![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Random Stuff
Oct. 16th, 2002 10:34 pmSo, I go for a bottle of beer and the stubborn cap almost tears up my hand. There's a roll of paper towels next to me, so I rip one off, and use it to open the bottle. Then I think...what tree just died so I could open a bottle of beer? Perspective, folks. It's all about perspective. From now on, I promise to use only non-organic materials to assist my drinking.
----
I've learned not to wear black the last couple days. I'm peeling/flaking from a sunburn I got in Florida a week ago, and it when I wear black, it looks like full-body dandruff.
----
I'm reading a biography of John Adams. For a history buff like me (especially American history) this is amazingly good stuff. I didn't know even a fraction about this guy, other than he was the first VP, the second President, and a Federalist. Biographers tend to paint their subjects in a flattering light (or absolutely rip them apart) but this guy was pretty amazing. I didn't think I'd like it, as I'm generally an anti-Federalist, but Adams was more of an independent than anything else. It's fascinating realizing how different our government has become in a little over two hundred years, and how our founding fathers attempted to guard against the government abuses we all take for granted these days.
----
My favorite historian, Stephen Ambrose, died earlier this week. His books were one of the first war histories that focused on the grunt soldier rather than the guys at the top (though he had plenty of those books as well.) He was one of the few historians who had popular movies and mini-series based on his books, from Band of Brothers, to D-Day, which was semi-fictionalized for Saving Private Ryan. He had been accused of plagiarism on a couple of his later books, but it was a hollow, perhaps jealous, charge. He had fully footnoted and sourced his material, he had merely neglected to place quotation marks around some descriptive passages.
----
I've learned not to wear black the last couple days. I'm peeling/flaking from a sunburn I got in Florida a week ago, and it when I wear black, it looks like full-body dandruff.
----
I'm reading a biography of John Adams. For a history buff like me (especially American history) this is amazingly good stuff. I didn't know even a fraction about this guy, other than he was the first VP, the second President, and a Federalist. Biographers tend to paint their subjects in a flattering light (or absolutely rip them apart) but this guy was pretty amazing. I didn't think I'd like it, as I'm generally an anti-Federalist, but Adams was more of an independent than anything else. It's fascinating realizing how different our government has become in a little over two hundred years, and how our founding fathers attempted to guard against the government abuses we all take for granted these days.
----
My favorite historian, Stephen Ambrose, died earlier this week. His books were one of the first war histories that focused on the grunt soldier rather than the guys at the top (though he had plenty of those books as well.) He was one of the few historians who had popular movies and mini-series based on his books, from Band of Brothers, to D-Day, which was semi-fictionalized for Saving Private Ryan. He had been accused of plagiarism on a couple of his later books, but it was a hollow, perhaps jealous, charge. He had fully footnoted and sourced his material, he had merely neglected to place quotation marks around some descriptive passages.
