Philips, nee Sonicare, makes an electric toothbrush that gets your teeth cleaner than anything else I have ever used. When Philips bought out Sonicare they expanded the line to 9 different brush head types. The basic model is all you need. The original, which I use, is called the Elite. It lets you use any toothpaste you want. Some other electric toothbrushes make you forgo toothpaste because it wears out the gears. The Sonicare has a timer that keeps you honest. Though they have now dropped the quadrant timer feature in the entry-level unit. The brushes last six months. The batteries lose their ability to hold a charge after about three years. I am on my fourth entire unit. There is very little to wear out other than the rechargeable batteries. It works at sonic frequencies, much faster than other brands. Going back to a manual brush feels like using a tree branch in comparison. The brush itself can get clogged with toothpaste. Take the head apart and clean it out with some dental floss or a toothpick and it will became re-energised. If it saves you even one cavity it has more than paid for itself, though as toothbrushes go, they are very pricey, including the replacement brushes.

This book kept me on the edge of my seat, even though I knew Watson must have survived these adventures to be able to write the book.

Watson's life reads like an Indiana Jones movie. Someday there will be a 3D blockbuster about it. He is the most heroic figure of the 20th century.

I knew him when he was in his late teens. A much shyer person then. I love him. He is so blunt, so honest, so consistent.

My big regret in life is I did not join him when he invited me to join his crew. I have nowhere near the tolerance for adrenalin and terror that he has.

This book is both delightful and infuriating. Pollan is at heart a poet. He weaves word pictures with consummate skill. The results are truly magical. He has a one-paragraph explanation of evolution that is brilliantly concise and clear. You can see his poetic skill at work in something not nominally a poem.

He is a bit of a hoarder, collecting trivia by the wheelbarrowful, and weaving it into his narrative like a sparrow weaving grass into its nest. Most of it is not really relevant to anything, just fun for its own quirky sake.

In the opening he makes a grand promise, to look at the world from the plant's point of view. He doesn't deliver. I kept waiting for the "punchline" that never came. All he does in throw in a sentence from time to time pointing out that plants derive some benefits from man's machinations.

It is not so much a book about plants as eccentric people and the weird things humans do when interacting with plants. Did you know Johnny Appleseed was accused of pedophilia and slept inside a stump?

The chapter that had steam pouring out my ears was the one on potatoes, which pretended to be scrupulously objective. I suspect Monsanto either wrote it for him, or edited it for him. It reeks of PR deception and bamboozlement. It is mostly an ad that goes on and on and on for Monsanto genetically modified New Leaf potatoes, leaving out all the downsides. He tries to fool you into believing that the New Leaf that makes its own BT pesticide offers just as much immunity to pests as spraying with a dozen different insecticides, each designed for a given past. He fails to point out that when you spray BT, you can stop prior to harvest. With the New Leaf, the potato keeps on generating the insecticide, even after you dig it from the ground.

In other parts of the book he honestly and clearly explains the various environmental/economic dilemmas farmers face, without vilifying anyone.

The book meanders. That can appeal or drive you mad, as he takes you on digression after digression. Think of the book as a long walk with a poetic soul for company, not going anywhere in particular.

Not only does Harpur point out there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, debunking some of the claims to such evidence, he explains the evidence that Jesus is a work of fiction, gradually embellished over time, much like the Superman myth. Jesus started out a set of aphorisms, with no personal information at all. The manger myths were added last.

This is an instence film. The characters are clearly so well meaning as they start their home for unwed mothers, but slowly
over the film they are corrupted by money and expedience.

You as the viewer, tend to stay sympathetic, until bit by bit you realise how corrupt they have become. You feel unclean for having sympathised with them so long. It is a heartbreaker of a movie.

It shows that the choice is not between abortion and no abortion, but between abortion and illegal abortion.

I recommend Zukav's first book, the Wu Li Dancing Masters on my website. I was eagerly looking forward to a continuation. I expected it to be about what we have learned about the soul and consciousness. Instead, he concocted an ecumenical soup of new age beliefs from astrology to reincarnation and wove it into an elaborate metaphysic, fluffed up with abstract words like "negativity", "learning" and "frequency". It is a merangue -- no substance, no backing, no examples, no reasons for why anything he conjectures is true, and no way to apply it practically.

It reads like a channeled hynotic trance induction. It sounds good but says little.

He explains that you should not think it unfair to see someone homeless and that humans are superior to dolphins even in a soul sense. This is a self-indulgent book, where Mr. Zukav treats his every intuition as divine revelation.

This is only secondarily a book about particle physics. It offers only a little handwaving on the physics, much the way Glashow many have explained what he was doing to his mother.
It is about the people and politics of being a particle physicist.
One of the most interesting chapters is an extremely detailed account of what it was like to win a Nobel prize. He even shows you the menus of the various banquets.

Paul Hellyer loves Canada and he is seeing George Bush and Paul Martin intent on destroying it.

He proves his points by quoting those who would destroy Canada.

Bush, it turns out, is far worse than your worst nightmares. He must be stopped.

Hellyer methodically makes his case, building to a crescendo of righteous indignation.

This book is not quite as funny as Mike's previous books, but it is chock full of details, with all those rumours and weird stories you heard tracked down and spelled out clearly just what happened.

I'm very glad this book has been written. The only thing that has a hope of bringing down Bush is the Truth. Lay it on, with double pickles!

I was delighted to see Kurzweil describe the process by which AI appears to sneak up on you. It mirrors my personal experience. Back in the 70s I worked on a computer program called Optow, to design high voltage transmission lines. At first, the designs it produced were laughable. Each day I worked on it, the designs got better and better. One day it got as good as a human. Two weeks later it was designing lines 10% better than a human. Suddenly a design team of 50 engineers, most with masters degrees and PhDs were obsolete.

The progress was steady, but the effect on the workers came overnight. I anticipate that this pattern will repeat. Millions of white collar workers will find themselves overnight unemployed as gradual advances in AI (Artificial Intelligence) reach the stage it is better than humans at task after task.