March 28, 2006

By Sheila Lennon / The Providence (R.I.) Journal

11:07 a.m. Tuesday (Blogroll)

Lemon Festival: Menton, France — near Monaco — held its annual Lemon Festival last month. The most obvious part of it is a sculpture festival. (They don't sculpt the lemons, they assemble them on metal frames.)

They've more than covered the lemon beat: Photos, a slideshow, e-cards and a stamp, recipes, cocktails; in English, The Lemon, symbol of Menton’s identity; The Fête du Citron: A Long Story; The Back of the Stage of the Festival and A Small Lemon Spelling-Book.

If you're really into this, there are plenty of photos of earlier festivals on the left.

Can changing your tune change your life? Nova's The Elegant Universe — elegantly explains "string theory," edgy physics that predicts "eleven dimensions, parallel universes and a world made of strings." The three-hour series is online in QuickTime and RealVideo formats, in four- to 10-minute chunks. For a crib sheet, check out the teachers' guide.

Articles, interviews and slideshows accompany it.

We watched it live on TV at our house, and it's mesmerizing. The freaks were right — the universe is all about vibes. Think vibrating strings, music.

Silhouettes: The Top 15 Skylines in the World v3.0. Interesting eye candy, except that the captions are above the photos, making for a bit of confusion.

Dubai, UAE, above, rises out of the desert. Author Luigi Di Serio, an urban planner, writes of Shenzhen, China, below, "Shenzen is a marvel of lights after sunset. You can’t help but ask yourself if you are in a video game or in a real city."

Karl Rove cooperating with Plame leak Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald? The Washington Note, Beneath the Surface on Plame Investigation: Rove and Libby in Deadly Dog Fight:

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney....

Campaign advice from the architect of off-year regime change:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told TIME that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

—  Republicans on the Run, Time Magazine, Mar. 26, 2006