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Showing posts from July, 2015

Clyde Tombaugh Just Passed Pluto

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How New Horizons shot through the Pluto System this past Tuesday morning.  Its data gathering stage lasted several hours then it switched into transmission mode and "phoned home." I think maintaining a wellspring of wonder (sense of wonder) is important and fundamental to human experience.  It enriches and inspires and fascinates in ways that lightens the weight of daily life.  For me, space exploration has been a lifelong source of wonder.  I have just witnessed a new probe serving as part of humanity's furthest reach from Earth.  I feel part of this wow Now event. In 2006 we shot New Horizons into space.  It burned a lot of its fuel speeding up to a record 36,000 miles per hour , carrying the probe away from Earth on a trajectory toward Jupiter. Whereas it took the Apollo mission astronauts three days to get to the Moon, New Horizons made the trek in just nine hours and kept going. In 2007 we used Jupiter's gravitational force to burn a bit more fuel, slings

Listening to The Monsanto Years

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You can watch the band record the album "live" on the DVD. They set everything up in a small theater.  Lukas Nelson is in the center of this shot.  His bassist, Cory McCormick, is behind Neil and Old Black.  Micah Nelson is in the background. It isn't unusual for Neil Young to venture out with some new music that is not universally accepted.  Much of his voluminous work features a rough-hewn dissonance that is demanding on the average listener.  Consider, for example, Broken Arrow (1996).  Fork In the Road (2009) is a more recent example, but this particular Neil-style goes all the way back to the infamous ditch trilogy and such classic albums as Tonight'sThe Night (1975) and even the mega-hit Rust Never Sleeps (1979).  There might not be a more challenging song to listen to in Neil's vast repertoire (though others equal it) than " Welfare Mothers ." The Monsanto Years is not that song, nor is it Fork In The Road .  Reviewers who feel it is