Most people want to do whatever they can to make the world a better place and protect the Earth. For them, marching in demonstrations or engaging in direct action is not an option. What to do? In subjects ranging from Air to Water to Food to Global Warming, this book lists many web sites with more information to get the reader involved in protecting the environment.

Perhaps the reader just wants to find out what sort of recycling facilities are in their town. One of their first stops should be to www.earth911.org. To look for reusable or biodegradable diapers, visit www.organicbebe.com. The Wildlife Conservation Society (www.wcs.org) has a very distinguished record in conserving endangered species. For those who have compost heaps, Starbucks will give you their coffee grounds. Details are at www.starbucks.com/aboutus/compost, or talk to your local manager.

A handy wallet card on produce and pesticides called "The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides" (bring it with you when shopping) is available from www.foodnews.org. A good site on global warming is www.climatestar.org. The Busy Person's Guide to Greener Living can be found at www.greenmatters.com. Do you have stuff you no longer need that someone else may want? Before that trip to the landfill, visit www.freecycle.org. Adopt a lobster (and help ensure a continued supply of lobsters) at www.lobsters.org, the Lobster Conservancy.

This is a wonderful book. It's small (it really can fit in your back pocket), it's well laid out, and the reader can pick their level of involvement. It is very highly recommended. Saving the environment does not get much easier than this.

Top of Page

Main Page

If free trade in general, and CAFTA in particular, is such a wonderful thing, then a few questions come to mind. Part of the attraction of free trade is that people in Latin America are going to start buying lots of US-made products, leading to new jobs here in America. How is that going to happen when the trend in wages is very much downward, to see who can reach the bottom first? It takes years, and higher wages, to create any sort of consumer society in Latin America. If high American wages are an "inefficiency" to be gotten rid of as soon as possible, who is going to buy all those hundred-dollar sneakers and wide-screen TVs? Where are all these new industries for which laid-off American workers are supposed to retrain?

NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and outsourcing in general, has led to a large loss of jobs. In the 21st century, over 3 million American manufacturing jobs are gone, never to return. According to one estimate, almost 900,000 jobs headed to Mexico because of NAFTA. Those maquiladora jobs are now leaving Mexico and going to China, where the wages are even lower. Over 1.5 million Mexican farmers have been forced off the land because of cheap (and subsidized) American agricultural imports. The same thing will happen in Central America if CAFTA comes into effect. None of those displaced farmers are going to head north and illegally enter America?

This is an excellent book. It doesn't go into much detail (that's not the intention), but it gives the reader plenty to consider. It is written in easy-to-understand language, so even those who know nothing about free trade can understand it. Overall, it is very highly recommended.

Top of Page

Main Page

The expedition is pretty uneventful. After several weeks of traveling, a female fortune teller in one village urges them to not go beyond a certain town, where the expedition was planning to split up to cover more territory. One part of the expedition has a relatively easy time, and makes it back to France with no problem. But the other part of the expedition suffers a much different fate.

They wake up one morning to find their lead guide missing; he returns the next day as if nothing happened. Another day, they are stopped by a group of twenty black men in what look like French uniforms. They say they have been chasing the expedition for the past couple of weeks, carrying urgent orders for Captain Marcenay, the head of the cavalry, and his men. The cavalry is to head to the town of Timbuktu immediately, and the black men, who say they are Sudanese Volunteers, will take care of the expedition. The men look like they have been in the bush for weeks, but their leader, Lt. Lacour, looks as if his uniform came back from the cleaners that morning. Just to make things worse, another morning the Europeans wake up to find their security, their portera and guides, and most of their supplies gone. They attempt to buy food from the local villages, but someone has gotten to them first, and wiped out all of them, killing everybody. What's left of the expedition continues on horseback, until the horses fall dead, one by one. As the book ends, at night they are surrounded by this very loud roaring sound coming from the sky (which they have heard before), with bright lights shining down on them, and they are grabbed by unknown persons.

In the second book, after a several-hour trip, tied up and blindfolded, the group finds itself inside a walled city called Blackland, far out in the Sahara Desert. Weather modification is only one of the technical marvels which allows a city to exist in such an inhospitable place. They are brough before the leader of Blackland, a very unpleasant person and criminal named Harry Killer. The Europeans are given the choice to become part of Blackland, or die. For Jane, the choice is to become Mrs Harry Killer, or die.

After a failed escape attempt, the group runs into Marcel Camaret, the technical genius behind Balckland. He is also the sort of person who sets new records for being blind to everything except his work. After being told just what Blackland is all about, something he honestly never realized, Camaret needs little encouraging to fight back, using other inventions of his. Of course, Killer and his criminal cohorts aren't going to give up without a fight.

Barricaded in The Factory, the only hope of the Europeans is if Tongane, one of their guides, can mingle among the slaves of Blackland, and convince them to revolt. After a seemingly interminable wait, the revolt begins. The battle ebbs and flows, but the battle turns against the rebels. When things are looking hopeless, well, one can lamost hear the bugle in the background, in the form of Captain Marcenay, a couple of hundred men and a cannon. His orders to proceed to Timbuktu turned out to be fake. Having gotten a partial location of Blackland through a wireless telegraphy distress call, he eventually convinced his superiors to let him undertake a military/rescue mission.

I really enjoyed both books. They are recommended for those who like 19th century exploration/adventure novels, and for those who appreciate prophetic science fiction novels. Verne has always been one of the best at attempting to predict the future. The reader won't go wrong with this pair of novels.

Top of Page

Main Page

As a child, Kent, the narrator, is dragged around the country by his father, a screaming psychotic who is also an itinerant radio announcer. Kent doesn't stay in one place, or school, for very long, because his father keeps getting fired. After several years of this, the father decides to stay in a town called Mormonville and start his own station. Kent gets to see organized religion, expecially Mormonism, first hand while he is forced to work at the station, every day, until he is able to escape into a local college. He does not like what he sees.

College is a place where the teachers are snitches for the military (this is during the Vietnam War). At least in math and science class, there are provable right and wrong answers (2+2=4, and nothing else). On the other hand, in classes like English and Psychology, it seems like the right answer is whatever the teacher says it is. The school is full of people who are taught, or indoctrinated, to believe whatever authority figures tell them to believe. Therefore, if war protesters are anti-American commie agitators, then, by god, that is what they are. He barely survives ROTC (a required course where nothing is more important than keeping the uniform free of even microscopic traces of dirt and making sure that all parts of the uniform are in mathematically precise alignment with all other parts). Kent also has run-ins with people who take their small bit of authority much too seriously.

Kent and several friends are arrested on trumped-up charges, and reluctantly let go several months later when the judicial farce (aided by the local newspaper) temporarily goes off the track. He is married for a while, until his wife announces that she is gay. Kent barely survives by publishing an anarchist zine, until the government bars its circulation, while most of his friends have joined The State. A new, hick landlord, who speaks barely intelligible English, triples his rent. One of the few decent people he has met is beaten to death by the police, while in police custody. In short, Kent lives in a world that seems to have lost its collective mind.

The other important thing about this book is that it intentionally does not have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), on every other published book. A person might wonder what the big deal is about ISBNs. To the author, forcing a book to have a standard number is akin to making people have numbers. Presently, ther is no law forcing books to have ISBNs, but such a law is coming at some point.

Getting an ISBN for a book is not automatic; it has to be bought for several hundred dollars (it used to be free). Perhaps the day will come when the people who issue ISBNs will start refusing them for certain publications, or charging a selective, and very high, price for them. Without an ISBN, there is no chance of a book being bought by libraries, or picked up by the major distributors. The author feels that having an ISBN is another form of social control, and he won't be a part of it.

This book easily rates a Wow! For anyone who wonders how a person becomes an anarchist, this book gives a very good answer. It will not be found at the local mall chain store because of its lack of an ISBN. Even if it had an ISBN, it would still be vfery hard to find; read it and you will see why. Therefore, send a letter asking about the price to Fred Woodworth, The Match!, P.O. Box 3012, Tucson, AZ 85702 USA. Do it today. It is time, and money, very well spent.

Top of Page

Main Page

Meantime, an ambitious American state senator latches on to the issue as a way to propel himself to Washington. Using some very questionable science, and some huge jumping to conclusions, he does a fine job of changing the public's focus from Unexplained Signal From Space to ALIEN INVASION! Panic and rioting spreads all over the world. (If this really is an invasion, how is stealing anything not already nailed down going to help?) The initial government and military response is to look like they are doing something (it's probably nothing, or this will quickly blow over). By this time, "it" is less than ten light years away, and still heading toward Earth.

An obsolete space station, already in orbit, is retrofitted with appropriate engines and sent to the edge of the solar system. All the humans can do is to make themselves as noticeable as possible, and hope the aliens stop and have a look. They do stop, but First Contact ends up being rather anticlimactic.

This one is really good. The first of a four-part series, it focuses more on the people involved than on the science or the Contact part. It's a strong, well-done piece of writing.

Top of Page

Main Page

It seems that the sonomak can be used to create new universes, copies of this universe but much smaller, called picoverses. Alexandra is actually a super-robot who wants to escape her masters, the Makers, in one of these new universes. In another of these universes, Anthony, Katie and Horst's young son and super-prodigy, has grown into an immortal and powerful being called Alpha. He enters this universe to destroy it.

In another universe, in the 1930s, America is on the verge of being conquered by a Soviet-German alliance. The east and west coasts are already in foreign hands due to some well-placed nuclear weapons. The only thing keeping the rest of America from falling into enemy hands are things like particle beam weapons to shoot down enemy aircraft, developed by Nikola Tesla and a teenaged Anthony. Albert Einstein has become an anti-science religious zealot, mostly due to his wife, Nadia, who is an exact duplicate of Alexandra Mitchell. The only stars at night are from the other planets, because the whole universe is the size of the solar system.

This novel is based on very high-level physics, so parts of it will go right over the head of the average reader. The rest of the novel is excellent. It does really well in the "mind-blowing" department. Get past the science, and the reader will have plenty to think about, while staying involved in the book. Well worth reading.

Top of Page

Main Page

The tower consists of a series of rooms. Entrance to the next room is gained by solving a very high-level mathematical puzzle. After a while, the tower begins to impose a time limit on the decision-making process. After retreating from one disastrous room, where one member is killed, and several limbs are chopped off (happily replaced by the doctor), the rest of the group says no more. Childe and Swift determine that artificial limbs and organs are less prone to attack by the tower than organic, so they have Dr. T turn them into something like an artificial greyhound dog, and return to the tower. In examining the bodies around the base of the tower, the doctor determines that, genetically, they all come from the same person. The question is also raised as to how Childe knew just what sort of people would be needed to explore the tower, if, as he claims, this is his first visit.

The second story takes place on Turquoise, a planet whose ocean is inhabited by Pattern Jugglers, a one-celled aquatic organism capable of recording the memories of any being who joins their collective consciousness. Naqi Okpik is among those studying the Jugglers, until Mina, her sister, becomes part of the Juggler consciousness.

One day, an interstellar trading vessel stops by for a visit, a once-in-a-lifetime event for the isolated people of Turquoise. One of the ship's crew, a man named Weir, is acting very strangely. During a tour of the Juggler research station, the rest of the crew attacks, and takes over the station. It seems that many years before, a despot named Ormozd visited the planet, and was absorbed by the Pattern Jugglers. The intention of the attackers is to "download" Ormozd's memories from the Jugglers, and place them into several different people. This is what Weir has come to stop. He takes a boat into a node of Jugglers, with Naqi in hot pursuit. He carries with him a "bomb" to destroy the Jugglers' memory storage capability, and also to destroy the memories of everyone ever absorbed by the Jugglers, including Mina, Naqi's sister.

This is another first-rate piece of writing from Reynolds. It would be a good idea to read any of his *Revelation Space* books first. These novellas are interesting, very well done and highly recommended.

Top of Page

Main Page

He may or may not be "developmentally degraded," but his purpose in life is to follow the Protocol and provide the Product (drug dealing?) as laid down by Big Guy and his woman, Boss Lady. Life becomes a daily grind of staying warm in a corner of the town library, cashing in cans to get money for food, keeping Big Guy happy, and sleeping on the banks of the River, one of the town's major landmarks. All the while, Scamp does his best to not attract the attention of Romantic's corrupt and overzealous police department.

Sal is back in town after years of playing guitar for a sixth-rate New Orleans strip club. He hangs out with his father, Pop, who spends his days in front of the TV watching New York Yankees baseball, or 24-hour war movies. Pop tells Sal to go find Rocco, his younger brother, who hasn't been around for years. This is something Sal doesn't want to do, because the history between him and Rocco (aka Scamp) is too unpleasant. Sal works at a local sixth-rate music shop called Slim's Pickens, the sort of place where the entrance of a customer is a major event.

After several run-ins with the same corrupt and overzealous Romantic P.D., and especially after Pop dies and leaves his money to Rocco/Scamp, who is nowhere to be found, Sal thinks strongly about leaving Romantic and heading back to the familiar environs of New Orleans.

This book could take place in any small town in New England, if not all of America. It may take some work on the part of the reader, but it has a strong Woody Guthrie feel to it, and it is well worth reading. Because this book won't be found in the local mall chain store, an email to blackrainpress@hotmail.com asking about the price is very much recommended. Do it today.

Top of Page

Main Page

Months later, they found themselves in San Francisco, heading to Alaska to look for gold. Alaska was also as far way from Philadelphia as Rosa and Daniel could go. They were in the company of Doc and Charles, an older man and his son, also looking to strike it rich. Rosa and Doc hit it off, by 19th Century standards, pretty quickly. The only strange thing about Rosa and Daniel's journey was that every so often a raven would come down out of the sky, land in front of them, and squawk the words "No gold" before leaving.

Rosa decided to stay in the town of Sitka, rather than join the men in the Alaskan wilderness. She got a job as a schoolteacher, and met Gordon, part Russian priest and part shaman. They are both there to teach, and hopefully convert, the local Tlingit (native) children. The raven is considered a trickster in many cultures, including Tlingit.

After several months, Rosa received a letter from Charles saying that Doc and Charles were shot and killed in a streetcorner dispute. In a fit of despair, Rosa took out a pistol that she kept for protection, and was prepared to use it on herself. At that moment, a talking raven, part Gordon and part trickster, flew into her cabin and took her on a journey. She visited a planet of man-sized, mobile, intelligent plants. She visited a planet whose sun was stationary in the sky. She visited a devastated Times Square, far in her future. She was turned into a golden eagle, and into a carnivorous dinosaur. Rosa was taught all about alternate universes, and was returned to one where Doc and Daniel were still alive, because they hadn't yet made the trip into the Alaskan wilderness.

This is an excellent novel, but a pretty "quiet" novel. The science fiction doesn't start until about the last quarter of the story. By the end, it gets nice and weird, and will give the reader plenty to consider. Two thumbs up.

Top of Page

Main Page

The biggest problem is that NCLB has been underfunded, by anywhere up to $12 billion. The states have all sorts of new federal mandates, but not enough money to pay for them. Standardized tests are valuable as a measure of a student's progress, but they should not be the only measure, which is the case with NCLB. Portions of the school curriculum that don't directly deal with testing, like art, phys ed and field trips, will be dropped, as schools become little more than test-prep factories.

A school can be classified as Failing if even one subgroup in the school, like Asains or disabled students, don't do well enough on the test. The school must then pay to bus its students who want to transfer to a non-failing school. If it is an inner-city school, their resources are already thin enough. There probably aren't any non-failing schools nearby, and besides, they have no incentive to accept students who might bring down their test scores. Urban schools, and urban communities in general, need a lot more help than to be told, "Raise your test scores, or else." Many schools have gotten in the habit of making students repeat a grade, raising the chance that they will eventually drop out, only because they might negatively affect the test score for the upper grade.

The most well-known non-education provision in NCLB forces schools to give student contact information to military recruiters, or face a cutoff of federal aid. Any policy that prevents participation in prayer in public schools, as well as any policy that prohibits the Boy Scouts or any other "patriotic society" access to school facilities. For these and many other reasons, the list of states refusing to follow NCLB is growing.

This is an excellent book. It shows that the public pronouncements about NCLB are much brighter than the reality. It's short, easy to read and highly recommended

Top of Page

Main Page

The average school cafeteria has replaced its food with sugary and sweet items like pizza and soda, that is, if the cafeteria hasn't actually been turned into a food court. Cash-strapped schools are obligated to let soda and candy vending machines in school, for a cut of the money, while physical education is being eliminated. Diabetes is supposed to be an "adult" disease; in the last few years, it has started to show up in children under 10 years old. Most nutritionists recommend limiting fast food to no more than once a month. How many people, or families, can honestly say that they can do that? In 2005, obesity related diseases will come close to smoking as the biggest killer of Americans; the estimate is that 400,000 people will die from such diseases. As an experiment, put a plate of McDonald's fries under glass, for several months. What will happen to the fries? The answer is: basically nothing. They might start to smell, but there will be little or no decomposition to the fries. One can only wonder what is in the fries or the vegetable oil to cause this to happen.

Part of this book is also a chronicle of his 30 days on the "McDonald's Diet" for the film. He got three different doctors to independently keep an eye on his health, which basically fell apart. He suffered bad headaches and chest pains, he couldn't focus mentally and his cholesterol and blood pressure rose dramatically. Oh, and he also gained more than 24 pounds.

A measure of liver function is the presence of an enzyme in the blood called serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase (SGPT). During his month of McDonald's food, his number rose from 20 to 290; under 40 is normal. Another enzyme to measure liver function is alanine transaminase (ALT); his number skyrocketed from 17 to 471, before settling at 240. Again, under 40 is normal. Is it any wonder that a child bron in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes from poor dietary habits?

This is a gem of a book. Filled with lots of information for all Americans, it is very easy to read, and is helped with bits of humor that Spurlock spreads all over the book. This is very highly recommended.

Top of Page

Main Page

Several billion years from now, the first thing Bob sees in waking up after his one-way journey is a 6 foot tall cockroach standing over him. Bob screams, the cockroach does the equivalent, and Bob requires a lot of calming down by Cock after being told that all cockroaches are this size. Thank heavens for the calming properties of chocolate, a constant supply of which helps Bob to function semi-normally. When going outside, Bob must wear a radiation suit at all times. The decimated ozone layer is being rebuilt, slowly but surely, through, shall we say, cockroach digestive processes. After a few days of acclimation to his surroundings, Bob is taken to a temple to explain what seems to show that 20th Century mankind was a sun-worshipping culture, like Ancient Egypt. What Bob sees, causes him, in a fit of despair, to rip off his radiation suit, frying himself instantly.

This is a really good novel. It's nice and apocalyptic, the author does a good job throughout and it rates very high on the Strange Meter. The reader will certainly learn more than they ever wanted to know about cockroaches. Two thumbs up.

Top of Page

Main Page

Published in the middle of the Cold War, the book spends most of its time looking at American and Soviet propaganda. In the major European capitals, the United States Information Agency (USIA), by itself, occupies rich, lavish buildings in the rich part of town. The actual Embassy is in a separate, equally lavish building. The USIA workers associate only with other Americans, and live in separate housing, making little or no attempt to get to know the average middle-class individual. They justify their overpaid existence by endlessly telling the elite of that country why America is so wonderful. Soviet propaganda, on the other hand, is handled by one person, or a couple of people, inside the Soviet Embassy. Alternatively, natives of that country can be counted on to talk to the common worker in their own language, spreading the advantages of Communism.

Having lived through two world wars, most people have developed a pretty sensitive built-in propaganda detector; anything that even smells like propaganda is avoided like the plague. This is something that America doesn't seem to understand. Millions of dollars are spent each year on educational/propaganda films extolling the virtues of America. A reason why Hollywood films are so popular around the world is that they are practcially guaranteed to be propaganda-free. Give this "job" to Hollywood. America wastes millions more publishing slick magazines, sometimes in local languages, extolling the virtues of America. Magazines like Time, Newsweek and The Saturday Evening Post reach a lot more people and do a much better job at showing what America is all about. The USIA also puts out a daily 6000 word news cable for local media. Consisting of several single-spaced typed pages, usually it is little more than stories about some American bureaucrat paying a visit. News agencies like the Associated Press and United Press International do a much better job. The author advocates that all American foreign information services, spread over several independent agencies, each with their own personnel overseas, be combined into one agency and become part of the State Department.

(Fast forward to 2005, and consider the Bush Administration's attempts to change the mind of the Muslim world. Convincing the average Muslim that America does not hate them has been treated as a public relations problem. There were TV commercials showing happy American Muslims, slick magazines for young people written in Arabic, and a pro-American version of the Al-Jazeera TV channel. Having lived through less-than-democratic governments, is it possible that the average Muslim has also developed a built-in propaganda detector? Is it also possible that the average Muslim compares American PR about religious tolerance with daily TV pictures from Iraq and Palestine? Which will be considered more important? Have things changed at all in the US Government in the last 50 years?)

This is an eye-opener of a book. While reading, mentally delete the words "Soviet propaganda" and insert "Islamic fundamentalism." It's very interesting, and very much worth reading.

Top of Page

Main Page

Imagine being at that point where you need a hit, not soon, but now, and you look around your apartment for anything to sell or pawn for drug money. Everything has already been pawned or sold, except for an old, decrepit portable TV. Even worse, the man at the pawn shop is not sympathetic to your predicament.

Lori is a friend and fellow junkie. She is a good person to know, always ready to share some of her stash if one has temporarily run out of drugs. When the author, David, and his wife, Joanna, get onto methadone, their relationship with Lori changes for the worst. They don't visit each other anymore, because of that junkie/non-junkie barrier between them, a barrier which Lori shows little desire to cross.

After a very frustrating night of driving around and around a desolate part of Chicago, which used to be a thriving drug supermarket, David and Joanna finally find a willing drug seller. Immediately afterwards, they are stopped by the Chicago Police, forcing David to swallow the evidence.

Top of Page

Main Page

In September 2002, the American government announced a new national security strategy. Instead of pre-emptive war, which might be covered by the UN Charter, the new strategy will be one of preventive war, which is not permitted at all under international law. In other words, America will rule the world by force, and if any challenge to that domination comes about, whether imagined, invented or perceived in the distance, America has the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat.

The Bush Administration talks about going after countries that harbor terrorists. Orlando Bosch, described by the Justice Department as a threat to American security, is quietly living in Miami, recipient of a Presidential Pardon. In 1976, Bosch was involved in the shooting down of a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people, among other crimes. Emanuel Constant is responsible for the deaths of at least 4000 Haitians. He is living in Queens, New York, because America refuses to even respond to extradition requests, let alone actually say No. Such doctrines are unilateral; they grant America the right to harbor terrorists and use violence, but not anyone else.

The people around George Bush are very open about their desire to destroy the progressive achievements of the last 100 years. They have generally gotten rid of the progressive income tax. They are next going after Social Security and health care. They do not want a small government. They are interested in a huge, massively intrusive government, but one that works for them.

This is another excellent and eye-opening book from Chomsky and Barsamian. For another very interesting look at the way America and the world Really Works, this is highly recommended.

Top of Page

Main Page

Earth of the mid-21st Century is not prepared for any sort of invasion. Global warming has begun to alter Earth's climate. Much of Long Island is under water, and in Florida, going outside for any length of time without sunscreen is a bad idea. Europe is again on the brink of war. The American President, Carlie LaSalle, is an airbrushed creation of the political consultants and media managers. She tends to look at everything in terms of a conspiracy against her; the general consensus is that she has approximately six working brain cells.

LaSalle orders the deployment of a space-based laser carried on a shuttle to destroy the alien ship if it starts firing on Earth. Such a laser could also be pointed downward, like at some European city, getting Europe very upset at America. If They (whoever they are) have light-speed space travel, and intetrstellar capabilities, won't they have defenses against orbiting laser systems? Even worse, if Earth gets them angry, won't they have the ability to severely damage, or destroy, the Earth? On the other hand, who ever heard of a one-ship "invasion?" Grayson Pauling, the President's Science Advisor, is totally opposed to LaSalle's plan, opposed enough to sneak several pounds of plastic explosive into a Cabinet meeting. Amid all this, Bell is less and less convinced that aliens are coming. A longer message, detailing just where and when they will land, is in present-day colloquial English. Something is heading for Earth, but what?

This is another solid, you-won't-go-wrong story from Haldeman. It is more about Earth several decades from now than about Alien Contact, but it is still a gem of a novel.

Top of Page