Some good articles, but some lame ones too. I liked contagious cancer, New York City sewage, the itch, plus a few others. January 4, 2012 ( )

Well once again I get to review a BASNW many years after publication. A number of the pieces went on to become books including 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' which was one of the first to take up the idea that the Internet is changing our brains (for better or worse). Some others I enjoyed include 'High-Tech Trash' which is not a new issue but the article has some interesting details about where high tech trash goes that I didn't know before. 'The Itch' has fascinating information about the brain that has some relevancy to my own condition. 'Last of the Neanderthals' is a common theme among science writers but this essay fired my imagination and I learned some things I didn't know before. 'Wasteland' is my favorite essay in the book, it's funny, unpredictable, informative and really, who knew all this stuff about our human waste stream? 'Big Foot' describes one UK groceries attempt to quantify each product's CO2 equivalency and thus shows the complexity and difficulty in managing global warming. ( )

This anthology contains plenty of fascinating articles about what are mostly unknown scientific phenomena to the lay person. It was a hard one to put down and led to many hours of research on the Internet. ( )