Matthew Eargle > Recent Status Updates

Beginning "Cape Cod"

Finished "A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers". Not great--just 124 pages of Thoreau musing about life, the universe, and everything with little structure and less coherence. It's a wonder that no publisher would buy the book. I'm hoping his later works are better.

Starting A Week On The Concord and Merrimack Rivers

More backstory on the International Jewish Conglomerate that apparently drove politics since the Roman Empire.

I'm still not entirely clear on how or why the Jews became the central bankers of 17th-century Europe. Where did the capital come from?

The first chapter is a lot of rhetoric exploring why Jews are the target of such hostilities over the centuries, but ultimately it just raises more questions. One thing is for certain: terror is the modern method of quelling political insubordination.

Finally made it through the prologues and now to start the actual text! I feel like I've just gone through a crash course in early 20th century European politics, but I'm sure it helps to have some context before diving into totalitarianism as a concept.

This is going to be heavy

Great Cobra story from Vietnam. Keen piloting and a miraculous string of luck kept two Cobra jockeys alive to fly another day!

Gunships! Cobras! Finally, some action!

Father & soon flying Hueys in the same DUSTOFF outfit during Vietnam.

Hueys in Vietnam.

Now THAT was a great story. Good pucker factor, too! (Chapter 10)

The book is rather formulaic, walking through first-hand accounts of various military helicopter missions since WWII. It's an interesting historical volume, but I don't think it's going to have much "replay value". I think these stories would be better served as video reenactments a la History Channel's "Dogfights".

Well, now we understand where the title comes from. Also, Ingram plays regionalism and the old joke about UGA fans superbly: Buck is a die-hard, rabid Dawgs fan--only really by virtue of being from south Georgia--despite never having attended college.

Jimbo is a little on the exaggerated side, but this is South Carolina we're taking about. I know a few folks--my own kin included--that fit the character pretty well anyway. So far, I've guffawed at some all-too-familiar situations; I think this book and I are going to get along just fine....

I don't exactly recall how I came about this book, but it looks interesting enough, and will probably strike home at a lot of my own misadventures as a young adult in the South during the economic downturn the late aughts.

Maybe I should quit my job and become a consultant. Seems like a solid plan... if this were 1998.

Bouncing from engineering to marketing with a two-drink minimum? My gods, I think may be Dilbert.

The more I read, the more I see these strategies as second nature. I believe that Mr. Adams and I are cut from the same cloth.

This is written from the perspective of a large company, but I'm finding many similarities with small businesses, too!

Stated reading, appropriately enough, during an ill-planned business trip (fault on the organiser, not my company). Through the first five chapters, I've remembered why it is that I loved Dilbert since the 1990s! Scott Adams's snark roasts corporate America in a way that few others have been able.

Well, for a "Readers' Digest" style overview, it isn't bad, and I can see where "busy people" would appreciate its brevity, but if you want to read something poignant, try some of the books he references.

There's always money in the banana stand.