• The Selvedge Yard features a collection of Jacob Riis photographs of a turn-of-the-century slum in New York City called the Bandits’ Roost. The photos clearly show poor, hard lives, but the hats and coats and dresses cause some cognitive dissonance.
• Recording Magazine has a nice primer on the technical aspects of mastering to vinyl.
• The Old Town School of Folk, 55-years-old and going strong, has expanded with the opening of its new building on Monday on the east side of Lincoln Ave. It’s great to see more classes and concerts, but I don’t like the carpet. Greg Kot covers the opening in the Trib.

A scientific study made some news recently declaring that, when playing blindfolded, even professional violinists cannot tell a Stradivarius from a modern instrument.

Except it didn’t. As often happens when a ‘finding’ jumps from a journal to the news, the nuance was lost. Laurie Niles, a violinist and blogger who participated in the study, explains how it was done and what conclusions were actually drawn. Essentially, they were only asked their personal preferences and not to identify instruments.

In their coverage, NPR has side by side audio samples of a Strad and a modern instrument. Who knew they had that kind of budget.

A photo of Chicago and the southern tip of Lake Michigan taken onboard the ISS (you can see it in the foreground). The photo comes from an In Focus photo collection covering the recent changing of the guard at the ISS. NASA loves documentation, and this video shows the hugs and handshakes when they opened the hatch in February on Discovery’s last trip.

• “During the 1860s, several photographers based in Moscow and St. Petersburg produced a series of cartes-de-visite showing Russian ‘types.’ These remarkable portraits provide a fascinating record of working-class townspeople, artisans, street vendors and peasants, some staged performing an activity, such as drinking tea or gaming, and some photographed in the performance of their occupation.”
• Chicago’s Adler Planetarium could get a Space Shuttle when they are retired next year, but competition is fierce from Texas, Florida, and New York.
• I knew Groupon was doing well, but I didn’t think they were doing THAT well: according to Forbes, it is one of the fastest companies to reach a $1B valuation (YouTube being the fastest, but it has yet to see profit).
• Finally, a particularly depressing list from Wikipedia: list of last occurrences.

oflate.org is an experiment in aggregating and presenting content. It combines the utility of an RSS reader and the casual browsing of a blog into one simple stream.

The site developed out of my own needs—there was no good way to get a snapshot of all the New York Times blogs without adding 60 different RSS feeds. This site does all the work for you; it updates in real-time with posts from dozens of the best NYT blogs.

You can filter by blog, by category, or by update frequency. Each entry gives a 1-3 sentence preview, but the headline links directly to the original post. With the “Save” link next to each headline, you can save posts for later reading (to access them, use the “My Saves” link on the top bar).

oflate.org is starting with a collection of blogs from the NYT, but I’m planning other aggregation topics. Please check out the site, and use it if you like it. Send an email to oflate.org@gmail.com if you have any thoughts.

• Max Brooks wrote an article for the Chicago Reader. Give that man a column!
• A neat, interactive graphic from the BBC shows what the top 500 supercomputers of the world are up to this year.
• The Times featured this cool story of architectural detective work: Christopher Gray wanted to find out who originally lived in his hundred-year-old apartment.

BP has their own coverage of the oil leak clean-up efforts. The brilliant blues and clear skies tell a very different story than images from other sources, like The Big Picture.

• Google’s interests extend into the energy industry. Google Energy, a new subsidiary, is registered as a power utility company in Delaware. At this point, they plan to be a reseller to wholesale customers.
• The Times created a neat interactive graphic to demonstrate how incredibly close the Olympic finish times are. Click the play button on the left and imagine them all racing at the same time.
• I would love to stand in front of this 3D, perspective-bending painting from the British Library, but this Flickr clip does a good job of showing it off.

As a representative for the old guard and someone who is not afraid to get behind an issue, Neil Young has been all over the place recently.

He appeared at the Haiti benefit concert doing a surprisingly somber Hank Williams song with Dave Matthews.

Young was also Conan O’Brien’s musical guest on his last Tonight Show on NBC, playing Long May You Run. O’Brien said that when the news of his departure broke, Young was the first person to call and offer support.

To see some more early shots of Neil (and CSN), check out this post at the Selvedge Yard.

• Tyler Cowen has some theories as to why vampires are so popular right now (and always).
• The full text of Lester Bangs’ classic 1979 article on the ten-year anniversary of Van Morrison’s album Astral Weeks.
• Apple has decided to buy the streaming music website Lala, moving us all one small step closer to the cloud.