Journal Cujo's Journal: Ol' mosquito lands on me, he ain't gonna fly no more 1
I would like to state for the record that I am very happy to hear that New Horizons got through its first pair of TCMs with no difficulty. I was pretty confident they'd be OK, but they're not to the hard part yet.
Interesting about Blount losing out for the Majority Leader spot. Are the red piggies ready to really reform things, or are they just blue piggies in disguise? We'll find out when earmark reform comes up, and then we'll see if any piggies start to evolve into the noble elephaunt.
COTS Watch is a blog about NASA's new COTS program, which may be the REAL stealth Vision for Space Exploration, instead of what we curently have: the Don't Really Do Anything Differently or Aerospace Behemoths Might Suffer program. I think we definitely need some new behemoths. COTS will be a chance for the alt.space companies to put up or shut up. I'd bet against the vaporware vendors, and look to those companies that have real hardware at an advanced state of development. I like SpaceDev, which owns the hybrid solids developed by AMROC, and SpaceX, which plans to launch their first vehicle next week. I recommend the podcast interview with Jim Benson on the Space Show from a few weeks back. For a somewhat different perspective, check out the more recent Space Show interview with Rand Simberg, who is quite pessimistic about the whole business.
Two live CDs I just acquired that are The Shit, one old, one new: Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Compliments of the Mysterious Phantom, which is a late recording, and Douglas/Laswell/Zorn/et. al. The Stone. One thing the two performances - 31 years apart - have in common is some of the most intense and imaginative saxophone playing found anywhere. As Kirk says on the album: "You won't hear this music nowhere else!" Also, Robert Fripp's latest, only available as a download, was recorded in All Saints' Church in Broad Chalke and is his for me his most interesting looping work since the mid 90s when he was on a roll. He turns 60 this year, and his still evolving his music quite a lot.
Roland Kirk! (Score:2)
I wish I had the version of "Goodbye, Porkpie Hat", recorded with Mingus. Rahsaan sings on that one, about Lester Young. I heard it on the Radio, 'bout five years ago.
"He had his way of talkin'
Was a language of his own."