Category: TECHNOLOGY

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The fate of the space station … Mission to Jupiter … A beach in Paris … Guide to a great clambake … A world with 7 billion people.

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. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Space station will eventually end up in Pacific to avoid becoming space junk
Associated Press | July 27
“A Russian space official said … that once the mammoth International Space Station is no longer needed it will be sent into the Pacific Ocean.”

2. Juno’s Jupiter mission may yield clues to Earth’s origins
By Scott Gold | The Los Angeles Times | July 28
“Starting Aug. 5, NASA will enter the launch period for the spacecraft Juno, which will begin an unprecedented exploration of Jupiter’s secrets. ‘We are after the recipe for planet-making,’ says a scientist.”

3. Research Exercise: Did Grant Say This?
By Brooks D. Simpson | Crossroads | July 19
“Over the last week or so a quote often attributed to Ulysses S. Grant has made the rounds again. … My own take on this is that the quote rings false. However, I am curious as to its origins, and I think the matter deserves further research. And what does that research show us?”

4. A Beach Sweeps Into Paris
PlanetPic :: GlobalPost | July 28
“The Seine River — dotted by the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, the Tuileries Gardens and the Eiffel Tower — is transformed into a beachside resort enjoyed by Parisians and tourists alike.”

5. Let’s Have a Real Nice Clambake
By Mark Bittman | The New York Times Magazine | July 28
“Few meals are more beautiful than a well-executed clambake. And because demanding culinary tasks are in vogue, at least for a certain hard-working segment of the sustainable-food set, it seems like the right moment for a clambake revival.”

6. Qassem Suleimani: the Iranian general ‘secretly running’ Iraq
By Martin Chulov | The Guardian | July 28
“[T]the elusive Iranian with so much Iraqi influence that Baghdadis believe he is controlling the country”

7. Presidential historian indicted on federal charges
Associated Press | July 28
“Federal prosecutors said Thursday the two are also accused of stealing and selling documents from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York. They also stole Franklin’s letter to John Paul Jones from the New York Historical Society, prosecutors said.”

8. Army Hits Pause on ‘Wearable Computer’ Program
By Spencer Ackerman | Danger room :: Wired.com | July 28
“Debi Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Army office overseeing the Nett Warrior program, confirms that the Army has put the multi-million effort on pause.”

9. World population soon to hit 7 billion after boom in developing world
Associated Press | July 28
“By 2050, the population will reach 9.3 billion, and 97 percent of the growth will be in less-developed regions. …”

10. Fermat’s Last Theorem
Witness :: BBC News | June 23
“Solving the problem had intrigued mathematicians for centuries. In June 1993 a British academic, Andrew Wiles, thought he’d cracked it. But then someone pointed out a flaw in his calculations.”

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. The Homemade Jamz Blues Band — Loco Blues
2. Mark Searcy — Truth
3. Joe Bonamassa — Man Of Many Words
4. Gurf Morlix — Drums From New Orleans
5. Nate Rodriguez & The Unlikely Criminals — Better Left Unsaid
6. Luther Allison — Low Down & Dirty
7. Scott Miller & The Commonwealth — 8 Miles A Gallon
8. Gene Reynolds — Bobby’d Be A Star
9. Rocky Benton — Have Mercy
10. Zack Walther & The Cronkites — Money Tree
11. Henry’s Swank Club — Changin All The Time
12. Giles — Nutbush City Limits
13. Chris Juergensen — Sweet Melissa
14. The Lost Immigrants — Dixie Queen

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

A name seen from space … Prince Andrew … Jesus sightings … A fight over Guadalcanal … Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon.

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. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. The tragedy of imperial retreat
By Tarak Barkawi | Al Jazaeera | July 21
“When the US withdraws from Afghanistan, don’t expect much help for the people it leaves behind.”

2. Sheikh’s Name Written In Sand Visible from Space
By Natalie Wolchover | Life’s Little Mysteries | July 21
“Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan, a billionaire Sheikh and member of Abu Dabhi’s ruling family, has had his name carved into the sandy surface of an island he owns in the Persian Gulf.”

3. Stephen Marche and Arthur Phillips on Shakespeare
The Paris Review Daily | July 21
“The cult of Shakespeare is one of the weirdest and most persistent in literature. This spring, Arthur Phillips and Stephen Marche each published books on the obsession. … They discussed their various journeys into the heart of this cult by e-mail.”

4. Prince Andrew’s Tabloid History
By Matt Pressman | Vanity Fair | August 2011
“Prince Andrew’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein … is only the most recent of his many public blunders. Whether it’s the company he keeps or his driving technique, Andrew usually makes the news for all the wrong reasons.”

5. Jesus sightings in food (and walls) – in pictures
The Guardian | July 21
“A couple from South Carolina have claimed to have found the image of the face of Jesus Christ on a Walmart receipt. Here are other examples of Jesus turning up in everyday life.”

6. Unmanned Navy boat has brains – and an attitude
By Hugh Lessig | Daily Press | July 21
“The Navy is advancing its development of Autonomous Maritime Navigation, using unmanned craft that can patrol waterways and ports without humans at the helm – and without humans at the joystick, for that matter.”

7. Long-Term Unemployment, by State
By Sara Murray | The Wall Street Journal | July 21
“More than one in three jobless Americans were out of work for at least a year in a handful of U.S. states that appear to be disproportionately caught up in the nation’s long-term unemployment problem.”

8. Mitt Romney’s Sad Tour of America’s Modern Ruins
By Elspeth Reeve | The Atlantine Wire | July 22
“To hammer President Obama on the sluggish economy, Romney has been touring businesses around the country that closed during the recession.”

9. Arthur Ashe wins Wimbledon
Witness :: BBC News | July 1
“In 1975 he became the first African-American man to win the tennis tournament. His friend and agent, Donald Dell, talks about that memorable match – and about what else Ashe might have achieved if he had not died young.”

10. Dogfight Over Guadalcanal
Secrets of the Dead :: PBS
“Deep in the jungle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific … are the rusting remains of a World War II-era fighter plane. … Research confirms that the plane is the doomed Wildcat flown by James ‘Pug’ Southerland in one of the most heroic and legendary dogfights in aviation history.”

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. Jason Ricci & New Blood — I’m A New Man
2. Stingray — Met Me In The Middle
3. John Mayall — Snake Eye
4. Storyville — Lucky One More Time
5. Dan Granero — My Baby
6. Pat Green — Me And Billy The Kid
7. Barely Legal — White Line Fever
8. Joe Galea — Wash My Hands
9. Max Meaza — The Long Goodbye
10. Texas Boogie — Adelie
11. Tim Gaze & Rob Grosser — Six Strings Down
12. The Bois D’arcs — Feel All Right
13. Zed Head — Shotgun
14. The Ramblin Dawgs — Steppin Up

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Life for Los 33 … The scent of history … Strange asteroids … A smaller astronaut corps … Celebrating voyeurism.

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. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Whither astronauts? Corps shrinks as shuttles stop
By Marcia Dunn | Associated Press | July 17
“NASA’s mighty astronaut corps has become a shadow of what it once was. And it’s only going to get smaller.”

2. The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System
By Adam Hadhazy | Space.com | July 14
“[S]ome notably strange ones have popped up over our two centuries-plus of observations since the first asteroid, Ceres, was spotted in 1801.”

3. Savoring History Through Its Smells
Big Think | July 17
“[S]everal organizations want to preserve the scents of today and revive the ones of yesterday.”

4. Eric Foner on the Evolution of Liberalism
FiveBooks Interview :: The Browser | July 2011
“The historian chooses five books illustrating how concepts of American liberalism have changed over the past 50 years, and tells us about the tension that lies at the heart of liberalism today.”

5. Voyeurism, Exposed
By Sandra Phillips and Mark Murrmann | Mother Jones | June 2011
“In the age of Weinergate, we are all lookers and watchers.”

6. Online reputation will shape our lives more and more
By Omar L. Gallaga | Austin American-Statesman | July 16
“Think of it as a new version of your credit score. And in the near future, your digital reputation could affect your life even more than that score.”

7. Honey bee hive removed from East Austin house
By Farzad Mashhood | Austin American-Statesman | July 15
“Beekeeper Walter Schumacher of Central Texas Bee Rescue said the 7-foot-tall hive probably housed 250,000 bees and is among the largest he’s seen.”

8. Chilean miners face up to a strange new world
By Angus MacQueen | The Guardian | July 17
“The rescue of 33 miners from Chile’s San José mine after 69 days trapped underground was a triumph shared with the whole world. But the transition back to normality is proving difficult for both the men and their families”

9. John Glenn: A Journey
NASA
An interactive special report on the astronaut and legislator.

10. The space shuttle
Witness :: BBC News | July 8
“It is more than 30 years since the launch of the first space shuttle. Milton Silveira has been involved in the programme since the very beginning – long before the first shuttle ever took off.”

Homo universalis

One of my guiding principles is that we’re all capable of self-improvement at any age, particularly intellectual self-improvement. Sometimes that faith is the only thing that enables me to sleep through the night and get out of bed in the morning.

KS16

That’s Latin for “universal man” or “man of the world,” if Wikipedia can be relied on for a proper translation.

I glide through a small, comfortable life — trying not to bother anyone, trying to be pleasant and polite, non-judgmental and sympathetic, charming and humble, trying to be intellectually honest and self-aware of my limits and flaws, every day edging closer to fulfilling all my ambitions.

One of my guiding principles is that we’re all capable of self-improvement at any age, particularly intellectual self-improvement. Sometimes that faith is the only thing that enables me to sleep through the night and get out of bed in the morning. I’ve always been blessed with a hunger for knowledge, a curiosity that often flares into full-blown passion for new arenas of experience, a curiosity perhaps sparked by a bittersweet frustration that I don’t know as much about literature, science, mathematics, history and culture as I think I should.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve always embraced wholeheartedly people like Theodore Roosevelt and Michelangelo, those who lived their lives desperately hungry for more of the world to absorb into their hearts and minds, constantly reaching out to make more of it their own.

A friend once called me a polymath. Other friends have called me a Renaissance man. I politely laughed off both compliments. I’m certainly no genius. I’d hardly consider myself intelligent, compared to the accomplishments and capabilities of the other men and women in my life.

As I understand it, polymaths and Renaissance men and women possess an immensity of talent to complement that fiery passion to achieve great things in multiple fields, professions, etc. As my quiet life sadly illustrates — in which I’ve been not much more than a minor writer, historian, editor, painter and arts critic — I have very much of the latter and very little of the former.

Perhaps later life will prove otherwise, as I’m slowly exploring how to become a proper pianist, an amateur boxer, an effective apiarist and gardener, an expert numismatist and philatelist, a stellar professor of American Civil War and Roman and Spanish imperial history, a sympathetic and effective psychologist, an historical novelist, a decent speaker, writer and translator of Spanish and Latin, and a less-than-atrocious golfer, photographer, and salsa dancer. My mandate is to be more than a simple-minded, well-meaning hobbyist.

But if none of that works out, perhaps this particular man of the world will be content being someone who’s fun to spend time with, whose passion for history is inspiring, whose writing makes the heart soar, who’s always interesting, always relaxing, always enriching. Always happy.

I’d settle for that last one, above and beyond all the rest.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

America’s eternal connection to France … Emmy’s snubbing of ‘Treme’ … The debt ceiling debate … Print out some solar panels … The Afghan power vacuum.

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. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Did CIA’s Fake Vaccine Drive Undermine Global Health Efforts?
The Takeaway | July 13
“Reports are emerging that the C.I.A. used a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, prior to the May 1 raid where the Al Qaida leader was killed.”

2. Where Would Hemingway Go?
Room for Debate :: The New York Times | July 13
“Which city is the dynamic center in Europe?”

3. What It Means: the Debt Ceiling and You
By Robert Ray | Associated Press | July 13
“If you think the last few days have been tumultuous for markets, just watch as August 2 approaches. The United States faces a trove of issues if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.”

4. Hit ‘Print’ for Solar Panels
Egocentric :: Time | July 13
“According to a paper published in the journal Advanced Materials, it’s now possible to print photovoltaic cells on paper almost as you would a document — and almost as cheaply too.”

5. The Navy’s Green Devices: Coming to a Store Near You?
By Lucy Flood | The Atlantic | July 11
“As the military commits itself to going green, it’s supporting innovations that could ultimately help American consumers save energy”

6. ‘Treme,’ a winning show, suffers Emmy neglect
By Lynette Rice | Inside TV :: Entertainment Weekly | July 14
“‘Treme’ is easily among the best drama series on the air, and takes a backseat to no show for the breadth and excellence of its cast. One more thing that makes ‘Treme’ praiseworthy: its uniqueness.”

7. Egypt: How to build a camp in Tahrir Square
By Jon Jensen | The Casbah :: GlobalPost | July 14
“A day in the life of Cairo’s Tahrir Square sit-in – which is now entering its seventh day.”

8. Vive la Similarité
By David McCullough | The New York Times | July 13
“Though we will probably never see a Bastille Day when French flags fly along Main Street and strains of ‘La Marseillaise’ fill the airwaves, July 14 would not go so largely unobserved here were we better served by memory. For the ties that bind America and France are more important and infinitely more interesting than most of us know.”

9. Afghanistan’s dangerous power vacuum
By Ben Brody | GlobalPost | July 14
“The most powerful man in Kandahar is gone. But Afghans say their real worry is the departure of US troops.”

10. Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the USA
Witness :: BBC News | July 5
“In 1985 the Royal couple made their first joint visit to America. The highlight of the tour was a gala dinner at the White House where the young Princess danced with John Travolta.”

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. Bluessmyth — Rosemary’s Blues
2. Michael K’s Rumble Pack — Black Cadillac
3. Los Lonely Boys — Dime Mi Amor
4. Delbert McClinton — Standing On Shaky Ground
5. Billy Joe Shaver & Son Eddy — Step On Up
6. Susan Tedeschi — Voodoo Woman
7. Delta Moon — Lap Dog
8. Too Slim & The Taildraggers — The Fortune Teller
9. Bleu Edmondson — 50 Dollars & A Flask Of Crown
10. Carolyn Wonderland — Misunderstood
11. Frank Gomez — In The Moon Light
12. Allan Haynes — Here In The Dark
13. Jewel — Sweet Home Alabama

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Coverage of the Caylee case … Searching for Cleopatra … Diseases that plagued George Washington … A long Arab summer … Remembering the Piper Alpha explosion.

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. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Caylee & Brisenia: Why the Difference in Coverage?
By Victor Landa | NewsTaco | July 6
“When was the last time you heard Nancy Grace rail obnoxiously from the television screen about the murder of Brisenia Flores?”

2. The Search for Cleopatra
By Chip Brown | National Geographic | July 2011
“Archaeologists search for the true face — and the burial place — of the ‘world’s first celebrity.’ ”

3. Researcher IDs Remains Of Unknown Civil War Soldier
By Edgar Treiguts | NPR | July 4
“Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died on Civil War battlefields. Many of the fallen were moved and buried in national cemeteries. But some lie in unmarked graves on the fields where they died. Edgar Treiguts of Georgia Public Broadcasting brings us this story on an effort to identify one soldier. ”

4. Divorce ceremonies pick up in Japan after disaster
Reuters | July 4
“Ceremonies to celebrate divorces have gained momentum in Japan after the massive March earthquake and tsunami, followed by an ongoing nuclear crisis, caused unhappy couples to reassess their lives.”

5. The 9 Deadly Diseases That Plagued George Washington
By Jason Kane | The Rundown :: PBS NewsHour | July 4
“Tuberculosis. Malaria. Smallpox. Dysentery. Some of the deadliest ailments of the 18th century attacked him early and often.”

6. Entrepreneur’s plan converts wind into jobs
By Mike D. Smith | Corpus Christi Caller-Times | July 4
“Big. Loud. Unsightly. Those are some of the negatives hurled out about the turbines powering the wind energy industry. … Byron Loftin, chief executive officer of 3eWerks Inc. … not only thinks he’s found the product that quells all those worries, but he said in a few years he will have a local facility building them.”

7. The Arab Spring Has Given Way to a Long, Hot Summer
By Richard Haass | Council on Foreign Relations | July 6
“Looked at more broadly, the stalling of the Arab spring has both revealed and widened the breach between the US and Saudi Arabia.”

8. Military Suicide Condolence Letters: White House Lifts Ban
Associated Press and the Hiuffington Post | July 6
“The White House says that families of service members who commit suicide while deployed abroad are now getting condolence letters from the president just like families of troops who die in other ways.”

9. Platon and the many faces of world power
By Emily Kasriel | The Guardian | July 6
“Photographer Platon’s new collection of images, ‘Power,’ published by Chronicle Books, provides glimpses of what lies behind world leaders’ carefully constructed auras”

10. Piper Alpha
Witness :: BBC News | July 6
“We hear from a survivor from the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster that killed 167 people.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The fall of MySpace … Women in special operations … ‘Spy girls’ find each other in retirement … The aircraft carrier may be irrelevant … A boring Gorbachev.

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. Twilight of the $UPERfluous Carrier
By Henry J. Hendrix and J. Noel Williams | Proceedings | May 2011
“[T]he march of technology is bringing the supercarrier era to an end, just as the new long-range strike capabilities of carrier aviation brought on the demise of the battleship era in the 1940s.”

2. The Long, Lame Afterlife of Mikhail Gorbachev
By Anne Applebaum | Foreign Policy | July/August 2011
“A cautionary tale about what happens when you fail to see the revolution coming.”

3. The FP Twitterati 100
Foreign Policy | June 20
“Here are 100 Twitter users from around the world who will make you smarter, infuriate you, and delight you — 140 characters at a time.”

4. Heavy sentences
By Joseph Epstein | The New Criterion | June 2011
“Learning to write sound, interesting, sometimes elegant prose is the work of a lifetime. The only way I know to do it is to read a vast deal of the best writing available, prose and poetry, with keen attention, and find a way to make use of this reading in one’s own writing. The first step is to become a slow reader.”

5. Decades after duty in the OSS and CIA, ‘spy girls’ find each other in retirement
By Ian Shapira | The Washington Post | June 26
“Doris Bohrer and Elizabeth ‘Betty’ McIntosh met two years ago in a Prince William County retirement community. As their friendship developed, they realized they had both served as intelligence operatives during World War II.”

6. Female Special Operators Now in Combat
By Christian Lowe | Military.com | June 29
“Army Special Operations Command has deployed its first teams of female soldiers assigned to commando units in Afghanistan, and military officials are assessing their initial performance in theater as ‘off the charts.’ ”

7. Beauty and the Beasts: The Sight of a Pretty Woman Can Make Men Crave War
By Rebecca Coffey | Scientific American | June 25
“Show a man a picture of an attractive woman, and he might play riskier blackjack. With a real-life pretty woman watching, he might cross traffic against a red light. Such exhibitions of agility and bravado are the behavioral equivalent in humans of physical attributes such as antlers and horns in animals. ‘Mate with me,’ they signal to women. ‘I can brave danger to defend you and the children.’ ”

8. An A-Z of incredible uses for everyday things
The Guardian | May 7, 2007
“Did you know you can kill weeds with vodka? Remove stains on clothes with aspirin? Make jewellery gleam with tomato ketchup? Here are 40 surprising tips to save you time and money.”

9. Libya mission brings John McCain and John Kerry together again
By Paul Kane | The Washington Post | June 28
“Concerned about what they consider an isolationist and fearful drift in both of their parties, Kerry (D-Mass.) and McCain (R-Ariz.) are advocating an even more forceful role for America in the world.”

10. The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace
By Feliz Gillette | Bloomberg Businessweek | June 22
“It once promised to redefine music, politics, dating, and pop culture. Rupert Murdoch fell in love with it. Then everything fell apart.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

A bold vision from Joint Chiefs officers … Another look at LBJ … What Voyager 1 has discovered … The new iTunes … 100 facts for Machu Picchu.

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 Power Broker’s Other Voice
By Jason Sokol | Slate | June 13
“President Lyndon Johnson, domineering and manipulative, lives on in American memory as the classic power broker. … Yet this is not the Johnson who emerges from volumes seven and eight of The Presidential Recordings, a transcription of his phone conversations from June 1 to July 4 of 1964.”

2. The Y Article
By John Norris | Foreign Policy | April 13
“The piece was written by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a ‘personal’ capacity, but it is clear that it would not have seen the light of day without a measure of official approval. Its findings are revelatory, and they deserve to be read and appreciated not only by every lawmaker in Congress, but by every American citizen.”

3. Voyager 1 Reaches Surprisingly Calm Boundary of Interstellar Space
By Geoff Brumfiel | Nature and Scientific American | June 15
“The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the ‘heliosheath’, where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy. Contrary to scientists’ expectation of a sharp, violent edge, the boundary seems to be a tepid place, where the solar wind mingles with extrasolar particles.”

4. Everything You Need to Know About the New iTunes
By Sam Grobart | Gadgetwise — The New York Times | June 13
“Last week, at the opening of its annual developers’ conference, Apple announced iCloud — its new online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and software. Although not all of its features are available immediately, one part — “iTunes in the Cloud Beta” — is, if you’ve updated to iTunes 10.3.1. Here is a primer about what you need to know, right now, about it.”

5. Looking beyond Obama to ‘The Golden Age’
By Paul Rosenberg | Al Jazeera | June 11
“Obama has so far been a disappointment to many of his supporters, but he has awakened a worldwide need for real change.”

6. So Much More Than Plasma and Poison
By Natalie Angier | The New York Times | June 6
“Among nature’s grand inventory of multicellular creatures, jellyfish seem like the ultimate other, as alien from us as mobile beings can be while still remaining within the kingdom Animalia. Where is the head, the heart, the back, the front, the matched sets of parts and organs? Where is the bilateral symmetry?”

7. 100 facts for 100 years of Machu Picchu: Fact 59
By Catharine Hamm | The Los Angeles Times | June 12
“Hiram Bingham, a Yale professor, came upon the vine-covered ruins on July 24, 1911. Here, then, as we lead up to the century mark, are 100-plus facts about Machu Picchu, its country, its history and its players. We’ve been posting one each of the 100 days leading to the anniversary. Read from the bottom up.”

8. Why you’re wrong about who’s going to be elected president next year
By Tom Casciato | Need to Know | June 10
“It’s 2011, do you know who’s going to win the presidential election next year? The answer is no, you don’t. Even if you predict now that someone will win then, and that person ends up winning, it won’t be because you knew. You don’t know.”

9. The Balance of Melville
By David D. Robbins Jr. | The Fade Out | June 14
“His masterpiece, ‘Le Samouraï’ (1967), the story of a lone contract killer named Jef Costello, played by exquisitely by Alain Delon, seems to work in perfectly balanced pairs.”

10. How NASA Prepares for the Final Space Shuttle Launch
By Denise Chow | Space.com | June 14
“With just one more mission remaining before the end of NASA’s storied 30-year space shuttle, the agency has shifted its focus to the final launch of Atlantis on July 8. But exactly how does NASA get a space shuttle ready to fly?”

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. The Insomniacs — Hoodoo Man
2. Carolyn Wonderland — Ain’t Nobody’s Business
3. Los Super Seven — Heard It On the X
4. Robbie King Band — Classic Case of the Blues
5. Jack County — Lonesome Radio
6. BB Chung King and the Budda Heads — Still the Rain
7. The Fabulous Thunderbirds — Painted On
8. Red Rooster Club — Fool for Your Stockings
9. Red Rooster Club — Lie to Me
10. Paul Rogers — Muddy Water Blues
11. Preachers Stone — Mother to Bed

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

Ob360media

Real News That Matters

Talking Pictures Audio Description

Pintar Discover

Space Navy

Mealtime Joy

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

Fridgelore

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.

Flavorite

Where your favorite flavors come together