A wise man speaks because he has something to say...

Today's soundtrack is a recording from earlier this month of a live performance by Harold Budd and Bradford Ellis with poetry read by Veda Hille.

Live 2 from The Security Project (celebrating the work of Peter Gabriel) is now available for pre-order. Live 1 was pretty darn good so I recommend Live 2.

This year's winner of the Bulwer-Lytton [bad] Fiction Contest (i.e. "It was a dark and stormy night") goes like this: "Even from the hall, the overpowering stench told me the dingy caramel glow in his office would be from a ten-thousand-cigarette layer of nicotine baked on a naked bulb hanging from a frayed wire in the center of a likely cracked and water-stained ceiling, but I was broke, he was cheap, and I had to find her."

On a related note, I wish they'd bring back the Faux Faulkner contest.

An illustration of Jupiter by Etienne Leopold Trouvelot done in the late 1800s. See more here.

Of Popular Mechanics' 50 best tools to own, I come in at exactly 50%. Not bad. If only I knew how to use them properly.

If you were under the false impression that metal organic frameworks could only be created in the lab, think again. These unique minerals that can absorb and retain gases (think CO2) were found in a mine in Siberia.

From the category I Didn't Think This Was Possible, here's Super Mario Bros. implemented in Excel.

Screen capture from a very cool FLIR video of an F-35.

Want more aviation pr0n? Here's a video of the Blue Angels' flyover of Super Bowl 50.

Just in time for the Xmas shopping season, a catalogue raisonne of Richard Diebenkorn's work will be published this coming autumn.

Jouska is a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head. It's included on a list of names for emotions you feel but can't explain.

If you're having Olympics withdrawal, check out this unique photo essay of the games.

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #54, 1972

The basic laws of human stupidity, written in the 1970s, still ring true today. #1 Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

Kubrick's alternate titles for Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Doomsday and His Nuclear Wisemen?

How do you make the perfect hard boiled eggs? First, you don't boil them - you steam them.

When I visit the beach - which isn't often - I like to hunt for sea glass. But that's not what this is. It's edible sea glass candy.

Science to the rescue: you spill because you're holding your coffee wrong.

An unexamined life is not worth living, or so said Socrates. Therefore, it makes sense to integrate a scale into a toilet seat to find out how much weight you lose while making a #2.

Blank Windows that go on forever. Apologies if you're obsessive-compulsive.

...a fool because he has to say something. ~Plato