Category Archives: history

Survival of the Sickest

Posted on September 21, 2019 by smellincoffee

© 2008 Sharon Moalem 267 pages Ask the man on the street about evolution, and assuming he doesn’t connect it to Pokemon, he’ll probably identify it as something that happened long ago.   But creation is never finished, either underground where … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews, science | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Drop Dead Healthy

Posted on September 15, 2019 by smellincoffee

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Quest for Bodily Perfection © 2016 A.J. Jacobs 416 pages A.J. Jacobs, a writer for Esquire, has previously taken on year-long efforts to improve his mind and his spirit. Now, in Drop Dead Healthy, he … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

How we communicated on 9/11

Posted on September 12, 2019 by smellincoffee

“Pagers, Pay Phones, and Dial Up: How We Communicated on 9/11“ I largely avoided social media and the internet yesterday because of the significance of the day. It wasn’t anything pious, a deliberate remembrance;  but I knew what the topic … Continue reading →

Posted in history | 2 Comments

The Courage to Start

Posted on September 10, 2019 by smellincoffee

The Courage to Start: A Guide to Running For Your Life © 1999 John Bingham 208 pages John Bingham loved running as a kid. He wasn’t any good at it – he flailed his arms and wouldn’t impress any stopwatch-yielding … Continue reading →

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A purloined book survey

Posted on September 9, 2019 by smellincoffee

I’m shamelessly stealing this from Cyberkitten! What is your average monthly budget for books? Officially, my entertainment budget allots $20 for books.  It is usually exceeded a little bit. $30 would be fairer, but I’ve decided to place myself under … Continue reading →

Posted in history | 6 Comments

Year of No Sugar

Posted on September 8, 2019 by smellincoffee

Year of No Sugar pub. 2014 Eve O. Schaub 320 pages Eva Schaub’s life was changed at a birthday party for children, when a conversation with a fellow mom  made her aware of something called “corn syrup”,  Being the curious … Continue reading →

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Health Week 2019

Posted on September 7, 2019 by smellincoffee

Welcome to Health Week!    I haven’t done anything like this before, but lately I’ve been focusing a lot on personal cross-training, as well as trying intermittent fasting with an eye of breaking through an old plateau,  and so diet and … Continue reading →

Posted in General, history | Tagged | 6 Comments

The dance of nature

Posted on September 6, 2019 by smellincoffee

So to be crystal clear: everything out there is influencing the evolution of everything else. The bacteria and viruses and parasites that cause disease in us have affected our evolution as we have adapted in ways to cope with their … Continue reading →

Posted in history, quotations, science | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Of Romans, manly saints, and the beginning of the end

Posted on September 4, 2019 by smellincoffee

I spent much of August crawling through the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I was very careful, in making my list, that I specified “Volume I”: I  had little interest in trying … Continue reading →

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Stoic advice on overcoming anger

Posted on August 31, 2019 by smellincoffee

In the last couple of weeks I’ve  read a few books on nonviolence communication and  conflict management (How To Be Your Own Bodyguard; Verbal Judo (re-read); and How to Survive Aggressive People).    Tonight, in a similar vein,  I encountered a … Continue reading →

Posted in history, quotations | Tagged , , | 7 Comments