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Ray Charles' I got a Woman.

I know I mentioned how I'd like to see personal fabrication lean toward making your own homes, electricity, water, and such. I am fascinated by things like this homemade dome (Make Magazine.) out of plastic, wire, and packing peanuts. I like designs where, once you've heard the idea, you can figure out how to do it. They seem more powerful than really complicated ones with lots of specialized materials and such.

I find articles on the U.S. losing its competitive edge in innovation (IHT) amusing. I've heard lots of comparisons between America and the Britain of a hundred years ago, where we're losing our edge and just don't know it yet.

If you, like me, have only the faintest idea what those people are talking about, I highly recommend The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (Amazon). I picked up a copy while I was traveling a couple years ago, and it's become a book I like to reread every so often to remind myself of how such things are done.

On the topic of transitions, I like this article praising google for killing newspapers (Gawker.com). I also like this article which shows sales of Atlas Shrugged correlated with recent news events. (Economist)

Suspending your disbelief is sometimes as easy as reading the news.