Posts in the "reviews" category - Chris Hardie

I'm having a really great time right now reading/listening to Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything. The book itself is very intriguing - a lively and engaging narrative of how our universe came to be and where it is now, the sciences and people who have explored those questions for so long, and the amazing oddities and subtleties about how our world works. It's a little geeky, but definitely written for non-geeks who want the Big Picture in the biggest sense of the word. But...

I'd like to sing the praises of artist Vienna Teng. Not only is her music outstanding (more on that in a moment), but her story is quite interesting as well, at least to me. Teng studied Computer Science at Stanford University, and then worked as a software engineer at Cisco Systems in San Francisco. As a fellow geek, I have to admire that part alone. But then Teng quit her tech job to prepare for the independent release of her debut album, Waking Hour, which is a really wonderful mix of striking...

Okay, I'm not usually one to gripe, or even talk about, the horrors of keeping up with all my favorite TV shows and movies. But last night was just not fair. UPN was showing two episodes of Star Trek Enterprise (one of the two TV shows I watch), one at 8 and one at 9. The 9 o'clock showing overlapped with the season finale of The West Wing (the second of the two TV shows I watch), which overlapped with my travel and prep-time for the 10 o'clock theater showing of The Matrix Reloaded (one of the few movies...

I saw the movie Phone Booth over the holiday weekend; I commend it to you, though less so for the movie itself than for the central question that it finds such a creative way to ask: When you're all alone at the edge of your life, with nothing much to lose, what are the things about your life that need to be reconciled, the ghosts of your your past and present that need to be called by name? When Stu, the central character in the movie, was asked this question, he didn't have any particularly...

I should preface these thoughts by saying that I believe the current uproar over Napster, copyright issues, the music industry, and information theory is producing a public debate that is very healthy for our government, culture, and nation. It is forcing us to look in new ways at how we treat information, data, privacy, personal transactions, art, and money on a personal and public level. It is forcing several large and powerful corporate and government entities to think hard about their place in the digital...

This analysis necessarily discusses some plot and thematic details of the book After Dachau by Daniel Quinn. I have made every attempt to refrain from revealing too much or spoiling the experience of reading the book for the first time, but picky readers be warned. After reading just the first sentence of After Dachau, I was sure I had identified the major themes, direction, and message-delivering vehicle that Daniel Quinn would use in his new book. This was slightly comforting; I'd read that...