The All-New Bunrab

and now they go past yours via Twitter:

• 21:45 @caviaporcell I,m so sorry to hear about Chico. Not unexpected, but still. He had a wonderful life with you. #
• 21:48 @caviaporcell I miss Bob. I'm glad they'll be together. #
• 21:54 Rigoletto in 6 words: Hunchback versus Duke; just add women. #
• 21:58 I Pagliacci in 6 words: Evil clowns! Run for your lives! #
• 22:57 New Yorker Style #
• 22:58 New Yorker "Style" issue boring, except for Roz Chast cartoon. #
• 23:26 Also in the New Yorker: article about the latest annotated edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Done almost completely without reference to... #
• 23:28 ...the place of vampires in modern fantasy. Mentions only Twilight series (roamnce, really,not vampire) and The Sookie Stackhouse series. #
• 01:32 At least no one's going to complain about your spelling if you limit yourself to TLAs. OMG! #
• 02:49 @EmperorNorton That goes with the territory! You should see when pushy rabbits all pile in for some dried fruit! #
• 15:49 books being returned to library: Virtual Evil and Madman's Dance - 2nd & 3rd Time Rovers. More about those later. #
• 15:51 also Death of the New Gods - comic book blech. Almost no plot, just complications without a plot. Unsuccessfully "dark." Only good part... #
• 15:53 ...was Superman. Most of dialog was "prepare to die!" and "Wait, it was you all along!" Nice drawing, though. #
• 15:54 also being returned - several episodes of Twilight Zone done as graphic novels, which works Ok. And handful of usual murder mysteries. #
• 15:56 OK, one doesn't see that many tractor_trailer cabs painted lilac. #
• 16:11 ah, the WashPost as local paper for the Pentagon. Today, a full-page ad for the "combat-ready Super Hornet Block II" fighter plane. #

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A couple of knitting books. (One reviewed at Amazon.com here.)

A Larry-Niven-and-somebody collaboration that was supposed to fill in some of the gaps in Known Space - "200 years before Ringworld!" - it was so full of clumsy retconning and had so many distortions of Nessus' personality, along with some improbable captive-bred humans, that I didn't finish it.

Charles Stross - Halting States. Um, cyberpunk murder mystery gamer fantasy spy thriller. A little heavy on the gamer stuff, but not unintelligibly so. fadethecat, you may want to give this one a peek. Our heroes are a Python programmer with a checkered past, a forensic accountant (female) with a serious sword habit, and a lesbian Detective Sargeant with a strong enough Scottish accent that I had some trouble interpreting at first.

Um, a bunch of back issues of Ellery Queen mystery magazine.

Oh, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class by Robert Frank. Liberal economist, those who like Juliet Schor should like Frank also; makes a case for a progressive consumption tax which he rounds up some conservative support for also. A book that gives one something to think about, without being so heavy or academic that you give up with a sneer about economists.

It's the end of the month; I might as well try to clear off the big stack o' magazines that's piled on my desk. Some of it will just be recipes to tear out, but there's a few things of general interest, I think.

Let's see. The Economist, 18th August, has a review of a book called A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World which sounds interesting - the E's headline for the review is "The merits of genteel poverty." Basic thesis seems to be that in pre-industrial-revolution England, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, and that spread middle-class attributes such as patience, hard work, and education to the middle and lower classes; in other societies at the time, the rich had fewer children. Thus Britain was positioned to take advantage of the capitalist/industrial revolution. If our library gets that one, I definitely want to look more closely at it.

The July/August issue of Washington Monthly has a review of a book entitled Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy. This one sounds like fun, too - "post-9/11 geopolitics served up with a heavy dose of ancient arcana." A quote: "America is increasingly turning to its own outside sources - not the Visigothi and the Ostrogothae, but the Halliburtoni and the Wackenhuti."

OK, here's one that got me worked up: an article in New Scientist, 11 August, about a system that the US gov't is developing to try and stop terrorists by picking up "involuntary signs of hostility" on security cameras and have them analyzed by computer. I can barely begin to say how stupid an idea this is. Identifying microexpressions, gait, and perspiration rates that are characteristic of hositlity or the desire to deceive. Let's see. That would catch every guy who hasn't told his wife how much those golf clubs he's swinging into the scanner cost, and every wife who hasn't told her husband how much the shoes cost, and every college student who's lied to his/her parents about where they're going on spring break, and every spouse headed off for an adulterous liaison, and everyone who hates flying and airlines in general but has to do it, and all the people angry because someone else paid less for a ticket than they did, and... and then, looking for people who are "trying to hide their emotions" you'd get everyone who's had Botox or other cosmetic surgery on their face, everyone with heavy makeup or hair hanging down in their eyes, anyone with a medication or an illness that has flattening of the affect as a side effect... by the time you catch everyone who is either concealing their emotions or expressing hostility or deceit, is ANYONE going to get through airport security besides children under 8 years old and maybe the Dalai Lama?

Another issue of New Scientist, this time 28 July, has an article about pack-hunting squid. Somehow, I feel as though I've mentioned this already. But in case I haven't. Normally solitary, now jumbo Humboldt squid are forming predatory packs in Monterey Bay.

An article in Scientific American, August issue, about "race-based medicine," particularly the heart-failure drug Bidil. And a humor article about the taxonomy of "Artificial Plantae: the Taxonomy, Ecology, and Ethnobotany of the Simulacrae." Yes, taxonomizing plastic plants. Part of the original article, in the journal "Ethnobotany Research and Applications," was written in Pig Latin.

Oh, and a rather peculiar ad from that same issue - an ad from the "New York Mint" which is not a US mint at all, of course, selling gold liberty coins - so far, sounds like the usual not-quite-a-scam, right? But here's the interesting part: the ad claims that "since 1999, the number of coin collectors has sharply risen from 3 million to 130 million..." Oh, really? They're claiming that over 1/3 of every man, woman, and child in the US is a coin collector? And that this sudden hobby fad has arisen in the last few years - somehow unremarked by any other source of news? Uh huh.

Next up, the August issue of Discover - which I determined was August only by looking at the "Save the Date" listing inside it; they don't mention the month or issue number on the cover, the inside cover, the table of contents, or the editorial listing pages, nor at the bottom of odd-numbered pages. Sorta creepy. Anyway. A new species of bee fly, from the genus Phthiria, has been named Phthiria relativitae. Yes, that's pronounce "theory o' relativity."

The rest seems to be recipes and yarn ads.

We're home. Lessee. The Austin Symphonic Band concert on Saturday night was great, the party was fun. All sorts of people who played with the band at one time or another were invited, so there were people there who hadn't played with the band in 20 years. One guy who had apparently played with the band for a few months in the 80's, who I didn't remember *at all*, apparently remembered squirrel_magnet and I really, really well, because he cornered us for a while to talk to us about our pet rabbits! It was fun seeing all those people.

Jerry knows us really well. Sunday morning, it was iffy about us waking up in time to get to the airport in time to return the car and check a bag and go through security (remember, I have to get the fun hand pat-down), so Jerry had just the solution: put a recording of a band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the stereo and crank the volume up. Yep, that got us out of bed! Jerry and Kathy, thank you SO much for your hospitality this past week!

More of the week than we expected was taken up by visiting w/ Steve's family and by band stuff, so there's still people we didn't get to see. It's funny how much of the week seemed to have something to do with tea. We gave Kathy a hostess gift of a sampler of decaf teas from Upton; Jeanne and Larry gave us a gift of samples of tea from a new tea shop that opened in Round Rock.

We made it back safely, and in time even to take a short nap before having to wash up and change for the concert we played in Sunday evening, in Perry Hall. The concert went pretty well, although there were several places where I missed cues because I was squinting, the lighting being aimed directly into my eyes and those of the two trumpets who sit nearest me. We did not have fun with those lights. The tenor sax did not show up for the concert. I have a few words for him...

One of the things Dick Floyd said at the ASB concert was something he had heard from someone else, to the effect that "Any band conductor who doesn't end a concert with a march doesn't love his mother." The ASB concert ended with "Washington Post." The Baltimore Symphonic Band concert ended with the band arrangement from "Les Miserables" that everyone plays, but as it happens, that arrangement does end with the rousing march, "Do You Hear The People Sing?" so that was OK. Monday night was Bel Air band rehearsal; that concert, next Sunday, will end with "Barnum & Bailey's Favorite." All the conductors we know love their mothers. Judging by what people say at rehearsal, I am not playing the bari sax LOUD ENOUGH on the contra-alto clarinet part; I'll have to try to fix that at dress rehearsal, which is way too early Saturday morning. Being on stage instead of in band room, the whole seating arrangement will be different, so it may fix itself.

I have tons of mail to go through, of course. And I haven't read anything but magazines all this past week, and I have a stack of library books to go through sometime soon.

Sort of odd being back in our plain "Pebble Ash" colored car after a week with the Tomato Express.

The new issue of The Progressive has an interesting poem, called "Bird Seed," by Kathleen Aguero, which uses birds squabbling at a bird feeder as a metaphor for the current war, and uses quotations from Robert Fagle's recent translation of The Iliad. If you like poetry you might want to get this issue. Assuming, of course, that you are someone who would buy a magazine called The Progressive - one of many liberal mags I subscribe to.

OK, that's enough for one post. I'm sure I'll think of more later.

Science News from 20 January: hamsters and other pet rodents are likely spreaders of salmonella. Wash your hands after you snorgle your hamsters. Also from same issue, note to self, gene variant shapes beta-blocker's effectiveness, and the beta-blocker in question is carvedilol, which is one of the drugs I take; unknown exactly when cheap testing for this gene will be available, but the note to myself is that I might be one of the people it's not effective on, which would explain some.

Clipping of ad as note to self: look for in library, Adam Gopnik's The King in the Window as ad makes it sound like an interesting kid's fantasy.

Clipping of ad for a yarn company, of interest only to yarn freaks, except that this one is notable for its tag line, "Yarns for which to dye!" which is just a really silly example of how people have bought into the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" nonsense.

Book review (short) in Science News of 21 October 2006 (yes, it's been a while since I last cleared the stack of magazines off my nightstand; why do you ask?) for a book called Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom by Wallace Arthur, sounds interesting.

Current issue of Skeptical Inquirer (Vol. 31, No. 2) is mostly articles on science and religion. Odd little poem by Alan Dean Foster, who should leave the atheist-poetry-writing field to Philip Appleman, who does it much better. What I did make a note of in this issue, however, is a letter to the editor about an article in a previous issue. Here's the letter:( in full )

3 February issue of New Scientist also has a letter in it, and again I will give you the entire letter:( here )

The issue also has a review of The Last Human by Esteban Sarmiento et al., which also sounds interesting - discusses as much as we know about the daily life of each species of hominid, sort of a family album, of which we humans are the last living member.

Some dog-eared pages from the November 2006 issue of Prevention; I have no idea why. Oh wait, this little bit at the end of a paragraph might be it: if you are taking zinc to stave off/reduce a cold (mixed research on whether it accomplishes anything), don't take flavored ones, since if the zinc does have any effect, it's stunted by citric acid and tartaric acid, common in flavorings.

A rundown of stuff happening during March, in the March issue of Discover, oncludes the lunar eclipse on the 3rd - you all knew about that already - but also mentions that March 31 is Bunsen Burner Day. "Yes, there's a day for that." - their words.

There, that clears off a BIG stack of magazines from my desk. Maybe now I can spread out my music.

Let's see, magazines: the usual 6 weekly suspects, plus monthlies Harpers, In These Times and Washington Monthly, plus somewhere-between-a-newsletter-and-a-magazine Freethought Bulletin, plus just-a-small-newsletter local Mensa chapter newsletter. Catalogs: not many at all, just a couple different Herrschner's needlework thingies.

The snow has melted almost completely.

My brother G has some sort of share or something like that in a resort house down in Chincoteague, on the Delmarva peninsula, so tomorrow we're gonna drive down there and visit with them for a day and a half or so. Can't stay through to Sunday, because (a) there are hungry bunnies who will go on a rampage if we don't feed them, not to mention their shedding fur will grow to block the doorway, and (b) we have tickets to the Chieftains for Sunday! Yay!

Today's magazine in the mail: Ladies Home Journal.
Today's catalog, yes, only one: Mary Maxim (inexpensive needlecrafts)
Today's supper: canned tuna that's supposedly smoked and marinated in ginger, but didn't taste like it, and a rice-quinoa mix in a bag. Total time to microwave: 3 minutes.

Yep, that's about as exciting as it gets. Rehearsal cancelled due to 1" of snow.

Magazines received this week:
Monthly:
Consumer Reports
Rider
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Natural History
Discover
Harper's
Mensa Bulletin
Weekly:
The Nation
The Economist
Science News
New Scientist
The New Yorker
Time

Not many catalogs this week - the after-Christmas pall, I guess. Only Colorful Images (address labels) and WinterSilks (which includes, among other things, the silk glove liners I use for extra layers under my motorcycle gloves, and on their own for playing Christmas-tree-lighting gigs when bare hands would freeze but regular gloves make it impossible to feel the keys.) An area coupon-clipper pamphlet, with coupons for a couple restaurants I'd actually like to try in Ellicott City and vacinity. (Remember, even though we're in Baltimore County inside the Balto. Beltway, we are only about 2 miles from the Howard County line and Ellicott City.)

( Music nerd stuff )

I've got a stack of magazine articles dog-eared to share, time to clear them off the desk!

First, in New Scientist from 20 October, an article entitled "Alzheimer's alert over anesthetics." (Well, it actually uses the British spelling, anaesthetics.) Last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, in Atlanta,a medical researcher said that the inhaled anesthetics halothane and isoflurane encourage clumping of beta amyloid protein, as does the common IV anesthetic propofol. This protein clumping is similar to that seen in Alzheimer's cases, and may account for the memory and attention problems many patients have after surgery. ("There are plenty of anecdotal reports about elderly relatives never being quite the same after going in for surgery.")

Why this is important to us: the inhaled anesthetics are not commonly used on people in the US or Europe, more in Asia and Africa, but isoflurane *is* commonly used in the US for pets - in fact, it's about the most common anesthetic in use for small and exotic pets, because it has so few of the side effects of more traditional anesthetics such as nausea and lack of appetite. Anyone who has had their rabbit neutered, or their guinea pig's rear molars treated, the pet probably had isoflurane as the anesthetic. So, since these studies were on animals, we can assume that the brain protein clumping definitely applies to them. The upshot seems to be that exposure to isoflurane (and the others) is more likely to cause the problem if you are exposed repeatedly, and/or if you are elderly. Which means, I think, that if you are deciding whether to put an elderly pet through surgery for something, and considering the benefits vs. the risks, this is another factor to take into account.

I could swear I already mentioned the article in the September 30 issue of Science News, about penguins that nest in cactus. Why is it still on my desk?

Let's see, an article from Woman's Day about heart failure - that belongs on my other blog.

And from Science News, August 12, "Scientists find midnight-snack center in brain." The article is more technical, and is about studies on mice, but isn't that a great headline?

Non-science related: the October issue of In These Times recommends a book called Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, by Jeff Cohen. Says it's a fun read, not as dry as most media criticism.

That leaves another 3 magazines with no pages tabbed down, still sitting on my desk. Why did I put them here?

There's an article in this week's Time about parents who let their kids play poker for money. Much of the article is spent on people who are sure that this will lead kids to become problem gamblers, addicted gamblers, and, of course, quite possibly, sinners. There's a quote from an "addiction counselor" who says that exposing kids to gambling before they are supposedly developmentally ready for it (how do you determine when someone is developmentally "ready" to play cards for money?) will lead them astray because "Younger children lack abstract thinking, so they believe that if they win, it's because they're special or because God loves them." Excuse me, but don't people give prizes and throw awards banquets for competitive sports winners in school to teach them exactly that? If playing poker for pennies in one's own back yard with parents supervising nearby is dangerous because it gives kids that impression, then shouldn't we be taking a cold, hard look at school football? No, of course not, that's different.

When I was a kid, we played gin rummy, rather than poker. In my memory, it's often associated with holidays - we gambled for Easter jelly beans and chocolate eggs, Halloween candy, Chanukah gelt (the gold-foil-wrapped chocolate "coins"), and the whole walnuts and almonds that were in our Christmas stockings. Oddly enough, when we played dreidel, the spinning top game associated with Chanukah, it wasn't for Chanukah gelt, it was either for pennies or for, of all things, cowrie shells. Why did my cousins and friends and I have so many cowrie shells? Anyway, it's an indication that I've always been an "autumn" person that I can remember usually losing all my jelly beans, but winning lots of Halloween candy. (Did I ever mention that I had an eclectic upbringing?) And as far as I know, none of us ever became addicted to gin rummy, or gambling on cards - or tops - in general, although some of us did become addicted to chocolate candy.

I think it's just another case of the abstinence-only, Harry-Potter-is-evil, let's-not-teach-kids-too-much-math-or-science-or-they-might-learn-to-think-for-themselves, folks who are against anything that's fun and secular, myself. [/cranky geezer]