To whatever pagan god brought this weather upon us: thank you and what/whom do I need to sacrifice to keep it this way?

I had fun with the June mix, so I put up another one for July over at (merlin)morland-muxtape.

• Foals - The French Open
• Changes - when i wake
• Born Ruffians - Barnacle Goose
• The 1900s - When I Say Go
• This Is Ivy League - Modern World
• Veronica Maggio - Gammal Sång (note: this is in Swedish and while I intended it to be an effervescent celebration of summer I apologize if it's actually about paper cuts or the exploitation of child labor)
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - The Operation
• The Cool Kids - What Up Man
• MC Chris - Nrrrd Grrrl
• Crystal Castles - Untrust Us
• Crystal Antlers - A Thousand Eyes
• Dios Malos - I See The Light (Miguel Mendez Cover)

To exercise my cynic's impulse to temper enthusiasm I should note I find it dismaying that the pace of change on the part of the big TV networks is so slow that in the interim between the first suggestion that they should put marquee shows online and that suggestion's realization an entire show was conceived, cast, written, produced for three seasons, canceled, released on DVD, mothballed for a year, and then revived as a potential movie. But I'll take slow change over no change.

Anyway, in an effort to at least post pictures of the aforementioned side trips, here are some from the trip to Lisbon and Sintra last weekend that the Portuguese club organized splendidly.

The last time I was in Berlin was ten full years ago, as a cherubic backpacker freshly graduated from high school (in order to help my perspective I actually tried to book the same hostel I stayed in then for this trip, but alas, no vacancies this time). Ten years ago the sky was littered to an absurd extent with construction cranes working on vacant lots. Now the cranes are fewer, but Berlin still has the vibe of a city undergoing a transformation, with the virtual overnight 1990 doubling of real estate available for free capitalist development leading to abundant space, an extremely affordable cost of living, and a resulting booming artistic community. Which is why, since artists tend to enjoy a party or two, Berlin is an ideal New Year's spot.

You may enjoy looking at some photographs of the trip.

Holiday well-wishing goes out from me to friends, readers, and the universe.

The geography of solar power is obviously different from the nation's current supply scheme. Today coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants dot the landscape, built relatively close to where power is needed. Most of the country's solar generation would stand in the Southwest. The existing system of alternating-current (AC) power lines is not robust enough to carry power from these centers to consumers everywhere and would lose too much energy over long hauls. A new high-voltage, direct-current (HVDC) power transmission backbone would have to be built.

The original rivalry between AC and DC for long-distance power transmission pitted Edison and his Direct Current against the tag-team of Tesla and Westinghouse, supporting Alternating Current. It was intense enough to be nicknamed the war of currents, and while the conclusion had been forgone for decades, the last DC power station in the US only closed this past November.

Now DC, specifically HVDC, may be coming back in vogue due to the extreme distances demanded by certain methods of power production. Not being an electrical engineer I can't really offer comment except to say that Tesla has a freakish record of almost always being right, and scientists are still testing out new technologies based on his experiments (specifically wireless power transmission) 60+ years after his death. Let the second war of currents (Electric Boogaloo?) begin.

In a study published this year, experimenters varied the way that people took in a PowerPoint presentation about the country of Mali. Those who were allowed to read silently were more likely to agree with the statement "The presentation was interesting," and those who read along with an audiovisual commentary were more likely to agree with the statement "I did not learn anything from this presentation." The silent readers remembered more, too, a finding in line with a series of British studies in which people who read transcripts of television newscasts, political programs, advertisements, and science shows recalled more information than those who had watched the shows themselves.

Despite having a mad hot love affair with technology I do worry sometimes about how our chosen media of communication and entertainment affect our ability to think. My biggest fear relates to multi-tasking and the erosion of the global attention span, but the atrophy of our faculties for retention and critical analysis as we rely more upon orality isn't far behind. I will refer for the third time on this blog (now with Wikipedia citation!) to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, whose omission from this article surprised me, as it's as relevant today as when it was published in 1985.