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William Saletan of Slate Magazine has come to the conclusion that routine body scanning at airports is a lost fight, he may be right.  However this coward seems to go above and beyond in his love for invasion of privacy.
It’s time to give up this squeamishness. Forget the etchings and fuzzy negatives. Take the whole picture, TSA: breasts, scrotum, penis, labia, gluteal cleft, whatever. Look at mine so you can look at the next guy’s. Because if he’s a bomber, that’s where you’ll find the bomb.

Privacy advocates are fighting to keep the scanners from becoming standard procedure. In … Continue Reading

So originally I was going to read 52 books in 52 weeks, by my count I read 28.  That however is probably more than I would have read if I hadn’t started picking up the reading habit again. Oh yes I read plenty outside the printed page, but books grabbed me in a way that they haven’t in a while.  In Bookmark Now one of the writers says that what makes a successful writer is fidelity and I would say that the experience of fidelity that a book provides changes the reading experience as well.  Reading online lets me skip … Continue Reading

Here it is, the last book of the year.  Unless I read one more just to read one, I don’t see myself reading one this week for pleasure, it would be like a school assignment if I did.  I would just be hoop jumping.  I have one more post to make on the project but for now let’s look at another work of non-fiction, the best American essays of 2007.

The book starts out with a punch to the teeth with an essay called Werner.  A man is caught in a fire and does what it takes to try to save … Continue Reading

So this was the last of the Sedaris Trilogy, I wish I would have read it second as it bridges the gap between Naked and When You Are Engulfed in Flames pretty well.  It starts out with stories of David’s family and the last half is about moving to France and his time there.  The title bridges the gap between the two, there is an essay about him being in speech therapy in the first half and the last half has him spending a lot of time in French classes.

This one I had heard about when it was first published.  … Continue Reading

This was the second David Sedaris book that I read.  I’m glad I finished Naked first or I would have wondered what the big deal with this Sedaris guy is and why am I reading this,  fortunately I reached for the other book first and this book made all the more sense.

This book is the most recent of his books, it’s about a mature David Sedaris’  life and hobbies and spending time walking around Paris and Normandy with his boyfriend Hugh.  It’s not as gut splitting as Naked was, I’d almost say it’s slightly inferior.  It doesn’t quite ring the … Continue Reading

Since Fyodor Dostoevsky there hasn’t been anything written about gambling that can be called literature with a straight face.  This book is no exception.  I have a fairly large collection of gambling books, most of them are about Poker, there was a time in my life when being a professional gambler was my dream job, now I’m old enough to appreciate the benefits of health insurance and the kind of company my corporate job provides, I haven’t ruled out playing poker as a serious hobby but overtime when it’s available is just much more profitable.

Bob Dancer is a pseudonym, many … Continue Reading

For my birthday my lovely sister gave me an Amazon gift certificate.  This was a perfect gift and since my Amazon wish-list is always a mile long on books that I would love to read I used it quickly.  Less than a month later I had finished three books, never have I had such a short amount of time from purchase to final read of so may books since many years ago when I could only afford one book at a time.

I really wanted to read some Sedaris, I half heard one of the stories from this book on NPR … Continue Reading