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OK, this is strange and just plain scary. Seems that Dr. Ruth is not just a terror in the bedroom, but she can kill you too! WOW! LINK
At 
16, the orphaned girl moved to Israel and joined Haganah, an underground Jewish military organization. She served as a lookout and sniper but never killed anyone. Says Dr. Ruth of that interval:
"When I was in my routine training for the Israeli army as a teenager, they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe. Not just that, even though I was tiny and not even much of an athlete, I was incredibly accurate throwing hand grenades too. Even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded."
"My legs were almost ripped off on my 20th birthday in 1948 in Jerusalem from cannon ball shrapnel which exploded in the student’s residence where I was living. Three other students were killed instantly and many more were wounded. The metal pierced both my legs, and there was blood everywhere. A cannon ball from Jordan had smashed through the window. I was thrown 20 feet. The strangest thing was that all I could think about was whether there might be some blood on the brand-new shoes I had just gotten for my birthday, and amazingly there wasn’t even a drop on them, which was all I cared about in some kind of strange denial."
Ruth later moved to Paris, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne and taught kindergarten, then immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 and obtained a Master’s degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Education from Columbia University. A job with Planned Parenthood spurred her to study human sexuality.
Congrats to Scott Siglar and other podcasters. Seems this niche item is going mainstream! Here is a short article from the NY Times featuring my two favorite podcasters, Scott Sigler and J.C. Hutchins……. LINK
Authors Find Their Voice, and Audience, in Podcasts
Heidi Schumann for The New York Times
From a closet in his San Francisco home, Scott Sigler records his books, which are distributed as podcasts.
Scott Sigler writes science-fiction horror novels, the kind one fan called “steel-tipped boot on your throat, speed-metal fiction.” Mr. Sigler has written four such books, though not many people have actually read them.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Files are mp3 format. Warning: some contain profanity.
Prologue to ‘Earthcore,’ by Scott Sigler
Episode #1 of ‘7th Son,’ by J.C. Hutchins
Episode #1 of ‘Pocket & the Pendant,’ by Mark Jeffrey
Prologue to ‘Morevi,’ by Tee Morris
Readers’ Opinions
How many have listened to them, though, is a different story.
Several times a week Mr. Sigler, 37, steps into a walk-in closet in his San Francisco home. He reads into a microphone that connects to his computer via a sound mixer. Hanging shirts envelop him, masking ambient sound.
After being snubbed by publishers for years, Mr. Sigler began recording his first book, “EarthCore,” in 2005. He offered it as a podcast in 22 episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) that he posted online and sent free to subscribers for downloading. Before long, Mr. Sigler had 5,000 listeners; by the time he finished releasing his second novel, “Ancestor,” last January, he had 30,000, as he does for “The Rookie,” which is playing now.
With initial printings of novelists’ first books running as low as 2,000 copies, Mr. Sigler has a substantial audience, enough finally to attract a small Canadian publisher, Dragon Moon Press, which published “EarthCore” in 2005 and will release “Ancestor” on April 1.
Mr. Sigler also recently signed with a New York agent, Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Agency, who expects to park his latest, “Infection,” with a major publisher.
Others have turned to the Internet to build their audience, including Cory Doctorow, who offered the text of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” as a free download in 2003. But Mr. Sigler is among the vanguard of authors stapling their literary aspirations to the iPod.
“A lot of no-name authors like me are getting massive grass-roots exposure, and some of us are going to percolate to the top and get on the best-seller list,” Mr. Sigler said.
The business is brewing at Podiobooks.com, the Web site founded in late 2005 with just 15 titles, including books by Tee Morris and Mark Jeffrey, who began offering podcasts about the same time as Mr. Sigler.
The site was founded by Evo Terra, who wrote the book on podcasting, literally; he was co-author of “Podcasting for Dummies.” Today the Web site has about 100 titles, many science fiction and fantasy.
“Most of the science-fiction authors are more tech savvy than romance authors,” Mr. Terra said. Podiobooks features primarily unpublished writers, and has rejected books only because of “hate speech,” Mr. Terra said. The site also includes guidelines on recording a book.
“Compared to audiobooks these authors break every rule in the business, including using sound effects,” Mr. Terra said. The podcast books also use music and a full cast more liberally than traditional audiobooks. Still, what Podiobooks’ offerings might lack in polish, they tend to make up for in brash enthusiasm.
Mr. Terra plans to add some fee books by more established authors, and for now covers costs through suggested donations of $9.99 per title (some give more, as much as $50), with Podiobooks taking 25 percent and passing the rest to its authors.
This is awesome! Mac armor anyone? 
LINK
MacBook Pro takes bullet like a champ
We’re not exactly sure what Apple’s impact test procedures are for MacBook Pros, but a bullet in the side makes quite the statement. A mugging victim in Brazil avoided a trip to the ER thanks to his trusty bodyguard, a seemingly bulletproof MBP. According to the image holder (who isn’t the victim or MBP owner), the lappy continues to function, although it isn’t clear to what extent. Obviously, popping caps to to the top, bottom, or not-so-centered spot on the side might result in a less a heroic outcome, not to mention a busted machine. As far as brawn goes, MBP ain’t no Toughbook, but at least it took one for the team.
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