Thursday miscellanea #513

• Requesting prayers for a longtime favorite person with a beautiful heart facing a new situation not entirely of her choosing. Much appreciated.
• The live reveal of the 2020 Corvette is tonight. The show begins at 10 pm CDT, and you can follow it here.
• I’ve always had a relatively casual knowledge of The Beatles’ music, knowing the same two to three dozen songs most any music fan knows. Recently I’ve been listening to the albums on Amazon Music and broadening my exposure a bit. It’s been fun. It’s truly amazing how much they evolved and grew in such a short span.
• I’m looking forward to people returning to the moon. Commercially and militarily, we need to be there. I expect to see a permanent human presence there in my lifetime—probably even before I’m old. I’m considerably less certain about seeing human beings on Mars in my lifetime, though. Departing from lunar orbit makes it a little easier, but it remains a considerably more difficult problem. Here’s a good piece that says as much. (Designing a one-way mission makes it easier too, but I’m not sure we’ll ever have the stomach for that.)
• We’re halfway through the penultimate season of Justified. Still highly recommended. (Part of me still wishes we could watch Bosch forever, though.)
• I’ve carried a Cross pen daily for 20+ years, but it’s always been a minor annoyance that the clips get loose, and now I think the quality of the refills has declined too. So reluctantly, I’m trying a new everyday soldier. It came with a gel cartridge, but I swapped it for a Fisher Space Pen ballpoint cartridge. We’ll see.
• IndyCar at Iowa Speedway is a blast. Iowa is a 7/8-mile Thunderdome of speed, and it’s a kick to see IndyCars turning out 17-18-second laps at it. Check it out at 5:45 Saturday evening on NBCSN.

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