It’s hell keeping up with postings from Science Daily.

I’m amazed so many people have read this book. I think more people reacted to seeing it on my table than any other book in a long time.

It was too long for me. And, too slow. The first hundred pages crept by like The Wall Street Journal. I’m assuming the author intended for me to guess the “big secret” the moment I read about it in the Preface. No doubt, he used that as a hook (readers will stick around to make sure they’re right). There were, indeed, other surprises. The frequent mentions of other mystery writers went from cute, to predictable, and back to cute again. The multitude of people – first, middle, last, and pet names – and town names, often jammed into one sentence, taxed my interest. Yeah, I know it’s set in Sweden. (Mind you, I majored in German Language and Literature. I’ve read a lot of unusual names – in German, yet.) Speaking of translation: There were several times I stopped in amazement, wondering what was really meant. I’m well-read enough to handle gaol, and to figure out the translator meant arranged when he wrote organized. Maybe it’s all perfect British English. I haven’t a clue what dogsbody means, even in context. But I was susceptible to distractions because, again, the book is too long. Still, the very end was quite moving.

On the other hand, the two major characters are well-done. Since one of them a journalist, like the author, he may not have been much of a stretch, though I wonder if Larsson had so much sex. Still, Lisbeth Salander is a very original character.

And kudos to Stieg Larsson for drawing such attention to violence against women, not only in terms of several aspects of the plot, but even in the pages between sections. And the original title: Men Who Hate Women. Larsson does not glamorize this violence and he documents it well-enough to make me quite uncomfortable. I gather he is building towards even larger issues involving violence against women and children. Not sure I can stomach more, especially at a slow pace. I’m undecided.

We were very excited when Sun Chips (fish flakes for humans, as Rebecca put it so well) came out with a compostable bag. What a great idea! Sadly, the bags don’t live up to the promise. The photo shows two bags. The one on the left sat in full sun, while the other was in our compost pile (not buried). I don’t know exactly how long these bags have been exposed to the elements, including New Mexico’s monsoon season, but it is more than the 13 weeks the bag says it takes to completely compost.

If you’ve picked up one of these bags, you know they make such a weird and load rustling noise. No one sneaks a chip without the rest of the household knowing about it. (As if the orange residue wouldn’t give you away.)

Very interesting. It makes me wonder if dyslexia is a problem with one eye or the fusion of both.

Reading Process Is Surprisingly Different Than Previously Thought, Technology Shows

Analysing these eye movements enables psychologists to understand how our brain processes the sentence.

With sophisticated eye tracking equipment able to determine which letter of a font-size 14 word a person is looking at every millisecond from 1 metre away, Prof. Liversedge’s team went one further and looked at the letters within the word within the sentence. They were able to deduce that when our eyes are not looking at the same letter of the word, they are usually about two letters apart. Prof. Liversedge explains: ‘Although this difference might sound small, in fact it represents a very substantial difference in terms of the precise "picture" of the world that each eye delivers to the brain.’

So if our eyes are looking at different parts of the same word, thereby receiving different information from each eye, how is it that we are able to see the words clearly enough to read them? There are two ways the brain can do this; either the image from one of the eyes is blocked or the two different images are somehow fused together.

Reading Process Is Surprisingly Different Than Previously Thought, Technology Shows

Living in an environment rich with physical, mental and social stimulation — a setting that causes mild stress — might by itself curb cancer growth, according to a new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

Stress of an enriched environment might curb cancer growth; Effect linked to a brain-fat-hormone pathway