairman of the board’s Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force and president of Decision Factors Inc. of San Diego.

Overskei said the threat of espionage dictated that the complex be spread out in the 1940s and ’50s, but now the threat is terrorism.

Destroy any of the ‘five single points of failure’ and ‘you have lost the ability to produce a nuclear weapon,’ said Overskei.

Even a ‘partially successful’ terrorist attack on Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, the Y-12 plant or the Pantex site ‘may cause collateral damage’ to the surrounding civilian populations, the report said.”

Fascinating. But in a proliferated world, all assets must be distributed assets. The politically unpalatable right answer is to make the nuclear weapons production complex muiltiply redundant. Tough sell!

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 10/06/2005 08:31:42 AM

Uncategorized Law, Proliferated, SF, Zimmerblog General

Charles N. Brown, publisher and editor-in-chief of LOCUS, the trade magazine of the science fiction field, reports in the September 2005 issue that he got his hands on an advance reading copy of A FEAST FOR CROWS.

High point for the month was reading A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin. Yes, it’s only half the book originally promised. Yes, it’s been five years since volume three. Yes, it only advances the story a bit, but it’s prime. Martin writes the best and tensest high fantasy today. Wow.

Uncategorized A Feast for Crows, George R. R. Martin, Gmail, science fiction, Zimmerblog General