Time Magazine 1988: Robert A. Heinlein Obituary

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of Robert A. Heinlein, one of the greatest scifi authors ever, and a personal favorite of mine. Thanks to my father, I grew up reading his books and still have a shelf full of them. I’ve always recalled a strange thing that Time magazine stuck in his obituary and I looked it up recently to verify my memory:

Yes, they listed time travel as a “future commonplace” that Heinlein included in his fiction. I guess that is, technically, true.

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Third Coolest Temperatures Ever at Jazz Fest

Just like last year’s statistics provided fodder for the anthropological global warming alarmists, this year’s fifth annual update on Jazz Fest temperatures is an example of the other extreme - this was the third coolest Jazz Fest ever.

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More Fun at the BP Trial

Its not like I’m reading the BP Trial transcripts religiously, but, as I noted two weeks ago, the web set that Judge Barbier had the e-discovery company and the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee set up to make all the court documents public: 

http://www.mdl2179trialdocs.com/

is amazing in its transparency - all daily transcripts are available by the evening of each day of the trial, as are all the exhibits, deposition transcripts, and even videos. After just six weeks of the trial - likely just the half-way point of this phase - the transcripts alone are 8500 pages long. And, by my count, there are over 7000 other documents that have been entered into evidence, or at least posted on the web site.

The trial must be beyond tedious, so I guess its no surprise that the attorneys and staff occasionally try to inject a little levity into the proceedings, like March’s birthday celebration for a court staff member.

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Leonard Cohen Chants a Cat Back to Health

One of the funniest parts of the recent excellent biography:

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Snake and the City

Found this guy dead on the side of St. Charles Ave. near Constantinople:

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