From our friend FOIA, a list of the books, movies, and music at the International Space Station. The reading just reinforces that astronauts will always be astronautish, but I’m intrigued by the movies. Well, intrigued by season one of Sealab 2021. Seems a little too… on the nose.
I'm a librarian, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies
FARK takes on the READ poster.
Can I help you?
A guy crawled under the reference desk and was poking at the power outlets. I said “can I help you?” and he said he was just looking at the outlets. Then I realized he was probably with the firm that will be remodeling the building in the fall. But it was equally likely that he was a patron looking for somewhere to plug in his laptop. Or crazy.
Brand News
Ran across Brand New when Googling for discussion of Google’s new favicon. It might have to go into stuff we like.
Needs more boring legal background
A story from the Daily Mail tells of a couple who married, divorced, and unioned (with intervening sex change). What is not explained is why “They had to divorce after the switch” though they continued living together and being in love. Seems like common law would be fine with them staying married. But it’s a human interest story rather than news, I guess, despite being in a “news” paper. Also unusual is that the subject looks quite nice as both genders.
Important Fruit Bulletin!
Galia Melons are super-delicious! Top Foods is having some sort of melon special, featuring many types of melons I have never heard of (including Galia). I tried the Galia for breakfast, I am very impressed! I wish the side of fruit that comes with many restaurant meals had Galia instead of rock-hard cantaloupe and honeydew. Later, I try the Persian melon.
May Reading
More crane misfortune
Another crane goes down in NYC. This one sounds like another climbing maneuver mishap: “Contractors were trying to lengthen the crane when a steel support broke.” I’m not looking forward to the start of construction on the high-rise right outside my office window.
Anywaaaaayyyyy
The BBC News Magazine used to include images of the front pages of many of the dailies. Lawyers put an end to that, but they continue to have Paper Monitor, which occasionally gives us such a gem as this:
The [Telegraph] does today have the privilege of having a column by the man of the moment, Sebastian Faulks, who has written the new Bond novel. After a few observations about how remarkable Ian Fleming’s family are, he tells an awfully amusing tale about how he was watching his barrister brother appearing in court last week but then realised that he didn’t know if his phone was switched off and because it was a new phone (a device, you might say), he didn’t know how to check if it was on or not without making it beep or buzz. Anywaaaaayyyyy, as it turns out, the phone didn’t actually go off, but boy was that a close thing. That’s some anecdote.
Peanuts, won't you?
G.W. Carver’s famous peanut recipes are very… peanutty. I really like peanuts, and skimming through these recipes makes me feel a little queasy. I’m almost frightened to see his (less famous) treatment of tomatoes and sweet potatoes.