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September 24, 2006

Blogger: What space smells like; Which apple for what? Banksy

Space tourist Anousheh Ansari
blogs from space on the X-Prize Blog.

She was spacesick, but recovered in time for the docking with the International Space Station:

...finally the moment arrived and they were ready to open the hatch. Mike and Misha called me closer and told me to take a good whiff because this would be the first time I would smell “SPACE.”

They said it is a very unique smell. As they pulled the hatch open on the Soyuz side, I smelled “SPACE.” It was strange… kind of like burned almond cookie.

Over eons, humans have looked at the night sky, and some must have wondered what space smells like. If Anousheh were a time traveler, able to go back with the answer... Yeah, right.

Related: Iranian women gather to catch glimpse of spacecraft carrying Iranian woman

Apple research: Rocky Brook Orchard in Middletown has a nicely simple page of small photos of some apple varieties, each with a description of its appearance, texture, sweetness or tartness, and best uses.

Many are the familiar apples you'll see now in grocery stores -- McIntosh, Granny Smith, Delicous, Gala, Northern Spy -- as well as some newer varieties such as Honeycrisp and Suncrisp. Few of these varieties are in the largely unfamiliar, and undated, "Now growing" list below this chart.

At Phantom Farms in Cumberland, the "We currently harvest…" list also includes Rhode Island Greening and Spencer.

The Apples page at The Cook's Thesaurus presents many more varieties grown in other regions, as well, and there's a comprehensive page of links to hundreds of apple varieties at All About Apples.

Earlier in the season, a vendor at the farmer's market recommended Cortland (pictured above) for baked apples, so I picked some up today. Tonight I learned that they hold their shape well when baked.

At the recipe page of the Rhode Island Fruit Growers Association, I found the Apple Crisp of my childhood.

Art meets West: Banksy: The joker: The Independent (UK) story on the graffiti artist begins,

Quite how a celebrity culture like that of Hollywood is going to cope with the British artist Banksy is far from clear. His show Barely Legal - featuring an incarnation of the proverbial elephant in the room - has this week made Banksy the darling of Tinseltown.

The problem is that the man who is variously described as a "guerrilla artist", an "art terrorist" or - by those of a more prosaic turn of phrase - as a "prankster" is someone for whom celebrity is anathema. So much so that he has never let the world know his real name - and he has never even posed for a photograph. Funny kind of celebrity....

Do unto others...: "Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America?" by Chilean American novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman in the Washington Post.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 2:57 AM | Permalink