The Vice Presidents that history forgot

A well written, entertaining piece by Tony Horwitz about his visit to the museum of Vice Presidents: It is a nonpartisan collection of stories and artifacts on all 47 vice presidents – the only museum in the land devoted to the nation’s second-highest office. This neglect might seem surprising, until you tour the museum and …

The Museum of Endangered Sounds – Nintendo, VCR, payphone, cassette tape

This site is archiving the electronic sounds of the past, and it’s awesome The site archives a few sounds that might have you nostalgically playing them over and over again. There’s everything from the sound of dialing a rotary telephone to the sound of a floppy drive chugging away. If nothing else, listening to the sound …

New museum exhibit – Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology, presented by the National Geographic Society, immerses you in the science and history of field archaeology. Walk in the footsteps of beloved film hero Indiana Jones as you embark on this interactive museum adventure. This unique exhibition features : A vast and exclusive collection of Indiana Jones film props, …

MLB’s All-Star Game – schedule of events (starting today through Tuesday)

July 6-10 Major League Baseball All-Star FanFest at Kansas City Convention Center Live auction of game-used memorabilia (from Home Run Derby, All-Star Game, Legends, Futures, Celebrity) Negro Leagues Museum Showcase     Sunday – July 8 All-Star Charity 5K & Fun Run All-Star Futures Game, 5 p.m. ET All-Star Legends & Celebrity Softball Game, approximately …

11 documentaries about cities – streaming on Netflix

Here are 11 new and new-ish documentaries now streaming that offer interesting, frustrating and downright sad stories about cities.   Bill Cunningham New York 2010, 84 minutes Directed by Richard Press A film about octogenarian and New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who rides his bike around New York City taking pictures of clothes …

Barnes opens in Philadelphia – with more Renoirs, Cézannes than all of France

Philadelphia, the city that gave us Poor Richard, cheese-steak sandwiches and the American Constitution, just opened a new treasure: the Barnes Foundation, one of the premier privately assembled collections of painting in the U.S. with more dreamy Renoirs and searching Cézannes than in the whole of France. Its arrival in May halfway between the landmark …

Nelson Mandela and Google create a virtual museum of his life

For a look at the future of digital museums, check out the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory’s new digital archive composed of thousands of scanned documents from the African leader’s life. With the help of a $1.25 million grant from Google, the center digitized thousands of documents and images that illustrate the life and times of South Africa’s first …

For delivery only – photos/video of Space Shuttle being attached to Boeing 747

At the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, initial mating of space shuttle Discovery and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is complete in the mate-demate device. The device, known as the MDD, is a large gantry-like steel structure used to hoist a shuttle off the ground and position it onto the back …

Charles Dickens London

I’ve got a little trip coming up for Amy’s birthday and was browsing around on airbnb. We’re hoping to find a nice little cottage in Santa Barbara for a few days. Anyway, I found their blog and this great post on Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday on February 17, 2012. Doubtless, the dour Victorian author would …