Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Healthy eating myths … Poison and Jane Austen … NASA’s Dawn spacecraft … Clinton’s new advisers … Pearl Harbor myths

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. Five myths about Pearl Harbor
By Craig Shirley | Five Myths :: The Washington Post | Dec. 2
“President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941, ‘a date which will live in infamy.’ And that day, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, has lived in infamy for 70 years. Yet even as the memory of the attack has lasted, so have the misperceptions surrounding it.”

2. Pearl Harbor survivors share stories of attack
By Audrey McAvoy | Associated Press | Dec. 5
“The College of the Ozarks program aims to preserve the stories of veterans – something that’s becoming increasingly urgent for Pearl Harbor survivors as the youngest are in their late 80s.”

3. Smallest habitable world around sun-like star found
By Melissae Fellet | New Scientist | Dec. 5
“The new planet was found with the KeplerMovie Camera telescope, which searches for signs that a star’s light has dimmed because a planet has passed between it and the telescope — an event called a transit.”

4. Who will be whispering in Hillary Clinton’s ear now?
By Howard LaFranchi | Christian Science Monitor | Dec. 6
“Secretary Hillary Clinton, eager for the State Department to have its own advisory panel of big thinkers, is convening the new, 25-member Foreign Affairs Policy Board this month.”

5. NASA: Massive Asteroid Vesta ‘Unlike Any Other’
By Alicia Chang | Associated Press | Dec. 5
“Since slipping into orbit around Vesta in July, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has beamed back stunning images of the second largest object residing in the asteroid belt.”

6. Q&A: Lending Out an Electronic Book
By J.D. Biersdorfer | Gadgetwise :: The New York Times | Aug. 10
“Q: Can you lend a Kindle e-book out to someone who doesn’t have a Kindle e-reader?”

7. Michele Bachmann Loves Vaccines After All
By Benjy Sarlin | Talking Points Memo | Dec. 7
“Michele Bachman, who was condemned as an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist after suggesting that Gardasil causes ‘mental retardation,’ said Wednesday that she was in fact a big supporter of vaccines. Not only that, she thinks there are too many regulations on them.”

8. Was Jane Austen Poisoned by Arsenic? Science May Soon Find Out
By Ferris Jabr | Scientific American | Dec. 5
“Modern techniques could reveal whether the celebrated English novelist’s surviving hair contains unusually high levels of arsenic”

9. Five myths about healthy eating
By Katherine Mangu-Ward | Five Myths :: The Washington Post | Oct. 14
Myth 1: “People in poor neighborhoods lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables.”

10. Civil War women: Elizabeth Townsend Meagher
Civil War Women blog | Sept. 19
“Elizabeth Meagher was 36 years of age when she arrived on the Montana frontier. She had married the brilliant, but unpredictable, Irish exile in New York and often served as his secretary and nurse. She first arrived at Fort Benton June 5, 1866, aboard the sternwheeler Ontario in the company of her husband who had gone downriver from Benton to meet her.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

A new Canary island … Scorsese’s best … al-Qaida in Africa … Bachmann’s journey … Girl gangs

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. Canary Island volcano: A new island in the making?
By Rob Hugh-Jones | The World and BBC News | Dec. 3
“An undersea volcano erupting just south of Spain’s Canary Islands may be the beginnings of a new island, or an extension to an existing one. For some, it’s a colourful spectacle — for others a major blow to their livelihood.”

2. Martin Scorsese’s greatest movies
By Matt Zoller Seitz | Salon | Dec. 3
“‘Raging Bull’s’ a contender, and ‘Taxi Driver.’ Which other films round out the iconic director’s best?”

3. Dreaming May Help Relieve a Bad Day
My HealthNewsDaily | Nov. 23
“The results show that during nighttime dreaming, also known as REM sleep, the brain processes emotional experiences in a ‘safe’ environment, or one in which stress chemicals are low. This processing may take the emotional edge off of difficult memories, the researchers said.”

4. Candy, cash — al-Qaida implants itself in Africa
By Rukmini Callimachi and Martin Vogl | Associated Press | Dec. 4
“The terrorist group has create a refuge in this remote land through a strategy of winning hearts and minds, described in rare detail by seven locals in regular contact with the cell.”

5. Bachmann, from Waterloo to White House contender
By Adam Geller | Associated Press | Dec. 3
“The choreographed repetition of modern presidential campaigns can turn the most personable candidate into an endless loop of talking points. But any close observer of Bachmann’s political career would be hard-pressed to dismiss her as two-dimensional.”

6. Plastic Bag Bans Spreading Across The United States
By Jordan Howard | The Huffington Post | Dec. 1
“Four cities in Oregon — Eugene, Corvallis, Newport and Ashland — are considering banning plastic bags at retail stores. The towns would join at least 10 other U.S. cities and counties that have prohibited plastic bags since 2008.”

7. Interesting readers, as well as writers
By Sarah Sweeney | Harvard Gazette | Dec. 1
“Book focuses on leading authors and the books they love”

8. Chelsea Clinton, Living Up to the Family Name
By Amy Chozick | The New York Times | Dec. 3
“Her move to television was a career shift she initiated, having her close advisers arrange interviews with top network executives and at one point working with the powerful Creative Artists Agency.”

9. Which Faulkner Novels Should HBO Adapt?
By David Haglund | Browbeat :: Slate | Dec. 2
“Clearly this is a question for true Faulkner aficionados, so I posed it to a handful of writers who know his work intimately—starting with a novelist who’s no slouch himself when it comes to literary adaptations.”

10. Rise of the girl gangs
By Brad Hamilton | The New York Post | Dec. 3
“As ‘crews’ proliferate in New York’s housing projects, officials worry about the increasing brutality of all-female wolfpacks”

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

TUNES

My soundtrack for today included:
1. LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY Donna Summer
2. POSSESSION Sarah McLachlan
3. ELSEWHERE (The Freedom Sessions) Sarah McLachlan
4. EROTICA Madonna
5. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS Foreigner
6. WAIT (The Whisper Song) Ying Yang Twins
7. KILOMETER Sebastien Tellier
8. THE ORBITING SUNS Jens Gad
9. PUNCH DRUNK Sade
10. LINGER The Cranberries

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

A world failure in Haiti … Alien destruction … 2012 election rhetoric … Pre-bed drinks … What would President Hillary Clinton have done?

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. How the World Failed Haiti
By Janet Reitman | Rolling Stone | August 2011
“A year and a half after the island was reduced to rubble by an earthquake, the world’s unprecedented effort to rebuild it has turned into a disaster of good intentions.”

2. Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists
By Ian Sample | The Guardian | The Guardian
“Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for NASA”

3. Archaeologists comb newly-found Civil War POW camp
By Russ Bynum | Associated Press | Aug. 18
“Archaeologists are still discovering unusual, and sometimes stunningly personal, artifacts a year after state officials revealed that a graduate student had pinpointed the location of the massive but short-lived Civil War camp in southeast Georgia.”

4. The rhetoric of the 2012 election will be about race
By Joseph P.A. Villescas | NewsTaco | Aug. 18
“In this racially charged election, previous and future representatives will be judged according to their influence on regional Latino issues related to education, healthcare and job creation as well as their dedication to improving the quality of life for residents in Austin, Kyle, Lockhart, Maxwell, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Seguín and San Antonio.”

5. What a Rick Perry Presidency Would Look Like for Women
MeanRachel :: Huffington Post | Aug. 17
“With a governor who has a women’s health record that’s a bumpy country mile long possibly becoming our next President, what would it mean for women across America? Allow me.”

6. Pre-Bed Booze May Bust Rest
By Katherine Harmon | 60-Second Health :: Scientific American | August 2011
“A nightcap may force the body to work harder at repair during sleep, making for a less restful night”

7. What Would Hillary Clinton Have Done?
By Rebecca Traister | The New York Times Magazine | Aug. 17
“[I]n a period of liberal disillusionment, some on the left are engaging in an inverse fantasy. Almost unbelievably, they are now daydreaming of how much better a Hillary Clinton administration might have represented them. ”

8. Dimming the Red Lights in Turkey
By Anna Louie Sussman | The New York Times | Aug. 19
“Since the 1870s, prostitution has thrived in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, which houses Kadem and its sister street, Zurafa.”

9. When Looking for Love, Women Spurn Science
By Jennifer Welsh | LiveScience | Aug. 18
“Finding romantic love can be a distracting goal for anyone, but for women thoughts of romantic goals are particularly distracting from science, technology, engineering and math, new research suggests.”

10. Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction
By Michael Grabell | ProPublica | Aug. 18
“1. Taxes have been going up and are high compared to levels in other countries. 2. The stimulus failed./The stimulus rescued the economy. 3. The stimulus should have been bigger.”

TUNES

My soundtrack for today included:
1. I’M LIFE The Fixx
2. ANGELINA FLASHBACK Jan Hammer
3. LOMBARD TRIAL Jan Hammer
4. POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME Def Leppard
5. TURNING POINT Jan Hammer
6. WHO ARE YOU John Murphy
7. DESIRE U2
8. WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE Bon Jovi
9. I WISH SOMEONE WOULD CARE Irma Thomas
10. NIGHTTIME IS THE RIGHT TIME Ray Charles

Behind The Wall

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Rebecca Aguilar

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

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Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

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

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

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

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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.