The other night, I finished reading “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin“, by Timothy Snyder.  To say that this book was a difficult read would be an understatement.  Not that the author didn’t do an excellent job stating and proving his thesis, but that the subject matter was horrific on a scale that makes it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time without stopping to reflect on it for a while.  Monday was Yom HaShoah, the day of rememberance for victims of the Holocaust.  I find it fitting that I finished this excellent work on the time and place of the Holocaust that evening.  By expanding the scope of his study to include both victims of Stalinist communism and Hitlerist socialism , Snyder shows that all human beings are subject to oblivion if a regime feels that they can destroy those whom they dislike with impunity.

We’ve all heard the stories, seen the movies and pictures.  6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, 25 million Soviet citizens perished in World War II.  What Snyder does is expand the time frame for the mass killings in Eastern Europe to include the Soviet famines and purges of the 1930’s and the ethnic cleansing that took place after World War II.   He does this not by just quoting more statistics, although this book is heavy with statistics, but by also relating the personal stories of those who survived or were able to document their experiences before dying.

I was trained in Russian and German by people who either lived through the Great Terror and the Holocaust or by their children.  So I’d heard some of the personal stories from their perspective.  What was wrenching about Bloodlands was that the same story seemed to happen over and over again throughout the 12 to 15 years of mass killings in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, and western Russia.  People, who for the most part did nothing worse than be a living member of a chosen group, were murdered in their millions, mainly through starvation, shooting, or gassing.  Human beings, be they Polish Jews, Ukrainian peasants, or Baltic intellectuals, were reduced to units of production and consumption, and were destroyed when their productive capacity was not worth their continued existence and consumption of resources.

Where Snyder differs from other authors is that he shows that the killings went beyond the labor and death camps of the Third Reich and the Gulags of the Soviets.  He illustrates how the vast majority of the victims of the two most murderous regimes in human history died from intentional starvation or by being shot over pits that they dug themselves.  As someone with history, especially military history, as a hobby, I had read about the conditions that the Soviets and Germans kept POW’s and civilians under during the war. This book brought just how horribly these two populations were afflicted into sharp focus, especially when contrasted with the treatment and conditions the civilians of Western Europe and non-Russian POW’s lived under at the same time.

If you’re a history buff, or want to get an in-depth analysis of this period of European history, I heartily recommend this book.  It’s Its lesson that another mass murder of innocent human beings can happen anywhere is relevant in a world that has seen genocides in my own lifetime.  Places like Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and a myriad of others show that when people are stripped of their humanity by a government or an ideology and have no way to defend themselves, their continued drawing of breath is not a given.  By learning about these crimes and understanding how they occurred and what happened to make them possible, we are better prepared to prevent or stop them.

I just finished reading “Redliners” by David Drake.  In a nutshell, a company of human shock infantry that has been worn the heck out in an protracted interstellar war is tasked to guard a new human colony in an environment where every living thing is deadly.  I won’t discuss the plot beyond that, because I hate spoilers and I believe that this book deserves every reader it can get.

Drake served with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam, and he has used the things he saw and did there to populate and enrich his fiction for over 30 years.  He’s most well known for his “Hammer’s Slammer’s” series of short stories and novels, but has branched out into other storylines and genres as he’s grown as a writer.  He’s one of the few people I don’t know that I would like to sit down and eat a meal with, just to have a conversation with them and hear their stories.

The central question of Redliners is “How do you re-integrate combat veterans, some of them damaged to a horrible extent both physically and psychologically, into a civilian populace who not only has no idea what those who protect them have gone through, but also has no interest in learning?”.  Redliners was published in 1997, but its theme is extremely timely after 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  As a society, Americans have only a tenuous connection to its military sons and daughters, and we have a long way to go to not only thank our combat veterans, but also to bring them back in as part of our society without treating them as damaged goods.

I believe the critical scene in the book is where the civilians watch video footage of a recent battle and realize just how much the soldiers put on the line for them.  This is why I believe that embedded reporters are one of the best things to come out of the current conflicts.  Yes, a lot of the time the reporting can be tilted one way or the other, but it gives those of us who have sent our soldiers into harms way an idea of what they go through, how they maintain their sanity, and the price they pay for each and every one of us.  We are blessed that our citizens do not come under attack very often, so such things as Restrepo and Gunner Palace can give us some connection to what our soldiers are doing for us.

I’d recommend that everyone read this book.  It’s available as a free download from Baen Books if you’re into e-readers, and a dead tree version is available from Amazon.  This one is definitely going on the “Have the kids read this when they’re old enough to understand it” shelf.

OK, I’m a geek.  This isn’t a gun review, or even a tactical equipment review.  This is a review of a little black electronic box that measures about 2″ by 4 ” by 4″.

For about a year now, we’ve been using our Nintendo Wii to watch Netflix streaming video, and that has led me to discover a lot of the other streaming services that unfortunately don’t mate with the Wii.  So I’ve been looking for something to either supplement or replace the Wii as a media player. My requirements were:

• Play Netflix, and Amazon Prime video streams
• Have the ability to add video streams as I discover them
• Play videos from my movie collection, either by streaming from one of our computers or by connecting media to it directly
• Interface with my 2004-purchased non-HD TV without degrading the video signal.  I’m not replacing my TV so I can watch old re-runs of Hawaii 5-0.

I looked at the new AppleTV when I bought the Macbook in December, but the salesman was very clear that it would interface only with an HD TV.  I also looked at some of the network enabled BlueRay players, but had the same issue.   I’m a cheap bastard, and I’m not going to spend money on a new TV until one of my sets dies.

A friend of mine suggested the Roku, and the price was right.  There three models of Roku box, priced from $59 to $99.  I bought the $99 model, since it came out of the box with the non-HD connectors for my “old” TV, had a USB connection to attach removable media and play movies, and had an “enhanced” remote.  I figured for $100, I could try it out, and if I didn’t like it, I could put it up on eBay or Craig’s List and re-sell it for most of what I paid for it.

Once it arrived, connection and set up took about 30 minutes.  The only wrinkle was getting it to talk to my wireless network, and the issue was more on the router end than on the player.  After that it was just a matter of configuring my Netflix and Amazon accounts to play over it, and then exploring the menus to find content streams that interested me.

In addition to the movies and TV shows on Netflix and Amazon, there are around 100 other channels that provide video and audio for a lot of different tastes.  I’ve configured a news stream, a children’s programming stream, the NASA channel, and the “channel” that allows for playback from removable media.  This feature seems to be early in development, but plays movies from a USB drive pretty easily.  Basically, there is content available for a lot of different interests.  I will eventually add more to my default menu as I have time to explore.  A friend of mine suggests Hulu Plus, which plays a lot more current TV shows than Netflix or Amazon, so I may check that out.  My goal is to eventually cut down on the cable TV packages we have and watch content on the Roku.  That will save me money in the long run, even if I have to pay a few dollars a month to get to some content.  I just have to prove to Irish Woman that the technology works and we will indeed still get to the programming that she enjoys.

Overall, I’m very happy with the Roku.  I’ve reached the point in life that 99.99% of programming on cable is crap to me, even on former favorite channels like “Discovery” and “History Channel”.  By having easy access to on-demand content streams, I can take the hour or so of TV that I watch a day and make sure it’s something I want to watch.  And there is enough family and kids content that when I want to let the kids watch a cartoon or a movie, they aren’t watching the same three episodes of Barney the Purple Dinosaur over and over.  And I’m making sure that there is content for Irish Woman.  I live by the credo “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”.

FCC Disclaimer – No money or other material gain on my part here.  Go bug someone else.

Since I mentioned Lucky Gunner earlier, I thought I’d do a quick review of their service during a recent purchase.

Most of you have probably heard of Lucky Gunner, and I’d bet that a large percentage of you have done business with them.  For those of you who haven’t, Lucky Gunner is an on-line ammunition dealer.  Their claim to fame is that if it’s listed on their website, it’s in stock, so there are no back orders.  If you can’t find it on their site, they don’t have it.

A couple of Friday nights ago, I took a look at my ammunition supply and found myself wanting in .38 Special target ammunition and .270 hunting ammunition.  I have a few boxes of each, but not enough that I would feel comfortable going to the range and going through a box or two of either without severely depleting my on-hand storage.

I went up to Lucky Gunner and pretty quickly found what I was looking for.  Two boxes each of both kinds off ammunition, both made by Sellier and Bellot.  I’ve had good luck with other S&B ammunition, so I thought I’d stock up a little.  After adding two 50 round boxes of .38 and two 20 round boxes of .270 to my cart, the cost came to $68.  The price was better than any of the other on-line retailers I looked at.

Checking out was easy and pretty quick, even allowing for going through their registration process.  Shipping charges and taxes came to $12, for a grand total of $80 for all of them.

I received a confirmation email on my purchase almost immediately, and a shipping notification was in my inbox the following Monday afternoon.  The Big Brown Truck of Happiness left the box on my doorstep on Wednesday.

What made my experience a bit better than other on-line ammo retailers I’ve used is the follow-up that Lucky Gunner did after the sale.  I got my receipt and shipping confirmation in the mail, as expected.  But this evening I received an email from their customer service department asking if my order had come in as expected and if I had any concerns.  Yes, it’s a form letter, but this is the first time I’ve ever had a gun related business reach out to me after successful completion of a transaction to check on how satisfied I was without it being a marketing survey.

So, the experience I had at Lucky Gunner was quite good.  The price of their ammunition is as good as or better than local gun stores or even Walmart in some cases.  Their website and customer service is top notch, and I got my order quickly and without problems.

FTC notification – I have no connection to Lucky Gunner other than being a satisfied customer.  They provided me with nothing that I didn’t pay for.

Girlie Bear and I were planning on going to do something outdoorsy this weekend, but it was too darned hot and muggy to do anything that wasn’t necessary.

So, we went to the movies instead.  Hey, sitting in an air conditioned theater drinking cold Coca-Cola beats sweating to death any day.

We decided on the new Shrek movie.  I’m not going to give any spoilers, but suffice it to say that the movie is about what happens when a male has a mid-life crisis in a world where it’s not hard to get a wish fulfilled, whether you understand the consequences or not.  Hilarity ensues, adventure happens, and romance blossoms.  I laughed, I cried, I came away feeling better as a person.

Of the four Shrek movies, this one probably goes about in the middle quality wise.  It was definitely an enjoyable movie, and Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy definitely gave it their all to make it funny.  There were a lot of good belly laughs throughout the movie, and a lot of snark directed at pop culture in general.

Girlie Bear enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it, which is saying a lot in movies these days.  Most movies either appeal to little kids, tweens, teenagers, or adults.  Not many can cross those demographic barriers, so Shrek Forever After gets extra points for this.

If you liked the first three movies, this one is worth a matinee or rental.