SPACE – Page 4 – Stillness of Heart

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Bush’s storms loom over Obamaland / Heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’ / Life lessons from Pinterest / The Civil War in Florida / A new exomoon

This week: Bush’s storms loom over Obamaland / Heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’ / Life lessons from Pinterest / The Civil War in Florida / A new exomoon

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Echoes of George W. Bush blues in Barack Obama’s 2nd term
By Alex Isenstadt and Carrie Budoff Brown | Politico | Dec. 19
“They’re two presidents dogged by crises largely of their own making, whose welcome with Americans has worn thin after two marathon elections.”

2. Dick Cheney in Nixonland
By Jon Wiener | The Nation | Dec. 19
“When our most hated vice president visits the library of our most disgraced president, you look forward to a good night.”

3. Found heroin labeled ‘Obamacare’
By Lucy McCalmont | Politico | Dec. 20
“This probably isn’t the Obamacare PR push the White House had in mind.”

4. Important Life Lessons From Pinterest’s Top Pins of 2013
By Erin Gloria Ryan | Jezebel | Dec. 19
“Pinterest is to physically impossible crafts, recipes, and photographs for the homebound and quixotic what Cosmo is to physically impossible sex positions for the recently deflowered.”

5. Florida’s Cattle Wars
By Phil Leigh | Disunion :: The New York Times | Dec. 19
“[T]he Confederacy increasingly looked to a seemingly unlikely source, Florida, as a source of beef for its armies.”

6. Our Thirteen Most-Read Blog Posts of 2013
By Nicholas Thompson | The News Desk :: The New Yorker | Dec. 12
“There’s a certain randomness, or at least unpredictability, to Web traffic. You’re never absolutely certain that a blog post will take off until it does.”

7. How Diplomacy Helped Cause an F-18 Crash
By Dan Lamothe | The Complex :: Foreign Policy | Dec. 19
“[A] series of miscommunications and judgment mistakes … ultimately forced the $60 million fighter — call sign ‘Victory 206’ — into the North Arabian Sea.”

8. Astronomers may have found the first-ever exomoon seen by humans
By James Plafke | Geek.com | Dec. 18
“The planet and moon, located 1,800 light years from Earth, are around four times the mass of Jupiter, and half the mass of Earth, respectively.”

9. Auld Lang Syne NYE tradition thanks to cigar firm
The Scotsman | Dec. 19
“Guy Lombardo, a bandleader who was nicknamed America’s Mr New Year’s Eve, was searching for a song to bridge a gap between radio broadcasts.”

10. Afraid to spend money: The psychological trauma of long-term unemployment
By Adriene Hill | Marketplace Your Money | May 2013
“How do you take control of your finances when, after six years of under- and un-employment, you suddenly have a job?”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Profiles of first ladies / Childfree and loving it / A boring mission to Mars / A Texas-made space telescope / Nixon’s love for Jews

This week: Profiles of first ladies / Childfree and loving it / A boring mission to Mars / A Texas-made space telescope / Nixon’s love for Jews

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. The First Ladies
C-SPAN | 2013 and 2014
Watch the stunning and fascinating series about the women as intelligent, complex, canny, and noble (if not more so) than the presidents their husbands became.

2. The Choice To Be Childfree
On Point with Tom Ashbrook :: NPR | Aug. 23
“Childless by choice. We look at the trend of couples saying ‘no thanks’ to having kids.”

3. Dating Superman
By Seth Stevenson | Slate | May 2013
“The ultimate superpower would let you find, woo, and mate with the perfect person”

4. Olivia Wilde Takes Center Stage
By Emma Brown | Interview | Aug. 22
“Drinking Buddies is Olivia Wilde’s first time carrying a film, but it is certainly not her last. With upcoming roles in everything from Rush to Spike Jonze’s Her and Paul Haggis’ Third Person, Wilde is the girl of the moment.”

5. Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker | The New York Times Magazine | July 2013
“It would be catastrophic if humanity’s greatest voyage were brought low by the mind’s tendency to wander when left to its own devices. ”

6. Some Newly Uncovered Nixon Comments on the Subjects of Jews and Black People
By Elspeth Reeve | Atlantic Wire :: Atlantic Monthly | Aug. 21
“Richard Nixon was like many a Millennial (or middle-aged politician) who’s gotten busted for sending racy emails or sexts — even though he knew everything he was saying would be archived forever, he still said really inappropriate things.”

7. UT, A&M telescope to be 10 times sharper than Hubble
By Robert Stanton | Houston Chronicle | Aug. 21
“This Saturday, the third mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be cast inside a rotating furnace lab at the Steward Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. It’s the only facility in the world where mirrors this large are being made.”

8. Turkey’s Women Strike Back
The New York Review of Books | Aug. 19
“Just as some Turks have recognized for the first time that violence against the Kurds in the east is no different than the police violence they are now experiencing in the west, they are also becoming aware that state meddling in women’s lives means meddling in the lives of everyone.”

9. Not-so-empty nests: When adult children live at home
By Adriene Hill | Marketplace Life | May 2013
“There are more than 22 million adult children still living at home with their parents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”

10. The End of Second Acts?
By Shadd Maruna and Charles Barber | The Wilson Quarterly | Spring 2013
“The mass warehousing of convicts is a sign of America’s faltering belief in second chances. Considering how individuals atone for their crimes can help us restore rehabilitation as an ideal.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Hauling a rock into orbit / A comatose Senate / Fiction to understand Iraq War / Navy SEALS fighting Jabba the Hutt / John Kerry and Cuba

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Senatus Decadens
By George Packer | The Daily Comment :: The New Yorker | Jan. 4
“The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation. It does not inspire important debate. It is not responsive to key national problems. Its pretense of institutional dignity is so battered that junior senators openly mock it.”

2. Emerging wave of Iraq fiction examines America’s role in ‘bullshit war’
By Paul Harris | The Guardian | Jan. 3
“Flood of books with ‘elegiac feel running through them’ tackle eight-year conflict and help US to understand the folly of war”

3. Be Cautious With Free Software
By J.D. Biersdorfer | Gadgetwise :: The New York Times | August 2012
“Is it safe to install freeware and shareware on my computer?”

4. Can Kerry make friends with Cuba?
By Nick Miroff | GlobalPost :: Salon | Jan. 2
“While the ex-senator’s been a harsh critic of U.S. policy toward Havana, he’ll have a hard time changing anything”

5. Louis C. K.’s Symphony Of Comedy
By Chris Duffy | WBUR | Jan. 3
“In a field notorious for compromise, where comedians routinely change personas and water down material to get sitcom deals, C.K. has managed to maintain his voice.”

6. High schooler suspended for poem on understanding Adam Lanza
By Natasha Lennard | Salon | Jan. 2
“A 17-year-old high school student in San Francisco has been suspended indefinitely after she wrote a poem in her personal notebook which included the lines, ‘I understand the killings in Connecticut; I understand why he pulled the trigger.’ ”

7. Good and Bad, the Little Things Add Up in Fitness
By Gretchen Reynolds | Well :: The New York Times | Jan. 2
“I was delighted to report … that the ‘sweet sport’ for health benefits seems to come from jogging or moderately working out for only a brief period a few times a week.”

8. How Real Navy SEALs Would Handle Famous Movie Missions
By Shane Snow | Underwire :: Wired | December 2012
“[W]e asked 17-year SEAL veteran Don Mann … how the SEALs would handle a few epic missions of our own devising. And by ‘our,’ we mean Hollywood’s.”

9. Dissatisfaction City
By Jesse Elias Spafford | The New Inquiry | Jan. 2
“The Las Vegas casino is a machine for social control that works not through repression, but disinhibition”

10. NASA mulls plan to drag asteroid into moon’s orbit
By Jeff Hecht | New Scientist | Jan. 2
“The mission would cost about $2.6 billion — slightly more than NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover — and could be completed by the 2020s.”

2012 in review

It’s been my best year ever. Thank you all for your interest.

WordPress.com prepared a 2012 annual report for Stillness of Heart.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 13 years to get that many views.

It’s been my best year ever. Thank you all for your interest. Click here to see the complete report.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Turkish soap operas / King’s ‘Whorehouse’ story / No (world’s) end in sight / Clinton’s legacy / 2012 fashion

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Dec. 21: The Winter Solstice Explained
By Joe Rao and Space.com | Scientific American | Dec. 21
“For northern latitudes, the solstice marks the beginning of winter, but ancient skywatchers didn’t understand the sun’s migration, fearing it could disappear forever as it dipped below the horizon.”

2. End of the world: Not this year
By William Booth | The Washington Post | Dec. 21
“The U.S. Missile Defense Agency reported no incoming meteorites capable of extinction events. In France, at a mountaintop popular with UFO enthusiasts, there was no sign of little green men seeking cavity probes. In China, where an apocalyptic Christian sect was predicting doomsday, the Shanghai stock market dipped slightly.”

3. 2012 styles that made our heads turn
By Samantha Critchell | Associated Press | Dec. 21
“Every year fashion offers up the good, the bad and the ugly. But what the industry is really built on — and consumers respond to — is buzz.”

4. Hillary Clinton: Unemployed
By Jean Mackenzie | GlobalPost :: Salon | Dec. 21
“Her widely heralded term as secretary of state has ended in turmoil. Could it affect her presidential prospects?”

5. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
By Larry L. King | Playboy | April 1974
“When a true son of Texas discovers they’ve closed down “the chicken farm” he takes his business to the free-lancers. Man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

6. Wayne LaPierre’s bizarre pop culture references
By Jamelle Bouie | The American Prospect :: Salon | Dec. 21
“‘Natural Born Killers?’ ‘Mortal Kombat?’ You wonder why the NRA is so feared when its leader is this addled”

7. 151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories
Mother Jones | Dec. 21
“Bearing witness to the worst year of gun rampages in modern US history.”

8. A Problem of Churchillian Proportions
By James Andrew Miller | The New York Times Magazine | Nov. 1
“After one of the longest waits in publishing history … the third and final volume of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, ‘The Last Lion,’ is finally about to arrive. …”
Also, read the book review: ‘We Shall Go On to the End’

9. Turkish soaps: threat to Pakistan’s culture or entertainment market?
By Mansoor Jafar | Al Arabiya | Dec. 21
“[T]he talk of the town in Pakistan these days is a flamboyant Turkish soap opera having a theme that revolves around a taboo subject like incest, besides over exposure, and other moral problems associated with the super rich class.”

10. Crazy Far
By Tim Folger | National Geographic | January 2013
“To the stars, that is. Will we ever get crazy enough to go?”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

2012’s best photobombs / Take the 2012 news quiz / Our trash on the moon / The Soviet-Japanese War of 1939 / The 1927 school massacre

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. The 30 Most Powerful Photobombs Of 2012
By Jack Shepherd and Dave Stopera | BuzzFeed | Dec. 19
“Never stop ‘bombing, you guys. And stingrays.”

2. New Concordia Island
Dezeen Magazine | Dec. 19
“Sunken cruise ship the Costa Concordia would be transformed into a watery memorial garden in this competition-winning conceptual design by London architecture graduates Alexander Laing and Francesco Matteo Belfiore.”

3. The Trash We’ve Left on the Moon
By Megan Garber | The Atlantic | Dec. 19
“The lunar surface is strewn with hundreds of manmade items, from spacecraft to bags of urine to monumental plaques.”

4. Habitable planet discovered circling Tau Ceti, a star close to Earth
By Alexander Besant | GlobalPost | Dec. 19
“Tau Ceti, which is less than 12 light-years from Earth, has five planets orbiting it.”

5. How Obama’s win keeps on giving
By Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake | The Fix :: The Washington Post | Dec. 19
“Whether or not a majority of Americans — or Members of Congress — believe that President Obama’s victory amounted to a mandate, it’s clear that the incumbent’s hand has been significantly strengthened by what happened on Nov. 6.”

6. Joy
By Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books | Jan. 10
“A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road — you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.”

7. Nature and Fairy Stories
By Sara Maitland | The Huffington Post | Dec. 17
“A newer question though is whether landscape shapes, or more modestly perhaps becomes one of the things that shapes, whole cultures, their languages, their religion and their mythology; and of course therefore their responses to their artists and artistic forms.”

8. The Deadliest School Massacre in American History — in 1927
By Justin Peters | Slate | Dec. 18
“A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children.”

9. The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939
By Stuart D. Goldman | The Diplomat | Aug. 28
“From May to September 1939, the USSR and Japan fought an undeclared war involving over 100,000 troops. It may have altered world history. ”

10. 2012 News Quiz
Associated Press | Dec. 20
“A superstorm that wasn’t so super, an election that seemed to go on forever and a rap video that took the world by storm — those were just a few of the stories that made news in 2012”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Manhattan’s literary scene / Kerry as secretary of state / The truth about the end of the world / Dissecting the new ‘Stark Trek’ trailer / Dive into fiscal cliff infographs

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. A Critic’s Tour of Literary Manhattan
By Dwight Garner | The New York Times Book Review | Dec. 14
“Is Manhattan’s literary night life, along with its literary infrastructure (certain bars, hotels, restaurants and bookstores) fading away?”

2. On foreign policy, Kerry is Obama’s good soldier
By Donna Cassata | Associated Press | Dec. 17
“Obama seems likely to [nominate] the 69-year-old Kerry, perhaps in the coming days, to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as the nation’s top diplomat.”

3. Mayan Apocalypse: Everything You Wanted To Know But Were REALLY Afraid To Ask
By Asawin Suebsaeng | Mother Jones | Dec. 17
“So, first things first: Will the world in fact end on December 21?”

4. Daniel Inouye ‘lived and breathed the Senate’
By David Rogers | Politico | Dec. 17
“Inouye’s quiet, restrained style led some to underestimate him. But he had a wit and shrewdness, too, combined with a record of genuine heroism and compassion for the underdog, having come of age amid discrimination against Japanese-Americans even as he served bravely in World War II.”

5. ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ trailer: A deep dive
By Darren Franich | Inside Movies :: Entertainment Weekly | Dec. 17
“Is Into Darkness going to continue the recent franchise trend of killing off characters? And if it does, will it be Spock again?”

6. The fiscal cliff, in graphs and GIFs
By Dylan Matthews | Wonkblog :: The Washington Post | Dec. 17
“Once upon a time, there was a budget surplus.”

7. Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?
TED | April 2012
“Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now?”

8. ‘A Bombshell on the American Public’
By James M. McPherson | The New York Review of Books | Nov. 22
“As the war took a turn for the worse in the summer of 1862, Lincoln now fully embraced the idea that as commander in chief he could proclaim emancipation as a means of weakening the enemy.”

9. Why Are 2012’s Holiday Movies So Damn Long?
By Ramin Setoodeh | The Daily Beast | Dec. 17
“In the time it takes to sit through this year’s new holiday movies, you could do a lot of other things. For example, finish all your Christmas shopping, roast a turkey, drive to the airport, and fly to Hong Kong. If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers.”

10. The Unpersuaded
By Ezra Klein | The New Yorker | March 19
“The President’s effort at persuasion failed. The question is, could it have succeeded?”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Bomb threat at UT Austin / What men and women really want / The presidency through Obama’s eyes / Codex of Archimedes

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. UT Bomb Threat Declared A Hoax, Response Questioned
By Audry White | The Texas Tribune | Sept. 14
“At about 8:35 a.m., a caller told university staff that bombs around campus would detonate 90 minutes from the call. UT officials, though, did not issue an emergency text alert to the campus until about 9:50, just 15 minutes before the supposed time of detonation.”

3. First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory :: NASA | Sept. 14
“NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. … Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.”

2. Women from Venus? Men from Mars? The Real Sexual Gender Divide
By Michael Castleman | All About Sex :: Psychology Today | Sept. 13
“Men and women feel more similar about sex than most people imagine.”

4. Our Diplomats Deserve Better
By Prudence Bushnell | The New York Times | Sept. 13
“Diplomats don’t often make headlines until something horrible happens.”

5. Obama’s Way
By Michael Lewis | Vanity Fair | October 2012
“To understand how air-force navigator Tyler Stark ended up in a thornbush in the Libyan desert in March 2011, one must understand what it’s like to be president of the United States — and this president in particular.”

6. The Salton Sea: Death and Politics in the Great American Water Wars
By Matt Simon | Wired Science | Sept. 14
“Considered to be among the world’s most vital avian habitats and — until recently — one of its most productive fisheries, the Salton Sea is in a state of wild flux, the scene of fish and bird die-offs of unfathomable proportions.”

7. William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes
TED | April 2012
“How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over?”

8. Hollywood’s Spacesuits
By Diane Tedeschi | Air & Space Magazine | Sept. 13
“A sci-fi historian’s guide to movie spacesuits, from wacky to realistic.”

9. Working on the Railroad
By Rick Beard | Disunion :: The New York Times | July 11
“[O]ne of the most important public projects of the 19th century took 20 years to approve.”

10. Obama by the Numbers
By Mark Warren and Richard Dorment | Esquire | Sept. 14
“Here, as a service to clarity and sanity, is the story of the Obama administration in raw, irreducible numbers.”

**************

TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Zed Head — Till I Lost You & Electraglide Shuffle
2. Dean Haitani — All Roads Lead To Rome
3. Freedom and Whiskey — Kettlebottom Blues
4. Josh Gracin — Please Come Home for Christmas
5. Marc Broussard –Home
6. Paul Rodgers — Muddy Water Blues
7. Victor Wainwright and the Wild Roots — What You Want
8. Hill Country Review — Highway Blues
9. Too Slim and the Taildraggers — Testament
10. Kevin Ball — Mexi-Tele’ Blues
11. Duffy — Hanging On Too Long
12. Storyville — There’s a Light

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Containing Iran / Romney administration’s first 100 days / Why Clinton’s speeches sparkle / The moment a tank shell strikes

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Afghans use culture guides to cut ‘insider’ attacks
By Amie Ferris-Rolman | Reuters | Sept. 6
“Afghan Defense Ministry officials, trying to stop the alarming increase in ‘insider’ attacks, have given their troops tips on foreign culture, telling them not to be offended by a hearty pat on the back or an American soldier asking after your wife’s health.”

2. Five countries the U.S. is screwing over
By Alex Keane | Salon | Sept. 7
“From the drug war to the war on terror, the United States is wreaking havoc around the globe”

3. The Pentagon Doesn’t Have the Right Stuff
By Robert Haddick | Foreign Policy | Sept. 6
“The Navy can’t ‘contain’ Iran — even if we wanted it to.”

4. Why Bill Clinton’s Speeches Succeed
By James Fallows | The Atlantic | Sept. 6
“Because he treats listeners as if they are smart.”

5. 100 Days
Need To Know :: PBS | Sept. 7
“Need to Know spoke with three experts on what the first 100 days of a Romney administration or an Obama second term might look like.”

6. The Proper Way To Share Your Junk
By J.R. Reed | Sex and the Single Dad :: The Good Men Project | Sept. 7
“As technology advances so does our ability to move the proverbial line further and further away. The unsolicited penis picture crosses that line but fear not because I have some tips to keep you classy-ish with your photography.”

7. Rives: Reinventing the encyclopedia game
TED | April 2012
“Rives takes us on a charming tour through random (and less random) bits of human knowledge: from Chimborazo, the farthest point from the center of the Earth, to Ham the Astrochimp, the first chimpanzee in outer space.”

8. You Are Here: How Astronomical Surveys Are Pinpointing Our Place in the Cosmos
By John Matson | Scientific American | Sept. 6
“Upcoming telescope projects on Earth and in space will map out billions of stars and galaxies all around us”

9. Is Philosophy Literature?
By Jim Holt | The Stone :: The New York Times | June 30
“Is philosophy literature? Do people read philosophy for pleasure? Of course it is, and of course they do.”

10. Incredible Photograph Captures Exact Moment of Tank Shell Hitting Against Syrian Rebels
By Jesus Diaz | Gizmodo | Sept. 7
“This image sequence of a Syrian army tank firing against a group of rebels in a street of Aleppo is beyond stunning. It’s pure insanity.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

What not to wear on a plane / Navy adviser torpedoed / Heading into the Republican National Convention

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Airlines can say: You can’t wear that
By David Koenig | Associated Press | Aug, 25
“Airlines give many reasons for refusing to let you board, but none stir as much debate as this: How you’re dressed.”
Also see: Airline rules on clothing are usually vague

2. Sunk
By Jeff Stein | The Washington Post Magazine | Aug. 21
“Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career?”

3. A Media Personality, Suffering a Blow to His Image, Ponders a Lesson
By Christine Haughney | The New York Times | Aug. 19
“Just as quickly as his employers had questioned his credibility, they rallied around him.”

4. How Long Do You Want to Live?
By David Ewing Duncan | The New York Times | Aug. 25
“How many years might be added to a life? A few longevity enthusiasts suggest a possible increase of decades. Most others believe in more modest gains. And when will they come? Are we a decade away? Twenty years? Fifty years?”

5. Hubble Captures a Collection of Ancient Stars
ScienceDaily | Aug. 25
“Hubble Space Telescope has produced a beautiful image of the globular cluster Messier 56 (also known as M 56 or NGC 6779), which is located about 33,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Lyra (The Lyre).”

6. For some Republicans, convention could be springboard to future
By Peter Schroeder | The Hill | Aug. 26
“Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) will introduce Romney before he officially accepts the party’s nomination, while Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.) is delivering the convention’s keynote address.”

7. Daniel Ogilvie: Why children believe they have souls
TED New York | July 2012
“Rutgers University Professor of Psychology Daniel Ogilvie is researching what causes people to believe in souls and the afterlife.”

8. A short history of the phony political convention
By Andrew O’Hehir | Salon | Aug. 25
“The GOP’s phony living-room stage is the latest twist in a history of carefully crafted, content-free spectacle”

9. The Author of the Civil War
By Cynthia Wachtell | Disunion :: The New York Times | July 6
“Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict.”

10. The Mike Todd Party: Cronkite Recalls a TV Low
By Walter Cronkite | NPR | November 2004
“[W]hen the crowd got out of control, a bland publicity stunt turned into a giant food fight. Cronkite recalls the disastrous night.”

******************

TUNES

This weekend, I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the wonderful Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Zed Head — Nice To Love You
2. Zed Head — Kick Start
3. Hill Country Review — Let Me Love You
4. Marc Brousard — Home
5. Bleu Edmondson — Southland
6. Popa Chubby — Fire
7. Rocky Athas Group — Tearin’ Me Up
8. Keb Mo — Shave Yo Legs
9. Kenny Wayne Shepherd — Blue On Black
10. Ian Moore — Nothing
11. Clay McClinton — One Of Those Guys
12. Anna Popovic — How’d You Learn To Shake It Like That
13. ZZ Top — Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings

Behind The Wall

Tabletop Games

Rebecca Aguilar

#CallingAllJournalists Initiative | Reporter | Media Watchdog | Mentor | Latinas in Journalism

Anna Fonte's Paper Planes

Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

Postcards from Barton Springs

Gayle Brennan Spencer - sending random thoughts to and from South Austin

The Flask Half Full

Irreverent travelogues, good drinks, and the cultural stories they tell.

Government Book Talk

Talking about some of the best publications from the Federal Government, past and present.

Fighting Irish Wire

Cadillac Society

Cadillac News, Forums, Rumors, Reviews

Real News That Matters

Talking Pictures Audio Description

Pintar Discover

bringing joy to family meals

Øl, Mad og Folk

Bloggen Øl, Mad og Folk

a joyous kitchen

fun, delicious food for everyone

A Perfect Feast

Modern Comfort Food

donnablackwrites

Art is a gift we give ourselves

low waste living drawn from food lore through the ages

BeckiesKitchen.com

MUSINGS : CRITICISM : HISTORY : NEWS

North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.