Making of America: at Cornell.

…A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. The project represents a major collaborative endeavor in preservation and electronic access to historical texts.

Via this typically thoughtful Paul Ford post.

Design inspiration, certainly. When, oh when, will I see my long-desired handbills archive out there in the aether?

David Pogue, Bob LeVitus, and John Fortt are out the gate ahead of the pack with reviews of GarageBand.

[via Atat]

My money’s on TidBITS for a very thorough writeup on Monday or Tuesday, though – Adam’s got two working musicians writing for TidBITS regularly and I expect them to answer my questions about what the limitations of the product are.

Project Horizon at astronautixcom [via things].

HORIZON is the project whose objective is the establishment of a lunar outpost by the United States. This study was directed by letter dated 20 March 1959, from the Chief of R&D, Department of the Army, to the Chief of Ordnance. Responsibility for the preparation of the study was subsequently assigned to the Commanding General, Army Ordnance Missile Command. Elements of all Technical Services of the Army participated in the investigation. This report is a limited feasibility study which investigates the methods and means of accomplishing this objective and the purposes it will serve. It also considers the substantial political, scientific and security implications which the prompt establishment of a lunar outpost will have for the United States.

Includes numerous black and white illustrations. Part of Encyclopedia Astronautica. Don’t miss the Phantom Cosmonauts, where I learned that the Russian space program actually flew a full-size sculpture of Yuri Gagarin around the moon. Who says that art under socialism lacks imagination?

One Suicide Too Many: by Philip Dawdy

CYNTHIA DOYON meant business the morning of Aug. 5. She was cleaning out her desk at KUOW-FM and moving on after 24 years at the NPR station. The 48-year-old with a smooth, husky voice had been working part time on weekends as the host of The Swing Years and Beyond. For photographs, she dressed like a 1940s throwback—checked jackets and skirts, permed blond hair carefully parted to the side. Around the University of Washington campus, however, she was most commonly seen walking to the library wearing khakis and a windbreaker, Schlitz beer cap on her head, books in her arms.

Watching the persistent traffic to and heartfelt messages left on my two posts about Doyon’s death tells me that this article will certainly be of interest to many people. I have yet to read the piece, but I hope it helps to answer the many sad questions I’ve seen in my email inbox these past few months.

(After reading the piece: It’s good, and impassioned, and worth reading.)

Rest in peace, Cynthia: you are truly remembered with deep fondness.

TidBITS#712/12-Jan-04 offers detailed analysis of the MacWorld announcements from last week. While Adam’s lead editorial struck me as less sharp than he’s capable of (it felt more like justification than analysis, something that may be borne out by his noting that he’s not a music-oriented Mac user), the detailed discussion of iLife 04, in particular, is worthwhile.

Non-Mac iPod users: what do you think of Adam’s thesis?

My portfolio occupied much of my time today, apologies for the dead air.

Go take a look! I still need to wrangle the assets for a number of old-skool multimedia CD-ROMs, but there’s a passel of material there that was not previously available.

Gallery, for all its’ not-immediately apparent limitations and frustrations, remains a deeply flexible tool, and I am ever-thankful for it. Adding the fifty-or-so graphic files I threw up today would have been a much more frustrating experience without it. Here’s to ya, Bharat and company!

thingsmagazine.net: daily links, photos and new writing about objects. Why, exactly, do I find this so dense?

via oldtimey’s referrer site. And may I say, hippo birdie two ewes, by the way.

Translators are welcome to clarify my cryptic musings.

My So-Called Blog examines the folkways of the blog, or, more precisely, of some teenagers who use LJ.

It’s long, appears accurate enough if highly focused, and, regrettably, will surely lead to some interesting questions for those of us not in adolescence. OMG! Now I can devote the rest my life to explaining that blogs AND comics are not really something exclusively for kids.

defective yeti: The Lord of the Ring of Fire

And then, out of nowhere, a creepy-looking bald-headed creature comes onto the scene.

Father-to-be Matthew Baldwin points out that the whole alllegorical meaning of LOTR has been wildly misinterpreted.

Moorcock´s Weekly Miscellany is a nuke-clone based update to the former multiverse.org, long hosted by the capable Berry Sizemore for Mr. Moorcock.

I interviewed Mike early last year about his current Elric series and the impending movie, and he discusses it quite freely in the PHPBB forums on the new site, mentioning at one point a budget of – $100m!!!

He also mentions that they are aiming at a trilogy; 100 mil is less than half the budget for Jackson’s LOTR but definitely respectable. Fellow ur-geeks will in all likelyhood find a stroll through the site rewarding.