It's guest-blogging city amongst the NOLA blogpocheh these days.

The Rude Pundit kicked it off with a week of New Orleans-based guest bloggers while he vacations on a faraway isle someplace. Tomorrow's the last day, so get right and catch up on the previous days' posts:

Some things about people from New Orleans:

We don't care what you think. We've been doing our own thing for 300 years.

We don't want to go to your parades, ya'll don't throw anything.

100% humidity is the best moisturizer they ever came up with.

It's "New A'wlins," not "N'awlins."

We would have been fine if the federal levees hadn't broke.

And that's ooooonly the beginning...

Bigezbear's latest post over there has also inspired Maitri. Go read 'em both.


Cliff of Cliff's Crib has become the first of the greater New Orleans freelancers to guest on Gambit's Blog of New Orleans. A big mazel tov to him!

Cliff raises one aspect of all of this NOAH hubbub that can get a little lost in the details of it:

I’m not trying to minimize NOAH, Pampy Barre, or Oliver Thomas. I have said in the past that these little things add up to the huge problems the city has had for decades because it discourages people from coming to the city and investing time and money here. If someone did something wrong they should pay the price for it. All I am asking is that the size and scope of the scheme matches the neglect I see. I see how everyone is rallying around this NOAH story but if you added up all the questionable payments on that list it would be a drop in the bucket of the money that has been drained from this city. That’s what I want to find out about.

I want the folks who caused me to have a ten year old 7th grade English book investigated. What about the people who crippled NORD leaving the poor kids of the city with no organized recreation? What happened to all of the money the gambling industry was supposed to bring? Why isn’t Lincoln Beach open yet? Why didn’t any class I sat in from 7th to 12th grade have air conditioning? Where has all the money been going even before Ray Nagin and Marc Morial got in office?

If someone can find out and indict these people regardless of their color we will make them King of Chocolate City. We would welcome that because no one has suffered because of whatever they did or didn’t do more than we have. Until then please forgive me if I don’t grab my hangman’s noose and storm city hall because a contractor got paid to gut a house that he didn’t.

If we can’t find the big fish that everyone keeps saying is out there, the next logical explanation would be discrimination based on race and class. I don’t really want to believe that but no one is showing me otherwise.

And, finally:

I ganked the above button to the Rising Tide III website from Tim's sidebar. I hope he doesn't mind...

Feel free to add it to your sidebar... after you make a reservation for this year's conference!

What more is there, really, to say about Clarence Ray Nagin's talk with Lee Zurik today?

Some might say that Hizzoner was railroaded into this talk. Gee, how can one expect a city official to not respond to questions related to a City Hall scandal a-brewing while said official is at a large meeting of attorneys? Well, has anybody ever thought that Nagin could have turned this latest interview down with a simple "no comment"?

The man is stumbling here, and it is sad.

Somehow, he also seemed to think that a whole "Who's On First?" routine would somehow quell any further questions about the list the Mayor's Office of Communications passed on to Zurik a week ago and cast even more suspicion on Zurik himself.

Zurik: Are we using an old list? Is that what you're...is that what you're sticking to?

Nagin: I don't know which list you're using...(unintelligible)

Zurik: We're using the list that you gave us last week.

Nagin: ...I didn't give you anything.

Zurik: Well, Ms Fields, Ms (Penya) Moses-Fields gave us a list last week then that we used in our latest report and now you're saying that that's not accurate?

Nagin: I have no idea which list you're using. Your first list had Congressman Jefferson on it supposedly, then you had city employees, then you had Officer Riley...I don't know what you're using.

Zurik: I can tell you that we have it on our website, and I can tell you that we are using the list that you (nods to Moses-Fields, looks back at Nagin) gave us last week, the list that you said was accurate.

Nagin: Well, I gave you the list that NOAH gave us. You still need the list that is supported...that is supporting the payments.

Zurik: And why haven't you given us that list?

Nagin: I don't know if you've requested it.

Zurik: I've requested the accurate list that shows what houses you did work on. I would think that would be that list, right?

Nagin: You got what you requested.

If anybody thinks that Zurik is unfairly associating Nagin with NOAH, I have this sign posted on a listed home fairly recently to show how much Nagin associated himself with the program in the first place:

...there is also this press release from March 2007 concerning the mayor's promotion of a certain remediation program, complete with : “I want to encourage every resident who is not able either physically or financially to remediate their properties to register for this program by calling NOAH.”

I did not see anything resembling leadership coming from this elected official of ours tonight. I saw obfuscation, an attitude that was less than serious (and instantly switched to indignance when Zurik pointed out the farcical circles the mayor was trying to have him run in concerning which was the real NOAH list - once again, how dare an investigative reporter should actually do his job and question him on this? Nagin, the transparent mayor! How could Zurik do this to him???), and, in the end, no meaningful cooperation on behalf of the public that gave him another term in office. Irresponsibility personified.

Very, very sad...and also much too little and too late for some who were in need.

At long last, Mr Nagin, have you left no sense of decency, sir?*

Oh, and the Times-Picayune finally woke up and started covering this story. They must have been on vacation.

________________

*Army-McCarthy hearings, question from the US Army attorney Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy. The question still needs to be asked of all our politicians at all levels of government these days.

Here come da judges... here come da judges...



I hope my statement ain't too bold...

Update, 7-30: Yeah, it's happening. And here's a possible verdict on it. Adrastos thinks a bit differently, however.

Yes, really, I should have stayed in bed.

I woke up very late, in part 'cause the little guy woke up at 4-in-the-aw-hell-naw-AM and we both suffered the consequences. I saw the immediate aftermath of a car wreck down our street when I was taking the little guy to camp and had to yank him out of his need to rubberneck and into the car seat. The sky overhead looks almost as bad as I feel. Ugh.

Glad to see Lee Zurik is keeping on with the NOAH mess. The one thing about the kind of throwdown Hizzoner the Walking Id made at last week's press conference is that, when taken up, it challenges good reporters to become better. "Inaccurate, biased and reckless", my tuchus. Read through everything in the above link. A whole bunch of things about this are still mighty fishy.

Yesterday, I embarked on something I haven't done in a little over half a decade...I dug through the hell that is our downstairs closet (and made it more manageable in the process - it's simply a box purgatory now, and one can actually walk in there) in order to find my old glass casting notes and information, most of which is still mighty relevant. I found the casting handouts that were my bible long ago when I thought moldmaking was da bomb. Hey, if done wrong, it is entirely possible to blow out a mold box and have wet plaster mix all over the floor, and I had my share of looking back on mold pours that went bad, on demonstrations that had me on the floor laughing hysterically, and other happy memories when I saw those few highly informative pages...oh, dear God, they go back to 1994...I AM getting frickin' OLD...but I had to get back to work.

Got some plasticine for the positive. Picked up the little guy from camp. Took him to Lowe's and plopped him in a shopping cart that looked like a racecar. Piled in some buckets, a few more tools, chicken wire, some pieces of melamine-coated shelving that will make good mold boxes and won't suck the water out of the mold, and some wood that I had to cut down to help make the sides. Got challenged to a race by one kid traveling with his sisters in another racecar shopping cart pushed by his dad - we took one look at a potential aisle raceway and decided the risk of having a forklift suddenly appear in mid-race was too great. The woodcutter refused to cut the melamine shelving on his table saw, saying it would ruin it. I was gonna need to cut it down anyway - so I now own a handsaw. Please, Lord, let me keep all of my fingers - at least it isn't a table saw, right?

Adding to the hassles of lost wax fusecasting and its slight derision within the glassworking world as a "warm" glass process that isn't as superkewl as hot glassblowing is the fact that I can't find a source for silica sand in this city anywhere. Seems any ceramic supply company that was once here has either gone outta business, or - insult of insults - has moved to Baton Rouge, or has moved completely out of state. I'm looking at either a road trip or mail order just to get frickin' silica sand. Seriously, if anybody knows where I can get any here in New Orleans, lemme know. Otherwise, I will be going to get plastered in a really really bad way. This is the prime town for that. But silica sand? Noooooo...

I shoulda stood in bed yesterday, too.

Everybody still needs to watch out when they conduct meetings concerning the issues they care about and want to take action on. Case in point:

Finally, at long last, I have something in common with Muhammad Ali.

No, I'm not the heavyweight champion of the world, but, like "the Greatest," I have been a target of state police surveillance for activities--in my case, against the death penalty--that were legal, nonviolent and, so I assumed, constitutionally protected.

In classified reports compiled by the Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security, I am "Dave Z." This nickname was given by an undercover agent known to us as "Lucy." She sat in our meetings of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, smiling and engaged, taking copious notes about actions deemed threatening by the former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. Our seditious crimes, as Lucy reported, involved such acts as planning to set up a table at the local farmers market and writing up a petition. Adding a dash of farce to this outrage, she was monitoring us in the liberal enclave of Takoma Park, Maryland, a place known more for tie-dyeing than terrorism. Incidentally, current Governor Martin O'Malley says he opposes this kind of surveillance. He also opposes the death penalty. No word yet on whether he, too, is being spied upon.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the ACLU, we now know that "Lucy" was only one part of a vast, insidious project. The Maryland State Police's Department of Homeland Security devoted nearly 300 hours and thousands of taxpayer dollars in 2005 and 2006 to harassing people whose only crime was dissenting on the question of the war in Iraq and Maryland's use of cruel and unusual punishment.

My friend Mike Stark, a board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, is at times referred to in Lucy's report as a "socialist" and an "anarchist." One can only assume this is the pathetic, time-honored tradition of reducing people to simple caricatures, all the better to garner Homeland Security grant money.

Dave Zirin ain't taking this lying down. He is currently engaged in a lawsuit initiated by the ACLU and asks those of you who are outraged to do the following:

People who want to express their outrage can contact the office Governor Martin O'Malley. We should demand a full investigation of the MSP, public release of all documents obtained through this illegal activity, and a specific commitment that the antideath penalty and anti-war movement will not be targeted. Call the office of the governor at 1-800-811-8336, or submit a comment online at http://www.governor.maryland.gov/mail

I know someone else who wouldn't take this lightly, either.

Perhaps that's why I got the gator ju-ju doll in the raffle at One-Eyed Jack's the other night...
(thanks, Coozan...)

___________________

Update on the Dr Bob Bywater sign defacement, from the Bywater Neighborhood Association:

Mr. Radke was contacted regarding the sign; He denied having anything to do with it. It is not his style. As there is no proof that this was not done by a copycat it has been reported to the police for investigation.

A story:

Three men of Chelm were walking down the road, one of them carrying an umbrella. The three were engrossed in conversation when it began to rain. "Quick, open your umbrella!" one of the men said to the umbrella's carrier.

"It's useless. It's full of holes," the carrier said as the rain came down harder.

"Why did you bring it with you, then?"

"I didn't think it would rain."

I came to a bit of a realization when I gathered with the blogpocheh last night at One-Eyed Jack's. When I was asked why it was that very little in New Orleans actually began on time, the only thing that came to my mind was one of the reasons why I feel so comfortable here: the whole place has taken Jewish Standard Time to heart....to the extent that, in some reaction to this, the local rabbis are sticklers for beginning their services on time.

Of course, one of the dangers of taking this on is the risk that this town will become the town of Chelm:

To build perchance to dream Its not so easy to build a city. First you have to chop down trees, make the logs into lumber and then begin to build. But where will we get the trees from? "The mountain," cried one scholar. So they all began to chop down the trees and lug the heavy logs down the mountain. One day a passing Jew from Lithuania saw the hard work and advised them "Since the trees are on the mountain why don't you just roll them down?" "Wonderful idea," they replied and right away they began to carry all the logs back up the to the top in order to roll them down.

Believe it or not the town was eventually built, but in their haste they made it too small for the population.

"What are we going to do," they wailed. At length they went to ask the Rabbi. "Simple," he replied. "You have to move the mountain." All the citizens came out one bright morning and began to push. The entire population of Chelm was pushing against the mountain: Men, women, and even little children.

After a while it became unbearably hot and they removed their coats, piling them high one on top of the other. They were concentrating so hard on their work they didn't notice some thieves who came and stole their coats. After a while one of the Chelmites turned around with a shout of joy. "Look, we've succeeded!" How do you know? he was asked. "Because we pushed the mountain so far we can't see our coats anymore!"

Uh-oh.

I think we live in the country of Chelm...

On a national level, some folks are getting at what is wrong with No Child Left Behind - it leaves a hell of a lot behind.

The many teachers I spoke with for this article unanimously agreed that NCLB's emphasis on testing makes their job harder, more stressful and more frustrating. The major problem? Creating one standard for all children is impossible. The teachers spoke of the limited individual attention they could give students due to the narrow objectives of the all-important federal test scores.

The Department of Education insists that educators aren't forced to teach to the test: "Curriculum based on state standards should be taught in the classroom. If teachers cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well, then students will master the material on which they will be tested — and probably much more. NCLB essentially forces teachers to get the grades up at all costs, because the school's very existence is on the line. In that case, students will need no special test preparation in order to do well."

Of course, it's not as simple as that. Some kids have special needs. Some kids have a bad year. But NCLB essentially forces teachers to get the grades up at all costs, because the school's very existence is on the line. Schools and districts that don't make annual progress goals could go into sanction, whereby the schools can be closed, transferred to the state, sold to private corporations, or transformed into charter schools.

The bureaucracy involved can drive a teacher crazy.

On a local mainstream media level, Jarvis DeBerry questions the vouchers program some more.:

Gerard Robinson of the Black Alliance for Educational Options had a letter published Monday touting the glorious benefits of choice and describing Louisiana's wrongheaded voucher bill as some kind of liberating document that finally frees students to get a quality education.

A quality education I'm for. And though I am a graduate of and an advocate for public schools, I'm not necessarily opposed to parental choice, even if it means some students leave the public schools. What I am opposed to categorically is a state-funded transfer of students from safe, fuel-efficient cars to those with air fresheners hanging from the rearview.

I'm opposed to this poorly conceived legislation, which doesn't even attempt to discern the academic quality of qualifying private schools, being misrepresented by Robinson at the BAEO as giving parents a choice. Who can we credit for Robinson's flawed logic? A private school? If so, he needs his tuition refunded.

...Problem is, nonpublic schools have refused to allow themselves to be tested to the same extent and in the same manner that public schools are tested. The new law mandates testing for voucher recipients, and thus, will provide limited insight into the quality of participating private schools. But at this moment, parents are not being given sufficient information to rationally weigh public schools against private ones.

Inasmuch as they're being allowed to choose, their choices are between schools required to report all their flaws and schools that don't have to reveal anything about themselves that's unflattering.

You can argue, as the BAEO does, that parents choosing the second group is proof that schools in that group are better. But those schools are allowed to do the kind of image manufacturing that -- for very good reason -- is forbidden our public schools.

Honest school-choice advocates will admit that what Louisiana has pulled off is a fraud. This bill tilts parents toward private schools by refusing to make them meet the state's accountability standards in order to participate.

That makes as much sense as setting up a choice between a school with good math instruction and a school with a cafeteria that serves sno-balls.

These are the times when I thank God for G-Bitch:

...there’s been no overall reform, just fracturing. The breaking up of the Orleans public schools was fueled by frustration and not a desire to enact specific reforms for specific problems. Yes, there were some really bad schools in this town, and there are some poor schools all across the state, but breaking up the system so the worst schools are over there, middling schools here, and former-magnet-now-charter schools are up here. That’s not reform. It’s the same system we had before with many of the same problems. There was and still is little public talk about what happens in the schools, in classrooms, with teachers, with students, between teachers and students and support staff that is different, that creates improvements in outcomes. And what changes are discussed are hampered by being geared toward raising test scores. Test scores make ADULTS think that something is happening and being done. What about the children? Teachers? Parents?

Damn straight.

Everybody, go get schooled.

Well, that mural at Burgundy and Dauphine is untouched, but a really nice "Welcome to the Bywater" sign by folk artist Dr Bob has been defaced:

It was even complete with part of a trademark phrase of his, "Be Nice Or Leave", as this link shows (thanks, Loki):

Okay, the gloves oughta be off over this one.

I'm thinking point-blank paintball duel - gray pellets in Radtke's weapon, all the colors of the rainbow for Dr Bob. The one who gets the most shots in has to wear their paintballed garb for a month.

NOTE, 7:15 PM: Kevin Allman is right in that nobody has witnessed Fred Radtke actually doing this...and, judging from Sophmom's comment below, I'm starting to hope, for his sake, that he didn't do it and that this might be some sort of copycat...because, quite honestly, this is awful, and if it IS him, then he needs help for whatever mental problem he has.

Stuff and Schmaltz:

First off:

Be there, or be a...well, ya know...

Secondly...Fred Radtke goes all gray on Dr Bob. Apparently, the man painted over a sign next to the X/O Gallery at Dauphine and Press Streets, not far from this mural:

link to massmoga's photo courtesy of casa

More of my own photos on this and some examples of the gray as canvas are coming soon.

Thirdly: Lot of talk on my Queens synagogue's listserve about AgriProcessors and an ongoing debate about social justice vs., or in tandem with, upholding the laws of kashrut or kosher eating.
We don't keep strict kosher ourselves, but we tried to do so when we were in NYC. Through the listserve, I've been getting a picture of how pervasive the AgriProcessors products are and how difficult it is right now for those who want to keep kosher, but don't want to buy the Rubashkin's or Aaron's products because of the company's labor practices - people are now mostly bypassing the steaks, roasts, and ground beef and going for Empire chicken more and more, and this is in NYC, where there are more sources of the different varieties of kosher meats. Here in New Orleans, there's only one source in town for a greater variety of kosher meat - and most of it, with the exception of some cold cuts and hot dogs from Best's Kosher and Hebrew National, comes from AgriProcessors.

Anyway, somebody forwarded this latest advisory on food from some kashrut powers-that-be:

This is the recent news regarding strawberries. The rabbanim say that they are assur to eat, because even after proper cleaning they still contain LIVE bugs, yes live!!! So therefore it is FORBIDDEN TO EAT THEM. Please e-mail and send this link to all that you know, because eating bugs goes against a Torah prohibition (an issur mi'dorayta).

The rabbi from our Queens synagogue (an egalitarian Conservative shul, in the parlance of the denominational hairsplitting that is happening these days) responded thusly:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with eating strawberries. Like all fruit and vegetables, they should be washed before eating. Looking for not-visible insects on fruit and vegetables is above and beyond what is required, and this is just a first cousin of the whole business of declaring water not-kosher because of invisible microbes.

Please- the real challenge is to be kosher, which is hard enough. Being neurotically kosher is just a distortion of rabbinic Judaism. Let's focus on the real challenge!

Amen to that.

Fourth: NOAH's website is gone with the wind....among other NOAH news. E's all over this like copepods in NYC's drinking water. (I would say "like the oil slick all over the Mississippi" but that's a little too close for comfort right now...) Plus, Clancy DuBos gives Karen Gadbois some link love. 'Bout time...

And finally: Rising Tide III! Click on the graphic below and register now!!!!

Or, if you cannot attend, donations towards making the event bigger and better than ever are always greatly appreciated.

Can't miss that stink of earl outside. Blecch. Keep those doors and windows closed, folks.

Dan said not too long ago: "Hey, I just got an idea...."

Uh-oh

"Let's send all the city's smokers down to the river!"

Oh, dear.

What do we do then?

Let's hear it for webmaestro Varg of The Chicory! The Rising Tide III Conference site is up and going. Click on the graphic below to see more:

Register now at the site!

I'm so giddy I could almost watch this clip of Lee Zurik making the mayor and his associates squirm over and over again. Awww, Lee, Karen, Sarah, and E made him look bad in front of a visiting Congressional delegation. Poor baby.

Update, 11:39 AM: Via Blog of New Orleans' David Winkler-Schmit, Stacy Head chimes in on the efforts she made to have NOAH investigated, but noooo....

And could it be that the folks in City Hall actually found the key to the office? Any of 'em heard of a locksmith? Or are they afraid of spending any more money?

Anudder update, 2:36 PM: Schroeder has some more questions for the Walking Id.

On the heels of all of the hubbub in my life comes this article, the cover story of The Atlantic that I viewed in a number of airport newsstands in the past week:

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Good question. It could probably have been reworded as: Is Google Rewiring Our Brains? 'Cause hey, I don't know about you, but there are gonna be doofuses (doofi?) out there regardless of whether or not they use Google.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Huh. Anybody remember how to footnote? How to create a bibliography? Try it without Googling it. Check out an MLA Handbook and see if you can concentrate long enough on it to follow the directions.

The conflict here is most likely occurring when those who are professional writers - journalists, novelists, historians, what-have-you - are contending with deadlines. No, I'm not suggesting that there should not be any deadlines; everybody has to finish up their work sometime. I'm just saying that an accelerated world calls for even more accelerated measures simply in order to keep up. Having to come up with news on a daily basis is one thing - newspapers have applied that since it was possible for them to do so. The advent of radio, then TV, and now the Net have made it imperative for some time that every morning on your doorstep ain't enough. The radio can break into scheduled broadcasts to bring you what they see as breaking news, and TV does the same. The web accelerates things even more by combining all of the above media with even greater speeds - up to the second reporting. It can certainly feel like a ride on a JetSki. And I'm sure that, in this day and age, it can be even more difficult to try to teach others how not to skim the surface if that is all you feel like you are doing.

I can just see how this is changing the way kids are taught. For general knowledge, one used to be told to check an encyclopedia, then start looking in depth - books and periodicals from magazines to newspapers. Documentaries and radio broadcasts have been added to those piles of sources. The biggest problem now is that it might all be too easy to just call it all up with a word search on a search engine such as Google - the trick after that is doing one's best to discern what is true and useful from what is bogus and blowhardy. Boy, this must make nonfiction term papers a whole new experience for teachers who must read and grade 'em. Oh, right - they're on a deadline, too.

Dear God - everybody needs to be reeducated!!!

It is kinda scary when you think about it, and also when you think that this could well be opening up a new gap between the haves and the have-nots: those with regular Net access have these rewired brains that can think like the computers with which they interface, while those who don't will probably be seen, unfairly, as slower thinkers and possibly less intelligent ones as a result.

However, after reading Nicholas Carr's impressions of Google's "science of measurement" in their never-ending analyses of behavioral data collected from their search engine, I'm not sure who is really being used in the above scenario:

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Damn.

Makes me want to go to the library and start reading War and Peace just to see if I can get through it and free myself from the commercial tyranny of Google in the process. Time to crack some spines, people - the spines of books, that is.