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I had an incredibly late night/early morning at work yesterday. I got home and fell asleep sometime around 3 AM and woke to my alarm just a few hours later, dreading the rinse and repeat that my week had become.

I turned on NPR, as I normally do before getting out of bed, when this segment started. Morning Edition does a weekly segment where they feature a recently recorded Story Corps piece and this one of Robert Patterson and his wife Karen was today’s.

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I laid in bed and nearly cried. I’ve thought a lot recently about the demise of the lifelong marriage (if it ever existed) in light of some recent observations of close friends and even family and I have to admit that become cynical about the whole thing and skeptical of any seeming examples. Hearing this did two things for me. First, I now have a newly restored belief in the possibility of happy life partnership. Secondly, I was immediately inspired to get out of bed, shed complaints about a sleepless night, and set off into whatever my day held.

I just listened to this NPR story that I missed while away this winter: New York’s Hipsters Too Cool For The Census [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Check out the rate of return for your neighborhood with the Take 10 Map.

I was just reading this article about Apple and Adobe’s squabble over Flash where they compare the two companies arguments with tag clouds of words used—a great idea. That got me thinking about all those books or documents I wish I had or had time to read and all that info I wish could just be injected into my skull in Matrix-like fashion. If I could just have some shorthand visual I could at least pretend that I’ve grasped the core argument of any document I’m supposed to read in full…

“Music played from a compact disc is of higher quality than what comes out of an iPod — but you can’t easily carry 4,000 CDs with you on the subway or to the gym. Similarly, a professional television camera will produce a higher-quality image than a phone, but when something important happens, from the landing of a jet on the Hudson River to the murder of an Iranian protester, and there are no TV cameras around, images recorded on phones are good enough.”

Two articles from today’s New York Times especially caught my eye. On page 1 Inside the Situation Room: How a War Plan Evolved and Week in Review’s feature article, The War in Pashtunistan. I’ve become increasingly interested in being educated about the situation in Afghanistan over the last few weeks…

A commenter on a recent post reminded me of this film, which I had heard about a while ago, but had forgotten to check up on. 180° South retraces a trip down the Pan American Highway taken in 1968 by Yvon Chouinard and best friend Doug Tompkins, two heros of mine…