It's funny, but hard-boiled pulp fiction seems to appeal to the literary mouth-breathers and the most extremely intellectual literati (and I make no claim as to which group I fall into). Even so, I did a double take when I saw that the review of Otto Penzler's new <I>The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps</I> was by John freaking Banville, author of <I>The Sea</I>, <I>Doctor Copernicus</I>, <I>The Newton Letter</I>, and <I>Kepler, a novel</I>."

In August, astronomers discovered an <A HREF="http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/">one billion light-year hole</A> in the Universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton's team of theoretical physicists and cosmologists posits that it is "unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own."

Have astronomers astronomers accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy?

The Consumer Electronics Association (<A HREF="http://www.ce.org">CEA</A&gt;) has taken major steps to ensure that the 2008 edition of its International Consumer Electronics Show, to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 7&ndash;10, will provide a model for sustainable and energy-efficient practices. According to CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro, the world's largest international trade show for consumer technologies is "the first tradeshow of our size to reduce our carbon footprint. We will do so by reducing energy consumption, increasing our recycling efforts, improving efficiency where possible, and making strides toward offsetting our unavoidable emissions. . . . [We intend to give] this industry an opportunity to be a positive force for change and integral to environmental solutions that will ensure future generations inherit a healthy planet."

Hitting newsstands this past weekend, the <I>2008 Stereophile Buyer's Guide</I> is bursting with technical specifications for more than 5000 audio components. Loudspeakers, amplifiers, CD players, turntables&mdash;every component category is listed in full, and we worked extra hard this past summer to make sure that the products of every manufacturer were included in its 228 pages.

According to an article posted by <I>The Financial Times</I> November 20, Kim Bailey, the director general of the UK trade group Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) is urging the music industry to drop digital rights management (DRM), saying that incompatible proprietary technologies, rather than preventing unlicensed copying, discourage sales of electronic files, "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest."

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has always been aimed at the electronics industry and the reporters who cover it. Other than a brief experiment with "open" days toward the end of the summer CES held in Chicago in the mid-1990s, the exhibition has never been open to the public.

Well, ladies and gents, it's been a long year. As I write this, on an unusually humid and hazy October morning, I'm still feeling the lingering effects of my beloved Mets' sudden and tragic collapse from the top of the National League East. I sat there, at Flushing Meadows' Shea Stadium, covered in peanut shells and with tears in my hazel eyes as the scoreboard went cruelly blank and Coldplay's "The Scientist" wept over the stadium loudspeakers. It was brutal.