January 5th: Today in 1925 Nellie Taylor Ross became the first woman Governor of a US State to take office by being sworn in as the Governor of Wyoming. Amazing that it has taken as long as it has for Ms. Pelosi to follow on as the first woman Majority Leader in the House of [...]

For my friends with an interest in history there is a good collection of videos or audio from lectures available from WGBH in Boston on a number of good historical topics. Looks like there is one on the notorious cross dressing soldier Deborah Sampson as well as some good ones on the Continental Army. Tons [...]

Phillip Bimstein’s Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica, J Luc Pitard dropped this one by the other day to try and I have listened to it about a dozen times since then. It is music with vocals worked in a similar way to Steve Reich’s Different Trains, modern ‘classical’ music as I understand it. Most modern classic leaves [...]

Dave Barry hits it out of the park with his year in review this year.

January 1rst: Today in 1788 the Times of London was first published. One of the things I enjoy in the UK is the variety of papers available. What you read says quite a bit about you, if you read the Guardian you are stereotyped as a Granola eating middle class liberal. The Times is for [...]