1998 Christmas List

1998 was a good year except for heavy teaching. 1999 promises to be even better, with a new young Rasmusen due to arrive February 9. Helen and I discovered items 2 and 11 below just in time. As usual, my list is not in any particular order.

• 1. The IBM 560E Laptop Computer. $900. IBM really does have a well-crafted computer. It's worth buying from them, Dell, or another top-name maker, I've decided. Get a laptop like this one by web auction, short on features but weighing only 3 or 4 pounds and from a good manufacturer.

• 2. The Nikon Coolpix 100 digital camera. $100. They stopped making this, but look for something similar: a 100-dollar camera with few features but small in size, using a quick card connection rather than a cable, AA batteries, and good for portraits.

• 3. Two brewpubs: the Upland Brewery, 350 West Eleventh Street, Bloomington, 812-336-BEER, [email protected], for good food and drink both; and the RockBottom Brewery #9, 10 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, 317-681-8180, downtown Indianapolis next to the new mall, which has good red ale and crayfish pizza. (GONE IN 2003)

• 4. Why We Get Sick, by George Williams and Randolph Nesse. 1996, 290 pages, $10.40. As Dawkins says in his blurb, you should buy an extra copy for your doctor. Examples of ideas: People with infections shouldn't take iron because it helps the bacteria more than them; the appendix can't get smaller by evolution because a smaller appendix can get blocked and infected more easily; fevers have their uses, or they wouldn't show up as a symptom.

• 5. Trapdoor Cave.. This Monroe County Cave is not very impressive, but it has one good feature: it is even easier for beginners than Buckner's.

• 6. Come to Grief , by Dick Francis, 1995, 368 pp. $5.59. Yet another first-rate Dick Francis novel-- one of his best, I think, though I read it in one long day of plane flights. This one is about an ex-jockey detective who finds that a popular friend of his committed terrible crimes.

• 7. The Ides of March , by Thornton Wilder, 1948, 191 pp. $19.57. A novel in document form about the last year of Julius Caesar's life. There is good Plato imitation, and good characterization of Caesar, Pompeia (his wife before Calpurnia), Cleopatra, Clodia, and Catullus. The only disappointment is that the story peters out, with no catharsis at all. The documentary form makes the presentation jagged anyway, tho, with lots of back-and-forth in chronology, so the lack of an ending does not matter as much as it would otherwise.

• 8. The NedStat free webpage counter. This is fun to put on your webpage, because you can see which countries people are visiting you from.

• 9. Molecules, by P.W. Atkins, 1987. $18.95. He takes a molecule, shows a picture, and in the English plain style tells interesting things about its chemical properties and everyday uses.

• 10. The Blue Letter Bible, a website that lets you search the Bible, see both Greek and Hebrew interlinear, and access various commentaries and dictionaries.

• 11. The Irfanview32 graphics viewer, a freeware program by Irfan Skiljan, a Bosnian programmer living in Vienna. He has the gift of writing good software, and I prefer this to any other editor for JPG and GIFF images. I found this and other good freeware at the Nonags website, at Www.nonags.com.

• 12. Why You can Never Get to the End of the Rainbow and Other Moments of Science , by Don Glass, 1993. $8.76. A little paperback consisting of short, 2-page columns on neat scientific points, as explained on a local radio program.