Alien invaders evicted humanity from the earth, but the human race managed to survive by scattering to form societies on the moon and the other planets. They get a lot of help from highly advanced technological data streaming from the direction of the star 70 Ophiuchi. The advances in biotechnology are most noteworthy. People routinely restructure their body parts, and store the contents of their psyche in memory recordings which can be used to “reconstitute” a person who has died. It is in this universe that we follow our heroine as she becomes an unwilling participant in a mission to free the earth from the invaders.

I must have read The Ophiuchi Hotline the first time in my late teens or early twenties. I’ve read a good deal more science fiction since then, and this story holds up pretty well. The ending is a teensy bit weak because it seems to be setting us up for a sequel.

There aren’t a lot of female perspectives in science fiction, and this book does it so superbly that when I first read it I was convinced that “John Varley” was a pseudonym for a female author. I was wrong! Thanks again for writing this great story, Mr. Varley!

This chocolate is mildly hot. I find it to be hotter than the Red Fire Bar. Nice chocolate too!

Wanted tries to be The Matrix meets Fight Club, but lacks the soul of either. Our hero starts out as a neurotic, pathetic mess with poor judgment. He winds up a psychotic, pathetic mess with poor judgment. There’s lots of killing in between. The message seems to be that if you kill enough people unthinkingly, your life will have meaning.

I like action movies, and I will happily view movies containing tons of gratuitous violence. I don’t like that this movie tried to tack some deep life lesson onto a story that was developed in a very shallow way.

Someone should extract all the great action sequences from this movie and splice them together for viewing. The rest can go in the trash. Unfortunately that means we’d miss seeing Morgan Freeman, but this is not his most significant work.

I read John Varley’s The Ophiuchi Hotline ages ago, and it made a really big impact on me. I decided to give the man some props (and shekels) and revisit this novel.

Hancock is not what I was expecting; I was looking for something much more mature and serious, and this is too goofy. I liked the plot line which briefly explained the hero’s superpowers, and Will Smith is a sweet charmer, so I don’t regret going.

I’ll start by saying that I think Muhammad Yunus is a remarkable man, who has done some outstanding, commendable things.

Unfortunately, his book, Banker to the Poor, is not well written and could have used a strong editorial hand. It is disorganized, roaming from one subject to another without logical sequence. This makes the book hard to read, which is unfortunate, because I think the story is worth hearing.

Also, the book does not cover some topics that I’d expected to hear about. For one, I had once read that there is an Islamic prohibition against loans. Since this is a book about microcredit in Bangladesh, you’d think the topic would be given a few pages. Instead, it is given a few paragraphs which do little to explore how this affects microlending in Islamic countries. I felt like the subject was pushed under a rug.

...
“Go to the moneylender, he is a good Muslim [!], ” answered the confused mullah.
“He charges 10 percent a week! If you don’t want us to borrow from Grameen, then you lend us the money.”
...

We believe that Islam is not at all a hindrance to the eradication of poverty through micro-credit programs. Islam does not inherently prevent women from making a living for themselves or from improving their economic situation. In 1994, the adviser on women’s affairs to the president of Iran came to visit me in Dhaka and … she said, “There is nothing in Shariah law or the Quran against what you are doing. On the contrary, what you are doing is terrific. You are helping to educate a whole generation of children. And thanks to Grameen loans, women can work at home, instead of sitting around.”
Many Islamic scholars have also told us that the Shariah ban on the charging of interest cannot apply to Grameen, since the Grameen borrower is also an owner of the bank. The purpose of the religious injunction against interest is to protect the poor from usury, but where the poor own their own bank, the interest is in effect paid to the company they own, and therefore to themselves.

That’s about the entirety of the discussion on the subject in this book.

Another topic I would have liked to see explored in more detail is the difference between pure charitable giving and the microcredit system. Why is it that lending small amounts of money with interest works better than giving small amounts of money with no interest charge? We all hear about horrendous waste and corruption that leads charitable contributions to go into the pockets of those who don’t need it. Why doesn’t that happen in this case? Clearly, because Grameen workers meet directly with the people who are getting the loans, in their houses, and a direct evaluation is possible (and on a side note, Grameen workers are devoid of corruption, how does that happen?).

Where do these poor people store their loan money – how do they avoid theft? Why can’t a similar program be set up that is purely charitable in nature; why must it only work if the money must be paid back? I don’t think these questions are adequately answered.

I’d recommend the book despite its weaknesses because it succeeds in demonstrating that poverty can be alleviated and even eliminated. It’s interesting to read the last couple of chapters, in which the author’s social theories are examined (he believes in minimizing government and replacing its social functions with “social-conciousness driven business”) – even if I don’t agree with them.

I’d also recommend skimming the book, which would help to get over the bumpy parts faster. You can slow down and chew on the parts that spark an interest.

I started reading Banker to the Poor because I wanted to find out more about how microlending started, and how it works. So why did I stall out while reading the first two chapters?

The book unexpectedly begins in a very autobiographical way, talking about the author’s childhood and participation in the creation of the nation of Bangladesh. All interesting stuff that can stand on its own, but not what I set out to read. Further, Yunus has a pretty dry writing style. It’s almost like he can’t decide whether it’s worth writing about personal details or not. So we get autobiography, but in very broad strokes.

...What I did not yet know about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-two years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the processes of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin of poverty and hunger. As a result, poverty continues.

This is content which makes me want to stand up and cheer, and motivates me to keep whittling away at this book.

I tried out Schokinag because I’m always on the lookout for a new delicious hot chocolate. I will only drink hot chocolate made with milk – not for me the powdered instant junk where you “just add hot water.”

Schokinag has an interesting idea: add milk to little mini chocolate chips, microwave them till melted, stir, and then add more milk and microwave till hot. Slightly more complicated than “nuke the milk and add hot cocoa powder.” But when I’m doing homemade hot cocoa, I do the same thing: add a little milk to some cocoa powder and sugar, nuke it, stir to mash it into a paste, and then add milk and nuke till hot. (The paste-making step is necessary because cocoa powder does not dissolve well in milk.) So their procedure is not too noisome for me.

Unfortunately, Schokinag disappointed in taste. I have grown used to a very straightforward hot cocoa made with skim milk and cocoa powder, which produces a thin, but delicious, drink.

In contrast, Schokinag produces a drink with a cloyingly creamy texture. I think it’s the ultra-creaminess that turns me off. So if you like super-creamy and sweet hot cocoa, you might go for this.

My feeling is that if you want a very high-fat, creamy hot cocoa, you should probably start with a high fat milk (maybe add some cream), and add cocoa powder, rather than starting with a high fat cocoa mix.

Schokinag is a very calorie dense food. Their serving size of 1.5 oz contains 233 calories, 14 g of fat, and 9 g of saturated fat! So it’s not something you want to get addicted to, anyway.

I find this chocolate a bit too sweet, and the peppers insufficiently hot. If I’m going to eat hot peppers in chocolate, I want to really feel that heat – and anything named “Red Fire” should sting your tongue. Instead, I can barely taste them at all. Granted, I am probably a little too desensitized to detect the chili peppers here, since I sometimes eat chili peppers straight up…

Be that as it may, I prefer the Dagoba Xocolatl bar. It’s a much darker chocolate, and I can taste the peppers. I think chilies go better with dark chocolate, too.

I loved the series, and this was like a really good long episode. Jerked my tears, too.