THE SOUND OF SCIENCE: Knoxville’s Dave “Seva” Ball — a musical whiz who was a founder of AudioAnimation and Waves, and who mastered both the first album I ever produced, and Helen’s film, Six — is now working to preserve Bob Moog’s tape archive. “In January, he embarked on his most unusual assignment: to rescue the earliest recordings of one his personal heroes before they disintegrated from an onslaught of mold and decay. Under a grant from the Grammy Foundation, he’s been working with the Bob Moog Foundation in Asheville, N.C., to meticulously clean, preserve, and digitize the audible history of the synthesizer in his garage-turned-studio. Or at least as much of it as he can—the grant only covers a sixth of the tapes requiring restoration, and the clock is ticking.”

OOPS: BMW X3 prototype reportedly causes bomb scare outside NY museum.

SO IS THIS HOPE, OR CHANGE? “Fresh on the heels of Freddie Mac’s request for another $10 billion or so between friends, Fannie Mae will be asking for an additional $8.4 billion from the government after reporting an $11.5 billion Q1 loss.”

C-SPAN: Elena Kagan on cameras in the Supreme Court.

WHAT THE G.O.P. doesn’t get about blogs.

IN THE MAIL: From Thomas Cherewick, Broken Family Law: In the Best Interests of the Minor Child.

PENNA. DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY: Sestak 46, Specter 42. How’s that party-switch working for you, Arlen?

ELENA KAGAN: “I LOVE the Federalist Society! I LOVE the Federalist Society!”

ON ELENA KAGAN: “She is certainly a fan of presidential power.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Are the Feds Trying to Nationalize Your Retirement Savings? “At this point, I think the best we can say is this: the federal government is desperate for cash, and the biggest untapped source of wealth is the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars that Americans who are now nearing retirement age have saved over their lifetimes.”

FUN WITH HIGH-TECH WEAPONS.

ILYA SOMIN: Preliminary Reflections on the Kagan Nomination.

HOPE AND CHANGE! Goldman Sachs Has First Perfect Quarter With Zero Trading Loss. “Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s traders made money every single day of the first quarter, a feat the firm has never accomplished before.”

TIM CAVANAUGH: California: The American Greece. “What do Europe’s most bankrupt nation-state and America’s most bankrupt united state have in common, aside from being bankrupt? In what is undoubtedly a coincidence noticed only by free-market fundamentalists, it turns out that Greece, that sun-drenched paradise on the Aegean, and California, that sun-warmed El Dorado on the Pacific, are the worst places to do business in their respective economic zones. . . . The insidious thing about an unfriendly business climate is that it takes a long time for the effects to show up in the government’s inability to pay its bills. So long, in fact, that when the sovereign bankruptcy comes, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that tax rates are too low. Both California and Greece are going through a variety of this type of denial right now. But with the governor of California and the prime minister of Greece both promising to turn over a new leaf, this is a good time to remember that you can’t take people’s money if you prevent them from making money in the first place.”

THE SAUSAGE GRAVY QUEST.

LIBERAL FASCISM: THE FONT.

THE TIMES SQUARE BOMBING INVESTIGATION: Discontinue The Censorship.

MARK HEMINGWAY: Tea Parties May Be Europe’s Only Hope.

Last week in Greece, a bank was firebombed by left-wing protesters, killing three people. The protesters were upset that as a result of the financial crisis, the Greek government is freezing public sector wages and taking other austerity measures.

Compare and contrast: In America, Tea Partiers peacefully march and demand their government spend less money to head off an impending crisis before it happens. In Greece, they evade taxes, wait until the economy collapses, then kill bank employees when the government is forced to cut benefits.

Which strikes you as the more sensible response to government fiscal recklessness? . . . A hundred million were killed by Communist governments in the name of Marx, but surely Rush Limbaugh fans are the real threat here.

Heh.

REVEALING THE DATA ON YOUR CREDIT CARD’S MAGSTRIPE using rust particles.

HEH: Left Wing Media Continues Struggle to Define the Tea Party Movement. “It’s like watching a 3 year old struggle with a jigsaw puzzle for AGES 14 AND UP.”

Plus this amusing line from Stacy McCain: “What was the point of the Left’s ‘long march through the institutions’ if, having captured those institutions, they can’t use them to tell everybody else what to do?”

More here.