A New Start ~Moosedenied ~ Welcome back to the most wonderful time of the year, bitches! Hope you're ready to put pretty much everything else on the back burner for the next six months. By all accounts, the Saints have had themselves one hell of a positive offseason. For example, they're one of a dwindling handful of NFL teams who managed to make it through the last six months without any of their players murdering anyone. So we've got that going for us. High five? Gotta love that high-character locker room! Word on the street is that (so far) even John Jenkins has been obtaining his biscuits through legal and nonviolent means. There's been a stunning lack of contract disputes, looming suspensions, internal investigations and daily hatchet jobs from the Legitimate Media™. The buzzword all summer has been (a return to) "normalcy" and optimism seems particularly high as the countdown to August 11* begins in earnest.

It's a Love Thing: A Benefit Love-Fest for Deborah Cotton

Chart: The 7,000 Streams that Become the Mississippi River ~Chris Kirk, Slate

~A new online tool released by the Department of the Interior this week allows users to select any major stream and trace it up to its sources or down to its watershed. The above map, exported from the tool, highlights all the major tributaries that feed into the Mississippi River, illustrating the river’s huge catchment area of approximately 1.15 million square miles, or 37 percent of the land area of the continental U.S. Use the tool to see where the streams around you are getting their water (and pollution).

Officials: 'Major cloud of gas' surrounds platform after blowout ~WDSU