Lance Good

It's probably not too surprising that kid's books are gimmicky. You've got your tissue paper guy. And the lithograph guy. And then you've got the authors with story gimmicks. Like If You Give a Moose a Muffin or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie or the soon to be released "If You Give a Rat Some Poison".

The gimmick I've been reading a lot of recently is Curious George. If you haven't read the books, I'll give you a summary of every single one. George is curious causing him to get in trouble. After a stern lecture, George is back in action to save the day. Everyone forgets about the trouble he caused earlier and he ends up a hero.

First of all, is that really a good lesson to teach kids? The implication is that if you screw up, you better walk ...

I recently finished reading a book called "The Time Traveler's Wife". It was one of the few books I've bought on a whim at the store. The last one I bought on a whim was "The Kiterunner" which I'd recommend if you haven't read it. The Time Traveler's Wife took me about a year to read. I can't ever remember taking even half that long to finish a fiction book. Having said that, you might think I hated it. I definintely didn't. It had some great insights into human relationships. The writing was also very well done in places.

For the first half of the book, the premise seemed really goofy to me. Basically it is a time travel romance novel. I wasn't really used to the introduction of a classic science fiction mainstay in such an otherwise mundane love story. I was also really worried starting out that the time travel would be totally ridiculous and filled with classic logical flaws. However, I think the book effectively avoided these pitfalls. By the end of the book, I was pretty comfortable with the time travel and I thought it gave the book a real tragic edge.

I am somewhat skeptical of most vitamins and herbal supplements. The evidence is constantly changing as to how much of which thing you should be taking. And from personal experience, the only difference I've ever seen from vitamins is a change in urine color. It's funny though that vitamin advocates are always so dogmatic about their supplement of choice.

That said, I do have my own supplement dogma. I am a fiber evangelist. That's right, fiber! Here's the thing about fiber that's different from other supplements: you can see it working within a day. There are studies that suggest that it can lower your cholesterol and help you control your weight. The mechanism is pretty easy to understand too. The fiber pushes out the fats and such faster so less of it is absorbed. That's not rocket science.

The problem for me is that I hate eating fibery foods. So instead of trying to change my diet, I started taking metamucil every day. It's not so bad, really. Lest you think thi...

OK, laser eye surgery made some sense. I could almost understand laser cosmetic surgery. Laser hair removal was getting a little bit weird. Now we've got lasers to quit smoking? Woah, you lost me there. I think we may want to give this some more thought. What are we going to do when these lasers start thinking for themselves. There'll be no stopping them!