Here is what I want. Well, one of the things I want. That I also believe would make other people’s lives better as well. So, Steve Jobs is all about the “user experience” these days. What about the user experience when I’m driving and I have my iPod plugged into what used to be the cigarette lighter and attached to the cassette drive through a faux cassette and I have it on shuffle and I am too lazy and indecisive to make up play lists so it’s playing through a wide variety of songs (which makes me realize just how quickly crap music can accrete into great sedimentary layers on an iPod) but what I really want to hear is Golden by My Morning Jacket or Dear Someone by Gillian Welch or even Ana Egge’s version of Edelweiss but it’s too dark and I’m too blind to safely fiddle with finding a particular song so I just want to talk to my iPod and tell it what I want to hear? What about that Steve? Huh? So where’s the voice recognition interface to your iPod? Huh? Huh? Can you hear me??

Books: The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr. A marvelous first novel and a disappointment that the author has not yet written another one. The genetics of families, both the hard-wired biological ones and the ones that seem to descend from no none origin, are explored in this story that is replete with charts and diagrams and pictures. I would have liked a few more lists, but can create those on my own. A family with a pair of first cousins at its core who married each other under strained circumstances, several possible explanations for the seemingly inexplicable traits of a few family members, and a plethora of achingly uncomfortable relationships, are all aspects of this beautiful story. I say - Carole Cadwalladr - hurry up and write something else!