I am savoring time with my soon-to-be-leaving teenage children and take every opportunity to spend time with them. When Oliver said he wanted to eat ice cream at the new Cold Stone Creamery that just opened in the Seoul Mun commercial development in the Ankhor Canal ravine. We had a great time. The kids keep my taste in music current and we listened to 100% “bangers” while cruising around the city. It was funny that they are reaching the age of being nostalgic for songs from when they were in elementary and middle school. 10 years ago to me seems like just yesterday. The prices are incredibly inexpensive with a cup of ice cream costing just over $1. I don’t know how they are making money…
Fridays are usually busy for me at school as I try to wrap up my things to-do list for the week. I had a late board meeting and afterwards attended our school’s community Iftar dinner. “Iftar” is the meal that faithful Muslims break their daily fast during Ramadan. It was a gorgeous night and our Arab and other Islamic families loved it. We served a community plov and people brought desserts and other dishes. It made me appreciate Ramadam more and I am always impressed with how kindness pervades Islamic culture.
I recently returned my latest e-library book, The Pentagon’s Brain by journalist Annie Jacobsen. I knew the US military does a lot of research into new weapons but I never heard of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency). Jacobsen’s book is a history of DARPA which is the Defense Department’s top secret research and development agency that develops all forms of future warfare. I didn’t finish the book because of business at work and the book was on loan from the library, but the 4 hours+ of reading, I got a good sense of DARPA’s history. It started right after World War II and in the late 1940s through the 1960s, much of their work was in developing nuclear weapons. Jacobsen focuses on characters and tells stories about their contributions to DARPA. The chapters about Doomsday scenarios are relevant today with the threat of nuclear war being higher recently. The chapter on the Vietnam War era was interesting because DARPA switched from weapons to techniques on how to defeat an insurgent, guerilla war. The future war chapters described how tiny and powerful drones are becoming. They are also now working on healing soldier’s brain injuries, regrowing limbs and of course, developing fighting robots. Annie Jacobsen has done a ton of research and interviews and the history of DARPA is the history of the American military in many ways. I recommend the book for
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