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but arises from the depths to appear on Letterman, and to plea for ESPN to call him.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/fired-anchor-j-clemente-tells-letterman-crawled...

First, Jose Valverde, now A.J. Clemente.

The sinking (for those who haven't seen it):

This summer I'm going to the Pantanal region of Brazil with a small group of Michigan alums and current students to teach orchestral music at an orphanage. We're trying to raise money for various pieces of the project, including instruments, maintenance, accessories (stands, bows, etc), living costs for the teachers, and others. Our fundraising site has a lot more info on the project and is at the link here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pantanal-music-exchange.

The Nazaré Orphanage in rural Brazil is home to sixty boys whose lives have been scarred by domestic violence, abuse, and neglect. Orphanage founder Father Joaquim Tébar secured a donation of numerous violins, violas, and cellos to teach the children music. Tragically, he died before he could turn his idea into reality. We began this project to carry on his vision to bring music to lives that have known little else but adversity and hardship.

While working to set up workshops with the kids at Nazaré on public health, CPR, English, and sustainable technologies last summer, the director revealed a room full of stringed instruments that were collecting dust. We immediately decided to start putting them to use, and did our best to give some basic string lessons. The excitement and energy this brought out of the kids was immediately apparent, and we couldn’t help but want to see it continue. This summer we plan to expand the program into a full string orchestra through daily rehearsals over a two month period.

The Pantanal Music Exchange (PME) aims to cultivate creativity in the lives of these boys. We want the project to grow out of the excitement of the kids, so much of the music we teach will be pop and traditional songs that the kids know and want to learn, a model we had great success with last summer. Local support and involvement is crucial, and we are working with musicians and community members in Poconé so that the program can continue and grow even while we're not there. We're currently organizing partnerships with other youth orchestra programs in both Brazil and America.

We have built a team of dedicated individuals to lead PME, including regional experts, local Brazilian musicians, energetic college students, and recent graduates. All of us have been playing, writing, and teaching music for over a decade. Those who didn’t grow up speaking Portuguese have worked hard to learn it over the past year. We are also a relatively young group, which should help the kids relate to us and see us as role models.

I think MGoBlog users will be interested in the project for a couple of reasons. It helps rep UM in an area that doesn't get a lot of attention and exposure, it's just generally good for the world (which MGoBloggers are usually in favor of), and this video (warning: small cute children playing the Victors sort of poorly):

Please let me know if you have any questions. I’d love if you would be able to donate or even just pass on to your networks. I’m at sethbu@gmail.com. 

The folk-rock band Sweetwater was the scheduled opening act for Woodstock ‘69, but they were stuck in traffic on the way to the festival, so, as has been reported elsewhere,

Richie Havens had been among the first to arrive at the performers’ staging area in nearby Liberty, New York. As the afternoon wore on and the crowd, estimated at 500,000 people, waited for the show to begin, concert organizers persuaded Havens, along with his guitarist, Paul Williams, and his drummer, Daniel Ben Zebulon, to squeeze into a helicopter with their two conga drums and two guitars for the quick ride to the festival stage.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-22/richie-havens-who-opened-woodstock-music-festival-dies-at-72.html

The rest is music history: 

I thought this was a really neat article that might pique interest around here during the dreary dregs of the all-sports off-season.

Applications now being accepted for a one way trip to Mars.

On the face of it, it seems utterly ridiculous. But then, when I think about it, I can't help but wonder if this isn't how mann takes his first steps outside of the earth/moon system? Not with some amazing new technology for fast transport, but rather, with people who fully intend to live out their entire lives at thei destination.

Aside from horrible fatalists and the psychotic, who clearly cannot be allowed to go on such a mission, anyone who agrees to travel one way to another planet is going to require a plan for them to survive once they arrive. "I'd be happy to live out my life on Mars, but I want to live longer than the few months that the water and food supplies will last." so, meet that requirement, and now you've got people living on another world growing their own food, purifying their own water, generating their own oxygen (likely all wthin the same aquaculture facility), who are prepared for the long term.

What do people who are in one place for a long time like to do? Expand! Open up new spaces. Study new things. Build a summer home! And in little time, with a few supply missions from Earth, you've got the equivalent of Martian industry allowing the people that live there to do more than live, but to grow. To procreate, expand their facilities, terraform the soil and create a new human frontier.

It had never really occured to me before that the first steps of human expansion could be both permanent relocations AND not metaphorical one-way trips (meaning you're going there to die). I absolutely love the idea of people traveling within our star system, never to return to earth, not to die, but to LIVE.

Tell me this isn't cool.

Open Thread on Episode 4 of Season 3.

Please no book spoilers - I'd recommend/request you start a separate thread if you want to discuss the episode in relation to the books. Mucho gracias.

Nice open with Jaimie's hand hanging around his neck.

West Virginia University FTW

The news was NSFW tonight. youtube.com/watch?v=D0rP6I…

— Scott Schroeder (@ScottSchroeder) April 21, 2013