Podcasts are a great way of keeping your listening skills sharp. Most international newspapers and magazines offer free podcasts on their websites. Some are TIME, BBC and The Guardian. Listen away!

The agony aunt “is a newspaper columnist who gives advice to people having problems, especially personal ones.”

The game is as follows: A friend of yours - be he/she real or fictional, who shall forever remain nameless - has a personal problem it needs advice on. Choose a partner who will act as an Agony Aunt/Uncle :) and describe your friend’s problem to her/him and listen to your partner’s words of wisdom. Then switch.

I was shopping around this weekend for a new cell phone - mine, a year-old Sony, is already ancient in terms of what it can do at the speed I expect programs to run - and couldn’t find anything I wanted within the price range I was aiming at. We are, as always, the last to receive the newest versions of our daily gadgets, and being a rich country (ironic sneer) pay twice of what Americans would pay for the same product. So, I guess I’ll have to stick to my phone a while longer. My consumerist plan thwarted, I went back to my newsfeeds. To my surprise, I found a very interesting article on old tech that refuses to die.

What are the technologies of yore you miss the most?

What are the gadgets your are not willing to part with?

Share your thoughts!

Comic for July 11, 2011 - http://pulse.me/s/CD6b

As the American Space Program closes a chapter with the final launch of Atlantis, and Steven Spielberg once again brings a space invasion to our home screens, what are your thoughts on humanity’s future in space?

Are we alone in the universe? What if we are not? Would our cosmic neighbors be as hideous as the ones picture in fiction? Do you believe in UFOs and alien abductions?

Speak up!