Kind Of Blue

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. What happens in the brain when someone improvises? Musician and researcher Charles Limb put jazz musicians and rappers into an fMRI to find out.
    
2. Last week, NASA's Juno spacecraft completed its first close flyby of Jupiter. The data it's sent back to earth has revealed Jupiter has a few surprises in store...
    
3. I was very sad to hear the author Denis Johnson died last week. His collection of short stories, Jesus's Son, is one of my favourites: Denis Johnson’s Perfect Short Story.
    
4. Billy Collins on finding your voice.
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is The Look by Metronomy. It's from their excellent album The English Riviera. I'm a big fan of the music video and that keyboard sound!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

About to hit the road

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. What is music? — A cool video and interview with Jad Abumrad (host of the brilliant Radiolab podcast) on sound and music.
    
2. NASA just succeeded at the hardest thing they've ever done — Getting the Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter. National Geographic shared this animation showing the manoeuvre used to achieve this feat. I love all things Space, so thought this was rather cool!
    
3. Ever looked out into the night sky and thought "Where is everybody?". If your answer is "yes", check out this article on the Fermi Paradox by (my new favourite website) Wait But Why. The Fermi Paradox tries to explain "the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations" (thanks Wikipedia). It's nerdy and a pretty long read, but for the curious amongst you, well worth the time.
    
4. Anki (a robotics & AI company) just announced Cozmo. It's smart (and emotional) toy robot and I really want one! I'm fairly minimalist so not one for just buying random junk, but Cozmo looks pretty awesome.
    
5. This is mainly going to be of interest to drummers, but even if you aren't one it's still an interesting read and has some good pictures too — History Of The Drum Set.

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!