Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
A wonderful website, with reviews of tools like the Whole Earth Catalog (now apparently defunct, as far as I can tell).

Salon: The Greatest Week in Rock History
I loved this article in Salon. It claims the week of Dec. 20, 1969, represents rock's summit:

No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds,
the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf) 

Aside from Tom Jones(!), the rest are great albums.

I remember when Abbey Road came out. We were all quite blown away by it. We played it over and over again for six weeks, esp. side two. Just amazing all these brilliant fragments run together. Any one of which another band would have built a whole career on. They just shot out of the Beatles like the finale to a fireworks show. We didn't quite grasp at the time that this was it for the Beatles. It just didn't seem possible that they would never play together again. They seemed almost beyond human with such creativity. I remember reading that people would bring their crippled children for the Beatles to touch, hoping for a miracle. It must have been very weird for them.

All that and "Whole Lotta Love," "Bad Moon Rising," "Gimme Shelter," "Evil Ways," BST and CSN, no wonder I bought so many albums. And concerts were like $4 in those days (really!). I remember bills at Perkins Palace in Pasadena with Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and maybe Ten Years After all for $4.

OK enough with the old days, time to look forward to the Nutcracker at $75 a pop. Oy.

Ethical Culture Society
Our members describe their beliefs as freethought, atheist, humanist, agnostic and secular spiritualist. We have families who are seeking an ethical community as an alternative to church. We have college students as well as our most experienced members of society. Some members were raised in ethical culture while others were raised in traditional religions they decided not to follow.

Our friend Rob Rich gave a lecture (sermon?) there on Sunday. Interesting group.