updates

Reading update:

Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon, David Cordingly. Couldn't resist this one - it's got ships of the line (I'm still halfway through the entire Patrick O'Brien series), it's got Napoleon, and it's got a ship with character - the Bellerophon, called the Billy Ruffian by sailors who couldn't pronounce the hoity toity "Bellerophon". (wonder what the hokkien peng here would make of such a name).

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. Francis Wheen's book is a scathing critique of everything that doesn't fit his rationalist, enlightenment sensibilities. Wonderful reading, insightful criticism, but more than that, just hilarious pokes at everything from self-help gurus to Reaganomics to deconstructionists, all with an Emperor's New Clothes atmosphere of revelation.

Machine Guns: 14th Century to the Present, by Ian Hogg. An absolute gem of a book - a strange mix of technical language that would make an engineer proud, and sardonic commentary from the author.

Cat update:

Twinkle has gone off heat, Iffy has gone on heat. They are rotating. This is not good. In other news, Patch scratched me in the face when we tried to trim her claws last night. Patch is extremely vain about her sharpened claws, which are very sharp indeed. Which is why we shoulod trim them more often. Unfortunately, their very sharpness makes it all the more difficult to trim them.

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