Before I left on Thursday, I mailed in my paperwork to file as a Libertarian candidate for NC House, District 40, and I see I'm now on the Wake County Board of Elections web site's list of candidates. I'd tell y'all to vote for me, but I don't think anybody on my friends list lives in my district.
Reading over the weekend was The Memory Cathedral by Jack Dann, subtitled "A Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci." It's an alternate history in which da Vinci and his apprentice Machiavelli leave Florence during the dust-up between Lorenzo Medici and Pope Sixtus IV and travel to Egypt and Persia, where da Vinci serves as Chief Engineer to the Caliph in his conquest against the Grand Turk Mehmed. The opening section with its endless Florentine soirees gets a bit tedious, but once the main action gets going, it's a fun tale of adventure and invention.
