I was never all that interested in space as a kid. I enjoyed reading The Martian Chronicles and some other sci fi classics, but I was barely aware of NASA or the science of space exploration.
That all changed for me on the Fourth of July, 1997, when I watched the Mars Pathfinder land on the red planet.
A post on Metafilter about the Tokyo National Museum inspired me to visit museum web sites on Mondays and write about them. I am repeatedly awed by the wealth of beautiful images and edifying information provided by museums around the world, and I hope this project will spur me to visit explore the web sites and learn new things.
My current approach to studying French is to make my way through some popular literature, picking up vocabulary words along the way.
I've found a number of Jules Verne works at Project Gutenberg, many available in both French and English. (I've seen several posts on one of the learning language forums reporting good results from reading a book in English and then in the original language. So far, I'm starting with the French, but I may change my mind.)
I decided to start with Around the World in 80 Days.
I love the Internet.
I popped this into Google:
analyzing pop music structures
The results include a huge glossary from the Society for Music Theory's Popular Music Interest Group and the usual ton of other interesting-looking stuff.