The All-New Bunrab

Books
Smoke and Ashes, by Tanya Huff, short review posted on Amazon.com - third book in a series, category best described as "humorous (but not comedy) urban vampire fantasy."

A Play of Knaves by Margaret Frazer, third in her spinoff series about actor Joliffe, sometime friend and assistant to Sister Frevisse in Frazer's earlier series. I thought I had read that the person who used the pen name Margaret Frazer had died, but either I'm wrong, or they've found someone reasonably competent to take over the franchise. Since the author who was Frazer was also, supposedly, Monica Ferris, who write the needlework shop series, and there's another volume out in that series also, which I haven't seen yet, perhaps the same person is still alive. (From what I had gathered before, she was also Mary Monica Pulver, who wrote a short series about a cop who was in the SCA, in the late 80's. Who knows whether they really all were one person, or still were when one of them died, if any of them have? I'm not quite curious enough to go research the matter, only curious enough to check the quality of the next books, if any, in the series.)

A murder mystery I've already forgotten, from the library, which doesn't say much for it, does it? I cannot remember who or why or what, just that there was yet another murder mystery somewhere in there, and I read it, and I forgot it and I returned it to the library.

Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam, latest in her Gregor Demarkian series. The series has changed over the years - Father Tibor has become less interesting than he was, only a cardboard foil for Gregor, but I nonetheless continue to find the series interesting and reasonably adequately written. I haven't decided whether to write a full review of it yet. Of some possible interest to my usual flist: the gnomic utterances at the beginning of each section include quotes from Terry Pratchett - not normally the first author that that you'd pick in a word association game after Haddam's name came up.

Magazines
The October issue of Rider includes a review of Piaggio's new 3-wheel scooter - with 2 wheels in front, one in the rear. It looks very, very strange when it's leaning in a curve.

I had already read about the newly approved fully implantable "permanent" artificial heart from one of the heart failure web sites I regularly get news off of; this week, Time had it in their "Numbers" column, as in:

$250,000 Cost of a fully implantable artificial heart approved last week by the FDA for use in up to 4,000 people with severe congestive heart failure.
2 lbs. Weight of the device, which makes it an option only for men and large women.
5.2 Average number of months the first 12 recipients survived with the device.

$250,000 for 5.2 months, of which I'll bet every single day was spent in a hospital?!?!?!? Not me, hon. If I get to that point, NO ARTIFICIAL HEARTS, you hear me? I am NOT interested in 5.2 months of that kind of "life."

Consumer Reports' October issue tests ultra-performance and luxury sports cars, with the Porsche 911 Carrera coming in with the top stats, although the price means they didn't pick it as a Best Buy. For about $87,000, you get a 3.8 liter engine that can do 0-60 in only 4.4 seconds and the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds; breaking from 60 mph is only 113 feet, and it gets 20 mpg over all. It does sound like fun, but then, for less than $10,000, my 0.65 liter engine gives me 0-60 in about 5.5 seconds - faster than half of the cars tested in the October category - and get 58 mpg overall; any of the larger bikes (like, say, the 1.2 liter engines) will do better time than the Porsche, with most of the 1100-1200 cc bikes getting 0-60 in under 4 seconds. I don't offhand have the braking distance stats for my bike, but I know it's in the moderate 2 digits - 60-something feet, I think.
More useful to most of CR's readers, and certainly interesting to read only a couple of days after I did my list of supermarkets, is their article rating about 50 supermarket chains. Much depends on what one is looking for, of course; as the cartoon posted on the bulletin board of almost every employee break room in the USA says, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." - the winners for low prices are not the ones with the best variety of merchandise or the best service. Nonetheless, I think the ratings contain some details that would be interesting to people who go to the same market all the time, because there are some unexpected smaller regional chains out there that might well be worth a trip out of your usual rut.

First, several articles from a variety of sources, including the daily newspaper, about eating foods that are good for you for one reason or another. One about foods high in fiber. Another about foods known to lower your cholesterol. A third article about foods high in anti-oxidants. What's remarkable about these articles is that in all three, several of the top recommended foods are the same. To wit: nuts (especially almonds and walnuts), legumes (especially kidney beans and garbanzos) and berries (especially cranberries and blueberries). So there you have it. For a variety of reasons, eat your nuts and berries.

Next: a page in the 26 November 2005 issue of Science News, which has been buried on the dining table for far too long, summarizes the November meeting of the American Heart Association. ( some details )

And then, the "Feedback" column from New Scientist, 22 July 2006, includes this bit:( several paragraphs long )

Last but not least, "Feedback" from NS 5 August 2006:

Searching for the meaning of life? If a higher power can't help, then there's always Google. Last week it transpired that people in India lead the world in searching for "nanotechnology" on Google. Now we find that the people of Brisbane, Australia, come top in their eagerness to type "meaning of life" into the search engine. (We also spotted that the city comes top for the word "aliens," but the two probably aren't linked.)

Hidden inside Google Labs, where the company road-tests new ideas and software, you can find out what the world is searching for. Which cities search the most for "forgiveness"? Top sinner is Philadelphia, perhaps unsurprisingly followed by Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, Londoners are probably too busy for penitence: they top the world in searches for "lost keys." In a city well known for its hellish driving, our readers in the Boston area are busy trying to find a place to put their car. Cambridge, Massachusetts comes highest for "parking space."

So who could be searching the most for Osama Bin Laden? Naturally, it's Washington D.C.

Oh, and when I spell-checked this post, among other things, "Wikipedia" came up checked, and here are the alternatives LJ suggests:
Wikipedia: Wiped, Wimped, Kipped, Wicked, Whipped, Skipped, Waked, Whooped, Wickeder, Warped, Wigged, Worked, Copied, Whopped, Whupped, Wakened, Whelped, Wiggled

Stacks of science and other magazines sitting around, that should have gone into the paper recycling bin a while ago. So:

Science, June 3, 2006: Bipolar kids misinterpret facial cues as hostile. When viewing expressions, they read faces that the adult researchers and that normal kids though were neutral, as being hostile. Emotional centers in their brains lit up more, too. Hmmm, perhaps those charts of facial expressions that shrinks give a lot of depressed, bipolar, and otherwise somewhat-off people to study might actually be worth the study, to retrain those bad habits of misinterpretation.

Scientific American has a blog on its website. Here's a sample of it.

Skeptic, Vol 12 #2 2006: (1)Mentions the Ig Nobels. You can view the most recent Ig Nobel awards ceremondy at http://www.improbable.com/ig/ . (2) An article about a creationist "scientific" conference by James Rosenhouse, who is the editor of EvolutionBlog (formerly at http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/, where you can read back stuff, and now at http://www.scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/ . ScienceBlogs looks like it will probably have LOTS of stuff to read. (3) An article about the Dover trial shows a pic of a couple of the attorneys with "Professor Steve Steve" of the weblog Panda's Thumb (pandasthumb.org) "Professor Steve Steve" is a stuffed toy panda. If you aren't sure why naming the mascot Steve Steve is funny, you need to read more!!

OK, that takes care of part of the pile. More later. The really tough part is getting rid of Sing Out because the number of albums I want to buy based on their reviews, and folk festivals and camps I want to go to, is completely impossible and I want them all and I can't, waaaaah!!!

Will Durst's column in the June issue of The Progressive is only 7 sentences long, of which the first sentence takes up the first two columns and part of the third, the next sentence is 1 word, then one of 2 words, then 1 again, then three almost-normal sentences.

The May-June Utne Reader is a mixed bag, as usual. There's an ad for a new social networking website, zaadz, for peaceniks, peaceful revolutionaries, and other warm-n-fuzzy types: http://www.zaadz.com . Looks vaguely interesting, if one had time for yet another group... The "Street Librarian" column is a listing of magazines about permaculture and self-reliance. In the "This Just In" section is a new magazine called Four Hundred Words which contains "short-short nonfiction ideal for reading on the bus." That's got a web site too, of course: http://www.400words.com . I may just order a copy of that... There's an article about trying to replace the "Star Spangled Banner" with a new national anthem, with "America the Beautiful" as the main contender. A sidebar lists possible others - including longshots such as "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" (no one knows the words to that one any more, not even me); "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (nope, won't work - too many Southern states are still nursing grudges about the Civil War). Then there's a few "bringing up the rear" songs that represent America well but are even less likely to become a national anthem, including Neil Diamond's "America," Freddie Mercury's "We are the Champions," and, I must admit it would be easy to sing but difficult to agree on the words, "Louie Louie." Back in the classified ads, there's a few book and magazine listings that might be interesting, including "Books for readers who think" at http://www.pilgrimsprocess.com, which has a little too much "spiritual" stuff for me but I know that there are a bunch of liberal and religious folk on my flist, so y'all might want to check it out.

The rest of what I've dog-eared so far are medical news blurbs, not really general interest.