The Viking
Alan Baker

“Vikings also bathed once a week, which accounted for their success with the opposite sex.”

When my sister and I were little, Mom used to take us on ridiculously long road trips.\xA0 Traveling with two small and energetic children in a car for twelve to sixteen hours at a stretch sounds like a nightmare to me, but Mom had somehow learned to channel our boundless energy to other tasks.\xA0 Like counting cars.\xA0 Or singing.\xA0 Loudly.\xA0 And constantly.\xA0 Mom made the mistake once of buying a Ray Stevens tape at a gas station (can you get them anywhere else?), and I suspect that she’s regretted it ever since.\xA0 We insisted on listening to it over and over and over until we both had it memorized and/or Mom threw the cassette out the window.\xA0 Then we sang (or, more probably, shouted) every song from memory. \xA0 It’s not often that you have a five-year-old who answers the phone with, “Are you nekkid?”\xA0 Or who can sing the entirety of the Ballad of Three Mile Island.\xA0 (I still can, by the way, if you’re interested.)\xA0 So, to my great chagrin, all I could think of while I read this book was Erik the Awful, the cruel and tenacious, heavens’ sakes and goodness gracious.

Which, honestly, made it more interesting.\xA0 I know that I may be schtepping on Baker’s weinerschnitzel, but sadly, Viking reads like an expansive high school paper.\xA0 This particular edition has even made great and creative use of margins and font size to expand it to a respectable length.\xA0 Though much is unknown about the history of the Vikings, Baker has a tendency to posit speculation as fact and myth as actual happenstance.\xA0 The most fascinating and accurate information falls in the impressive quantity of lengthy quotes – which led me to wonder whether Baker ought not to have simply published his bibliography and let us do the interesting reading on our own.

Publishers Weekly says ?One of the finest WWII naval action narratives in recent years, this book follows in the footsteps of Flags of Our Fathers, creating a microcosm of the war?s American Navy destroyers. Hornfischer, a writer and literary agent in Austin, Tex., covers the battle off Samar, the Philippines, in October 1944, in which a force of American escort carriers and destroyers fought off a Japanese force many times its strength??\xA0Learn more about this outstanding book here!

For the first time ever, Google has revamped its search engine results page.

The new look, called Universal search, looks pretty nice. It groups search results for images, videos, and the web all in one results page, which means you have all manners of media at your fingertips during searching.

They also added some nice gradient fills to the navigation bars, which is the first time I can remember that Google has something resembling actual design on results pages.

Kudos to Google. Universal search looks nice and makes me enjoy using the engine that much even more.

This feature highlights a number of meteor showers, comets and asteroids which are visible during the month of July 2009.

Note: If anyone has pictures or observations of these objects/events and want to share them, send me a comment. I’ll post them here.

Planets

Mercury - Mercury quickly drops out of view in the morning sky as the month starts. After superior conjunction (passing the Sun on its far side) on July 14, Mercury again starts to become visible low in the WNW in the evening. This apparition which is best in Aug/Sept will be great from the Southern Hemisphere but very poor from the Northern.

Saturn – Saturn is still the easiest planet to observe during the evening this month. By the end of twilight, Saturn is in the southwest under the eastern part of the constellation of Leo.

This year Saturn is dimmer than usual. At magnitude +1.0 to +1.1, there are at least a dozen or more stars that are brighter than it. The reason is the rings of Saturn contribute a lot\xA0 to the brightness of Saturn. But this year, is a ring plane crossing year meaning that the rings are nearly edge-on. As a result, the rings are reflecting much less light in the Earth’s direction this year.

Ring plane crossings occur once every half-Saturnian year (~15 years). Though the rings are over 70,000 kilometers (43,500 miles) wide, they are only 10 meters (33 feet) thick. Since the rings are seen edge, or width, on during ring plane crossings, they can actually appear to disappear in most telescopes. The last time this happened was in 1995. This year the crossing happens on Sept 4 when Saturn is too close to the Sun to be observed. Still, the rings will appear very narrow and line-like this month.

The 3-day old crescent Moon will pass a relatively distant 6 degrees to the south of Saturn on the evening of July 24.

Image of Saturn by Bob Lunsford from early May 2009.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — When people think of Black Friday shopping, they usually think of things like flat screen TVs, toys and sweaters. Now you can add cars, trucks and SUVs.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the best day to buy a car, according to car pricing researchers at the Web site Truecar.com.

Analysts looked at day-by-day car pricing for the last several years. That data revealed that discounts on Black Friday are, on average, the biggest of the year.

“The discounts from dealerships, as well as manufacturers’ incentives, generate the highest discounts of the year on Black Friday,” said Jesse Toprak, an analyst for Truecar.com.

Unlike typical Black Friday sales where customers know exactly what they’ll pay for an item, car prices are individually negotiated the day of the sale, so it’s difficult for customers to know ahead of time they’ll be getting a deal. But there’s been a clear trend, Toprak said.

The average new car discount on Nov. 27 is projected to be 7.5%. The average discount the day before and after is expected to be just over 6%. On a typical day throughout the year, car shoppers usually pay about 4.7% less than the sticker price.

Truecar.com projected particularly large Black Friday discounts on certain models. For instance, consumers should be able to pay about 28% off sticker price for a 2009 Suzuki SX4 compact car, 26% off for a 2009 Nissan Titan or Ford F-150 pick-up or 20% off a 2009 Hyundai Sonata sedan.

Getting in on the Black Friday madness

Kenneth Copeland,

Creflo Dollar,

Mike Murdock,

Benny Hinn:

Used to be that thieves wore masks and did their dirt in the dark. Nowadays, they do it in shiny suits, and\xA0on satellite teevee before God and millions!

I had tears of laughter in my left eye, and tears of sadness in my right watching this clip…

“Seeds” are not dollars, folks. “Seeds” are DEEDS. Don’t try to buy God.

Don’t let these guys with their “Aw, shucks,” cracker barrel twang, or their\xA0Philly cream cheese voices lie to you AND steal from you! You may not be able to stop one, but you can certainly stop them from doing both!

Steve Munsey:

Shouts out to my folks at The YBF for the pic!

A figure much shrouded in mystery, Pseudonymous Bosch came to Salt Lake last week on Thursday, October 16, on tour for his new middle-reader adventure/mystery/magical extravaganza If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late:

Beware!

Dangerous secrets lie between the pages of this book.

OK, I warned you. But if you think I’ll give anything away, or tell you that this is the sequel to my first literary endeavor, The Name of This Book is Secret, you’re wrong.

I’m not going to remind you of how we last left our heroes, Cass and Max-Ernest, as they awaited initiation into the mysterious Terces Society, or the ongoing fight against the evil Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais. I certainly won’t be telling you about how the kids stumble upon the Museum of Magic, where they finally meet the amazing Pietro.

Oh, blast I’ve done it again. Well, at least I didn’t tell you about the missing Sound Prism, the nefarious Lord Pharaoh, or the mysterious creature born in a bottle over 500 years ago, the key to the biggest secret of all.

I really can’t help myself, now can I? Let’s face it—if you’re reading this, it’s too late.

Our customers and the students of McGillis School were not only privileged enough to see him in person (sadly, we have had to edit all our pictures to keep his identity secret) but to hear the story behind the fabulously funny books! For example, we now all know who W.P. May is, and why The Name of This Book Is Secret is dedicated to … them (shh! It’s a secret!). We also discovered that Bosch can pull a rabbit out of a hat, spin a great story, and entertain every single kid, parent, and bookseller he met!

There is so much I can’t tell you, aside from that you must all pick up the books immediately. But! For you, dear readers, an exclusive reveal of P. Bosch’s true identity! Drumroll please …..

….. Jon Scieszka!