I need to say that I am so over these Atkins-Approved menus that are cropping up in mainstream restaurants and eateries, and in the lexicon of mainstream food speak. If anyone espouses the Atkins diet, I consider it his or her prerogative, but I hate that it's become something to which dining establishments now pander. Moderation, the last time I checked, was what health and nutrition were all about.

I don't have too many axes to grind anymore, but that whole thing is downright annoying. You can't live without carbs, people!

I'm arms-lengthing Cornwell's Ripper case. It's very persuasive, but the details, and surviving photographs of postmortem victims aren't pleasant. I am a sucker for the reconstruction of historic events, especially around notorious crimes or tragedies, but the subject matter can weigh heavily on your psyche. I try to make sure the book is not the last information with which I interact before bed. I'm already in what I call "heavy scan" mode. Cornwell, as a forensics specialist, is enamored of detail to the finest point. I like a lot of details, but I like them to be overarching, and anecdotal.

I remember seeing an unsolved mysteries episode about "The Ripper" as a child, and I was captivated. Horrified, but intrigued. I think what hooks me is the notion that such a malevolent force could move through the streets of London's East End undetected. Amazing to me that such a consuming, classist, mysogonistic psychopathy could remain largely subverted in the daylight hours.

Even more interesting is that Cornwell's alleged Ripper obviously felt that his art (he was a painter) protected him from suspicion, as he routinely depicted Ripper-esque scenes, in many cases betraying an intimate knowledge of the sinister mood, and uncanny duplication of actual details of the deaths--things that could not be captured by second hand accounts.

Nothing much beyond this to report at present. I'm just having an evening cuppa, sipping slowly from a black Johns Hopkins mug. Speaking of Hopkins, I have yet to hear anything...