Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor, by Ken Silverstein (Random House, 2004)

In June of 1995, the Federal Government swooped down upon an unsuspecting Michigan subdivision, where a teenager's efforts to build a nuclear "breeder" reactor in his backyard were bathing his neighborhood in dangerous levels of radioactivity.

David Hahn was not an ordinary teenaged boy, but a brilliant mind trapped in an unfortunate life. Long before David began playing with radioactive materials, his nuclear family experienced its own meltdown. He had two parents, two step-parents, a step-sister, numerous schoolteachers, a Scout troop, and plenty of fellow students, but none of them realized how bright and determined he was. He told them what he was doing, but no one believed him.

It’s a fascinating tale, so the book should be hard to put down. Instead, I found it hard to wade through. The basic story must be teased out from the midst of the author’s diatribes against nuclear power, the Boy Scouts, and anyone with a positive attitude toward scientific progress. Some of his logic is so bizarre as to be almost amusing: The Boy Scouts are to blame for David’s actions because they have an Atomic Energy merit badge. Scouting is an evil institution because Lord Baden-Powell, its founder, was opposed to masturbation. It’s not surprising that no one recognized David’s genius, because he was a bad speller. Real geniuses get good grades and channel their scientific inquisitiveness into school-sponsored activities.

The Radioactive Boy Scout contains a great story, but it's a dull book. Recommended for those who are curious enough to be willing to put up with the propaganda, or who would enjoy reading tirades against both the Boy Scouts and nuclear power; or who can’t sleep and don’t want to reach for the Sominex.^®

Lime Daley is the name of Jon Daley's Internet hosting and embedded hardware and software systems company. It is also the name Porter gave to a great drink Jon and Heather invented. For the curious, here is the recipe for a Lime Daley:

ice to taste
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 drops Boyajian lime oil
1 twelve-ounce bottle Blenheim “Old #3” (red cap) ginger ale

Put ice in a tall glass. Add lime juice and lime oil. Slowly pour in Blenheim. Stir well. Be prepared for the strongest kick a non-alcoholic drink can have. (To remember the proportions, think “3, 2, 1, blastoff!” It’s appropriate.)

(I predict LimeDaley.com will be a powerful business.)

With the nonchalance of season passholders, we spent the day at EPCOT’s International Food and Wine Festival. The park was not crowded by their standards, but it was by ours; we prefer to go when time spent waiting in line is minimal. Today, however, we found ourselves in line again, and again, and again…each time at a small booth with a long queue, that featured a different country’s food and drink. Portions were appetizer-sized, and prices were Disney-sized, but the idea was great. If the portions had been any larger, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy so many tastes. It helps to have a partner in this situation: you wait in this line, I’ll wait in that one, then we’ll meet and share the food. It was a strategy that worked well.

Waiting in line was a social event, too. Floridians seem to have made an easy transition from exchanging hurricane preparation tips while in line at Home Depot, to exchanging food recommendations while waiting at EPCOT.

The food itself was variable. Between us, we experienced

• New Zealand: Green Lip Mussels (so-so; the preparation was good, but the mussels themselves were not, and certainly not up to the quality of the dish of the same name we enjoyed in Auckland.
• Ireland: Guiness Stew (a rather ordinary beef stew, but the flavor was quite good, and somehow comforting)
• Scandinavia: Cold Poached Salmon (one of the best, with a delicious lemon cream sauce)
• China: Dan Dan Noodles (all right, but bland); Chicken Sha Cha with Peanut Sauce (almost tasteless; were there any peanuts in the sauce at all?); Akadama Plum Wine (good, made the food more interesting)
• South Africa: Durban Spiced Chicken (wonderful! best dish of the day; lots of flavor)
• Italy (regular pavilion, not a Festival booth): tiramisu and chocolate mousse (both good, but the mousse triumphed)
• New England: free taste of Vermont Cabot sharp cheddar cheese (just about worth the price, not sharp at all)
• France: Escargot Provencal (almost as good as the Durban Spiced Chicken), Crêpe au Fromage et Jambon (not bad but nothing special)
• Poland: Nalewka Babuni Cherry Wine (recommended to us by someone who obviously never had to take cherry-flavored cough syrup as a child)
• Canada: Cheddar Cheese Soup (delicious, at least in a small portion, with detectable wine, bacon, and onion flavors in addition to the cheese)

Having run out of meals and appetite, we saved some other interesting pavilions (Southeast Asia, India, Morocco, and more) for another trip. Next time we’ll know to sign up early for the Twinings tea tasting.

I suppose we should be watching the presidential debates tonight. But I already know how I'm going to vote on that race. (We need to have debates for the local races, where I'm not yet convinced.)

Nonetheless, Porter—after a grueling week of work—was in the mood for a mystery story. I checked out Blockbuster online to see what we might expect, and found a good assortment of Agatha Christie, Inspector Morse, Rumpole of the Bailey, P.D. James, even a couple of Dorothy Sayers. (Alas, no Father Brown stories, nor Ngaio Marsh.) Thus encouraged, we paid a visit to our local Blockbuster store.

What a shock! They've remodelled since we were there last, and their movie stock has been considerably diminished. More than half the store is now given to game rentals and movies for purchase. There is no longer a "mysteries" section. When I asked the clerk for help, he told me that any mysteries would be scattered around, probably in "drama" or "action." There is no way to browse for a good mystery. Next I asked if they had any Agatha Christie movies in stock, only to learn that there was no way for him to answer that question, as his computer only allowed him to look up movies by title! "You mean," I said, disbelieving," that unless I come into this store knowing exactly what it is I want to rent, you can't help me?" Apparently.

We did browse for a bit, then left emptyhanded. "I'm cured," Porter said. There was nothing. It was nauseating, in fact, even to look at most of the titles and cover pictures.

Actually, there was one movie we might have rented, had we been in the mood. Not a mystery. I suggested The Mission, and when Porter asked what it was about, I replied, "It doesn't matter; it has some great oboe music." Then again, we can hear plenty of great oboe music without sitting through a movie, so we left it behind.

Fortunately, the library is more reasonable, and Porter now sits with Ngaio Marsh's Light Thickens in his lap. A good solution, even if we have to enjoy it in series rather than in parallel.

I don't remember if we have the Olympics or the hurricanes to thank for this, but for one of those occasions we had the television on long enough to hear an advertisement for the PBS show, The Question of God with Dr. Armand Nicholi. It caught my attention because Dr. Nicholi's popular Harvard course of the same name was featured in the Boston Globe while we were living in Massachusetts.

Subtitled C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, the program interweaves biographical information on the two men, quotations from their writings, and a seminar-like discussion among an eclectic group of serious thinkers. Alas, I was too busy to give the two-part, four-hour show the complete attention it deserved, but I saw most of it, and I haven't been so impressed with something on television since Ken Burns' The Civil War. The intellectual quality of this show is as far above normal PBS fare as normal PBS fare is above the rest of television.

One consequence of having had to keep a weather eye out for hurricane news is that our television set was on quite a bit recently. I'll save my comments on the generally repulsive nature of what we saw for another time.

There were actually a couple of shows that qualified as interesting enough (and un-raunchy enough) to keep my attention for a while. One of these was Medical Investigation, which we found on NBC from 10 to 11 p.m. Friday nights. I can be grateful that the hour is so late, as I'm less likely to be tempted to seek it out. For it is just the kind of story I love: a mystery, and a medical mystery at that. In fact, in at least two of the stories so far the plots were lifted directly from the wonderful—and true—medical detective stories of Berton Roueché.

Alas, the stories were much better off in Roueché's hands. Medical Investigation suffers from bad acting, bad writing, and contrived, embarrassing attempts at social commentary. The subplots amongst the main characters, no doubt an effort to give the series more continuity, are distracting—and detracting. Nonetheless, the appeal of the medical mysteries is so strong that I actually enjoyed the two and a half shows I watched, in spite of the defects.