Brad Linder's digital home

The year of the strawberries

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:41:00 +0000

Last spring I planted 4 strawberry plants in containers in the rooftop garden. As the weather got warmer and the plants took root, small flowers started to appear. But following the advice of pretty much everybody who talks about growing strawberries, I resisted the urge to let those flowers bloom and pinched them off in hopes that the plants would direct their energy into setting down a stronger root system, survive the winter, and offer a larger bounty of berries during their second year.

It looks like that gamble might pay off this summer. When I saw most of the leaves of the plants wither, turn brown, and crumble away like dust in the cold weather, I had my doubts. But a few months ago new green leaves started popping up. And a few weeks ago the first flowers started to appear.

Now it's early May, and strawberries are popping up all over. They're still green and won't be ready to pick for a while, but it looks like strawberries may be one of the plants that can thrive in the microclimate on our rooftop. Unlike peppers.

Unfortunately weather doesn't pose the only danger to the little guys. There are also squirrels which have a habit of digging into the planters.

So we've taken the precaution of putting some chicken wire around one of the planters to try to keep the berries in and the squirrels out. It's not a perfect solution, because some of the leaves are squished up pretty tightly against the metal -- and that means some of the strawberries might rest on the mesh as well. That can cause them to develop poorly.

But it's nice to know that there's at least one plant that'll be somewhat protected from strawberry thieves.

While we started with just four plants last year, they also put out runners and multiplied... I'm not even sure how many individual plants are growing this year. Some of them even leapfrogged out of their containers and into other pots.

Garlic

Another crop of plants I put in the ground last year is also thriving this spring. In the fall I planted some garlic, and the leaves are strong and tall this spring. It's a bit tougher to know exactly when to harvest the garlic, since the part you really want is under the ground.

But some of the garlic is soft-neck, while other plants are hard-neck. I'm hoping the hard-neck variety will send up some garlic scapes in the coming weeks. That'll be a good indication that the roots are turning into nice little bulbs of garlic below the surface... and a tasty indication at that. I love garlic, but I think I might like garlic scapes even more.

Snow peas, edamame, and tomatoes

While the plants I sowed last year are doing quite well in early 2013, the seeds I planted this year have been a bit more of a mixed bag so far. That's partly because I got off to a later-than-planned start.

I didn't have many seeds left from last year's snow peas and I forgot to buy new ones. Of the seeds I placed in the ground this spring, only one seems to be growing. It's coming up pretty nicely at this point, but the snow pea is in a race against time.

Once it gets too warm, it'll die, so there's no guarantee it'll produce any pea pods at all. Even if it does, I'm not sure a single plant will provide enough peas for anything larger than a small snack.

After trying, largely unsuccessfully, to grow red peppers on the roof for the past few years, I've decided to give up. I had some success with cherry tomatoes last year, so I'm trying to grow those again this year. And since snow peas thrive on the roof, I figured I'd try another legume with some edamame.

So far only two edamame plants are growing -- and they're surrounded by strawberries. It's a bit too early to say how they'll fare, but a few days ago I put a few more in the soil to hedge my bets.

Since I've had limited success growing seedlings indoors and transplanting them, I'm trying to just put everything directly into the planters to see what happens.

That's not a perfect solution for tomatoes -- which can usually start indoors as early as two months before they go outdoors. But rather than watch my plants die when they go outside, I figured I'd take my chances with directly seeding them.

Unfortunately I'm not 100 percent certain that what I'm looking at in this photo is a tomato plant. It could also be a weed. I get plenty of those in the garden. Right now I'm being careful about which weeds I pick, because I don't want to accidentally snip a tomato plant.

Leafy greans

One set of plants I started this spring which appears to be thriving is the leafy greens. Spinach still tends to be hit or miss, with some plants growing nice and big, but others looking anemic. But I bought a mix of red and green lettuce, and those plants are growing faster than weeds.

I didn't do a very good job of separating the plants, so some of the lettuce plants are probably growing too close to their neighbors. But I wanted to let them settle a bit before thinning the herd, because the first time I tried pulling up a seedling, I accidentally pulled up the roots of three of its neighbors.

I haven't decided whether it's time to give it another try -- or if I'll just let them duke it out among themselves while competing for natural resources.

Either way, it should be time to start making salads soon.

Shada: the Douglas Adams script for Doctor Who finally feels complete

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:50:00 +0000

Before writing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams was a writer and script editor for Doctor Who. But he's only credited with having written a few episodes -- one of them was never broadcast.

That's because production of Shada was interrupted by a BBC strike and parts of the episode were never filmed. In the 90s Shada was released on video with actor Tom Baker (the 4th doctor) filling in the blanks through narrative. But it didn't quite do justice to the story.

And as writer Gareth Roberts suggests, even the original script by Douglas Adams might not have really done justice to the story. It was hastily written and Adams later expressed relief that the episode was never completed.

But Adams was apparently fond of some of the ideas in the story, which were later recycled and used in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Roberts has retold the story in this novel by working from the original script but fleshing out many scenes and details, letting us get further inside the character's heads than would have been possible on screen, and working in a medium without a special effects budget.

He's also done a pretty decent job of borrowing Adams's style of combining humor and suspense in a rapid-paced adventure.

More than 30 years after Shada was originally written and not-quite-finished, the novelization of the story tells the tale in a way that's not only more satisfying than the incomplete video that was eventually released... but which is actually more enjoyable to read than many Doctor Who stories are to watch on screen.

For anyone who's spent time watching Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era, it's also hard not to picture Baker and co-stars Lalla Ward (Romana), and John Leeson (K-9) thanks to the pitch-perfect dialog in the story.

Interestingly, I just noticed that Shada has also recently been released on DVD, along with bonus materials including documentaries, behind-the-scenes videos, and a 2003 audio production of the story.

Doctor Who - Shada by Gareth Roberts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Casual Vacancy review: JK Rowling's follow-up to Harry Potter isn't magical, but it's a page-turner

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:11:00 +0000

J. K. Rowling has a way of creating fictional worlds that feel reel and filling them with characters that seem to take on a life of their own. The plot is almost beside the point... but by the time The Casual Vacancy comes to a close, it's hard not to feel something for the cast of mostly unlikable characters as the consequences of their actions (and inactions) unfold.

While the Harry Potter stories were told largely through the eyes of one character, in The Casual Vacancy, Rowling puts us into the heads of virtually every major character... and those heads aren't particularly pleasant places to be. The fictional town of Pagford is filled with self-centered residents who are invariably incapable of empathizing with those around them.

The narrative deals loosely with intrigue on the local council as folks debate whether or not the poor neighborhood that sprouted up adjacent to their little town should be the responsibility of Pagford or of the larger city over the hill.

But really The Casual Vacancy is an exercise in exploring how a bunch of self-centered individuals can have a profound impact on one another's lives without necessarily realizing it... so in that sense, I suppose it's a somewhat realistic, if very pessimistic tale.

It's also a demonstration that Rowling knows how to keep you turning the page to find out what happens next, even when there's no magic involved.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jury Duty

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:40:00 +0000

Monday - Jury Selection

The prosecutor had a story to tell: One night, two years ago, Joe S was at home when his friend John M came over for a little bit. Joe's wife Deanna S was at a family picnic with their 2 year old son. She called when she was pulling the car up to the house at around 10:30, asking Joe to come out and get the sleeping kid from the car and carry him up to the third floor bedroom.

So Joe get up, goes and gets the kid from the car, carries him upstairs, puts him in bed, and turns around -- and sees two guys in the room, pointing guns at him.

They start to ask him to give them all his money, and Joe recognizes one... despite the fact that the alleged burglars are wearing bandannas that cover their mouths and noses and hats and/or hoodies that cover the tops of their heads. "Tommy," he cries out. "Why are you doing this?"

According to the prosecutor, a struggle started. One of the burglars pulled out a baseball bat and hit Joe over the head several times. Hard.

Hearing the fighting, John runs up the stairs and tries to open the bedroom door, but the handle is stuck. A moment later the door opens, and out comes one of the assailants. John gets hit in the face. Fighting continues.

When police arrive on the scene later, they find blood all over the house, including blood in the living room where much of the fighting allegedly took place after the door opened, and a trail of blood running up the stairs.

There's no doubt that something happened that night. Joe was taken to the hospital by ambulance and had to have surgery on his brain. After the operation he was in a coma for a week, and had to remain in the hospital for another 4 weeks. He still has an enormous scar on the side of his head, and when he touches that side of his head it squishes like a soft piece of fruit.

But we weren't there to figure out if something happened. We were there to determine whether there was enough evidence that "Tommy" was one of the assailants to find him guilty of multiple criminal counts including burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, and illegal possession of a firearm.

I always kind of hope that I can get out of jury duty by writing on my questionnaire that I'm a "journalist," or a "blogger." The idea of sitting in judgment of others isn't one that appeals to me -- especially when the decision I make can put an innocent person in jail (or worse), or set a guilty person free.

But after reporting to jury duty Monday morning, I was in the first group of 50 people called to go into a courtroom and answer questions that would determine whether I'd sit on a jury. We were ushered into a smaller room where I got a bit of reading done while waiting for our court officer to show up, and eventually we were led into a courtroom where we were told that the case involved an alleged assault and robbery, and asked if we knew any of the people involved in the case.

After that, we were packed tightly into an even smaller room until we were called out one by one to answer questions put to us by the lawyers in the case, an assistant district attorney and a criminal defense lawyer.

When my turn came, I let both lawyers know that I recognized the defense lawyer, but didn't know him well. "I used to work as a news reporter in the city, and I'm pretty sure I've put a microphone in front of your face at some point," I said.

"I hope," he replied, "I didn't say anything to offend you. Do you remember what the case was?"

"Nothing like this... I'm pretty sure it was a corruption trial."

That was a safe bet, since I haven't covered a lot of trials in my time, and most of the cases I had followed involved political corruption -- or more accurately "honest services fraud," which is a fancy way of saying a politician deprived the citizens of their "honest services" as a public official, usually by taking bribes or performing political favors for some other inappropriate reason.

After this trial ended and we had a chance to speak with the attorneys, the defense counsel asked if I had ever remembered which trial he'd been involved in. I tried to make a point of not looking it up while I was serving, because jurors aren't supposed to bring outside influences to their duties, but I was pretty sure I remembered vaguely that he'd represented one of the defendants involved in a massive corruption case that rocked City Hall about 7 years ago.

Anyway, that clearly wasn't enough to get me dismissed from this jury. A moment later, after unsuccessfully trying to describe my wife's job (it's not just me, it takes her 20 minutes to answer the "what do you do?" question too!) I was led into a small room where the court officer told me that I was juror number 3, and I'd have to return after lunch.

The good news is that some nearby restaurants give jurors a 10 percent discount on lunch. The bad news is that Commonwealth Court jurors get just $9 per day for the first 3 days of service (and not much more than that for following days). So basically the court is only paying participants lunch money.

After lunch 12 jurors and 2 alternates were ushered into our seats where we heard the opening arguments. After the prosecutor outlined the story as he would present it, the defense attorney started to pick it apart.

His primary question at that point? How did the burglars magically appear in the house?

Good question, I figured... but I'm sure we'll hear more about it tomorrow when we start hearing from witnesses. We'd already been told that testimony could keep us in court through Thursday.

Tuesday - Testimony

Joe S

Joe S took the stand and told a story that sounded a lot like the one the prosecutor had outlined. The difference is that as jurors we're instructed that nothing the lawyers or even the judge says counts as evidence. We can use opening and closing arguments as suggested frameworks for piecing together the evidence. But only the testimony of witnesses and the physical evidence and documents submitted count.

So we listened to Joe answer the prosecutor's questions.

Joe had been at his grandmother's house down the street earlier in the day, but was at home that evening, when John called up and asked if he could stop by. A little while later he does, and the two sit and talk for a while. The TV isn't on, and they aren't doing anything else.

When Joe was later taken to the hospital, his urine sample showed that he had smoked marijuana that day and taken a percocet (for which he did not have a prescription . He said he took the painkiller at work, where he installs floors for a living. He'd gotten it from a coworker -- and when asked by an attorney and by the judge, he insisted he didn't remember which coworker. The judge muttered "I think it's perfectly clear what he's doing," which is to say he was lying to protect a friend.

If that's the only thing he lies about on the stand, I can ignore it though, I figured. Who wouldn't want to avoid incriminating a friend... and is this even relevant to the case anyway?

When he was questioned about the marijuana, he also tried to hedge a bit... but eventually admitted that he got it from his little brother.

It's interesting though, that when asked if he and John were doing drugs together, Joe replied that he and John never did that... even though they had known each other for years, and Joe had been arrested 4 or 5 times for possession and John had been busted for dealing (percocet, among other things).

So Joe and John are talking and Deanna calls. They both go outside and while Joe takes the baby seat (and baby) from the car and carries it upstairs, John apparently hangs outside with Deanna to smoke a cigarette.

Joe puts the child down, turns around, sees two masked men with guns, and after they start asking him for money, he starts shouting "Tommy, Tommy I know you!"

They start struggling, he's hit in the head with a bat. A moment later the door opens, and one of the assailants is putting a handcuff around John at the top of the stairs, and beating him. Joe and his assailant continue struggling, fall down the stairs, wrestle for a while, and eventually Joe breaks away and runs out the door and waits for the ambulance after shouting "call 911!"

He claims the burglars ran out the back door of the house, which was unlocked. The front door, on the other hand, he says was locked. He had let John in when he came, and had locked the door behind him. In order to run out through the front door, Joe says he had to unlock it again himself.

At no point, he says, did he see his wife (which already has me wondering how he knew he was waiting for an ambulance.

Joe says he was able to recognize Tommy because they've known each other for ages... although they haven't spoken in about a year. The last time they saw each other, one had sold the other an Xbox, suggesting they had been on reasonably good terms.

And looking over at the defendant, Tommy does look like he'd be easy to recognize. We didn't hear his voice, so we don't know how distinctive that is. But he had dark, hollow eyes, a very thin nose... if this was someone you knew well, it's reasonable to think you might be able to recognize him even if the only thing you could see were his eyes.

But it turns out there's more to the story. Joe hadn't just been busted for possession a few times. He'd also been asked by a local detective to act as a confidential informant, and to assist in setting up some drug buys to bust other dealers.

Tommy had done the same thing... with the same officer. What Joe says he didn't know was that Tommy had set up one of those buys with John M, who was arrested and later sentenced to 13 - 21 months in prison.

John didn't go to jail until several months after the incident we were there to hear about. But if Joe and John knew that Tommy was responsible for John's arrest... that's a pretty good reason to finger him for a crime, right?

Of course, that alone doesn't really tell us anything. At this point all we know is that Joe lied to cover up where he got some percocet from, that he knew Tommy, and that's it's plausible he knew that Tommy had something to do with another friend's arrest.

But something else interesting happened. The only defendant on trial was Tommy. Joe, John, and Deanna had told police officers that there were two people in the house -- but that they only recognized one.

Tuesday, Joe tried to name that unidentified person. While referring to him at one point in his narrative, he casually called him Zachary H. Both attorneys jumped a little bit at that.

According to Joe, he didn't know Zachary at the time, and still doesn't know him -- but he looked him up on Facebook and recognized him by his tattoos. He now seems quite certain that Zach is the second man.

Asked why he never told this to the police, Joe says he wants to deal with one thing at a time.

Things are starting to smell a little fishy.

John M

A skinny guy walks out and takes the stand. He's known Tommy and Joe for years, because they all grew up in the neighborhood. His little sister went to school with Tommy, and he figures he's known hi for around 10 years.

John admits that he's bought and sold drugs -- and even that he and Tommy have sold each other drugs in the past.

He clearly does know that Tommy is the informant that set up the buy that got him busted and landed John in prison. He's still on parole.

You must not be too happy, he was asked. "Sure I'm happy, I'm out of prison now."

But at the time? No, he wasn't happy.

"Were you mad at Tommy?"

"Not so much mad as hurt."

His friend betrayed him. No, he wasn't happy about that.

OK, well what about the night in question? Here's John's story:

He was out with his girlfriend at a party, and he called up Joe to see if he could stop by and hang out for a bit. Sure, Joe said. Come on by.

So John drives over... and leaves his girlfriend in the car.

This is apparently the first time both the defense and prosecution are hearing that the girlfriend was "within a million miles" of the house on that night.

But John insists he left her in the car because she'd had a bit much to drink, and she was feeling sick and throwing up -- and because his friends didn't really like her very much. They've since broken up, by the way.

So he leaves her in the car and goes right into the house. He and Joe have known each other for years, and he's comfortable in the house. So comfortable, in fact, that he goes in sometimes even if nobody's home -- which is what he did in this case.

John says the door was open, so he went in. He walked around and didn't see Joe anywhere, so he was getting ready to go back outside. But as he walked out the front door he saw John coming down the street from his little brother's house.

Apparently Joe's little brother (the one that sold him marijuana) lives in the same house as Joe's grandmother. That's where Joe was coming from.

So he comes back, they go in the house, and hang out for a while.

Joe's phone rings and it's Deanna, who John says was Joe's girlfriend. John thought she said she had groceries and needed help taking them out of the car, so he goes outside to help. When he sees that he was mistaken, he stays outside for a few moments and takes a few drags off Deanna's cigarette while Joe takes their child up to the bedroom.

John goes back into the house a few minutes later, hears something upstairs and runs up. He tries the door, but it's locked. A moment later the door opens and someone comes out and points a gun at him.

Honestly, at this point I'm starting to forget some of the details -- so I can't remember if Joe claimed he was looking at a gun held by Tommy or by the formerly-unnamed-assailant that Joe is now calling Zach.

What I do know is that John claims the following things happened. He was hit in the face with the side of a gun. His nose was broken. Someone tried to put handcuffs on him, but only managed to get one wrist into the cuffs. He was led to the bathroom and left in there for a few minutes with the door unlocked, but he didn't try to run.

Deanna S

Deanna says she was out at a picnic, dropped off a few family members, and then called John to come get their child.

She stood outside sharing her cigarette with John, because she doesn't smoke in the house. When John went back into the house she called her mom or her mom called her... I forget, but either way she had her phone in the hand when she walked in the house.

But she heard some shouting. At first she thought maybe the TV was on, but she told her mom she would have to call her back and walked into the house only to see her husband and an assailant fighting on the couch. Her husband had the guy in a headlock... they struggled for a while.

Joe shouted to call 911 and she started to -- but then someone was pointing a gun at her and telling her to put down the phone, which she did.

She plead with the attacker to let her just make sure their child is OK, and at first he resisted, but at some point (again, I'm forgetting some details), she says Joe ran out the front door.

Deanna apparently forced her way into the kid's room, scooped up her child, went out the window onto the rooftop, and walked over to the neighbor's roof (I don't think this is as crazy or death-defying as it sounds -- the house was connected to the neighbor's, as many Philadelphia homes are, and climbing one roof to the next often about as difficult as putting one foot in front of the other), and saw the two people with masks and guns run out the back door and away.

From the roof she called for help (her phone was still inside), and when no help came, she climbed down onto the porch.

This all happened, by the way, while she was holding a two-year old child, and while she was 8-months pregnant with a second child.

Here's the funny thing though - When police questioned Deanna about the incident two years ago -- on the very same night it happened, she said that the person she saw struggling with her husband on the couch was Tommy, and that he had hit her husband with a bat 3 or 4 times.

This week on the stand, she said that the person on the couch was the unnamed suspect (who Joe calls Zach), while Tommy was at the top of the stairs trying to put a handcuff on John.

This week's testimony is consistent with what her husband testified... but doesn't match with what she said on the night of the incident when she was talking to police after Joe had been taken to the hospital, and before she could go visit him.

When the prosecutor heard Deanna's testimony, he effectively cross-examined her before the defense attorney had the chance to point out the inconsistency.

Incidentally, I forget which of the witnesses said this, but I feel like at least two of these three witnesses said the ambulance arrived before the police.

Cops

We hear testimony from two members of the police department: One of the first called to the scene that night (he said they arrived before the ambulance), and the detective assigned to the case for further investigation.

They came to the scene, saw blood throughout the house, and got the vital details from Joe, John, and Deanna that night -- including the fact that all three had identified Tommy. No weapons were found, and while one officer tried to take prints on one of the handcuffs, no fingerprints were successfully obtained.

One other witness was interviewed. A neighbor across the street was out watering his plants (at around 11:30 at night for some reason), and he says he saw two guys running in and out of the house.

Then he saw Deanna walk around the corner with the baby and two or three other people, go into the house, and shout "where the F is he?!"

This other witness wasn't called by either the defense of the prosecution.

The defense attorney had one more important question for the police officers: had anyone they'd interviewed told them the suspects were wearing gloves?

No, they hadn't been told that.

Why was this important? Because Tommy has large tattoos on both hands -- something that's pretty distinctive, and which you'd think someone would point out if they were trying to explain how they recognized someone. Instead, Joe, John, and Deanna had all said they'd recognized him by his eyes or his voice... not his hands.

Watching the police officers testify is also interesting. On the one hand, how do we expect anybody to remember in great detail something that happened 2 years ago? On the other hand, it's probably a lot easier for the people directly involved in a home invasion to remember than for police officers that are just spending another day on the job.

So they tend to review their notes before coming into court and sometimes refer to them during testimony -- which makes it clear that they may remember a few details, but for the most part they're not remembering what happened. They're trusting that if there was anything important they would have written it down at the time.

Thomas T Junior

The defense called a single witness: Tommy's father.

His testimony was brief, and covered two points:

1. Tommy came home toward the end of the Flyers hockey game that evening... which was probably at about the time that this crime was alleged to have happened. So he was in the house when he was supposed to be robbing another house.

2. The defense attorney held up Tommy's hands, which are covered in tattoos and asked Tommy's father how long he'd had them. At least 5 or 6 years -- which means he had the tattoos on the night in question.

The prosecutor also tried to ask Thomas T Senior whether he'd been approached in the hallway of the courtroom the previous day by a bald guy asking his name -- but Tommy's father said no.

Alibi Witness

Apparently the point of that last question was to suggest that he was hiding something... because the bald guy turns out to be a police detective assigned to the district attorney's office.

He had been trying to interview the alibi witness -- and had been asked to do it recently. The previous week he'd sent a letter, but unable to get in touch with Tommy's father, he had come to the court building to look for him.

This all seemed like an odd line of inquiry... and left the jurors wondering why the witness hadn't been interviewed some other time in the two years between the incident and the start of the trial.

Closing Arguments

People changed their stories. The guy who was fingered also happened to be the guy who had helped send John to jail. The neighbor tells a completely different story than the three people who were supposed to be in the house. It's not particularly clear how we went from having no burglars in the house to having 2.

And why didn't anyone point out the guy's hands? It seems like that should be the first thing you'd point out.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor tried to reiterate the obvious: It's clear something happened in that house that night.

And that's true. Joe probably didn't bash in his own skull with a baseball bat, and John probably didn't break his own nose.

But we had to decide if it was likely beyond a reasonable doubt that these three people were telling the truth when they said Tommy and a second person came into the house, tried to rob them, beat up Joe and John, and ran out through the back door -- leaving no evidence but eyewitness testimony.

Wednesday - Verdict

Going back to court Wednesday morning, I figured it could honestly go either way. The witness testimony seemed pretty unreliable, but there were three witnesses saying one thing, and another witness saying, "no, he was home with me."

So when the foreman asked for a sample ballot to start things off, I wasn't shocked to see that there were 9 pieces of paper marked not guilty and 3 guilty. Actually, I was a little surprised that there weren't more that said guilty -- but we weren't there to prove the defendant did it. We were there to decide whether the police and prosecutor had presented enough evidence that he did.

And inconsistent eyewitness testimony -- some of it implausible, and some of it from someone with a clear grudge against the defendant... yeah, that's tough to swallow.

As we started to discuss the case, it became clear that at least one juror was actually just a little confused by the question. I had suggested that we start off just thinking about a "conspiracy" charge. Conspiracy to commit certain crimes is a crime itself in Pennsylvania, and it basically involves agreeing with at least one other person to commit a crime such as assault or robbery.

In this case, I reasoned, if we all agreed that Tommy was at least in the house, then he must be part of the conspiracy -- and then we could figure out if he was the guy with a baseball bat, or just one of the guys with a gun (which wasn't ever fired).

Conversely, if he wasn't even in the house, then he couldn't be guilty of any of the crimes, and so jurors could just write down "not guilty," which is what 9 people did. A 10th person got a little mixed up about "conspiracy," and was thinking about when Tommy had gone undercover with a police officer to bust John... but once we discussed it, she changed her mind -- as did another juror.

The 12th juror had a hard time figuring out when there would have been time for Joe, John, and Deanna to all agree that whatever it was that happened in the house... they should blame it on Tommy.

That was actually a pretty good question -- if you believed the timeline of events that had been presented to us. Joe and John are hanging out. Deana comes home. Suddenly there are burglars in the house and all hell breaks loose... moments after the incident ends police and/or an ambulance shows up (the cops said they arrived first, but most of the witnesses said the ambulance came first.

That wouldn't give the witnesses a lot of time to gather together and say "OK, someone just tried to rob us. We don't know who those guys were, but since we've got a grudge against Tommy, let's say it was him."

But there were so many inconsistencies in the stories that it's not clear that any of those things actually happened. Clearly something happened in the house that night that led to John's broken nose and left Joe in need of surgery and with a horrible scar on the side of his head.

Given how many problems there were with the witness testimony though, it's possible that someone else was responsible for the crimes... it's possible there was no robbery at all. It's possible Joe and John might have been fighting among themselves. Lots of things are possible -- and lots of those things make as much sense as the story the prosecutor tried to shape out of the testimony of the three witnesses.

We took a second vote and we all generally agreed that there wasn't strong enough evidence that Tommy was even at the scene to find him guilty of the laundry list of crimes of which he was accused.

The whole process took maybe 10-15 minutes, but we kept talking for a while about the things that had bugged us during the trial. After listening to arguments and testimony on Monday and Tuesday and being told not to talk to anyone about it, we were all relieved to finally have someone to discuss the case with.

We also wanted lunch. Before the judge had instructed us on the law as it should be applied to this case, a court officer had ordered pizza for our lunch. But we finished deliberations by 11:30, and the pizza wasn't supposed to arrive until 12:30.

The officer was kind enough to try to get it delivered sooner, and after we were sent back to the courtroom to deliver the verdict, the judge thanked us for our service and told us we were dismissed from duty... but that we had to stick around to eat the pizza, because court staff couldn't eat it for us.

A few folks left early anyway to get back to work, but since I'd insisted on getting a few slices of tomato pie, I figured the least I could do is stick around and eat them.

When the foreperson started to read the verdict, Tommy stood up with his lawyer and stood stone-faced, showing no emotion. He hadn't really let on what he was thinking at all during the course of the trial. But as he heard the "not guilty" after "not guilty, he started to cry in relief.

We were never told how much prison time he was facing, but based on the number and severity of the charges against him, I'm guessing he could have spent a very, very long time locked away if the verdict had come back differently.

He knew the case against him was weak. That's why he chose to go to trial and chose a jury trial. His lawyer knew the case was weak, which is probably why he advised it. And afterward, we learned that the prosecutor also knew the case was weak.

The foreperson had served on a murder trial 18 years earlier, and knew that if we asked, the lawyers might come back and talk to us, answering questions we might have.

"People remember things differently," the prosecutor said, "so it's rare that you get a trial where there's not some inconsistency in witness testimony."

Then his tone changed and it became clear that he had known all along he was facing an uphill battle as he said "in this case I had to deal with a pile of conflicting evidence."

One juror asked if there was a number we could call to get more information about the case to find out what happens next... and he seemed a little surprised to hear that nothing happens next. Now that we had found the defendant not guilty, everything stops.

We might never actually know what happened in that house that night. It's possible that Tommy did have something to do with it, but there wasn't enough evidence to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, there wasn't any evidence, aside from testimony from witnesses who didn't agree with one another, and in some cases didn't agree with themselves.

I think most of us left feeling pretty good about the decision we'd reached. The pizza wasn't bad either.

Book review: The Day The World Discovered the Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:31:00 +0000

The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus by Mark Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the early 18th century astronomer Edmond Halley determined that the Transit of Venus represented the best opportunity to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun... and from there the size of the entire known solar system.

There was just one problem. Venus crosses the Sun (as seen from the Earth) only twice every 125 years or so. Halley made his proposal in 1716, but the next Transit wouldn't be until 1761.

The Day the World Discovered the Sun traces the adventures of several teams of astronomers that fanned out across the globe to track the next two Transits in 1761 and 1769 in order to better understand our place in the Universe... quite literally.

But this was at a time when traveling across the oceans was a time-consuming, life-threatening endeavor at the best of times. The heroes of this story had to contend with everything from disease to politics to bad weather... which is a lot more dangerous than it sounds when you're stuck out at sea or trudging through Siberia. It also has a way of obstructing your view of the sky.

Anderson's book plays out like an adventure story with bits of math and science thrown in for good measure. But it's also a bit of a history lesson, describing the world as it stood in the mid and late 18th century regarding travel, medicine, science, and more.

But it's not a textbook. It's a light read about the adventures of several teams of explorers... and the results of their explorations. You just happen to learn a bit about astronomy, geography, and the discovery of New Zealand, Australia, and kangaroos along the way.

Pandora's Seed Book review: It all started going horribly wrong about 10,000 years ago

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization by T. Spencer Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Back in the dark ages I studied communication in college, but I also minored in anthropology. I was fascinated by the one class in archaeology I took, and even subscribed to Archaeology Magazine briefly before I realized that I never get around to reading magazines.

It turns out I didn't really have a knack for piecing together the story of human history based on the items our predecessors left behind though. Our professor would draw a picture of a dwelling on a whiteboard, pointing out different features. This is where bedding was found. This is where shards of pottery were uncovered. Remnants of food were dug up here. That sort of thing.

When he asked the class to identify what functions different areas served, I invariably thought the toilet was the kitchen, and vice versa.

Although I didn't pursue a career as an archaeologist, it's always been interesting to watch the field progress as researchers get better and better at uncovering the past.

Archaeologist Spencer Wells goes an extra step in Pandora's Seed goes a step further and tries to figure out what our past tells us about our present and future. Over the past few decades archaeologists have added tools to their arsenals that help tell the story in new ways.

When I was in college, most archaeological research started at dig sites. Now a lot of it starts in a lab where scientists can compare DNA of human populations in different parts of the globe to figure out how far back in time you have to go to find common ancestors.

What scientists have found in the dirt and in our bones tells us that the world changed pretty dramatically starting about 10,000 years ago. That's when humans started domesticating plants and animals for food. This didn't just change our diets. It led to a population boom, the birth of cities, governments, laws, and much more.

It also led to changes in our genetic makeup. For instance, the ability to digest milk from cows and goats became advantageous, so humans with a genetic mutation that let them do this were more likely to survive. It's likely that most of our ancestors were lactose intolerant.

But here's the strange thing: Not every change actually made humans healthier. The advent of agriculture made it possible for humans to shape the land to meet their needs instead of living or dying based on the amount of food they could find. But the average lifespan of a human didn't change much once we started planting food in the ground, and the average height of humans actually declined.

Things only really started to turn around in the 20th century, and it's not because we started eating organic food or anything. Medicine just got better.

In the early chapters of Pandora's Seed, Wells traces some interesting lines between the foods we started cultivating and health problems such as obesity and diabetes. It's pretty easy to see direct correlations... although solutions are a little trickier to come by.

Later in the book he touches on issues such as mental illness, genetic manipulation and global warming... things that are a bit trickier to trace back to the roots of our agricultural society. I get the feeling that in order to flesh out the book, Wells just started writing about things that were on his mind rather than topics he could tie to a central thesis.

But Wells does have a way with words and he does a pretty good job of explaining complex scientific issues so that they can be understood by non-scientists. While Pandora's Seed feels a bit scattered at times, it presents some interesting ideas in an easy-to-read format.

2030 book review: The future looks a lot like today, but older

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:10:00 +0000

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the fourth book I've read recently which depicts a world which seems entirely plausible when you look at today's trends in society and technology.

That means you don't get flying cars, jetpacks, or colonization of Mars. Instead, in Halting State and Rule 34 you get the evolution of the internet to encompass virtual reality and 3D printers. In The Windup Girl you have climate change, energy collapse, and bio-engineering. And in 2030, you get a piece of future history about an America with an aging population and declining economy -- much like the one we see today.

Brooks tells several interconnected stories in 2030. We meet the first Jewish president of the United States, an 80 year old retiree, the man who cured cancer, a 19 year old girl struggling to pay her father's medical bills, and a Chinese entrepreneur itching to reform America's healthcare system.

Through their tales, Brooks tells the story of an America where young people see little future for themselves as the government's resources are used disproportionately to support elder citizens... who keep getting older and older due to advances in medical science.

Meanwhile, the nation continues to crawl further and further into debt so that when a natural disaster hits that makes Hurricane Katrina look tame, there aren't many options available.

This is the first novel from filmmaker and actor Albert Brooks. It's not particularly funny, but despite the heavy subject matter it's not all that dark either. It doesn't paint a pretty picture of the future, but it's not exactly pessimistic either... just realistic.

It's a fast-paced, quick read that feels like it ends a little too soon. There's not really much of a resolution. Some parts of the plot are tied up, others left to go... but that's how history works. Maybe Brooks will be back one day with 2031, or 2050... or maybe not. As a first novel it holds up pretty well. But that's not surprising from someone who's been telling complex, human stories for as long as Brooks has.

How the garlic grows (or doesn't)

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:36:00 +0000

Garlic is an interesting vegetable. In some ways it's incredibly easy to grow. Just grab a clove of the stuff you get at a supermarket or a farmers market, stick it in the ground, and see what happens. You may or may not want to peel away the papery covering first. You'll probably want to dig a whole a little deeper than the length of the garlic clove itself. And the pointy end should be pointed up.

In a few days, you'll start to see some greenery, and after a few weeks it will look something like this:

Then the waiting begins. Apparently it's best to plant garlic in the fall and harvest it the next spring or in early summer. This is my first year growing garlic, so I tried planting it in early spring, and the parts of the plant above ground looked pretty healthy.

I tried a mix of hard-neck and soft-neck garlic (once I realized that the soft-neck stuff I'd planted wouldn't give me garlic scapes I added some hard-neck cloves, because I love garlic scapes).

It's officially time to dig up the garlic when a couple of the lower leaves turn brown... but that's under ideal conditions. Things might be a little different in a rooftop garden with little shade and a lot of heat.

There wasn't much time between the first leaves dying and most of the plant dying for many of my garlic plants. Once I realized there wasn't really enough green stuff above ground to foster any serious growth, I went and dug up all the garlic I could find today.

It looks like a pretty nice haul... until you realize how small those dishes are. Here's what it looks like in the palm of my hand.

I think that's more garlic than I started with, but not much. I'll try again this fall and see if letting the plants hang out through a winter makes them hardier in the spring and provides a larger yield.

What I did harvest smells wonderful, and once it's done drying out, I'm sure it'll taste great. But I think I might need to space the garlic out further and figure out the right mix of shade and sunshine next time.

Embassytown book review

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Embassytown is told as a sort of memoir of a woman who grew up in a small colony on the edge of nowhere. She lives in a small human-populated area of a city formed by aliens she (and most humans) know little about. Like many children that grow up in small towns, she dreams of getting out -- and eventually does leave to travel the universe.

But things get really interesting upon her return when she discovers how much she never really know about the place of her birth... and reacts to a threat that could destroy it all.

Embassytown is a story about language, meaning, culture, exploration, and understanding. That's a lot to pack into a few hundred pages, but the book is divided into different sections so that the first part of the book almost feels like a different story than that which follows.

It also takes a while to understand what the heck is going on at all, because Miéville starts using language and slang of the future right out of the gate without giving the reader any sort of guide to help them make sense of unfamiliar words.

It's a bit disorienting, but I find that it makes the story more engaging than the alternative - page after page of exposition. Miéville's use of language is critical to the story, but since he doesn't take time to explain every last detail, he can focus on the plot while some other novelists flesh out a rather thin story with large passages explaining why the details are important.

There are also passages near the middle of the story that feel a bit slow, as if you really are reading a diary and the editor didn't bother to cull the boring bits to make the narrative stronger. I can't imaging getting through Embassytown in one sitting. I read it over the course of a week -- and in some ways I'm glad I did, because the story takes place over an extended period of time, so letting a day or two pass between putting the book down and picking it up again made it feel like time really had passed between one page and the next.

But overall, Miéville creates an intriguing narrative set in the far future which asks intelligent questions about how meaning is conveyed through language -- something that's important in any time period.

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Tomatoes, green beans, and basil

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:05:00 +0000

It's been hot on the east coast. Like really, really hot. A week or two ago I started to see blossoms on my cherry tomato plants. Then I saw the flowers fall off leaving nothing in their wake.

Blossom drop is apparently associated with a few different things, including excessive heat or overwatering. I'm pretty sure the problem was heat rather than water -- but it's been in the 90s most of this week too, yet I'm finally starting to see some tiny green tomatoes forming.

The green beans in my rooftop container garden were also dropping flowers like nobody's business last week, but this week the first beans started to show up.

These little guys are always intriguing -- they start off as short, thin green stalks. If you're lucky they keep growing longer and thicker until they look like the beans you find at farmer's markets or grocery stores. If you're not, they stay kind of stunted.

Having gotten a pretty small crop of green beans in 2011, I decided to plant a larger number of seeds this year, and I'm planning on doing some succession seeding and adding another round of seeds soon. Green beans grow pretty quickly so I'm hoping to have time for at least 2-4 different rounds of plants this summer.

Meanwhile, after growing the same basil plant in a small planter in my office window for the past three years, I decided to let some of its flowers bloom instead of cutting them off. After the flowers dry up, they leave behind seeds.

I didn't have much luck growing these seeds indoors -- or even scattering them in the rooftop garden. So I decided to take a page out of nature's book and just bury a few twigs snapped off the plant with their dried up seed pods intact.

The result has been pretty great -- basil is growing in the rooftop containers like nobody's business. I'm a little concerned there may be too many plants growing in close proximity and competing for the same resources. But after they grow a little higher I might think about pruning out some of the smaller plants... and cooking them up with some pasta for dinner.

Basil requires hot weather to thrive, so I don't expect these plants to survive the winter. The plan is either to take whatever's left at the end of the growing season and turn it into pesto or maybe dig up some and put it into a planter to bring indoors before the weather gets too cold. The plant in my windowsill isn't looking as happy as it was a year or two ago.

The Long Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:05:00 +0000

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The basic conceit behind The Long Earth is simple: There are parallel universes and one day human beings discover they can "step" from one to the next quite easily.

But while most parallel universe stories would use this as a stepping stone to tell about the conflict between our world and one where the Axis powers won World War II, or where the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs never struck the earth, The Long Earth takes a different approach: humans don't seem to have evolved on most of the other earths.

Instead, Pratchett and Baxter basically have two stories to tell: one about a very small team of adventurers that start exploring the Long Earth, and one about the impact the discovery has on the world as we know it.

Interspersed with the tale of exploration are snippets looking at the social and economic impacts of the fact that there's now a nearly infinite amount of land available for humans to populate -- and what it means when some people just pick up and leave their world behind in search of a better one.

Like any story that Terry Pratchett has been involved in writing, The Long Earth has a touch of humor to it, but it also poses some interesting philosophical questions and feels at times more like a Heinlein or Asimov novel than a Discworld story -- which makes sense, because it's *not* a Discworld story. If that's what you're expecting, you'll probably be disappointed.

You'll also probably be disappointed if you like your stories wrapped up in a bow with everything explained at the end. There are a lot of questions asked in this story that are never answered -- and while it's possible that's just to leave open room for a sequel, I kind of like the open-ended nature of the world(s) and characters created in this story and don't see the need for a second volume.

There are times when the story seems to ramble a bit, and some of the characters we're introduced to only seem to play a role for a moment or two and then fade into the background, wondering if they even added enough color to the story to merit the few seconds it takes to read about them. But overall I found The Long Earth to be a quick, enjoyable read as a classic science fiction tale set in the near future.

The Long Earth will be available on June 19th, 2012.

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Turn of the season: Out with the snow peas, in with the beans

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:23:00 +0000

It's late May and the temperatures have been unseasonably warm in Philadelphia for this time of year. There's also been a lot of rain. In the rooftop garden that's meant the snow peas came in a little earlier this year than last, and the plants offered up a lot of peas.

But over the past few days I've been finding fewer pods to pick... and when I glance at the bottom leaves of the plants, I think I can see why. The hot weather is getting to the green guys... and turning them brown.

I'm hopeful that I'll be able to continue picking at least a few snow peas each day for the next few weeks, but these plants' days are numbered.

Fortunately I'm not putting all my legumes in one basket.

Last week I dropped a few beans into the planters that are currently home to the snow peas, and yesterday they started to pop their heads through the soil.

When I tried growing green beans in the garden last summer I didn't end up getting a very large yield -- but last summer was extraordinarily hot and dry. I'm hoping to do better this year.

Anyway, my goal is to let these guys grow up among the dying peas and cut away the pea plants as needed to make room for beans as they start to get big.

I'll also be putting the pepper and tomato plants that have been growing in my windowsill outside soon. They're not as large as I'd like them to be yet, but I don't want to wait too long to get them into larger planters and more direct sunlight.

Today I started hardening them off by putting the peppers and tomatoes up on the rooftop in the hot sun for about an hour. When I brought them back inside their leaves had wilted a bit from the sun and wind, but a little water and time back in the windowsill was all it took for everyone to perk up again.

Garbology

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:48:00 +0000

America is full of junk. Like, a lot of junk. Like we generate more trash per capita than any other nation in the world... an average of 102 tons per person over the course of a lifetime.

When Edward Humes started out to write a book about America's trash legacy he thought the number was closer to 64 tons -- but while researching the book he found that the real number was much, much higher. In fact, the average person throws out close to 7 pounds of garbage each day.

Garbology takes a close look at how (and why) we throw so much away, what alternatives exist, and what it all means.

Surprisingly, while Humes takes what you would think would be the non-controversial position that "waste is bad," he points out that there's actually plenty of space in the US to bury all the trash we generate... over the next thousand years.

All we need to do is find neighborhoods that want to put up with enormous landfills. Good luck with that.

Another surprising fact? Almost nothing that goes into modern sanitary landfills decomposes. You can read newspapers that were thrown away 50 years ago, and identify food items that were dumped in more than a decade ago.

Landfills essentially preserve items indefinitely by smushing everything together and kind of mummifying the remains of plastic bags, food scraps, and even toxic materials such as battery acid and half-full paint cans.

The good news is that toxic chemicals don't leach out of landfills at nearly the rate that was once expected. The bad news is that they're still in there and it means problems associated with improper disposal of hazardous materials is just a long-term problem now instead of a short term one.

In the first half of Garbology, Humes identifies and describes the problems that lead to our 102 ton per person trash legacy, and in the second half he looks at partial solutions including trash-to-energy facilities that burn trash to create electricity (they're cleaner than they used to be, but wildly unpopular in the US), and ways individuals can reduce their own footprints.

Like other Humes books I've read, Garbology is a very readable volume, thanks to the author's method of combining statistics and facts with anecdotes and profiles of individuals including one of the first "garbologists" who applied archaeological research techniques to modern-day garbage and a family that lives a nearly zero-waste lifestyle by rejecting virtually every product that comes in a package, among other things.

On the one hand, Garbology is the kind of book that can make you feel very guilty about your life choices... on the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

While I doubt I'll be going zero-waste anytime soon, I've already decided to make a few changes. For years I've taken reusable shopping bags on trips to the grocery store or farmers market. But the bulk foods area at Whole Foods has always been my weak spot -- because I've found myself grabbing thin plastic bags and filling them up with rice, oatmeal, quinoa, and other grains on nearly every trip.

These bags are meant to be used once for the few minutes it takes to get the food home, but they'll survive in landfills for thousands of years.

So this week I ordered a half dozen reusable bulk food/produce bags.

I also learned recently that Whole Foods (and some other grocery stores) will let you fill up your own mason jars at the store. You just need to visit the customer service area first to find out the weight of your empty jars so you can have that weight subtracted when you check out. This feels a little more stressful to me than using the reusable nylon bags, which are so light that you don't really need to bother weighing them at all. But I might work my way up to the mason jar solution in the future.

It was a throwaway example in the book, but Humes also pointed out that potato chip bags will last for thousands of years in landfills. The same is probably true of candy bar wrappers, pretzel bags, and thousands of other items we throw away -- but that one little example inspired me to do something I've been meaning to do ever since I figured out how easy it is to make french fries at home by slicing whole potatoes and baking them in a little oil.

I picked up a cheap mandolin slicer for $14.99 and started making my own potato chips from scratch. All you have to do is take thinly sliced pieces of potato, dip both sides in oil, arrange them on a baking sheet, and cook at about 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

The resulting chips taste better than almost anything I've ever fished out of a bag, there's less waste associated, and most of the potatoes in our house didn't travel very far to get here. We pick them up from the local farmers market when they're in season.

And there's no bag to throw away.

Reducing plastic bags and potato chip bags won't save the world from trash. But if everyone thought a little more about the packaging that comes with the products they bought maybe there wouldn't be so many items (like plastic shopping bags) manufactured to be used just once and then thrown away.

Harvesting peas

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:53:00 +0000

It's official. I'm not going to be buying snow peas from the farmers market again this spring. Last weekend I was a bit annoyed to notice that one of my favorite farm stands had boxes and boxes of snow peas to sell while I only had two pods growing in my garden.

A few days and a fair amount of rain apparently makes a big difference. Peas are popping up all over the place, and I suspect that I'll be able to harvest enough to throw in some stir fry every two or three days for at least the next month or so.

Of course, that's assuming two things:

I can keep myself from eating fresh-picked peas as snacks before they make it to the kitchen.
I can find space in the planters for the other veggies I want to put outside in the next few weeks.

Nearly every planter of a reasonable size on our roof is now overflowing with snow pea plants. But if I want to be able to grow green beans, peppers, and tomatoes this summer I'm going to need to put them out soon.

The beans I'll just plant directly in the soil near the snow peas so that by the time the peas start to die off from the heat the beans should be starting to take their place -- but they still need enough space to get some sunlight while they get started.

The peppers and tomatoes are going to need a little more space... assuming the little guys growing in my windowsill get big and strong enough to brave the wild rooftop of south Philly soon.

The snow peas arrive

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Snow peas grow fast. It was just over a month ago that tiny stalks and little leaves started to shoot up. Now some of the plants are nearly three feet tall. A few days ago I spotted the first flowers, and today the first two pea pods arrived.

I'm growing snow peas in four containers, some more densely packed than others. Snow peas were by far my most successful crop in the rooftop container garden last year, so I decide to plant seeds without abandon this year.

I expect a big harvest very soon and hopefully for weeks to come.

Toward the end of May I'll cut back a few of the plants to make room for peppers and tomatoes, and I suspect prolonged warm weather will start to kill off the snow peas by June anyway.

Because snow peas grow best in cool weather I'll plant some more in August for a September/October crop. I don't actually have any seeds left because I made the mistake of pre-sprouting every last snow pea seed I had before planting this spring. But I'll try my hand at seed saving by leaving at least a few pods to wither and die on the vine so I have some new seeds to plant in the fall.

I tried saving seeds last year but made the mistake of putting them in an air-tight jar before they had fully dried out. It turns out if you're ever looking for a way to grow mold inside a jar, this turns out to be a very good method.

The snow peas are under a mild attack by little leaf-sucking bugs which I think are a type of aphid. I occasionally spray them off with soapy water, but for the most part there are far more leaves than their are aphids so I'm not that worried about them right now.

The fungus gnats are still a problem. I've tried watering the soil repeatedly with a mix of water and BT, but that hasn't had much effect. I've also placed yellow sticky strips in the planters and watched as dozens (maybe hundreds) of gnats have jumped to their sticky doom.

But there are plenty more gnats to take their place.

For my next gnat control attempt I'm going to take a suggestion from organic gardening expert (and You Bet Your Garden host) Mike McGrath. He says that placing cat grass near the gnat habitat will encourage that gnats to dig in and leave the other plants alone. I'm sprouting some cat grass seeds right now and hopefully I'll be able to put them outside in a week or two.

In other news, the spinach appears to be enjoying the weather immensely. I suspect it will get too warm to continue growing spinach soon and the plants will send up shoots and start flowering. In the meantime, it's nice to have a ready source of fresh spinach for meals once or twice a week on the rooftop.

Spinach... it's what's for lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Spinach wasn't exactly a bumper crop in my 2011 rooftop garden. I managed to harvest a few tiny leaves by the time the weather started getting warm and killing off my plants.

2012 is turning out to be a much better year. I'd like to take credit for the difference -- but I think more consistently warm (but not hot) weather has played a big role. I also switched from Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach seeds to America.

Anyway, I have several very healthy plants going right now and I picked some spinach to make a spinach-and-tempeh sandwich for lunch yesterday, and it was delicious.

I've still got a fungus gnat infestation to deal with. I've been watering the planters with water that has BT mixed in -- but it hasn't had much of an impact. That might be because the BT isn't dissolving in the water as much as I thought it would -- but today I tried crumbling the mosquito dunk before adding it to a bucket of water, so I'm hoping that will work better than just dropping a chunk in a bucket and waiting.

The snow peas have been growing like crazy and I suspect they'll start blooming within a few weeks.

While the plants that started outdoors are strong and healthy with thick stems and large leaves, one of the plants that started their lives in tiny pots in the windowsill died shortly after I put it outside. The other is alive, but hardly thriving.

Our windows might just not get enough light to do any serious seed starting indoors -- which is a shame, because I've got some peppers and tomatoes starting off indoors right now and I'd really like them to get strong enough to weather the rooftop conditions if I try to transplant them in late May or early June. But we might be better off picking up some plants at a nursery when the time comes.

It should also be time to start picking garlic soon -- but I should probably have done a better job of labeling the garlic when I planted it. Since I put garlic in the ground (or pots) three different times, I need to make sure not to dig up the younger plants too early. I was kind of counting on the oldest plants identifying themselves by out-sizing their younger cousins. But that might not actually happen.

A few planters are also little experimental grounds for growing multiple plants in the same container.

Here we've got snow peas, garlic, and spinach all growing in the same planter. The spinach at the front is thriving, but if you look closely you'll see a tiny spinach plant on the right which probably isn't getting enough sunlight because of the shade cast by the snow peas. If the image isn't big enough to see clearly, just click on the picture to see a larger version.

The garlic is a bit closer to the spinach than I'd expected -- but I'm hoping that since the spinach has shallow roots the two plants won't compete too much for space. The spinach will probably only be good for a few more weeks anyway. Once it gets hot spinach starts to flower and die pretty quickly -- or at least that's what happened last summer.

Watching the garden (and the gnats) grow

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:12:00 +0000

There's been a lot of activity on the rooftop over the past few weeks. The snow peas are growing fast, the garlic is having a party, and the spinach is actually starting to look edible.

I also received a belated birthday present of five locally sourced strawberry plants recently. I only had four planters, but I had some extra space in one my mixed containers, so I'm going to try growing a strawberry plant in the same large container as some snow peas, spinach, and garlic.

In the nursery, also known as the windowsill, progress has been a bit slower.

Fewer than half of the seeds I planted more than two weeks ago have poked their heads through the soil. I'm not sure if I'm over watering, under watering, or if there's another problem. But that's OK -- I planted seeds for more plants than I could possibly grow, assuming some plants would do better than others.

As things stand, as of April 20th, 2012 I've got two tiny yellow cherry tomato plants growing, half a dozen red pepper plants, and a fair number of little garlic chive seedlings.

Unfortunately I'm getting the feeling that I should have planted every single one of these seeds a few weeks earlier, because I'm not certain they'll be large and hardy enough to place outdoors when the weather is warm enough in May/June. But a lot can happen in a month or two.

It will also probably be at least a few more weeks before the snow peas start blooming, so I'm not in that much of a hurry to rip them out and replace them with peppers and tomatoes anyway.

I probably shouldn't be surprised that the spinach is going to be the first plant ready to harvest. In fact, I think it might already be grown enough to snip a few leaves for dinner tonight. But since the spinach was one of my under performing crops of 2011 I'm pleasantly surprised.

It'll probably be a race between the snow peas and the garlic to see who's ready to harvest next. The snow peas are easy, because once they start blooming you just wait until the pea pods are as long as you'd like them to be and start snipping.

The garlic takes a little more skill since you need to wait about 60-65 days from the time you plant and then reach down into the soil and pull them up by their roots and then leave them on rack in a low humidity room to dry out for a week.

I should probably have done a better job of labeling the garlic I planted 4 weeks ago from the cloves I put in the soil 2 weeks ago... but I was counting on the fact that it would be obvious from the top which plants were most mature. Looking at them now though, I'm not so sure that'll be the case.

Either way, there's a lot of garlic growing so I'm pretty sure we'll have a good garlicky summer without spending too much money on the onion cousin at the farmer's market.

Meanwhile, after weeks of wondering what the heck the tiny little winged bugs swarming over my spinach and peas were, the answer is pretty much what I'd assumed from the start: gnats. Fungus gnats, to be more specific.

That photos shows a few of them... but I snapped the picture in the late afternoon. They swarm in larger numbers earlier in the day. You can also click the image to see a larger version.

The gnats apparently like to chew on roots, which could explain why I didn't have a very successful spinach crop last year -- so I've decided to take action. I've got some Mosquito Dunks on the way, which are basically bacteria that you mix with water and pour over the soil to kill fungus gnats (and mosquitoes, obviously). I've also ordered some yellow sticky traps which apparently attract gnats with their color and then fill up with the little bugs as they fly to their sticky doom.

The strips I ordered are designed for indoor and outdoor containers, which comes in handy since I have some of each and there are gnats in both places (although the biggest infestation is in the containers on the roof).

Some tiny red mites are also re-populating the garden. I saw a few last year, but they seem to be coming back stronger this spring. Odds are that they're clover mites and nothing really to worry about unless they get into the house and start making a mess -- if you step on them or squash them, they leave bright red streaks.

I don't know if the mosquito dunks and sticky traps will have any impact on the mites one way or the other, but I'm not all that concerned about them.

Signs of life among the garlic chives

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:22:00 +0000

It's been about five days since I planted garlic chive, pepper, and tomato seeds in some indoor planters. Today the first signs of life started showing up in the garlic chive pot.

If the little green bits look small in that photo, try the macro view on for size.

Yeah, good luck finding them at all.

Still, I count at least four little green guys in there so far, and I'm hopeful that the pot will be bursting with garlic chives soon. I've also got a few planted in smaller pots that might be easier to transplant outdoors once the weather is consistently warmer -- but if it turns out I can get enough sunlight in my office I may try growing some indoors year round.

You don't find garlic chives at the supermarket very often, but they taste like a cross between a green onion or scallion and garlic. That's not surprising since garlic and onions are in the same family, and I've been meaning to grow some of these little guys since I first learned of their existence a few years ago.

But I hadn't ever actually tasted one until this week. The Farm To City organization in Philadelphia manages a buying club called Winter Harvest that lets you order food from local farms throughout the colder months of the year.

For most of the winter we get a lot of apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and other hardy fruits and vegetables that are harvested in the fall and kept through the winter, as well as spinach which can be grown in cool temperatures, given the right conditions.

As springtime approaches, farmer start to add some new items to the mix, including leafy greens such as bok choy and bekana, and scallions and chives. I managed to snag a few garlic scallions before they were sold out, and picked them up last weekend. They didn't spend much time in the fridge before ending up in the frying pan -- although I sampled a few raw, because they're just good.

I'm looking forward to trying some of their home grown cousins in a few months.

Rooftop Garden update (4-04-2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:34:00 +0000

It's been a busy week up on rooftop garden, where all the garlic is strong, the snow peas are good looking and the spinach is... well, a bit below average.

When I planted the first cool-weather crops in mid-March, it was unseasonably warm in Philadelphia and I think some of the little guys got a little ahead of themselves. Temperatures dipped pretty dramatically for a few days, and the wind picked up enough to blow over some of my snow pea starter plants and I'm not sure they're coming back.

Fortunately more plants are thriving than succumbing to the pressures of life on a windy rooftop, so I'm hoping to get some peas by May... or so.

Meanwhile, as more of a science experiment than anything else, I've been continuing to grow some peas indoors to see how they differ from those growing on the rooftop.

These guys were planted at the same time as the ones on the roof, but they've grown taller and their leaves haven't grown nearly as wide. They also seem to have thinner stems, and I have little doubt that they'd die almost immediately if I tried to take them outside.

Eventually I might try it just to prove my hypothesis.. and to free up the planters.

Almost all of the garlic I planted has survived the temperature swings. The only casualty so far appears to be one plant that either got dug up by an animal (squirrel, I suspect), or which wasn't planted deeply enough and was therefore stirred loose by a heavy rainfall or two.

Some of the spinach plants are starting to show their edible leaves... but they're growing slowly and I'm not particularly hopeful that they'll thrive. I tried growing spinach last year and didn't have much luck.

If this crop stays stunted as well, I might give up on spinach... at least until I have time to try some sort of cold frame solution which might allow the plants to grow in a less windy environment.

Meanwhile, I'm running a little behind on starting seeds for my summer garden, but I finally took the time yesterday to fill some seed trays and small pots with pepper, tomato, and garlic chive seeds.

These are all plants that need a head start before you put them outside, so it's recommended to star them off 6-8 weeks before the last frost.

Last frost in Philadelphia is usually around late April, but I might not be ready to transplant my little guys until May... which is fine, because by then I'll be able to decide which snow pea plants are under-performing and cut them away to make room for new plants.

I may also try to grow some green beans and bok choy this summer, but those plants can be directly planted into the soil outside so I won't be starting them indoors.

The biggest challenge for starting seeds in the house is that our cats love to chew on plants and knock over planters. So I have to find well-lit, sunny spots in the house that are difficult for the cats to get to. There aren't many of these spaces in the house, so I've made a little space next to some houseplants in my office... but I'm not convinced that spot really gets enough sunlight.

I guess we'll know for sure in a few weeks... if the cats haven't jumped four and a half feet in the air to topple over the planters by then.

Winter/Spring rooftop garden 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:12:00 +0000

It's been unseasonably warm in Philadelphia for the past few weeks, so my rooftop garden is already off to a pretty great start. About two weeks ago I soaked some snow peas for a few days to get them ready for planting, and a week and a half ago I turned the soil in the planters I'd left on the roof since last year, added about an inch of mushroom compost and put some peas and garlic cloves in the ground.

Garlic shoots started popping up almost immediately. I'm wondering if I should have put the garlic a little deeper beneath the surface -- but I've got garlic hanging out in my closet so I'll probably do a second planting next weekend and try digging a little deeper this time.

This is my first year growing garlic, and to be honest I haven't done a whole lot of research. Much of what I read about growing vegetables in containers last year proved to be only partially useful at best. It turns out my rooftop has its own rather unusual microclimate and I suspect the best way to figure out what will grow well there is to keep seeding as many plants as possible.

To give my plants a little shade, I've placed the planters up against the only wall available. It's on the north side, so the plants get a nice southern exposure... most of the time. At certain parts of the day the sun dips below the high-rise building directly southeast of us and everybody gets a little more shade.

But when the sun is out it gets very bright and very warm. I've already realized that I have to water the plants more often than I would if they were in the ground because the planters dry out pretty quickly.

It's also very windy on the rooftop, so plants have to be pretty sturdy to survive.

Last year I discovered that snow peas I directly seeded outside came up with nice thick stems while those I started indoors had long, thin stalks.

But since I had some extra sprouted seeds, I figured I'd try a few indoors anyway just in case cold weather returned and decided to wipe out everything I've planted on the rooftop before the little guys were established.

As it turns out, the seeds I started indoors are suffering the same fate as last year's. I suspect if I tried to take them outside they'd wilt and fall over just as quickly as last year's.

At least part of the problem is probably that it's hard to find places to put seed trays and pots in the house that are cat-proof. While the cats rarely actually eat the plants, they do like to paw at them, turn over small planters, and play in the soil.

I suspect it's also just not windy enough inside, and the temperatures don't get as hot and cold, which makes it tough to prepare the little baby snow peas for the harsh realities of life on the roof.

Anyway, long story short, my goal at this point is to find plants that aren't only container-friendly, but which also have relatively short yield times. That will allow me to plant as many veggies as possible directly in outdoor planters since I can plant snow peas in March, hopefully get a harvest in April or May, and start peppers and beans in May and hopefully allow them to grow up around the snow peas so that by the time the weather's really warm enough for the summer veggies to thrive I'll have gotten sick of snow peas and I'll be ready to cut down those vines.

You'll notice there's a lot of "hope" in that last paragraph. I'm not really sure this will work. Technically you're supposed to plant peppers indoors about 6 weeks before last frost and then transplant them outside. I'm just not sure that any plants I try to transplant will actually bear much fruit.

I mean, I'll try it, because there are more seeds in my packet than I really need for direct seeding outdoors. I'm just not sure it will work.

I may also break down and pick up a few plants from a nursery to transplant, but I'd like to grow as much as possible from seed, just so I can actually figure out how best to grow things three stories up in the urban wilderness of Philadelphia.

Speaking of which, despite limited success with last year's spinach crop, I've decided to try a few leafy greens again this year. There are a few shoots of what could be spinach popping up... but it could also be weeds. You'd be amazed just how many weeds find their way into pots placed on a rooftop thanks to bugs, birds, wind, and trees.

Last year's green onions also don't quite seem to be ready to go away.

Book review: Visit Sunny Chernobyl

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:18:00 +0000

Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It sounds like a silly idea at first: visiting seven of the most polluted places on the planet and treating them as vacation spots. But from the moment he hits the ground in Chernobyl and as we follow him to Canada, Texas, the Pacific Garbage Patch, Brazil, China, and India, Blackwell is an engaging story teller, combining anecdotes with facts, philosophy, interesting observations about environmentalism and the environment, and his own personal journey.

It's also fascinating to take a guided tour of some of the places you're least likely to ever visit, including the patch of water in the Pacific where enormous amounts of trash accumulate and few boats ever travel and the radiation zone around Chernobyl.

At times Visit Sunny Chernobyl feels like 7 essays that would have made great magazine articles strung together into an aimless book. But there are two strong themes holds the stories together:

Humans aren't just destroying the environment. We're part of it, and we have to live with the consequences.
Even the most polluted places in the world have their charms... people who love them, still live in them, and make the best of what they're given.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl is surprisingly upbeat for a book about environmental disaster tourism. Instead of focusing on the devastation, Blackwell focuses on showing the world as it is, not as it should be or even could be.

That's not to say we shouldn't try to avoid life-threatening environmental catastrophes and reduce pollution. But that all sort of goes without saying... so it isn't said much in this book, which makes it an unusual alternative to most books about the environment I've read.

This is why we don't spend much money on cat toys

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:42:00 +0000

This week I picked up a few items from IKEA and assembled a new standing desk for my office. As you might imagine, there was a bit of cardboard packaging left over.

Fortunately, it hasn't gone to waste.

Puck and Ollie have been making good use of the cardbaord as a kitten tunnel for hiding, running, and general purpose silliness.

Sure, we've bought the kids plenty of little toys from the pet stores over the years. But nothing amuses kittens as much as a cardboard box, no matter what shape or size it is.

If you watch closely, you'll notice that at one point before she pounces, Ollie is poised on her back paws with her front legs lifted in the air before her. I'm pretty sure this defies at least a few laws of physics.

My new standing desk workstation

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:15:00 +0000

For the past few years I've spent a lot of time sitting in a chair staring at a computer.

When I was younger I worked in retail and stood behind a cash register or roamed a sales floor for 8 hours a day. When I worked as a full time radio news reporter, I spent my fair share of time sitting at a desk to make phone calls, write stories, and edit audio. But at least I left the office from time to time to go interview someone, cover a press conference, or head to a breaking news scene.

But I've been a full time blogger for the past few years, and if my home office wasn't on the third floor and my kitchen on the first, I could probably spend 10 hours or more glued to a chair.

This isn't healthy.

For the past year or two I've been waking up early to work out for 30 to 60 minutes before showering, eating, and getting to work. I'm glad I've built a morning workout into my routine, but it's not necessarily enough to offset the health effects of doing practically nothing for the rest of my day.

My sitting posture is also pretty awful, and I suspect I'd be in for some pretty serious back pain if I kept to business as usual.

So I decided a while ago that I'd like to try a standing desk, but I was a little put off by the high cost of existing solutions. One problem is that I'm relatively short, so a desk that's standing height for some people might not be standing height for me.

I also wasn't sure I wanted to stand all day.

I started looking at adjustable desks such as the GeekDesk or JayMil Sit-to-Stand desk, but $1000 seemed like a lot of money to spend on a solution that I wasn't sure I'd be able to use.

On February 1st, I decided to just try raising my keyboard, mouse and monitor by propping various items on top of my existing desk. The first attempt didn't work out very well, but I found a few boxes that were almost the right height, and then grabbed some spare wood from the basement and created a stand a few inches high to elevate those boxes a bit more.

The end result? The setup was actually so comfortable that I wound up using it for over a month.

Since the desk wasn't easily adjustable, I basically stood for most of my work days during that time, and only sat down when using a laptop or tablet.

At the end of the first day at the standing desk my legs were killing me, but I actually had more energy at the end of the work day than I'd had in ages. After a few more days, I was able to stand for 8-10 hours without my legs aching, although my feet do still get sore. I haven't entirely decided whether it's better to wear shoes or not to wear shoes while working at the desk.

I also found myself taking lunch breaks for the first time in years. I mean real breaks where I go down to the dining room and sit down with a book to read and eat.

Since there was no sitting at the computer, I learned to value this break in the middle of my day which allowed me to relax for a brief period before returning to work. Short relaxing breaks are good on the feet, legs, and the mind and I should have been taking lunch breaks before -- but somehow it always seemed easier to just grab some food and then sit down at my desk and eat by the computer.

Anyway, the wine crate and spare lumber solution was never meant to be permanent, but I was still reluctant to spend $1000 on a new desk.

Fortunately there's another option. IKEA sells a series of adjustable tablet legs called Vika Byske that can be extended as high as 42 and 1/8th inches. They're some of the most expensive tablet legs IKEA sells, but at $30 each, I was able to pick up 4 legs plus an inexpensive tabletop for less than $200.

I splurged and bought a reasonably comfy bar stool for another $90 so that I can sit at the table from time to time if my feet get sore.

In order to adjust the legs you need to twist them one at a time, so the IKEA desk isn't as easy to raise or lower as one with an electric motor. But it's a heck of a lot cheaper, and since it is adjustable I was able to use the desk for a day or two, decide that it was a little too high, and then remove everything from the tabletop, lower the legs, and try again.

Now I have a desk that's comfortable to stand at for an extended period... and as an added bonus, it doesn't offer the same storage options that my old IKEA desk did, so it's a lot less cluttered.

The desk was a little wobbly at first, and I can't anchor it to the wall because it's up against an exterior wall that I can't drill into. But I discovered that if I placed the back of the tablet tightly against the wall and then lengthened the front table legs a little so that the back of the tablet presses firmly against the wall, the desk no longer shakes.

Unfortunately that means I can't run any wires behind the table. And since cable connecting my monitor and desktop PC isn't long enough to run around the side of the table, I had to place the PC on the tablet -- where I'm noticing that it's actually pretty noisy. But I may replace the PC one day or at least get a quieter fan, while I'm hoping to use the desk for many years.

A side effect of my month with the wine crate solution is that I've gotten used to using a single monitor instead of a dual-screen setup. I bought a 21.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel monitor a while back, but I'd been using it alongside an older 1280 x 1024 pixel display -- which was kind of overkill. Really I just need enough space to run two apps side-by-side or view multiple websites side-by-side.

Ideally, I'd like a 2560 x 1600 monitor, but right now those are expensive enough to make motorized standing desks look cheap.

But the 1920 x 1080 pixel display is really almost good enough for my needs, and it uses less energy and takes up less space than my dual display setup, so I've put my old 1280 x 1024 pixel monitor in the closet for now.

Soon I may look for a riser that will lift my remaining monitor a few inches higher. While the desk is at the perfect height for typing, I'd like to be able to look straight ahead at the display instead of slightly down.

Anyway, long story short: since I started experimenting with a standing desk I've had more energy, fewer back aches, and I suspect I'm building muscle in my legs. I've learned to value the time I do take to sit down and relax, but to treat it as the exception rather than the rule.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Note: I'm still experimenting with how best to write about books without reading spoilers. I think I've largely managed to do that here, but if you don't want to know anything about the series other than whether it's worth reading, the answer is yes.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I just spent the last week reading The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. It's the first time I've read three books in a week since I was a teenager and didn't really have much to do with my free time other than read books for hours on end... but this tale was so engaging I found myself making time to read, during lunch breaks, before bed, before dinner -- I couldn't put the books down.

That's largely because Collins does a great job of pacing her story. Each book has 27 chapters divided into 3 sections per book. So it doesn't take long to finish a chapter, and more often than not you're faced with a cliffhanger at the end which makes you want to extend that lunch break until you read just a little more so you can find out what happens next.

The characters are also all very alive... until they're not, and then sometimes they're even more alive in the reader's mind. There's a lot of death in these books, which isn't surprising because it's a series about war, starting with aftermath of a war that had led people to do atrocious things to other human beings and later about another war... which doesn't seem much better even if the cause seems more noble.

Collins's books present a coming of age story in a post-apocalyptic world where there's no such thing as a happy ending. It's sort of what you would get if you crossed Harry Potter with The Handmaid's Tale and throw in a bit of Lord of the Flies and the reality TV show Survivor as well as a healthy dose of criticism of said reality TV culture.

That might not sound like the sort of thing that'd make for a fun read, and maybe it isn't. But it's engrossing.

As we follow the protagonist Katniss Everdeen through the story, it becomes more and more clear that while she's the heroine of the story, she's also the victim -- and nothing that happens will change that. It's all the more tragic because she's clearly operating at the center of the conflict and on the sidelines at the same time.

As a 16 and 17 year old, she's a pawn in a game that she barely understands. She's a fighter, and a survivor and from time to time she has flashes of charisma and brilliance that bind the characters around her (and the reader) to Katniss... but she also makes rash decisions, jumps to conclusions that are often wrong, and leads us on a journey that could turn out so many different ways that it should probably come as no surprise when Collins concludes the story in a totally unsatisfying but completely logical way.

Following the story from Katniss's perspective, reading her thoughts, it's hard not to feel like a confused teenager reading the story -- but it's hard to imagine anyone thrown into the bloody world of the Hunger Games making any more sense of the situation, be they 16 or 60.

Part of what makes the story work, and makes the plot twists so unpredictable is that we're following Katniss down every wrong turn she makes... because they make sense, while the situations she finds herself in don't.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading these books -- although I probably could have lived without the love triangle that felt kind of unnecessary to the plot.

How many people do you know that meet their true soulmates as a teenager? Yes, extreme conditions lead to extreme emotions, so I suppose Harry and Ginny really could spend the rest of their lives happily together after defeating Voldemort, and I suppose it's possible that Katniss could find love, comfort, and maybe even some happiness with Gale or Peeta... but while boys are fawning over Katniss she spends much of the story not even bothering to examine her own feelings because she's got better things to do, like feeding her family, trying to stay alive, or fighting to the death.

So the growing tension over which boy she'll choose that grows as the series reaches its conclusion feels kind of superfluous. It doesn't exactly ruin the story, but by the end, you can't help but feel that the romance was more of an afterthought than anything.

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Review: In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Linder) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:10:00 +0000

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a tech blogger and journalist I've been following Google pretty closely since 2006, and I was using their products before that. But for the most part I've focused on the parts of Google that everyone sees: the finished products. Steven Levy took a peek behind the scenes and paints an intriguing picture of a company that's combined openness, secrecy, and innovation to create an empire out of products that work extraordinarily well... but which scare the pants off of some people who stop to think about just how much information Google has about all of its users.

I'm a big fan of Levy's skills at turning highly technical topics into engaging narratives by focusing on the people behind the products. But in Google's case, that's an awful lot of people. At last count the company had around 20,000 employees, and while Levy didn't interview them all, unlike some of Levy's earlier books, In the Plex feels more like a series of distinct articles than a comprehensive story.

But most of those articles are worth reading and I enjoyed getting a feel for the people behind the search engine, email system, book scanning product, and high profile decisions to enter... and then exit China, among other things.

There's no way to avoid the fact that this book feels like a work in progress. It was published in April, 2011 -- when Google's social tools included Buzz, Orkut, and Latitude, but months before Google Plus or Search Plus Your World arrived on the scene.

But In The Plex paints a picture of how the insiders at Google think and provides a framework for understanding some of the things that have happened since the book's publication -- and a picture of what happens when a startup out to change the world becomes the established player that already did.

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