That Eric Alper! - June 27, 2012

Want a great headline? Here it is: How I Saved A Coked Up Miles Davis After He Crashed His Lamborghini - http://bit.ly/Kl9A6d

Pianist Elmo Hope was born on this day in 1923 in New York, NY. His highly individual piano-playing and, especially, his compositions have led a few enthusiasts and critics such as David Rosenthal to place him alongside his contemporaries Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk (one could also compare him to Herbie Nichols), but he remains less recognized than his colleagues.

Switzerland is about to get a taste of what Canada has to offer the world of jazz at the Montreux Jazz Festival July 7. The Hamilton All Star Jazz Band has a set list that’s more Canadian than a beaver wearing a tuque in a snowstorm: http://bit.ly/MTIE1k

Yes, Twitter is a ridiculously-constrained communications medium — a holdover from the dumb-phone days when text could only be sent from phone to phone in 140-character chunks. And yet, we love it, perhaps due to these constraints. Everywhere else, we’re drowning in words, images, video, and so on, while Twitter remains the same dirt-simple protocol. Even if you don’t know the UK band Blur, the precision on releasing music and information through Twitter is a lesson for any b(r)and: http://bit.ly/LvX5ek

Daniel Russell is a search guru in the employ of Google. He addressed a crowd of journalists with a lecture on the super-advanced search techniques, and posed this riddle: "What’s the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped?” He demonstrates how you can find anyone, anything or any number, based on Google. Scary and fascinating: http://bit.ly/L7F7Iw

The world's fastest sedan recreates super slow-motion bullet footage on a much grander scale: http://wp.me/p26Qb8-2gg

The more you know: Your weight in outer space - http://wp.me/p26Qb8-2gj