LATEST ADDITIONS

Does music represent the pleasure of counting without the burden of numbers? John S. Allen makes a strong case—sort of.

Text and photos by Bob Sacha. "Looking beneath a city street is like peeking under your skin: the terrain upon which your well-being depends is so close, yet so full of secrets."

This time <I>Science News</I>' late-summer science reading list. Lots of good stuff here, and, other than <I>Blink</I> and <I>The Wisdom of Crowds</I>, I haven't even heard of any of them.

<i>Your <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/080806expert/">enthusiastic response</a> has inspired Kristina to come out of blog-retirement. She could only stay away for an evening. Ladies and gentlemen, it seems she may be hooked. Any suggestions for an amp and CD player?<br></i>
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My buddy Jeff Wong sent this little video along and I initially resisted posting it, primarily because I used to work in a light show that featured strobe light effects (ah, the '60s, I'm told I enjoyed them). We used to create lots of chaos with unsynchronized strobes moving in different planes, so I was blas&#233; about <I>The Time Fountain</I>'s reversing time schtick.

<I>Good Math, Bad Math</I> says phi is more fun. After all, "if you write &#966; as a continued fraction, it's [1;1,1,1,1...]; and if you write it as a continued square root, it's 1 + sqrt(1+sqrt(1+sqrt(1+sqrt(1...))))."

I'm fascinated by how tiny little things affect world history&mdash;take the malaria parasite for instance. Forget the Black Death or the Influenza outbreak of 1917, Malaria has had a bigger impact on humanity than any other rampaging pathogen&mdash;yet, we still don't completely understand how it works.

As a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin romances and Bernard Cornwell's <I>Sharpe's Rifles</I> novels, I'm a sucker for this type of collection.

<i>In her final blog entry, Kristina asks for your expert opinion. The girl needs a new pair of speakers. I think she's looking for something "wicked cute," as they say in Boston.</i><br>
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Need I say more? And, unlike many parodies, these are ha-ha funny, not simply funny strange.