Winter Rhyme

My annual winter recitation

Derived from my correction on the data complied by Mother Goose.

Eh hem.

Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November
All the rest have thirty-one
Except January, which has sixty-seven
And February, which has ninety

Lincoln Speaks

President Lincoln’s 206th birthday is today!

Hoorayyyyyy for Abraham Lincoln Day!

I wanted to celebrate Old Abe Day at the Morgan Library, where they have a new installation entitled Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation.

But I am too immersed in guitar review season.

So I will have to go some other day and tell you all about it.

Thanks to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, those who are not able to make it to New York City to see this exhibit in person may see the entire collection on line.

Lincoln in HD

photo: hdpics.com

 

Far Side of the Moon

When Pink Floyd sang about meeting you on the dark side of the moon, they didn’t realize the far side of the moon isn’t so dark.

This new video from NASA’ Goddard Science Page shows an alien landscape, related to what we are used to seeing as “the moon”, yet so very different down to the smallest detail.

The official text on the NASA Goddard Facebook page is as follows:
The far side of the moon, like the side we can see from Earth, goes through a complete cycle of phases. But unlike the side we can see, the terrain of the far side is quite different. Learn more: http://go.nasa.gov/1KcDj1C & www.nasa.gov/lro

The far side of the moon lacks the large dark spots, called maria, that make up the familiar Man in the Moon on the near side. Instead, craters of all sizes crowd together over the entire far side. The far side is also home to one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin, visible here as a slightly darker bruise covering the bottom third of the disk.

The far side was first seen in a handful of grainy images returned by the Soviet Luna 3 probe, which swung around the Moon in October, 1959. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, was launched fifty years later, and since then it has returned hundreds of terabytes of data, allowing LRO scientists to create extremely detailed and accurate maps of the far side. Those maps were used to create the imagery seen here.

More on the NASA Goddard Facebook page found HERE

Bob Dylan’s Second Best Speech

Bob Dylan gave the second best speech of his career when honored as the MusicCares Person of the Year for 2015.

The charity provides money and services for music industry people in their time of need.

A transcript of the speech can be found via the link listed below.

But before you get to that, watch this, a recording of a different speech Bob Dylan gave, over 51 years ago, which someone had the good sense to synch with a slideshow of cleverly placed photos, and then put it on YouTube.

Dylan was 21 years old when he stepped on the stage at Town Hall in New York City, to pay tribute to Woody Guthrie, who was then in the Brooklyn State Hospital he would never leave.

If you have not heard it, do yourself the favor and “roll along with this thing.”

The transcript of Dylan’s equally memorable speech from the MusiCares event can be found at the LA Times , HERE

 Dylan 1963  Dylan 2015

Bob Dylan 1963, 2015