WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!
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Cover: Very, erm, loud? It peaks my curiosity.
Dear Muse Reader: Flowchart FTW! NaK never ceases to amaze and amuse me. Still trying to figure out exactly what A and B are supposed to mean.
Contents: Very good quotes, in the “mystery quote” part, the quote around the pages, and in the editors’ list. Special bonus: the errata. “Apologies to our readers, Jeff Dean, Barbara Hall, and the goldenrod.” I had a hard time trying to stop laughing after I read that.
Bo’s Page: Alas, I did not guess the false fact. There was something about the bunny story that just seemed true to me, as if they were trying to throw me off, and the picture looks quite real. I had guessed the maggot story, as I couldn’t believe an actual study would be done, and the researcher’s name sounded fake. Excellent!
Muse Mail: Eh, tiring, as usual, and often clueless.
Kokopelli & Company: Really, what is there to say except that Larry Gonick is a genius?
“The Power of Placebo” by Michael Brooks, art by Shelden Erway: I’d never really thought about placebos much, so this was a very interesting article. I still dislike the first-person narration format of articles, but, for an excerpt from a book, it had a pretty good layout.
Q&A, with Robert and Rebecca: Two good questions with two good answers.
“Web Masters” by Richard Conniff: This article began very well, but towards the end I was getting tired. And it was yet another first-person narration. But Pwt caught Crraw again! That’s two, right?
Muserology: “Confessions of a Bando” by Alyssa Myerly: Eh, I was bored by this article, unfortunately, so I don’t have much to say. It’s good to see Devil appearing more and more, though.
Muse Mini-Myth: “The Twelve Labors of Hercules” by Virginia Edwards, illustrations by Kali Ciesemier: Yes! Another mini-myth! It’s good to see Muse going back to the classics, both in the sense of ancient Rome and Greece and in the sense of Muse favorites. “They EAT PEOPLE!!”
“Digital Age: A computer family photo album.”, photographs my Mark Richards: Wow, computers have changed a lot. I’ve read about the early ones, but being able to see them is fascinating.
“Studies in Human Behavior” by Professor Archibald Wigand: No
pranksexperiments I haven’t seen before, but I definitely want to see the report on Kokopelli’s study.Contest Winners: Rather odd split concerning the ages of the winners. Two 8-year-olds and two 14-year-olds, with a 10-year-old thrown in for good measure. Oops, and an 11-year-old. The only thing I really liked was the picture of the garage door. It’s rather… Star Trek-y?
Last Page: “TheWorld@YourFingertips”: I read about this a while ago in Popular Science, so it wasn’t new to me, but it’s still fascinating.
Overall, I see continuing improvements in Muse, with which I am quite happy. The editors are listening to us MuseBloggers, I believe, and I appreciate that. I wish I had read the Muse Mail pages first, as I didn’t understand the running gag about nutmeg until I had. Altogether a very funny and rather unpredictable issue. There seem to be fewer book excerpts, and that’s good, but I’d like to see them (or at least the first-person ones) gone altogether. I’m glad to see the editors’ humor peeking through more and more. For some reason I hadn’t seen much of it lately, and I missed it. Anyway, keep up the good work, Muse staff!
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OMG, there was a question on my Health final re-take yesterday about the placebo effect! And if I hadn’t gotten the issue on Sunday, I wouldn’t have gotten that question right! If that’s the one that gets me just within the passing range, I think I’ll send ’em a letter…
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I’m kind of disappointed, because this is the closest that Muse ever comes to a computer issue, and I like computers, but it’s not enough. (Also, I am afraid of spiders.)
I liked the placebo effect article but already knew the basic details, would have liked to go a little more in-depth.
The mini-myth reminded me of what I tend to think of as the golden era of Muse, around five years ago. Back when those were more common, when Muse was 48 pages and taller… *wistful nostalgic montage*
I liked that the reader article was about marching band, but I am compelled to state that our marching band is way more professional than theirs, and just as grueling, and more awesome, overall. Not that I’m unbiased, but still. Dancing? Multiple shows? I scoff at them.
First page was pretty good. Last page is yet another reason why I want to go to MIT.
“Digital Age” needed more pictures, and a more all-encompassing timeline. But, then again, what it said about “check out your parents’ basement”… I have about half our basement filled with card tables covered in the computers from my family’s past (two Macintosh SEs, an IBM PS/2, an IBM 3270 terminal emulator if I’m remembering the number correctly(white text with green ghosting on a black background- bonus points?), a Powerbook 1400, and Windows 95 and 98 boxen), most of which work, so maybe I’m not exactly the target audience. (This is in addition to *my* computer, a T42 thinkpad running kubuntu right now. Her name is singularity.)
…in conclusion, I have diverged completely from the topic, Muse this month was better than I feared, and there should be an article on open source software.
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The spider article was really good, and so was the Muserology. I have a friend in band–I’ll have to ask them if it’s like that.
I loved the Greek comic strip. There should most definitely be more of those. And Pwt finally caught Crraw! How many times has that happened in Muse history?
Lastly, a suggestion for future issues/articles: interesting neurological conditions like SYNESTHESIA (please! It has been mentioned a few times, and there was a letter about it too) And there are other rare conditions such as disgraphia (I believe that was also mentioned in a letter). Or you could explain autism and Down Syndrome.
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4- How long have you been getting Muse? The way you phrased your post made it sound like that was the first Muse Mini-Myth you’ve seen. To my knowledge, Pwt has caught Crraw twice now, but Pwt did have to trick Crraw last time.
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I’ve only been getting Muse for about three or four years, but I did manage to get a hold of some old issues. The librarian gave me some old copies, so I have the issue about Greek gods with those comic strips.
I thought the issue was better than the one before, but not as good as some in the past few months and certainly not as good as the ones from muse’s glory days. Which, I agree with Dodecahedron, was five or six years ago.