Huckleberry lurks in the shadows.

Now that it's fall, Bagheera barely leaves the toasty top of the Mac music server.

The casual interest soon transformed into an addiction and an obsession. Does <i>obsession</i> come before <i>addiction</i>, or after? I'm not sure. Either way, the salsa didn't seem to mind. It started in early August with two albums: <i>Siembra</i> by Ruben Blades and <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/la_gran_fuga/">La Gran Fuga</a></i> by Willie Colon. These two led me to several others which led me to more still. I read one pretty crappy Hector Lavoe biography, sent dozens of fiery e-mails to my family in Puerto Rico, devoured tons of liner notes, and watched a gazillion YouTube videos. I've now collected over 20 albums (all on CD), have lured one uncle into sending me rare and classic songs from his library of MP3s, coerced another into donating to my cause his entire LP collection (we'll see about that), and uncovered an entire world of really deep, incredibly hot tracks. The addiction is not fading.

Taking a <I>really</I> close look at Leonardo's portrait.

At last, an explanation of why carefully coiled cables grow knots.

I read <I>Slate</I> primarily to catch my colleague Fred Kaplan's "War Stories" column, but whenever I read Fred, I also go to Garry Trudeau's "The Sandbox," a milblog that allows military personnel stationed in Iraq and Afganistan to "vent, rhapsodize, and [inform] the folks on the home front . . . what is going on from their point of view."