papablues050164's reviews
136 reviews

I was hoping when I saw the title that this would actually be about the Voyager space missions, that it would focus on the flybys of the Outer Planets and all the discovering appertained. Oo boy. I understand the author’s purpose in trying to link the so-called Third Age of Discovery with the grand voyages of the past, but quite honesty, I don’t give a good damn about that. I don’t give a good goddamn about the politics or the Cold War machinations behind the scenes, or the ‘God gold and greed’ motivations of explorers’ past.
I expected a bit more than a glossing over the planning, assembly and launch of the grand tour. One chapter, ‘Missing Mars’, gives us at best a couple of sentences whereby both Voyagers breeze harmlessly past the Red Planet, plus 20 pages of exposition peripherally related to Mars. So it goes. This is as bad as the Harry Potter novels, where the villains blow 20 pages reciting all the past slights, real or imagined, that Harry has inflicted on them. Very little detail on the Voyager program, pages and pages on the ocean-going voyages of old, over and over again. Next time maybe the author can do a tome actually devoted to Voyager; for now I am disappointed.

I am disappointed--not in the book! Sachs' idealism is tempered by experience and facts. No, I'm disappointed that our leaders, and I especially mark those in the United States, have basically chosen to say Go To Hell not only to the people of the world but the homeless refugees in our own country. This could have been doable but for the greed of our nation's oligarchs. Sorry.

To be sure Jimmy Carter was not a perfect man. He could have better advanced his initiatives if he’d learned to work better with Congress, or indeed if he hadn’t presented a flurry of initiatives to begin with; if in a time when people were confused and struggling, he offered a hopeful vision instead f one characterized by sacrifice. That being said, Carter was a more consequential President than he’s been credit for. I remember the press coverage of that time well; how frequently unkind it was; how he would often be caricatured as weak when those who worked with him knew better.

His energy initiative, the peace he brokered between Israel and there greatest enemy Egypt, the Panama Canal treaty have had long-lasting benefit that have lasted to this day. His administration’s emphasis on human right helped save countless lives in Latin America. To that we can add that he saved both New York City and Chrysler from bankruptcy, and he appointed Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve, the man who arguably more than Ronald Reagan himself saved our country from economic disaster. On his watch, the Vice President Walter Mondale became a trusted partner and not the mere cipher all previous VPs had been.

This bio, written by his domestic policy adviser Stuart E. Eizenstat, while it gives Cater his due, takes care to emphasize the man’s flaws as well as his strengths. It manages to balance the blunders with his admirable successes. The constant theme of Carter’s Presidency was a willingness to risk short-term political costs for the nation’s long-term gain. On a personal note, several Washington State senators I only knew as names in the 1970’s take the stage as well, frequently to the frustration of the sitting President. Many of you will be unfamiliar with these names—Congressmen ‘Scoop’ Jackson, Warren Magnuson, Tom Foley, future Speaker of the US House, & Brock Adams, Carter’s Transportation Secretary before going on to be a one-term U.S. senator.

In the final summation, Jimmy Cater may have been imperfect, but he was and is a better man, a more moral man than a certain someday in the White House today.

In this age of right-wing ignoramuses, we should remember that with our flyby of Pluto the United States is the only nation on Earth to have sent probes on successful flybys and exploration of every planet in the Solar System, a fact we can take just pride in. to this we may add NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker mission to the asteroid Eros in 2000. It may have been 18 years ago, but in spite of some close shaves, NEAR Shoemaker made passes at two asteroids, first at Mathilde in 1997 and later at Eros, basically a giant space peanut.

The firsts kept coming: NEAR was the first spacecraft flyby of a C-type asteroid [Mathilde], the first to orbit an asteroid {Eros] and finally to land safely on the surface of an asteroid and return scientific readings from its surface. This is more impressive than it sounds since Eros is such an irregularly shaped space rock. Different members of the NEAR exploratory probe team each offer their own perspectives. Some of their finding overlap, but this serves to highlight different aspects of the mission’s goals.

This slim volume is not necessarily for the scientifically challenged, but it remains a satisfactory read for the technically minded. I’ll conclude with this observation from NEAR science team member Jim Bell: “Are asteroids nothing more than insignificant cosmic leftovers? Ask a dinosaur.”

How can you resist a title like that? What follows in its pages is a horde of bizarre scientific experiments, generally conducted over the most trivial subjects, from raising the dead to life to the pursuit of how easily man can turn to evil. [PS it’s frighteningly easy.] These experiments in absurdity reel in prostitutes, graduate students, kitties, corpses and several cultists misled into their beliefs via cognitive dissonance. At times disturbing and humorous, it a guaranteed fun read.

There is more bootlegs than you can imagine, certainly more than I ever dreamed. Did anybody else know there were 85 CDs worth of unreleased material just from the January 1969 Get Back sessions [not a lot of it listenable.] The author is no fawning maniac; he can be harsh, but most of his views are fair.

It’s hard to credit the conclusions the author has reached. Statistically yes, things have improved. Wars are less frequent, hunger has been reduced worldwide, education for girls is more available. However, a lot of work is yet to be done, as Rosling himself acknowledges. With charts and stats he demonstrates a world not as much in chaos as certain right-wing ideologues who would have us believe. In fact, the media projects a vision of a world on fire because as this book points out quite rightly, that’s what sells, what gets your attention. I have to remind myself this book was published before Donald Trump was appointed President by fiat, and the Electoral College, let’s not forget. On that account alone there has been a collateral surge in hatred and the embrace of ignorance, not to mention the encouragement and rise of ultra-rightists worldwide, especially in Brasil. Rosling admits there is much left to do in areas such as combating climate change, slavery and peaceful conflict resolution. With Trump in charge, that work has become significantly more difficult.

This October we lost anther icon of the 1960’s. Geoff Emerick first participated in the Beatles’ sessions as a fresh-faced 16-year-old kid assisting at EMI Studios. EMI in those days lent itself to parody; the engineers still wore mad scientist lab coats, the janitors went about in standard-issue brown coveralls. Starting with the Revolver sessions when he took over, at the tender age of 18 as the Fab Four’s chief studio engineer, he was frequently asked to do the impossible, which he did, generally by bending the rules at EMI beyond all excess.
The story of how he and George Martin sewed together two disparate parts to make ‘Strawberry Fields Forever” reminds me of how Walt Disney sold his animators on Snow White in 1937, how he got them so excited about making the film that they didn’t realize he was asking the impossible. Its surprising how many times George Harrison had a hard time nailing a solo, leading Paul to step up, which must have been especially egregious when Paul nailed a blistering solo on ‘Taxman”, one of George’s own songs.
As Emerick relates in his book, the Beatles tended toward self-absorption while they were recording, often giving little regard for other people’s feelings. Often they would also demonstrate a singular lack of appreciation for the technical wizardry that Emerick and other people would pull off with the limited resources then at hand. I took great delight in the frequent Britishisms that popped up in the narrative— “taking the piss”, “sod it” and so on, as well as Emerick’s rapport with his assistant Richard Lush.
Everything would come to a head during The White Album sessions, wherein the Four would show up late, jam for hours—or days-before a proper track was laid. If John Lennon felt Let It Be was the shittiest shit ever laid down on record, apparently he forgot the tensions of recording The White Album. The rancor between Beatles and the constant rehearsals of songs, over and over, pushed Emerick to quit right n the middle of the sessions. This book captures the mood of the making of their classic discs; the chapter on The White Album was as painful to read as it must have been for the author to work through.
Alternately the Abbey Road sessions yielded moments of joy punctuated by those odd moments that could’ve only happened in the ‘60’s—i.e., when Yoko arrived at the sessions, in bed [thought o be truthful, there really was a good reason for that] Too bad she snuck into George’s bag of crisps. The recording of that triple guitar solo for “The End” was a thing of magic. Don’t miss the true story of how Abbey Road got its name, it’s not to be missed [hint: it’s another Ringo-ism]. Emerick would work his magic on many albums to come, including Paul’s Band On the Run. This was an enjoyable roller-coaster ride by an insider on the hidden tricks behind the greatest music of the rock era. God bless, Mr. Emerick. We salute you.

My great grandparents were Boricuas, although that’s not how we ever knew them. Our great grandmother was always Abuela. We always knew Abuela, Aunt Poca & Aunt Mary came from Puerto Rico but other than that, not much else. I found out more about the motherland in this anthology collection than anything we ever heard in school, which was just about cero. Told in a variety of styles, Puerto Rico Strong presents a nuanced snapshot of our small island neighbor, one deserving better recognition and support than our government has seen fit to offer.