Hyde Park Blvd

The smart guys at Gizmodo saw the cockpit of the Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two, the mothership for commercial spaceflights, and had the same response that I did:  Rutan and Co. are channeling the work of Dr. Zarkov in the original Flash Gordon serial.

That old skinny-legged guy in the bloomers saw the future after all.

Here’s the only interior shot I could find, but you can see what I’m talking about.

Where are Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, and Charles Middleton (and cool outfits like the one above) now that we’re ready for showtime?

This image of who in the universe is watching what from Earth tonight is best seen (and described) in its original form on Strange Maps.  One of those images that changes one’s perspective.

My sons and I share a strange sense of humor.  One of them passed this on to me and I offer it here because I crack up every time I read it.  And I know it does the same for them.  Via Xenoveritas.org.

Despite the recent headlines about housing’s uptick, the backstory is a bit more complicated (compliments of Bianco Research):

While the media was speculating that housing finally hit its bottom and the great decline of 2006 to 2009 was over, S&P then posted the SA data.  This data showed a slight decline between April and May.  It also showed that 12 of the 20 cities surveyed had price declines in May.

The Blog Calculated Risk has done an excellent job of analyzing the housing data.  They note that housing really has two bottoms.  First sales (volume) bottom and then prices bottom.  While possible, history shows that sales and prices do not bottom at the same time.  Additionally, home prices often do not bounce back as quickly as other assets after a prolonged downturn.

Via reader RS

The Go! Team sing Milk Crisis.  Great use of early gaming graphics — and nice music.

Han, Darth, Chewie, Leia, Luke, R2.  via Frango.

George Friedman and the strategists at STRATFOR have issued a thoughtful re-appraisal of the politics in and around Iran.  A quick excerpt:

How Iran’s internal struggle will work itself out remains unclear. But one dimension is shaping up: Ahmadinejad is trying to position Rafsanjani as leading a pro-American faction intent on a color revolution, while Rafsanjani is trying to position Ahmadinejad as part of a pro-Russian faction. In this argument, the claim that Ahmadinejad had some degree of advice or collaboration with the Russians is credible, just as the claim that Rafsanjani maintained some channels with the Americans is credible. And this makes an internal dispute geopolitically significant.

Well worth subscribing.  Thanks to reader RS for the link.

The NYT surfaces Zoe Beloff’s Coney Island Psychoanalytic Society, an evolving art project/museum that survives like a piece of unremembered, troubling dream.

It’s now at the top of my list of places I must visit.  Or somewhere I’ve been all my life.  Brilliant.

I may be late to this game, but yesterday I discovered that Paul Ford, an editor at Harpers and contributor at NPR and The Morning News has a  site where he offers six-word reviews of 1,032 SWSX songs (and provides links to MP3s and embedded YouTube videos of some of the best, including my new discoveries  futomomo satisfaction, the first Japanese bikini trombone band, and Hello Seahorse below).

An extraordinary achievement, it’s an endless delight of six-word insight, among them:

Some kind of thrift-store miracle.

Please, please stop singing about feet.

High school football hurts so much.

The existential hell of bus driving.

Together we can stop acapella groups.

Norway must be an awful place.

Another bitter heart beating, but faintly.

The genius of Lionel Ritchie deconstructed.

As of January 1, 2009, a total of 11,305,896 Major League baseball games had been played since the leagues were first organized (founding of the National League in 1876).

Eighteen of those games have been perfect.  Or one of every 628,105.

Or .00016%

Until yesterday, five pitchers had thrown one perfect game and at least one no-hitters:  Addie Joss, Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, Jim Bunning, and Randy Johnson.

Age 30, Mark Buehrle is under the radar.  He doesn’t make a lot of noise, largely  because he rarely throws 90mph and because it’s not his nature.  Reminiscent of Carleton Fisk, he keeps to himself (the difference being that Carlton moved on a glacial time scale.  For Buehrle, it’s get the agate and throw it; whatever happens is just part of the game.  Posturing and overthinking aren’t part of the plan).  Yesterday the cut fastball wasn’t working, so the mix was mostly change-ups and curve balls. A left-handed Greg Maddux?

With one out in the 9th, Buehrle struck out Michael Hernandez on a 3-2 changeup.  With a changeup!  With a perfect game on the line.

How to explain?  For my money it’s the poise of a man comfortable in his own skin and constantly humbled by his own good fortune.