Diablo Mesa by Preston and Child.

It is one of theirs.

The series doesn’t have an official title, it’s usually referred to by the main character’s name- Pendergast. The authors are Preston and Child. This particular book is in a separate series in the same ‘verse; the main characters are an archaeologist and a rookie FBI agent, both of whom were established in the main series.

If you like techno-thriller/mystery adventures, the books are very entertaining, especially early on. The writing is generally pretty engrossing, the pacing is brisk, and the primary protagonist, Pendergast, is a terrific enigma of a character. Over the course of a couple dozen novels you go from knowing virtually nothing about him to knowing quite a bit about him, but still feeling like you know almost nothing about him.

Despite my dissatisfaction with this book, I encourage anyone who is interested in the genre to give the series a try. Start with ‘Relic’ and ‘Reliquary’ and go from there.

I am jumping around among several series, primarily sci-fi and fantasy. I have found Asimov to be a particular challenge to get through, mostly due to his style, but I’ve powered through them.

This series is techno-thriller/mystery in a contemporary setting. That authors’ style is very readable and the pacing is always spot on; one of my favorite things about their books was the unusual places the characters tended to end up- the basement of the Natural History Museum, Tierra del Fuego, the old subway tunnels beneath Central Park, a cave system in the middle of Kansas, the Donner Party campsite, the canyonlands of southern Egypt, etc. weird places that NOBODY sets the climax of a story.

But this time, Elon Musk Guy is out to prove the Roswell Incident really did happen, and the FBI is busy murdering its own agents to keep it under wraps. The book before this one, they used some quantum theory jiggery-pokery to explain how a creature from a parallel universe came to earth and started killing people by acting like a giant mosquito.

They’ve gone from straight mystery/thriller to plausible if unlikely scientific explanations for seemingly supernatural occurrences, to crafting mysteries and conspiracies around famous and semi-famous events like Roswell and ‘what ever happened to Geronimo’s rifle’, and a previously unknown Audubon folio. I quit.

Athletics at the service academies doesn’t fall under the same umbrella as a federally funded Olympic Committee or football/soccer Organization. The purpose of the service academies is to train military officers. The academies have athletics, but the athletes are. It recruited because of their skill on the field. It’s really hard to get into a military academy, they each accept around 1,000 new cadets/midshipmen every year, virtually all of whom have the academic chops to get into top schools like Northwestern, Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Michigan, etc.

Is the head coach at Army paid in federal dollars? Yes. But his job is to coach football, not convince a corrupt multinational sporting organization to stage an astonishingly expensive event in his country by giving them millions of taxpayer dollars under the table. Or over the table. Or on camera.

I’m sure there is, because they are not professional athletes while enrolled.

I can dream, can’t I?

I wasn’t aware of this. But I’m not surprised. It also probably wasn’t the government directly. Indirectly, however…

US law forbids federal funds going toward athletics. Which includes FIFA and the Olympics. The USOC is one of the few in the world that has no government funding.

Isn’t the next one in North America? Since it’s split between 3 countries, none of whose governments will offer bribes, the level of corruption will automatically be lower. How low will depend on how much private/corporate money is shoved up his ass in the US, how much drug money/drugs is shoved up his nose in Mexico, and how much poutine he is politely offered (while apologizing for the lack of bribes) by Canada.

I’m curious as to the size of the bribe he took. Was it more, or less than the bribe offered to the Ecuadorian players?

What do you call a busload of lawyers at the bottom of the sea?

A good start.

>Since the 2000–01 season, only the Knicks and Timberwolves have lost more games.

Fun fact. The Timberwolves have the lowest franchise winning percentage of any team that has existed for more than two seasons. Other than the Seattle Kraken, who have played 90 games as a franchise, the Wolves are the only team with a total winning percentage below 0.400. As a resident of a city full of hopeless teams, the Wolves are the hoplessest.

It was a looooooooooooooong time ago, but I'm pretty sure my grandpa, a mortician, was his county's coroner for many years.