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Samael’s Oak-Aged Ale

Very rich taste but not too heavy. This batch is allegedly 14.5 % ABV but the helpful employee-beer aficianados at Binny’s claim it is in practice, much higher than that. I’m inclined to agree that a bottle of Samael’s packs more of a punch than the average glass of wine or mixed drink.

Collaborating on a more formal article that I am trying to put to bed ASAP but which is in competition for time with a major, annual, unavoidable, chore at the day job that is coming due. Might be able to put up a few short items on Thursday.

 It’s weird, but as the only voice here I feel an odd obligation to explain when there’s a few days of silence.

Must be some legacy of evolution. 😉

I was rooting around for my passport today and in the course of opening a strongbox I came across one of my grandfather’s old pocket watches, the kind men once wore with three piece suits on a chain with a fob. My father had given them to me around twenty years ago during one of his moves ( pocket watches were not in style then and have not been since) saying they had belonged to my grandfather but were probably broken. I put the everyday watch (on the left with the chain) in a box of knicknacks. The gold watch (on the right) came with a display stand and it sat gathering dust during my twenties and thirties.

Curious, I began fiddling with a watch and found that it still worked, so I wound it and found that the gold watch was also functional. My grandfather, who died of pancreatic cancer when I was still a child, had been a very successful corporate tax attorney who had graduated from DePaul Law School in 1932. He was extremely conservative and had worked for the FBI for a time before settling into tax law and he did not travel or indulge in many extravagances. However, he did like to live well – my grandparents frequently entertained ( they had a full bar downstairs) and my grandfather liked good cigars, good food and dressing stylishly – the pocket watches were part of “the look” that a man at a certain level of success had in those days.

The everyday watch was made by Gruen, which went out of business in 1958. It is a Verithin model where the numerals show an edge of art deco while the hands have an older, gothic, style and it requires winding about twice a day. The gold watch, which was monogrammed and has decorative inlay on the case was made by Elgin National Watch Company, which once produced half of all the watches used in the United States and closed its’ original factory in 1964 and sold the rights to the name, which is now owned by a Chinese concern. The long abandoned  factory in Elgin, Illinois was converted into trendy “loft” condos sometime in the last decade. I opened the back panel and the inside is still as polished as a mirror. The parts are paper thin metal and show a precision of mechanical design that no longer is associated with the United States – at least in consumer items of this kind.

I like to think my grandfather took some pleasure in owning these watches. He certainly took care of them; the Gruen watch may date back to the thirties and they both have a heavy, masculine quality. The watches feel “solid” in the palm of your hand and give a sense of a different, calmer, era. At some point, I will pass them on to my own children when they are mature enough to value such things, and with some luck, they will continue the tradition.

“Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst”  – William Penn

My Father’s Day Gift this year, from my always thoughtful, technophile spouse,  Mrs. Zenpundit. 

I would expound at length on the wonders of The Kindle except that the package only arrived this afternoon and the device is charging on the kitchen countertop downstairs. I expect that this will a) reduce some of my book buying expenses* b) get me back into reading a whole newspaper, maybe FT.com, CSM or the NYT instead of reading random articles online, and c) be a much more convenient way to read my favorite blogs on the go than on my crackberry’s tiny interface.

The Eldest and the Son of Zenpundit gave me the following (with a little “help” from me):

The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer.

The biography of  “the Mad Baron” of the Russian civil war,  General Baron Ungern von Sternberg of the White armies, a Cossack host and eventually, the Mongols. One of the strangest warlords of the 20th century.

* some books you need to own. Others can just be read. I put most fiction in that category, along with contemporary hyperpartisan politics, business books, memoirs of the niche famous and misc. subjects.

I frequently post about what I am reading and even more often, get involved in discussions of books with various blogospheric cronies on their blogs, social media networks or via email. Some of the books discussed end up becoming full-blown  roundtables, others find their way into the Antilibrary or even fall by the wayside. Time is finite and the number of good books exceed the time available. At least my time.

In an effort to be a little more efficient in my reading this summer, I decided to compose what I am sure is a wildly overambitious reading list for the next three months. The method will be to discipline myself to put in a minimum of two hours of book reading a day, seven days a week. While like most bloggers, I read a large volume of information daily, too much of it is online – listservs, blogs, email, PDFs, twitter, e-zines and so on. This gives my reading a scattered, “searchlight” quality as opposed to a drill-down focus of a “laser beam”. The former habit has its cognitive virtues, but so does the latter and it is good for the brain to periodically dive back into “old school” reading of physical books. It will also help whittle down the ominously growing pile of unread books.

There is not any particular order in mind here, except that The Anabasis of Cyrus and Accidental Guerilla are high priorities, the former due to the upcoming roundtable discussion at Chicago Boyz. I have all of the books at hand on the shelf, ready to go and a stretch of time ahead of me that is freer than usual. I may omit books as time passes and add others, but I will give a formal report of my reading after Labor Day weekend.

Without further ado, THE SUMMER READING LIST:

Military History and Strategy

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century – PW Singer (Finish, currently reading)
The Anabasis of Cyrus (Agora) – Xenophon
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One – David Kilcullen
The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity – Antoine Bousquet
The Culture of War – Martin van Creveld
Certain to Win –Chet Richards

Science, Futurism, Networks, Economics and Technology

How the Mind Works – Steven Pinker
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software – Steven Johnson
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology – Ray Kurzweil
The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (The New Media World)– Lokman Tsui

Biography

Ho Chi Minh: A Life – William J. Duiker

Philosophy and Intellectual History

The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1: The Spell of Plato
The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2: Hegel and Marx – Karl Popper
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason – Charles Freeman

What will you be reading this summer ?

UPDATE:

It occurred to me that I left out an important category….

Fiction

Pattern Recognition – William Gibson
On the Road (Penguin Classics) – Jack Kerouac