Audiophiles are lucky when it comes to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, especially when you consider the embarrassment of riches that are the Shostakovich String Quartets. If you dig LPs, there are two essential batches of complete recordings: the Borodin Quartet and the Fitzwilliam Quartet. On CD, there's the fabulous <I>live</I> edition by the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/671/">Emerson Quartet</A>, rendered in superb sound by Da-Hong Seetoo.

These animated Nissin Cup-O-Noodle ads are great! Almost makes me want to buy some just to say thanks.

You simply <I>have</I> to read "The Peekaboo paradox," a fantastic piece of writing by Gene Weingarten. (It's long, so you might prefer to print it out and save it for later.) It conforms to a formula I admiringly call <I>The New Yorker</I> paradigm, in which a writer introduces you to a subject you think you don't have much interest in (in this case a children's party entertainer) and makes it fascinating. <I>Then</I> you discover that the <I>real</I> story is so much deeper and compelling than you could have ever imagined.

Parts is parts you say? They don't make 'em like these any more.

Rules? We don't need no rules! Oh, you mean these are <I>our</I> secret laws? Nevermind.

Over at <I>NewScientist</I>, there's an article on an alternate gravity theory called scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG), which seems to have an edge on Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). Which one meshes best with the data? Why the one that contains quantum, of course! Well, kinda sorta.