Real Life Crossover

Okay, so, it's Saturday night and nothing is on TV, so I end up watching a History Channel special called "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed." (Note in regards to my prior post...the rule also works for episodes and series titles.  "The Trouble with Tribbles" is a popular episode of Star Trek, and "The Choice" is to Farscape what "The Body" is to Buffy.  However, I'm not quite sure where this special falls...it's two hours, but I wouldn't call it a movie....) Anyway, all sorts of important sci-fi people are providing commentary, including (so far) J. J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Peter Jackson. It's Peter Jackson that prompted the post. He has, apparently, lost quite a bit of weight since his Lord of the Rings days...and he now looks a whole lot like the guy who played Merry when he was on Lost (I think it's the beard). It kinda broke my brain a bit.

Grammar Lesson for Today

I was reading a message board thread about songs, and I hit upon a new grammar pet peeve.

You put song titles in "quotation marks."

You italicize the name of the album.

(Memory trick:  Short things get quotation marks.  Long things get italicized.)

So, this is correct:  My favorite version of the song "Hallelujah" is on k.d. lang's album Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

Bonus tip:  The same trick memory trick works for stories and books.  Short stories get quotation marks; books get italicized.

So, this is correct:  The only thing of Stephen King's I've ever finished is the story "The Langoliers" from the book Four Past Midnight.

Yikes

I love my iPhone.  I really do.  I am also planning on handing it down on or near the 11th when I buy my birthday present for myself (a 16 GB iPhone 3G).But...that's a week from now...and there's already a line?

Yikes.

ETA:  Speaking of lines...I imagine I will be taking Patrick to Disneyland on Sunday....

ETA2:  Hey!  It's Patrick's friend!  Awesome!  (Yes, he rides the monorail enough that pilots recognize him, and many stop to chat with him -- especially Bill, the one in the picture.)

The 32 D'ohs

Yes, there really is a sound file somewhere on the Internet composed of 32 "d'ohs" right in a row.

What makes me think of it is that I just managed to scrape straight up my left arm, nearly from elbow to wrist, on the spring that popped out of the side of my mattress some time ago.

(Yes, I should get a new mattress, but I mostly remember it's there, and as I have a California King sized bed (a hand-me-down), mattresses are expensive.)

Ow.

The long campaign of making Bulldozer not hate his communication device began today, when I made him Bingo caller (our spelling words this week are the basic colors, which he -- not so coincidentally -- adores talking about).  He began to hate his device when he began to hate speech -- also not so coincidentally, but that's another story.

He did, however, sit with Speech Aide C -- who may not be returning to our school next year due to budget issues -- and do actual speech with her for nearly 20 minutes, quite happily.

Ironically, she sends everybody else she works with into a tailspin meltdown.

Also, once upon a time at our school, there was a boy named MF, as opposed to MW.  MF, because he is extremely intelligent, was moved to a more challenging program.  Every time -- every time -- I have seen MF this summer, walking to or from the bus, some aide has been leading him BY THE HAND.

Grrr.

I had MF one summer for summer school -- I think he was in first grade at the time.  I didn't lead him by the hand then.  He knew where he was going.

Grrrr.

Of course, I also can't figure out why former student J (the one who was legally blind) is coming to school every day with someone who I assume to be her mom, using a white cane, only to have her mom take the cane home with her every day.

So, we have my brain struggling with: (1) Hooray!  She finally got a cane! and (2) Um...canes only help if you use them...in this, you know, unfamiliar, crowded environment.

Bwuah?

A Ha!

Okay, here's the thing.

I cannot -- absolutely cannot -- pick faces (or anything, really) out of a crowd.  I call it "Can't See the Trees for the Forest Syndrome."

I vividly remember one day when I was about twelve or so -- I was helping teach a class at the park near my house with this lady Vicki.  Vicki wanted something in the art supply cabinet.

I remember opening the cabinet and just seeing...stuff.  No rhyme, no reason -- I had seen all of it, knew what all of it was, but all my brain could see was...a great big mass of stuff.

"No, no, down!" she said.

I looked down.  Stuff, stuff, and stuff.

"To the left."

I looked left.

Stuff, and stuff.

"It's right in front of you."

Eventually, I found whatever it was...but what I had to do was look at each item in the area she indicated individually, until I found whatever it was.  I'm sure she was thinking that it would have been easier for her to get up and get whatever it was herself.

I have the same problems with faces in crowds.  Faces, faces, faces...if I don't have something concrete to hold onto (at my cousin's graduation, I knew she was near the beginning, and found her only because she was right behind two boys), I don't have much of a hope of finding things.

But I recognize people, and I recognize voices.

(Doesn't mean I put names with faces, mind, but that's irrelevant for this discussion.)

Keep in mind that I watch a lot of sci-fi.  Lots of times, people are buried under prostheses and makeup, and sometimes even contacts.  But I recognize them.

In fact, I recognized him:

as also being him:

In this case, it was, I kid you not, the fingers and the smile...even under all that make-up.

So when I mentioned a while ago that the guy who played Nicki's boyfriend on Heroes looked like the guy who played Gunn on Angel, it was with misgivings.

I know what he looks like, and it wasn't him...but I never quite got rid of the idea that he had something to do with Angel.

I was close.

He played Forrest, one of Riley's buddies, on several episodes of Buffy in the fourth season.

So...

equals...

I'm actually a little put out that I could recognize Rene Auberjonois under all that make-up, and not this guy, even though he played humans in both cases.

Still, it's nice to solve the mystery.

By the way -- I'm all caught up, but...did I miss the part that explains why Matt and Molly live with Mohinder?  Or, for that matter, how Matt convinced anyone that he should have custody of Molly?

Well, Darn

General Hammond has gone to the great Stargate in the sky.

RIP, Don S. Davis.

Fandom types will also remember him as Scully's late father in the X-Files episodes "Beyond the Sea" and "One Breath." 

A quick trip to imdb.com says he was also in episodes of Psych, Supernatural, West Wing, Andromeda, The (newest) Twilight Zone, two episodes of The Outer Limits (playing different characters), and an episode of Highlander, along with starting in co-starring in Twin Peaks, amongst many, many other things.

But, to me, he's General Hammond, and I always picture him with two expressions: either the why-on-Earth-did-I-take-this-job incredulity as his best team insisted an invisible Urgo was talking to them in their heads; and the look on his face when Jack started spouting technobabble in "The Fifth Race."

Mistaken Identity

I got a great big hug from Goodfella today (I think?  Is Goodfella Boy M?).

As in, he saw me, opened his arms up, and half-ran, half-waddled ('cause that's just him) right up to me.

I think he thought I was Cat, though.

I Am Officially Insane

Here is a peak into how my brain works.

For years, while standing in line for Pirates of the Caribbean, my brain would immediately latch on to whatever my particular 'ship of the moment was (Riker/Troi, Tom/B'Elanna, and others...) and concoct ridiculous reasons for them to be in line for Pirates.

Only Pirates, mind.

(No, I don't know why.  Really.  I have absolutely, honestly, 100% no idea why it would be Pirates and nothing else.)

And, no, not with me.  Just...in line for Pirates.  I think with Tom and B'Elanna it was often Tom introducing B'Elanna to Disney in an attempt at helping her connect with her inner child.  I dunno.

But now, the last three times I've been to Disneyland, my brain has helpfully provided the beginning of a scene of a full-fledged story, that actually makes sense, where it's actually reasonable for the characters to be at Disneyland.

It's getting harder to avoid writing it.

I am utterly insane.

Another Photography Discovery

My point and shoot vastly over-saturates green.  Yeesh.  I was messing around with a few photos in Aperture, which has a slider called "vibrancy" -- which, essentially, saturates everything but skin tones.

It makes the photos beautiful, but on every single one, I've had go to back and desaturate the greens just a little bit.

Also?  One of these days, I'll win the lottery and be able to afford a wide angle lens.  Yeesh, are those things expensive...most of them cost more than my Rebel + kit lens did together a few years ago.

Bigger Picture

Still not 100% happy with it, but I'll figure it out.  It's still overexposed just a tiny bit (the lights on some of the letters, for instance).

A Rant, Squee, and a Review

Okay, first things first.

The rant.

It's Autopia.

As in "auto" and "utopia."

It is not auto-topia.

It is au-to-pi-a.

Four syllables.

Anything else is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Now, second.  The squee.

Nighttime photography is still very difficult for me.  For one thing, I'm too lazy to lug a tripod around.  For another, I've been more or less using my point and shoot because it has a self-timer (I've now figured out how to have my SLR delay a shot, so that my finger on the shutter release doesn't cause blurring).

But I was still limited, as far as I could determine, to what the camera decided was the best exposure.

Until last night, as I sat holding a table at Plaza Inn, exploring the menus (I was bored...), when I noticed that the menus are different for each mode.  (Duh.)

In the semi-manual mode, I noticed an on/off toggle for "long exposure."

I clicked it on.

Voila.

One second to fifteen second exposure.  Yee-haw.

(Larger version available later...I clicked the wrong setting when I exported from Aperture.)

So I spent the rest of the night wandering around Main Street, finding tree stakes, trash cans...anything that I could possibly brace my camera on.  I played around with exposure times up to 10 seconds (way, insanely overexposed...whoops).

My only complaint right now is that I can't find a way to mess with the aperture so that I could get one of those longer exposures without overexposing the lights and such.

Also?  My oh my does it eat up batteries.  Yikes.  I guess a few more of these need to go on my Amazon wish list.

Now, the review.

Toy Story Mania (a.k.a. Midway Mania) is very fun.

The video game aspect of it was very fun, especially since I'm fairly certain the "practice game" at the beginning actually determines your skill level (I'd read that the difficulty would be adaptive so that kids could feel successful at the ride).  My accuracy was lousy (40ish percent) but I think that was because I was deliberately aiming for the higher-point-value targets, instead of whacking the heck out of the cheap ones.

The inside of the ride is nifty.  My favorite was the big Candy Land board, but I think Patrick will enjoy that his Adventureland board game is featured too.

It's very much like the Buzz ride, except that instead of shooting as you go, it stops for five (?) mini-games, like throwing rings at the three-eyed green aliens ("The claw!  The claw is our master.  The claw chooses who will go and who will stay.") and trying to smash plates.

My only complaint is that as you whip around from one mini-game to another, you get tossed around a bit.

(Also, speaking as someone who has to worry about such things, the cars are much bigger than they seem.  When I saw the opening to get in, my heart stuttered a little, but it must be an optical illusion.  It was pretty comfortable.)

There was a group of adults with Down syndrome in line.  One of the guys, who was about sixty, is so what Patrick is going to look like in 40 years, right down to his Disneyland t-shirt, and rolled-eyed exasperation when the person with him gave him a hug.  Another looked like Superhero in fifty or sixty years.

Ow

Note from me to Motrin: WORK FASTER PLEASE.

Note from me to science:  Please invent the fake pregnancy thingie Huxley talked about in Brave New World, 'cause then I wouldn't have to take 3 Motrin every four hours for three days a month.

Thank you.

Vid Rec and Heroes

So, I made it through the first season of Heroes, and the premiere of the second.

A few thoughts.

*  Hiro is awesome personified.  He did what all us geeks wish we could do: wake up one day with super powers and have the strength of will to use them for good.

*  I used to say, "Every Frodo needs his Sam."  That is now interchangeable with, "Every Hiro needs his Ando."  Ando is also made of awesomeness, especially when he goes to confront Sylar alone.

To that end, check out the first vid on this page, "Sawatte Kawatte."  I downloaded the subbed version, but it would probably work just as well as an "instrumental" -- possibly even better.

*  I like that no one is one hundred percent good or bad.  I really, truly felt bad for Sylar when he was with his mom, even though he'd been slicing open people's heads (GROSS).  I vacillated with Mr. Bennett -- which, I think, is what I was supposed to do.  Mohinder was mostly so focused about helping people, but then almost killed Sylar.  No easy answers.  Nifty.

*  I find it interesting that Peter and Sylar both have the same gift.  I like the idea (was it the dead guy Peter saw at the end of the season? I forget.) that it's ultimately empathy that's his gift -- and through that, he absorbs others' powers.

*  The LA police officer...hmm....  I mean, what an awful power, if you can't shut it off -- can you imagine hearing a stray unkind thought about yourself?  Even if the person who thought it was just frustrated?  I don't quite get him working with Nuclear Dude -- it seemed like a plot device to get all of them in New York so Peter's dream would be mostly accurate.

* I find myself wondering if Hiro's dad had a gift.

*  I also found it interesting that Hiro can't be that much older than Claire -- when he was playing his Game Boy as Hiro's dad handed 1-year-old Claire to Mr. Bennett, he didn't look much older than 7 or 8.  That means current Hiro is in his early 20s.

*  Sylar.  I don't buy that Sylar's dead.  If Peter had absorbed Claire's healing powers enough to jump off that thing at Homecoming, and he had just been fighting with Sylar -- wouldn't Sylar have absorbed it too.

*  Mrs. Bennett and that dog drove me freaking insane.  And, yes, I know her brain looks more like Swiss cheese than a brain, thanks to Haitian Guy, but...seriously?

*  I warmed up, a bit, to the Nikki/Jessica story-line.  I think it got old, and I'd like to know if it was multiple personalities, or really Jessica's spirit, but...I did stop fast forwarding through them.

* Mohinder could say the alphabet for me, and I'd be enthralled.

* As if I weren't having enough trouble with the upcoming Star Trek movie....  The guy who plays Sylar had better be, like, the second coming of the Acting muse, if he wants me to look at him and see Spock, and not Sylar.  Geesh.

* I am endlessly fascinated (it's that language thing) by the fact that Hiro pronounces his last name differently when he's speaking in Japanese than when he's speaking in English.  I don't know why -- I just find it fascinating.  When he speaks in Japanese, the accent is on the "ka" -- NaKAmura -- and when he speaks in English, it's on the "mu" -- NakaMUra.  Coolness.

* I want to talk to ATM machines.  Seriously.

* I'm not quite sure whether Nathan -- or, actually, most of the Petrelli clan -- are in the "good guy," "bad guy," or "motivated self-interest" camp.  Which, I guess speaks to the above that no one is wholly good or evil.

*  Obviously, the symbol that keeps cropping up -- Jessica's tattoo, on Hiro's sword, and so forth -- means something.

* I felt absolutely awful for Hiro when he couldn't save the waitress.  :-(

*  I still don't quite get how saving the cheerleader = saving the world.

*  Will Claire age and die?

*  And, finally, having seen just a bit of the second season:  I rather thought for a moment that the Japanese hero guy would be Hiro's dad (revealing his power was immortality).  Now, I wonder if Hiro either talked the British guy into doing the heroic stuff, or did them himself.

Now, go watch the video.  And smile at Hiro's awesomeness.

Timing

So, the biological clock conspired to make me extra tired during the first week of summer school.  Oh well.

Two of the applications I sent in the last week of school vanished into thin air; one of these was for Sleeping Beauty, whose parents were all freaked in the first place about sending in the application late.  :-(

So far, my summer school class consists of (are ya ready for this?) Bulldozer, PH (who is on my roll but has not shown up yet), Hair Girl, Superhero, Mr. Voice, Sleeping Beauty (as of today), and, for one hour a day, 3rd Grade Girl B, who needs a nickname (I wanted Whining Girl but she actually hasn't yet....).

We're doing...okay.  The office had no idea who my staff was supposed to be -- but, then, they seem to know very little about anything having to do with summer school this year.  Anyhow, as it stands right now (unless Elastigirl's parents decide to send her), it's me, Aide L (the sub who came to our school the last three weeks or so, who I would keep in a heartbeat if I thought I could convince someone to combine two positions into one 6.25 hour position), Aide Mrs. B, and, for an hour a day, Aide D.

Bulldozer had a couple of meltdowns so far -- over the usual...like being told he couldn't put his Capri Sun on his Cheerios when it wasn't snack time.  As gross as it sounds, I'd have let him at any other time.

Superhero's been really, really, REALLY close to channeling his Red Kryptonite, but hasn't yet.

Hair Girl...hyped is the...restrained way of phrasing it.

And Mr. Voice got pushed into total meltdown mode this morning by Speech Aide C.

Anyway, the combined result of not knowing who on Earth was actually going to be in my class, combined with being kicked out at 4:00 on Friday, means I've been playing catch-up all week, when what I really want to do is GO TO SLEEP.

Oh well.

For amusement purposes, io9.com has a trip down memory lane.... (My side! Your side! My side! Your si -- whoops.  Wrong show.  Shut up, quote brain.)

Heroes Update

My continued apologies to Heroes fans; I'm up to the eighth or ninth episode of season 1, and I am definitely intrigued.  It strikes me as the type of show, though, that could easily veer off-course, delaying the big reveal of the mystery season by season because it's being renewed.

(Rather, I understand, like what's happened to Lost.)

The Simone story is...meh...and I sometimes skip past the Jessica/Niki bits -- I'm just not taken by that story yet.

I like Hiro a lot -- his enthusiasm is definitely endearing (and all the Star Trek references don't hurt :-)), and his excitedly showing Niki's kid the comic book that's about him was just awesome, and Mohinder's accent is...well, melt-worthy -- yay for the intro and epilogue he does on all the episodes.  I sense nothing but bad happening with the whole Claire and her father thing.

By the way -- it seems a huge stretch that Hiro's friend (Ando?) watched Niki on-line, so I imagine that'll have some meaning later, but we'll see...it's just that years of watching Babylon 5 and other arc-driven shows have given me something of a sixth sense for things that are too convenient.

Also?  Niki's (ex-?) husband reminds me of Gunn on Angel...a lot.

It's HOT!

Earth to Crazy Person

So, I've  been reading a really interesting discussion on Peter David's blog about the marriages that began taking place yesterday.

(Most of the pictures here are pretty cool, including a couple more of that couple in their 80s.)

Anyhow, it reminded me of...how to say this nicely....

Okay, I'll go for pure objectivity.

There was coverage on the channel 11 news yesterday of the marriages.  The coverage was largely positive, but they did talk to a protester who was -- well, eloquent she was not.

(Not that I would be if a TV reporter came up to me and started talking to me on-camera, but whatever.)

Anyway, when asked why she was protesting, she said, more or less (slightly paraphrasing from memory, here),  "It's just -- the state of families today -- they're falling apart.  There are so many kids coming from single parent homes!"

At which point, my Earth logic kicked in, and demanded, "Wait.  You're protesting couples formalizing their relationships and becoming legal families because there are too many broken families out there? Bwuah?"

You know, I won't agree with you, but I'd be far more likely to take your argument seriously if you weren't honestly trying to convince me that making 2-parent homes is somehow related to a rise in single-parent homes.

Or, you know, if you employed Earth logic.

Yum

Backwoods Inn + stuffed baked potato + Bea's Bakery + dobosh torte + not dropping the box a second time = happy SpooWriter.

Yummy.

Warning: Political Post

I've debated how to discuss this, and came to a few conclusions.

I could discuss the fact that I believe banning same-sex marriage is in direct opposition to Equal Protection under the law, as it prevents a couple from obtaining a marriage license based on the gender of one of the two people applying for such.

But I won't.

I could discuss the fact that marriage, as the state sees it, is a civil contract, and that the state allowing same-sex marriage does not prevent Homophobic Church #4 from refusing to allow same-sex couples to participate in the religious ceremony of marriage if they so choose.

But I won't.

I could discuss the fact there are, no doubt, churches that continue to refuse to marry people of different races, and that that is their right if they choose to do so.  I don't agree with it, but the civil contract aspect of marriage that entitles people to rights, protections, and responsibilities within the federal and state government is entirely separate to the religious ceremony of marriage.

But I won't.

I could discuss the fact that there are not, in fact, a limited number of marriage certificates, and that allowing same-sex couples to apply for, and receive, them does not mean that there will be fewer for heterosexual couples.

But I won't.

I could discuss, in an effort to persuade any reluctant readers, the fact that allowing people to go to city hall and get a marriage license in no way compels you to perceive them as religiously married, nor does it require you to approve of their marriage any more than you are required to approve of any other marriage, whether that's because those getting married are too young, are drug addicts, or in some other way don't meet your requirements for a good marriage.  It is a matter between them and the state.

But I won't.

I could, and someday may, be able to eloquently (I hope) defend, in a calm and rational manner, why I think that the California ruling allowing same-sex marriage is such a wonderful -- long, long overdue -- thing.

But I won't.

I could point out that, while you can go to City Hall and be married in the eyes of the state whether or not you have wedding in church, the opposite is most definitely not true.  The government is not regulating what your church decides is or is not applicable.  It is looking at the City Hall part of the process.

But I won't.

What I will say is simply this:  congratulations.

(P.S.  This picture makes me smile.  So does this one.)

Book Review: The Andromeda Strain

So, I think I said before that I picked up The Andromeda Strain after watching the eponymous miniseries -- or, trying to -- to see how similar it was.

First things first:  The plot of the book is much less...I don't want to say complex...it's much more focused in the book than in the miniseries.  For instance, there is no intrepid reporter hiking through the deserts promising God he'll never, ever again get high.

(Seriously.)

So, let's start with a brief plot synopsis -- of the plot in the book.  Keep in mind, it was written in 1969, with 1960s technology in mind.  Also keep in mind that, being published in 1969, it was written in the era of manned space flights but before Apollo 11.

The idea here is that there are likely organisms living in the upper atmosphere that humans would have limited or no immunity for -- rather like what happens when long-separated populations meet again.  Simple things can be very, very deadly.

To study this, NASA sends up satellites that "scoop" material from the upper atmosphere (thus, Project Scoop) and bring it back to Earth to examine.

One of the Project Scoop satellites comes down outside Piedmont, an isolated town in Nevada.  Within hours, everyone in the town except one old man and one infant, is dead.  Most died instantly, the blood in their body congealed into flaky, dusty stuff.  Some went insane and killed themselves in weird ways.

So, a bunch of scientists who had previously signed up for Project Wildfire are called into action.  They work in an underground lab that sounds an awful lot like Stargate SG-1's Cheyenne Mountain.

Their goal is to discover the source of the contagion and to eliminate it.

After much back and forth and drawn-out explanations of things we all take for granted today (seriously, he explains electron microscopes), they come to the stunning conclusion that it has mutated and is harmless.

Seriously.

Okay, stuff happens in between (turns out the folks that survived it survived because their blood chemistry was messed up -- the old guy had acidosis from an untreated ulcer and the baby's blood was too basic because (I absolutely kid you not) he cried too much and had too much CO2 in his blood), but basically, the conclusion is that it's not made of protein, it is in regular hexagons (so it's probably a crystal) and that it mutates.

So, let's get into comparing the book with the movie.

Things the book did better:

* The plot is almost largely contained in Piedmont and within the Wildfire installation -- we're not having to follow government agencies, army units, and some reporter guy detoxing in the desert

* The science is more believable -- there is no time traveling, there are no wormholes, there are no buckyballs...it sticks with the one premise that this is something weird and something alive that may or may not have come from outer space

Things the movie did better:

* ...Individually, all the scientific things they talked about in the movie (wormholes, time travel, buckyballs) are things I find intellectually fascinating (though presented all at once, it...strained credulity)

* The end.  Well, rather, the solving of the Andromeda puzzle.  The keeping of Andromeda on the International Space Station?  Not so much.  (I mean, really....)

Things the movie did worse:

* Um...most of it

* No, seriously, most of it.  The plot was a mangled, overwrought, overcomplicated mess.

Criticisms of the book:

* I had to read the ending three times to actually believe that after the whole frelling thing, everything was okay because Andromeda itself had mutated and wasn't dangerous anymore

   **  I mean, Andromeda is more or less the "bad guy" here -- and it just dissipates harmlessly on the wind

* I don't buy that the very smart scientists made the errors that Crichton made them make -- like not dissecting the lab rats that died from Andromeda.  These guys are supposed to be the best in their field, and they are supposed to be trained to deal with a threat that could come, literally, from space.

   **  It's not so much the errors -- is the number and frequency of them, and the fact that they are all the critical errors that make the whole thing last longer (not that it matters, 'cause Andromeda reforms itself and stops killing people...sigh).  It's too convenient.

Overall, it's a serviceable story, I suppose.  And, I realize that part of the point of the story is that we can't predict organisms that live in the upper layers of the atmosphere, or in outer space, etc. etc. etc.  But from a dramatic point of view, there's no climax.

The seals around Andromeda break down, and this guy is hyperventilating in order to try and stay alive, and, oh-my-gosh, everything's okay, 'cause Andromeda doesn't kill people anymore -- and we know that because it's already over Los Angeles and no one is dying or going crazy.

What the heck?

I mean, that's...that's the equivalent of Voldemort fading away in a puff of smoke just before the Battle of Hogwarts, never to bother anyone again.  You gear up for this showdown -- you think, "Oh, yay, they've got it!  They've figured it out! All they have to do is mess with the blood's pH...make everyone take antacids, and it's all good!" -- and then Crichton says, "Oh, ha ha, never mind -- I made the problem fix itself."

Until the last fifteen pages or so, I actually really liked the book, in a mindless, Angels and Demons kinda way.  It was a puzzle that I didn't take as literal fact, but I enjoyed following along as we tried to solve the puzzle, if that makes sense.

Final grade: C

(It would have been a B if not for the ending.  Grr.)