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Universe Today has posted a photo of a pulsar eating a star. Well, I'd never seen that before.
Chet Raymo manages to coax an entire essay out of a description of a kiss: "The way bees on a drowsy day suck honey from fuchsia."
I recognize deadline flopsweat when I read it—and I also recognize that Raymo has delivered a graceful, lyrical gem. And on time, too, I'll wager.
ELP
As Christmas approaches, the reissues have begun to trickle in. Today's bounty was Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery or what the notes call "Prog Rock's masterpiece."
Listening again after 20 years reminded me what an overblown bunch of jackasses those three truly were. The only three guys in England who could make Rick Wakeman look disciplined. But as soon as I pushed play, the odd pleasures of this record all came rushing back: the bleeding chunk out of Ginastera's piano concerto, the sacrilegious bit of William Blake to open the record, the gongs, the moogs; those…
Linguist John McWhorter casts a kindly eye on quotation marks conveying emphasis. Fine, but when he defends "impact" used as a verb, I suggest he goes too far. "Quite simply, the verbs view, silence, worship, copy, and outlaw all began as nouns. No one has a problem with them."
Hmmph. I say it's spinach and the hell with it.
Pure Pleasure Records is a British audiophile-label that—like the stateside Analogue Productions, Classic Records, and Cisco Recordings—reissues blue-chip jazz albums on pristine virgin vinyl. Pure Pleasure’s focus is the catalogue of Candid Records, an adventurous label that lasted only from 1960-61, with critic Nat Hentoff in charge of A&R. In the past few years, PPR has released such essential works of modern jazz as The Newport Rebels, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, and Max Roach’s We Insist! But its latest reissue, trumpeter Booker Little’s Out Front, is a revelation.…
Oliver Sacks on music and amnesia—and about just how puzzling cognition and memory truly are.