In How the Scots Invented the Modern World Arthur Herman recounts Scots history from the 16th through the 20th centuries. While the Scots didn't create the modern world by themselves, they certainly played a key role. They rapidly transformed their martial feudal/tribal clan society into the first modern literate one.

The Scottish Enlightenment championed the voice of reason and inspired the framers of the Constitution of the United States. Scottish engineers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers powered the expansion of the British Empire. While embracing the world of science and commerce, Scots thinkers were aware of the dangers of forgetting the virtues of war which include courage, honor, loyalty, and perseverance and promoted citizen militias to counter this.

Today Scottish culture is celebrated in festivals and Highland Games around the world. While the Scottish people and culture are popularly considered Celtic, they were also shaped by Scandinavians, Anglo Saxons, and Normans. The surge of Scottish influence had subsided by the mid 20th century, but the effects permeate western civilization.

In The Gluten Connection Shari Lieberman surveys the gluten sensitivity issue. Celiac Disease is the most severe form of gluten sensitivity and once thought to be rare, is now known to be rather common with an estimated global occurrence of almost 1% of the population. Celiac is not curable, but symptoms are relieved by avoiding gluten from wheat, barley, and rye.

Less serious sensitivity seems to be more common, but the data is ambiguous. It's been associated with many gastrointestinal and autoimmune ailments and there are many anecdotal accounts of such ailments improving once the sufferer adopted a gluten free diet. Research provides some support for this but looks inconclusive. Still, a gluten free diet may be worth trying for those suffering from chronic ailments which have been associated with gluten.

After taking another look at JavaScript, I'm still not inclined to use it for server side or command line scripting. When I do need to use it, I'll keep JavaScript: The Good Parts handy. This slim volume tells you what you really need to know to write good programs with the language. In addition to showing you how to use the good parts of JavaScript, it provides guidance for avoiding or working around the bad parts. Since JavaScript has more than its share of warts, this is invaluable.

In Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness Duncan Watts explores the effects of network connections on system behavior. Network effects are evident in the spread of epidemics, the function of the brain, the adoption of new technologies, and other disparate areas.

Small World networks are non-random and sparsely connected. They tend to contain clusters of closely connected notes with a few shortcuts to distant ones. The "six degrees of separation" from urban lore is an example of the small world phenomenon. Watts raises more questions than he answers concerning this emerging research topic.

Gates of Fire is a novelization of the Battle of Thermopylae. There 300 hundred Spartans under King Leonidas held the pass against an overwhelming Persian force long enough for the Greek city states to rally their forces for a successful defense. Their heroism was an inspiration to their fellow Greeks and has continued to be an inspiration down through the ages.

Steven Pressfield brings to life both the harsh realities and the nobility of the ancient Greeks. Life was hard, but there was also beauty, gentless, and compassion. His dramatization of events leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and it's aftermath shows how ordinary people can come to do extra-ordinary things.

In Entering Space Robert Zubrin describes how humanity could graduate from being a planet bound species to an interplanetary, and eventually interstellar one. He categorizes civilizations by the extent of their mastery of local resources. Type I civilizations exploit the resources of their native planet. Type II civilizations achieve control of the resources of their home star system. Type III civilizations expand to multiple star systems.

As founder of the Mars Society, it's no surprise that Zubrin sees Martian colonization and development to be key, though he acknowledges the potential of Lunar and asteroidal resources. He believes that governments will lead the way to space with private enterprise following and providing support services. I'm more optimistic that private efforts will play a leading role.

Zubrin looks at potential technologies consistent with our current knowledge of physics that might enable humans to travel, live, and prosper in the inner solar system, the outer solar system, and interstellar space. The most striking point in his analysis is that relatively fast interstellar spacecraft that could carry humans would expend an enormous amount of energy. They could easily become weapons of mass destruction, a sobering thought.

Return of the Kettlebell is Pavel Tsatsouline's latest book. It focuses on building muscle mass while maintaining or improving strength and conditioning. The tools of choice are double kettlebell exercises organized in alternating two week blocks. One block is devoted to slow grinding movements: the Double Kettlebell Press, the Double Kettlebell Front Squat, and the Double Kettlebell Deadlift. The alternate block is devoted to explosive movement, specifically the long cycle double Kettlebell Clean and Jerk.

This looks like fun, but it's a pretty intense program, not something I want to do during the throwing season. Pavel suggests that you shouldn't start it until you've reached the "Enter the Kettlebell" Rite of Passage goals of a half bodyweight Clean and Press, and 200 Kettlebell Snatches with the 24 kg implement as used by the U.S. Secret Service. I'm some way from that, so I'll work on the Rite of Passage until the end of throwing season and see where I am then.

This program in this book is really intended for elite athletes who want to add lean body mass. I found it interesting though I don't think it's the right thing for me at this point in time. I'll practice the double kettlebell movements on some of my "variety" days which can be considered a kind of active rest. Good book, but not for everyone.

Never Let Go is a collection of Dan John's writings on strength and conditioning training. Subtitled "A Philosophy of Lifting, Living, and Learning", it provides a pragmatic approach to navigating the tangled web of information about health, fitness, and athletic training. A certain amount of strength and conditioning is necessary for good health and is fundamental to fitness and athletic performance. How much and what kind depends on your goals, and Dan emphasizes that you need to need to stay focused on your goals.

The main points of Dan's strength and conditioning philosophy are:

1. The Body is One Piece.
2. There are three kinds of strength training:
   • Putting weight overhead
   • Picking it off the ground
   • Carrying it for time and distance
3. All training is complementary.

Each chapter is a lesson in the guise of an entertaining and enlightening story told by a master practitioner of the strength arts. Reading and rereading these stories will help you in your own strength practice, whether as a coach, athlete, or fitness enthusiast. As you read it you will sometimes think "I knew that", while realizing that you've just reached a better understanding. Dan teaches movements rather than muscles and you need to train the full spectrum of normal movement. However, if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing, so he recommends a warm up that works a variety of movements which allows you to focus on specific goals in the main workout.

Since the body adapts to novel stresses, everything works but nothing works forever. Combined with everyone's unique genetics and history, this implies that you should try different things long enough to see how they work for you. If they don't work, move on to something else. If they do, continue with them until you stop progressing, then try something else. Keep a training log so you'll know what has worked in the past and can profitably be repeated.

"Never Let Go" is a worthwhile and enjoyable read for just about anyone. It's a great book on the pursuit of althleticism that should be read and re-read by anyone with more than a passing interest in health, fitness, and/or sports performance.

In The Purposeful Primitive Marty Gallagher presents his strength and conditioning philosophy with the stories of notable strength and endurance athletes with his own experiences as a world champion powerlifter and coach.

While focusing on strength, Marty also recognizes the importance of cardiovascular conditioning and diet. He describes simple programs that have proven effective for both world class athletes and couch potatoes getting into shape. This book deserves a place in the library of all serious fitness enthusiasts, athletes, and coaches.

Mark Lutz is an outstanding trainer and writer. His Programming Python is the most most comprehensive Python text that I've found, weighing in at 1552 pages. It's not just long though, The detailed examples solving many real world problems in both desktop and server programming make it ideal for those who learn best by seeing how things are done.

While LSD (Long Slow Distance) type training is most popular for cardio, research has shown that sprint intervals like the Tabata Protocol are more effective for developing VO2 max. In Viking Warrior Conditioning, Kenneth Jay presents interval training protocols that he's developed using kettlebell snatches. I enjoyed the book though it's a bit pricey for the amount of material presented.

I'm using his basic protocol of 15 seconds of snatches with the left arm followed by 15 seconds of rest, then 15 seconds of snatches with the right arm followed by 15 seconds of rest and find it to be a nice challenge. In addition to the cardiovascular conditioning, this develops the explosive power needed for the Highland Games Heavy Athletics events.

In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David Landes asks why some nations are very rich and others very poor. He examines the economic history of Earth in search of answers. He concludes that a combination of freedom, the rule of law, and competing interests have tended to generate the most wealth. Along the way he recounts many interesting historical episodes. Seems our government is heading the wrong way.

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, an entertaining retelling of the Beowulf saga as it might have happened. It was originally published as The 13th Warrior and a movie with that name was based upon it. I feel a kinship to Beowulf as the old king who calls for Beowulf's help is named Rothgar, a name which has evolved into Rogers.

Nicholas Romanov's Pose Method of Running makes the case that running technique has been neglected by most runners and coaches, who believe that high volume training is all that is needed to become a better runner. Some say that running ability is purely inherit and cannot be taught. Romanov asserts that running can be taught and that proper technique is critical to maximize performance and minimize injury.

Romanov begins by describing how he developed the Pose Method, taking inspiration from ballet, the martial arts, and comparative biomechanics. He then describes the method which is based on the concept of movement as a sequence of poses. The critical pose for running is balanced on the ball of the support foot with the other raised and the body poised to fall forward. Let gravity do most of the work and pull the support foot vertically with the hamstring as the other foot swings forward to land on the ball at a new point of support. It's simple and would be natural if we ran barefoot. However, many environments make foot protection attractive, so we wear shoes, and modern running shoes have evolved to perhaps do too good a job of protecting the feet, allowing heavy heel strikes. The feet are protected, but the force of the heal strike is transmitted to the knees, hips, and back, which Romanov contends leads to most running injuries.

The core of the book is a series of drills to teach the pose method and exercises to improve balance, strength, and flexibility. Dedicated runners may chafe at spending training time in this manner when they could be running, but this is probably time well spent. The book concludes with methods to correct various running flaws. These include some of the drills and exercises covered earlier with some additional variations.

Romanov's ideas make sense, and I think they are worth trying for both recreational and competitive runners. With my knees, I may not do a significant amount of running, but I've applied the method to walking and it definitely helps. If I minimize heal strikes and use the balls of the feet for most support while walking, I'm pain free. If I forget and allow heavy heal strikes, the pain reminds me to pay attention.

Stephen Kellert presents a philosophers view of chaos theory with his In the Wake of Chaos. He follows an introduction to chaos theory and its history with an exploration the philosophical implications. The sensitive dependence on initial conditions of chaotic systems combined with the limits to measure precision from quantum mechanics places limits on the predictability of many physical processes.

Kellert then poses the question: Why did it take so long for chaos theory to become a field of serious scientific inquiry? The commonly presented explanation is that lack of the necessary mathematical and computational tools delayed such explanation, but Kellert doesn't think this sufficient reason. Poincare laid the mathematical foundations in the late 19th century and digital computers were available in the mid-twentieth century, but the dynamic non-linear systems of chaos theory weren't investigated until decades later. Kellert finds this surprising and proposes social factors that kept chaotic phenomena from being considered interesting. I think he's right, though I don't find it surprising. Even pure research tends to be driven by the potential utility of the results.

Iron Mind: Stronger Minds, Stronger Bodies by Randall Strossen covers psychological aspects of weight training in considerable detail. While it contains some useful insights, many of the points are presented as stories which seemed contrived to me.

The small size, speed, and ease of embedding promised by Lua caught my attention, so I downloaded it and began playing. I bought a copy of Programming in Lua, 2nd. ed. to facilitate my explorations. The book is an excellent introduction to the language.

Lua is, for the most part, fairly concise, but requires explicit declaration of local variables which adds some annoying verboseness. I prefer variables to be implicitly local and explicitly declared global. Lua's origin as an interactive data description language probably drove this choice. It is lexically scoped like Scheme, but without all the parentheses and without Python's syntactically significant indentation, so variable scope is determined by code chunks. A chunk may be file, a function, control structure, or a single line. Single line chunks are quite common when using the interactive shell and declaring all your variables global to do much of anything would be a bigger annoyance. I prefer the Python solution, but will keep Lua in the quiver if I need it for resource constrained situations.

John Ringo's The Last Centurion tells the tale of an American soldier dealing with apocalypse. The premise of the story is to suppose that things generally continue along the path of the early 2000's until 2019, when our planet is hit with both a significant cooling event and a global bird flu epidemic that decimates the population.

With the Four Horsemen on the loose, Bandit Six finds himself responsible for a huge cache of arms and supplies in Iran after most U.S. military forces have been pulled back to the States to deal with the emergencies at home. He has only an augmented company to provide security and eventually has to destroy the weapons and try to get his command across the chaotic Middle East to friendlier territory. They have to fight their way home, rearranging the map in the process.

In this fast paced novel, Ringo explores a possible future that turns a lot of today's presumptions inside out. Current trends are not a reliable indicator of future performance. It's a good read that I found hard to put down.

Though The Russian Kettlebell Challenge came first, it's best treated as a sequel to Enter the Kettlebell which emphasizes the basics of kettlebell training for strength and conditioning, The Russian Kettlebell Challenge provides additional exercises for variety, and guidance for designing sport specific programs.

Musculoskeletal Tissue Regeneration presents the state of the art in biological materials and methods for repairing damaged bone and muscle. It's of interest to me because I'd like to postpone or avoid replacing my knees with bionic devices. While not light reading, it is clear and comprehensive.