Best of The Interwebs May Edition

As I ride from D.C. to NYC...I thought I would reflect upon my online reading habits from May. I'm a huge personal believer in the social bookmarking service Delicious. You can find my favorite links from the interweb there. You know, like totally awesome things, or what I've read about text messages, or advertising, or on the current state of the dying media.

So, without any further ado. Happy end of May. (Hot damn, where did the time go?)

Here's what I found interesting on the interwebs in May:

The Longtime (Undervalued) Summer Reading List

The chaotic end of the school year brings along with it deadlines, piles of paper and homework, and excitement for summer--all crumpled up into a tidy ball and hurled at teachers and students at ludicrous speed. We true reading junkies try to find time in the midst of distraction and minutiae to choose stories we can still get lost in while remaining high functioning addicts in the real world.

Alas, throughout my life--and despite my best efforts--I've never been able to grasp the same freedom and escape that I've enjoyed while reading in the summer. Summer brings with its balmy climes the promise of an elusive treasure seldom captured during a busy school season. Time. Even when keeping busy in the summer there is ample time for various literary pursuits.

Everybody needs a summer reading list. Despite the fact that summer vacation applies to a small fraction of our population, creating a summer list can give you the gumption to pick up some of those books you've "been meaning to get to". If you've been holding off on seeing the film adaptation of Revolutionary Road, (Leo and Kate together for the first time since Titanic!) because you want to read Richard Yates' novel first--check it out! It's great.

Or maybe you've been dying to expand your reading repertoire and want to tackle a classic. Here is my only recommendation of Jane Austin--Pride and Prejudice--with a twist that would make George Romero smirk.

Make a commitment--at least to a list. Ok, so maybe, despite it being summer, you still won't have time to finish a list of summer readings. But you can take the first step. So, let us hear it.

What books are on your summer reading list this year?

Ben's List
  • The Human Stain - Philip Roth (Currently Reading)
  • Driftless - David Rhodes
  • The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
  • Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
  • My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro - Jeffrey Eugenides

ALIENS!? (Part 1)

WCBS-TV: Close Encounters of the Jersey Kind?

Paul Hurley, a pilot who works at Morristown Airport, said they weren't planes.

"I've been in aviation for 20 years and never seen anything like it," he told CBS 2.
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This list of supposed UFO sightings continues to grow.

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Were these UFOs or were they something else? This question is almost impossible to answer conclusively. But if we're going to try, the first question we have to answer is whether there is intelligent extra-terrestrial life in the universe.

The universe is bigger than we can comprehend. The Earth and the other seven planets that orbit the Sun create the Solar System. The Sun is one of just 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, our galaxy. And the Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies. Here is a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. Each one of those lights is a galaxy, filled with innumerable planets.

The odds are pretty good that somewhere else in the universe, intelligent life exists.

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Aliens!? (Part 2) coming soon...