I was listening to the group Pink Martini today, when on a whim, I checked their tour schedule and found that they're coming to the Straz Center April 5. Tickets are $26 and up -- well worth it.

“A defining moment in a group’s career can arrive from the most unexpected of places. For Pink Martini, it came courtesy of the United Nations …. Last month Srgjan Kerim, the new president of the U.N’s General Assembly, ordered 30 copies of Pink Martini’s second album “Hang on Little Tomato”. The Macedonian was so smitten after catching a recent show in Vancouver B.C. that he intends to pass out the CD during his first official meeting.”– Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2007

I also found that their official website plays their music as long as you want at this link. The page starts out with a couple of Christnas songs and then plays others -- many with a jazzy, latin beat.

Check it and see if you don't agree they're just the right sound for people of our generation, even though they're a lot younger. 

Yesterday, I was introduced to a musical group, Pink Martini, by the CBS Sunday Morning show. The group has been around for many years, and is made up of a few Americans who sing and play in a style reminiscent of the 50's - the songs have a melody, the lyrics are crisp and clear.

Science fiction stories frequently have a person don a helmet or something and have foreign memories induced.

Now, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF.gov article), Japanese and American researchers have demonstrated using special MRI's in reverse to "implant" knowedge into a person's brain. The article suggests "it may be possible ... to learn to play a piano ... or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort."

Instead of merely recording the activity of a brain, apparently they repeatedly "tickled" small areas of one person's brain in the same pattern that someone else has, who has had some small visual training. After having this done, the subjects were also trained. This happened with or without the subjects knowing ahead of time what was being trained, and with no active participation of subject. 

Those wonderful Church Bulletins! Thank God for church ladies with typewriters. These sentences (with all the BLOOPERS) actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services: