What We Loved This Week: Calor Norteño, ‘Packing for Mars’ and the Astronomy Picture of the Day

Travel Blog  •  World Hum  •  10.01.10 | 5:07 PM ET

Jim Benning
This Spanish-language cover of the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” by a band called Calor Norteño, performed in Tijuana (and recorded, unfortunately, with a shaky camera):

Rob Verger
This past weekend I enjoyed finishing up Mary Roach’s fun and informative Packing for Mars. Here’s my favorite passage from the book, describing a Soyuz capsule that, in 2008, landed off-course “in an empty field on the Kazakh Steppe, where sparks from the impact started a grass fire.” Roach describes what happened after that, from NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson’s perspective:

Not long after touchdown, she felt someone pull her from the capsule. “I was like, ‘Cool, the search-and-rescue guys are here already.’ They laid me on the ground near the cesium altimeter. Which seemed odd, because we were always told to stay away from the cesium altimeter. So I start looking at the SAR guys… One of them, literally, was wearing what looked like a burlap sack sewn into pants. They were Kazakh locals.” One spoke some Russian. He asked Whitson’s crewmate Yuri Malenchenko, “Where did this boat come from?” (The fire had consumed the parachutes.) “Yuri’s like, ‘No, this is a spacecraft. We were up in space.’ And the guy says, ‘Nu, ladna,’ which is kind of like ‘Fine, whatever.’”

Eva Holland
I loved finding a stash of okra at the grocery store. We don’t always get the most complete selection of produce here in the Yukon, and when something unusual shows up on the shelf it’s a good idea to grab it while you can. Needless to say, I’m digging through the memories of my southern travels and plotting a theme dinner for the weekend.

Michael Yessis
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day from Wednesday. Love the start of the caption as much as the shot: “If you look closely at the Moon, you will see a large airplane in front of it.”

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day by Chris Thomas
Tags: Shameless Self-Promotion, What We Loved This Week, News and Briefs


1 Comment for What We Loved This Week: Calor Norteño, ‘Packing for Mars’ and the Astronomy Picture of the Day

bubba smythe 10.03.10 | 10:24 AM ET

shameless fakery. The plane in front of the moon. give me a break. Photoshop does it again.

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