Some Recent Memoirs

CANCER

I haven't blogged yet on the terrible news that Elizabeth Edwards received last week and that Tony Snow received yesterday. Of course, all my sympathies are with them. They both want to keep on doing the work they've been doing, and I applaud them for doing so. I just want to share a post by blogger G. M. Roper (linked via Instapundit), which I found very moving. Roper is a cancer survivor who reprints the E-mail Tony sent him.

THE ROYAL NAVY, R.I.P.

Arthur Herman, historian of the Royal Navy, pronounces its demise with the capture of 15 British sailors by the forces of Iran.

PASSAGES FROM INDIA

I recently saw the movie The Namesake, about Indian immigrants to the United States. I'd like to give a plug here to my friend from Michigan Diane Checklich, who has made an engaging movie on a similar subject, Offshore, about Indians sent to the United States to learn how to set up a call center back in India. But the about-to-be-laid-off American call center workers try to sabotage them. Both movies present an interesting view into the lives of some of the tens of thousands of immigrants to the United States from India. Highly recommended.

GLOBAL WARMING

Here's an illuminating interview with author Michael Crichton on global warming. Everything he says seems to make good sense to me. Here's a fun excerpt:

I conclude fears are a matter of fashion. Worries are like clothing styles, they come and go, rise and fall, based on what the worry fashion leaders tell the herd of independent minds to fear this year. 

I knew Crichton, slightly, at Harvard; he was two years ahead of me, and we were both on the Crimson. As I recall, he was book editor one year, and regularly ran his Soc Rel (Harvardese for sociology) tutorial papers as book reviews. They were tediously boring; I can't imagine that anyone actually read them. No sign whatever that he would become a bestselling, name-brand author.