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Tom Brosseau

Empty Houses Are Lonely
FatCat Records

A wonderful introduction to the exquisite melancholy of Tom Brosseau, Empty Houses are Lonely is a collection of this crooner's finest work to date.

There's something so special about Brosseau's voice. In one moment, this shimmering, plaintive, and wavering cry is his and his alone. It is otherworldly. You've never heard anything quite like it. In the next, it belongs to everyone — a child searching for comfort and home. It is universal. You could sing these songs yourself.

Brosseau is an American poet and…

Baked Seaweed Capacitors

French researchers have constructed "supercapacitors" from burnt-to-a-crisp seaweed.

Ayre's Charlie Hansen prefers "organic" components whenever possible. Wonder if Ayre will be the first high-end manufacturer to give them a go?

Huck's Still On Strike

Huckleberry continues his lie-down strike, protesting his exclusion from the air-conditioned bedroom.

Who Watches the Watch-Cat?

Bagheera is no shirker. A little heat wave doesn't deter her from her daily duty of making sure our block is thoroughly observed—especially those good-for-nothing squirrels.

Pop Quiz

Okay, not a pop quiz, but a test of your ability to differentiate the famous musicians from the unknowns.

Via John Marks, who got it from recording engineer extraordinaire Jerry Bruck.

Rare Dava Sobel Sighting

The Age profiles Dava Sobel, author of Longitude (very highly recommended), Galileo's Daughter (ditto), and now Planets.

Planets may serve this blog's friend Clifton as a giant You Are Here sign, since he was last heard from in the comments section of yesterday's blog, lost somewhere amongst the 10 dimensions.

YG Acoustics Anat Reference

I see her from across the pool. She's tall and beautiful and dressed all in white.

The girl was the thing. At my first CES, all I did was follow them around. But this is how I first became familiar with YG Acoustics. At that demo, I was impressed by Yoav Gonczarowski's bold talk and love of music. His speakers, he said, approached perfection and were perhaps the most accurate in the world. He would demonstrate this, of course, with music. We were asked to follow as the speakers brought us closer to the essence of each musical piece. It can be a very effective demo technique…

An Eight-Lane Highway For Processing Emotion

It's Monday, I have a Jon Carroll column that discusses a new book on the differences between men and women, and it reveals the secret to stimulating a "major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm." So how could I not link to it?

The bad news guys is that the trigger is "connecting through talking," which women have been telling us for years. Yeah, but this time the woman saying it is a scientist!

<I>Girls Gone Wild</I> Founder Apparently A Huge Tool

Yeah, that's a shock to anybody who has ever seen any of those commercials on late-night TV. But here's the thing, this Claire Hoffman article from The Los Angeles Times is a wonderful piece of participatory journalism.

Warning: You may want to wash thoroughly after reading about this repulsive yobbo.

It Seems So Obvious When You Think About It

Given its ubiquity, strength, and lightness, why don't they build bikes out of bamboo?

Brano Mares not only wondered, he built a beautiful bike. Wes want!