Wes Phillips

Huckleberry definitely feels no need for eternal vigilance.

Edward Tufte, information pioneer.

Thomas Beller meditates on the pleasures of taking an aural time out. At Tyll Hertsens' urging, I began doing this about 10 years ago—it's amazing how much it makes you hear what you normally tune out. Of course, that's not always a good thing, as Beller points out.

The Japanese orbiting solar observatory Hinode has captured startling images of the Sun's outer limb and giant magnetic field loops crashing down into its surface. "Where astronomers expected to see a calm region called the chromosphere, they saw a seething mass of swaying spikes."

It's a good thing for us that Jeremy Denk got restless at a concert recently. One thought led to another, he rushed home to check out a CD he thought linked to his thoughts, and the next thing we know, he's deep into an analysis of the chorale in Beethoven's "Spring" sonata (No. 5 in F, Op. 24).

Greg Stepanich watches House. It seems like he got more out of the recent episode featuring Dave Matthews than I did.

Business Week has a cool photo essay on the making of a Steinway. The accompanying article is worth reading, too, but the pix are primo.