Saturday, October 31, 2009

Weekend Update

At midnight, tonight, I begin work on my masterwork, the Great American Novel, as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The point of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, and I'll be doing that, mostly on weekends, the whole month long. This is going to be interesting.

In other news, I will have to postpone my review of The Gathering Storm, since I did not get my book this week. I will have to wait until Monday, at the earliest, to get the book, and while I may start reading it during the week, I plan to dash through it on Friday. I understand that the reason for the holdup has something to do with the Post Office being full of spazes*, or something along those lines.

In real-world news, Hamid Karzai has probably just won next week's runoff, seeing as Abdullah Abdullah, his challenger, is boycotting it. Mmm, democracy in action. Also, Iran has (apparenlty) rejected our plan to prevent their acquisition of nuclear weapons. Mmm, I see green shoots of world peace sprouting. Finally, in upstate New York, we witness the victory of the GOP's nutwing over any semblance of wanting to compromise on anything, with Dede Scuzzlebutt's Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race in NY-23. Mmm, now's just the time for bipartisanship, right? Ah, well. At least my sense of cynicism is still alive. What would I do without it?

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*With all due respect to the employees of the United States Postal Service, particularly those of you who hear dogs talking to you.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Fridays are Fun: The "Honorverse"

I've recently started reading David Weber's Honor Harrington series, AKA "The Honorverse". It's military SF, with a heavy emphasis on naval combat. The series has been described as "Horatio Hornblower in space", and having read the actual Hornblower series from start to finish, I would agree with that description, although it appears the books grow beyond that in later books.

The books are set around 4100 AD (in Terra-years, or "T-years", at least). The main protagonist is Honor Harrington, a female officer in the "Royal Manticoran Navy". Yes, humanity has spread from Earth to the stars, and the Star Kingdom of Manticore is one of the most wealthy of Earth's children, mostly due to trade. One of the main threads running through the books is Manticore's ongoing feud with Haven, another colony settled by Earthlings. Haven, at the inception of the series, is technically a republic, but is actually a moribund semi-monarchical bureaucracy, ruled by the Legislaturalists. In order to keep its economy rising, Haven must conquer more territory, and they've come into conflict with Manticore as a result.

I can't speak for the whole series, but having read the first four books in the main series (I'm in the middle of the fifth right now), I will say that the Honor Harrington books have one definite strength: the battles. Weber has certainly given a great deal of thought to the military elements of this, and it shows. The battle sequences in the various books are well thought out, and he gives the reader a nitty-gritty look at the military tech and how it affects the way things work.

If I had one quibble with the series, it would be with some of the antagonist characters. A lot of them seem to be simple strawmen/-women, and their competence as villains could be seriously questioned. Also, subtlety is obviously not David Weber's strong suit. For instance (spoiler alert!) in book three, there is a revolution brewing in the series Big Bad, the "People's Republic of Haven". The leader of that revolution? Rob S. Pierre. I kid you not. The secret police of Haven? State Security, which he can (and has) abbreviated to SS.

Quite beside the mainline series, there are two spinoff series covering other parts of the 'verse, along with several short story anthologies. Perhaps, though, one of the best things about this series, is that you can get most of it FOR FREE. It's on http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com, under the CD marked "Storm From The Shadows". Yes, Baen, the publishers, are giving it away for free. The books all come in multiple formats, and unlike your average pirated OCR version of a book, they are all very well formatted and put together. I would Highly Recommend this series, if only because there's no reason to not try it out.

Coming next Friday: The Gathering Storm! SQUEEE!

Monday, October 26, 2009

For Your Mental Health Pleasure...


















Enjoy.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Grayson Schools Broun

Ok, yeah politics! This exchange between Alan Grayson and Paul Broun is excellent.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

me me me me me

So, yes. This is me. Matthew Kuhl. This is my new personal blog. Pay no mind to those other blogs, since I don't actually update them anymore.

As I write this, I am a sophomore at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, GA. I plan to major in history, and possibly I will minor in psychology, though that has not been chiseled into granite yet. When I leave this place in 2012, I plan to work in a government position, and if all goes well, I won't be able to tell you about it.

My interest in history is almost as old as my little sister, and I'm currently interested in a few areas: military history (broadly speaking), Middle Eastern history, and Central Asian history. In addition to these pursuits, I am also a great fan of science fiction, fantasy, good coffee, good food, and good music. Last, but not least, I will root for pretty much any team that comes from my hometown, Atlanta, particularly the Braves and (lately) the Falcons.

The last thing I will say here is that my politics tend towards the left hand of the political spectrum. I don't know how much this will come up, but I will say that I always hope to find common ground with reasonable Republicans and other types.

I think that's about enough for now.