9 Days to Apollo 11
www.nasa.gov: Super fun, and the perfect place to start celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first Moon landing. To borrow an exultant exhortation, get happy, people! "We came in peace for all Mankind."

The Stars My Destination
Lightning rods = awesome: N.A.S.A.link and B.B.C.link. The photograph of Zeus's thunderbolt is impressive, most impressive, but wait, there's more. Scroll down to the second photo included in the B.B.C. article: what are those swimming in the foreground? Pigs? Please, please, please, somebody tell me N.A.S.A. is working on making tomorrow the time when pigs fly. Or, and here I'm fairly squealing with excitement, that within our lifetimes we might see pigs in space.





This Week in Motorsport
It's been three weeks since Silverstone, and I've been itching for some Formula One action. I am determined not to learn the results of tomorrow's race—the German Grand Prix at the fearsome Nürburgring—before the tape-delayed Fox broadcast in the afternoon, and so shall be very careful when perusing ye olde internet and will avoid B.B.C. radio broadcasts entirely. By Jove, I will be ignorant!

The Queue
At one point in Shakespeare Wrote for Money, Nick Hornby listed the general themes of a book he'd just finished and wrote, "and if you're not interested in any of that, then we at the Believer politely suggest you'd be happier with another magazine." And that's it right there. For all my bombastic assertion of the rectitude of my own opinions, I am essentially a big tent fellow, and I will not brook Hornby's small-minded, conformist mindset. His too-cool-for-school, in-the-know attitude is all too eerily reminiscent of that found in those faux-Hellenic houses of horror from which the F.R.A.T. Party derived its mocking name. Hornby was dead-on, though, I would have been happier reading a collection of columns from another magazine; I'll still read his fiction, but I'd rather watch the Beck episode of Futurama than suffering through any more of his infantile non-fiction.

An illustration of my rejection of the all-or-nothing, one-of-us exclusivity of Shakespeare Wrote For Money and the Believer is that my fondness for both Ki-El, who specifically recommended the book, and The Guy, who purchases the magazine and has several times endorsed Hornby's "Stuff I've Been Reading" column, remains undiminished. A man is more than the sum of his cultural interests, and if you're not interest in that attitude, we here at The Secret Base politely suggest there's plenty you'll still enjoy in this blog; we thank you for your readership and encourage you to make generous use of the commenting feature. Big tent.

Recently
Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote For Money
G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State (abandoned)
Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy

Currently
Rob Thomas, editor, Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

Presently
Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage
Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Francie Lin, The Foreigner
Saki, When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Andy Findon, "The Belgian Detective" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)