Review of “One Hundred Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know: Math Explains Your World,” by John D. Barrow

John Barrow, a Cambridge University mathematics professor, is also a popularizer of mathematical concepts and advanced physics. This book is a pleasant little collection of 100 short essays on everyday phenomena that people commonly encounter without understanding them. As Barrow demonstrates, the understanding of these events is greatly enhanced by a little math, usually just [...]

Winner – The Last Child

We have the two winners of The Last Child by John Hart! And the winners, selected by Randomizer.org, are: Kristi of Books and Needlepoint Janet of Grammy Janet’s Place I will be emailing you for your addresses! Thanks to everyone else who entered; I’m sorry I didn’t have more copies to give away; it’s a [...]

The Game On! Diet by Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson

Book Description from HarperCollins The Game On! Diet is not a diet. It’s a bold new approach to fitness that turns the latest, smartest, most successful health science into a fun, fierce, and exhilarating game. Developed by Az Ferguson, to help Grey’s Anatomy writer Krista Vernoff shed forty pounds of postpregnancy weight, it is the [...]

June 29, 1914 – The Spingarn Medal was Established by the NAACP

The Spingarn Medal is a gold medal created by Joel Elias Spingarn in 1914, who was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), its second president, and chairman of its board from 1913 until his death. The purpose of this annual award for outstanding achievement by [...]

Sunday Salon – Review of “Emotional Geology” by Linda Gillard

Although rocks have always symbolized stability, in fact to a geologist what they show is change. Over time, mountains push up from the earth, mesas and buttes are formed, striations appear, arroyos are carved out, and the shapes metamorphose. But all this takes a very long time. In Gillard’s first novel, Emotional Geology, she weaves [...]

Saturday at the Movies

If you’re seeking information about movies, the Web is full of great resources! I’ll highlight some of them here. The best all-around database to answer all your movie questions is the Internet Movie DataBase. Lists! Get them here! From the American Film Institute, you can find out: Greatest movies, greatest movie quotes, greatest musicals, best [...]

June 26, 1911 – Birthday of Mildred Ella (“Babe”) Didrikson Zaharias

Mildred Ella (“Babe”) Didrikson Zaharias was one of the greatest female athletes in memory. She achieved outstanding success in golf, baseball, basketball, diving, bowling, and track and field. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics (breaking her own world records in both the [...]

Women In Iran for Freedom

Arizona Daily Star, 6/25/2009

Review of “Crossed Wires” by Rosy Thornton

This delightfully British version of “Sleepless in Seattle” tells the story of Peter, a teacher of urban geography at Cambridge, and Mina, an auto insurance claim worker. Mina takes Peter’s call when he has had an accident while swerving to avoid the neighbor’s cat. Peter is a widow with two nine-year-old twin girls, and Mina [...]

Review of “Time and Again” by Jack Finney

This science fiction novel, purportedly a “classic” published in 1970, describes a secret government project to travel back through time using mentation only. Si Morley is recruited as a subject, and he must agree to abandon his current life with no questions asked even before finding out what the project is. Dissatisfied with his circumstances, [...]