The brisket sandwich at General Lee’s in Cookeville, TN was some of the best BBQ I’ve had. The shop has a counter in an Amish Grocery store at a gas station between Nashville and Knoxville. All the meats are cooked in a giant smoker in the parking lot.
Nashville’s got quite the music scene. There’s live country music in dozens of venues from noon-3:00am daily, with no covers. I got here Friday and probably saw twelve bands play over two days. Somehow I ended up with a pair of cowboy boots too. I like it here. Here’s a clip from Friday night. Wagon Wheel is a pretty popular cover around town:
That was quick. SpaceX, a private space ship company, will begin sending shipments to the international space station this fall: A little less than six months after the final space shuttle launch, a private space company will launch a rocket carrying a cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station. SpaceX said this week that it plans a Nov. 30 launch date for its first rendezvous with the ISS — an encounter that will mark a major milestone in private space exploration. We heard last month that NASA agreed to speed up SpaceX’s flight demo schedule, as SpaceX, eager to start making deliveries under its $1.6 billion NASA contract, asked NASA for permission to combine two planned missions into one. That mission is now
This is not how I normally picture Colorado: The dunes sit at the edge of the Rockies, and are held in place by two opposing wind currents. They’re a third of a kilometer tall and can shift by as much as ten feet per day. Climbing to the top (where this picture was shot) was a good hike, running down was a blast. Some people had sleds.
Viruses. Via Marginal Revolution: …in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection. …In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever. The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it
Spent the morning here en route to Boston. Did you hear about the three holes in the ground? Well, well, well. My friend Roberto shot this pretty spectacular photo at one of the lookouts:
This cracked me up. Via Popular Science, “European Space Agency Plans to Team Up with Russia for the First Manned Mission to Mars“: If it’s a space race the Russians want, a space race they shall have. But et tu, Europe? Russian news outlet Ria Novosti is reporting that the European Space Agency (ESA), long the ally of Cold War champion NASA, is teaming with Russia on a joint manned mission to Mars, and that their crew will be the first to set foot on the Red Planet. At a press briefing at an air show in Russia this week, ESA chief Jean-Jacques Dordain said the ESA and Roskosmos will “carry out the first flight to Mars together.” Apparently a major catalyst
Well that should give my daily traffic a bump. The quote is actually referring to the benefits of “straight-up sex” (as opposed to asexual reproduction) for a type of insect — the cottony cushion scale. Via National Geographic, this is fascinating and weird (as is the picture): Are males necessary? Maybe not for long, at least in an insect species whose females have begun to develop sperm-producing clones of their fathers—inside their bodies. In the cottony cushion scale—a common agricultural pest that grows to about a fifth of an inch (half a centimeter) long—a new phenomenon has arisen: When some females develop in fertilized eggs, excess sperm grows into tissue within the daughters. This parasitic tissue, genetically identical to the female’s
1. Mortgage rates hit 50 year low 2. Make your own gun powder 3. 13-Year-Old Designs Super-Efficient Solar Array 4. Encouraging news from Elizabeth Warren 5. Nate Silver on Rick Perry 6. And this is just funny.
I’ve been on a bit of a National Park kick lately. Three months ago, I had yet to visit my first park. Since the start of my road trip out to California, I’ve now visited six. Here are some of the highlights. The Badlands: Yellowstone: Glacier: Joshua Tree: Death Valley: and Yosemite: For obvious reasons, I’m eager to see more. Today I begin my 4,500 mile drive back to Boston. If all goes as planned, I’m going to visit quite a few more parks along the way over the coming weeks: Zion, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Great Sand Dunes, Rocky Mountain, the Great Smokey Mountains, and Shenandoah. I really should have shelled out the $90 for