JoJo

The song of the day is When Love Hurts from the 2015 EP III (pronounced Tringle, a triple single EP) by singer, songwriter, and actress JoJo (Joanna Noëlle Blagden Levesque). JoJo’s debut album, JoJo, was released in 2004 when she was 13. Her debut single, Leave (Get Out) , reached number one on the Billboard pop songs chart, making her, at 13, the youngest solo artist to have a number-one single in the United States. Between 2006 and 2014, problems at her record label prevented her music from being released. In 2013 she took legal action against the label and was released from her contract in 2014. She is now signed with another label. More on the return of JoJo here.

Scott Weiland

I happened by chance to read in the news that Scott Weiland died this month, on December 3, from an accidental drug overdose. During his career he had been frontman for both Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver as well as a successful solo artist.
 
The song of the day is Sour Girl from the 1999 album № 4 (sometimes referred to as No. 4) by Stone Temple Pilots. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who appears in this video, posted a tribute to Weiland on her Instagram, saying “Your music will always be remembered.”

Melanie Martinez

The song of the day is Carousel from the 2015 album Cry Baby by singer and songwriter Melanie Martinez (Melanie Adele Martinez).

Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello

The song of the day is I Know What You Did Last Summer by Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes (Shawn Peter Raul Mendes) and Fifth Harmony’s Cuban-born vocalist Camila Cabello (Karla Camila Cabello Estrabao).

Lauren Alaina

The song of the day is Girl Crush by country artist Lauren Alaina. This song was a #1 hit for country vocal group Little Big Town and was released as a single from their album Pain Killer.

Beyond Mars

I read a review of Louis Friedman’s new book, Human Spaceflight From Mars to the Stars. (Friedman is the executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society, which he co-founded with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray in 1980.)

Friedman is optimistic about human space exploration, but he is quite certain that humans will not travel beyond the orbit of Mars in any significant way.

He says that human space travel beyond Mars is too expensive and is unnecessary; we can send machines to gather data, and virtual reality can give us the illusion that we have made the trip. He also says that space colonies – cities in space orbiting the sun – are impractical and unnecessary, a science-fiction idea that is not in our future.

I was at once reminded of Arthur Clarke’s First Law of Prediction: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

I don’t know what time scale Friedman has in mind. If it’s the next 20 years, then he’s very probably correct. If it’s the next 1000 years, then he’s very probably wrong.

If a human of 300 years ago had been asked about the feasibility of going to the Moon, or of building a city full of skyscrapers, or even of building a network of paved roads like America's interstate highway system, he would surely have thought all of the ideas were far-fetched and unlikely to ever become reality.

Sending humans to the Moon? Not only impossible but completely unnecessary – until the invention of rocket technology and computers made it possible and a space-race made it necessary. A city of skyscrapers? Impossible – until inventions like structural steel, elevators, and electric lighting made it possible. A continent-wide system of paved highways? Impractical and unnecessary (for horses) until mass-production of motor vehicles made paved highways essential.

It’s impossible to predict future technologies and what they may enable humanity to do. It’s impossible to predict what our descendants may want to do or what they may need to do. However, we do know one aspect of the future: some of the things our descendants will do will be, to our eyes, indistinguishable from magic.

Zara Larsson

The song of the day is 2015's Lush Life by Swedish singer-songwriter Zara Larsson.

Barbarossa

The song of the day is Bloodline from the 2013 album Bloodlines by London musician Barbarossa (James Mathé).

Lisa Hannigan

The song of the day is Home from the 2011 album Passenger by Irish singer, songwriter, and musician Lisa Hannigan.

Buffalo Salmon Wings

After reading one of my recent blog posts in which I joked about salmon wings with Buffalo sauce, my friend and fellow blogger CyberDave pointed out that Buffalo salmon and Buffalo salmon wings are real things.

At Epicurious there is a recipe for Buffalo salmon. The recipe uses a salmon fillet that is breaded with panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and baked.

Food Network also has a recipe for Buffalo-style salmon that uses a salmon fillet.

A company called Seabear offers a kit containing a pouch of bite-size nuggets of wild Alaskan salmon in a light panko and flour coating and a separate pouch of Buffalo sauce. The kit is called Wild Salmon Buffalo Wings. Their recipe calls for the salmon nuggets to be cooked on the stovetop. I’ve never tried Buffalo salmon wings but they sure look tasty.

The only thing missing from the picture are the celery sticks.