Steel

So you can make beer, run a mile, throw a punch, fix a motorcycle. Whatever. Are you a real man? 

No.

Real men make steel. 

Who's in?

Most successful man, ever.

Genghis: Birth of an Empire by Conn Iggulden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This morning, with spring coming on and a little warm egg yolk dripping onto crispy toast and a mug of hot coffee, I read about thin, determined boys shivering in Mongolia and refusing to die. I felt pretty spoiled, let me tell you. Iggulden's a good enough story teller to bring you into the scene, make you feel you could ride and shoot, be a Khan if the chance came. Vanity!  Yet exciting. My blood runs hot enough to be engaged.


I've read one of these before, so I expected it to go down easy like a light beer, perhaps unsophisticated, but refreshing and good for you.  That was about exactly right. Not a complicated book and more fiction than historical, but it's true enough!  There was just such a man, real, and he lived an exceptional life, and if it was not exactly as told, then near enough as makes no difference.  I enjoyed this a lot, admittedly more than I expected.


For a comparison, those who know Bernard Cornwell's series of infantryman Sharpe will not be disappointed: they're very similar authors.



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The cool airplane...

The cool part is that the central dorsal "rudder" provides Clb, the canard's carefully balanced vs cg and it sorta-kinda doesn't need the aft rudder.  

First day of school, 2006?

Kid pic from a couple years back.  Actually meant this to go to the family site: getting my tools figured out...

Chauvet Caves

Werner Herzog's at it again, making movies about someplace I want to visit.  I don't plan to see the movie; his last, nominally about Antarctica with beautiful photography to match, was really about the loons that inhabit McMurdo station. That was fun in its own way, and maybe that's a hint about this one too. Anyway, the but the trailer at least, is eerie and beautiful, and as you can see, it's worth googling up the paintings.