Space 7 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Unblogged Bits for Monday, 05 October 2009

Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….

A Swift view of Andromeda – Whenever I see lovely pics of galaxies, the end titles music for the (original) Outer Limits always plays in my head.
HAPPY Days or, Should Pets Be Tax Deductible? – Everyone has sacred cows — and when you’re a Congresscritter, of whatever party, you get to vote in tax advantages to them. I have pets, but I’d just as soon not get a tax deduction for them.
Why American Credit Cards Suck [Travel Tips] – Yeah, we’re going to be the greatest country in the world right until we turn around one day and realize everyone else has left us behind.
Photographers – Toughest Shot | Outside Online – Okay, I’m now cured of wanting to be a professional photographer.
The Abuse Of American Exceptionalism – Amen, brother.
Tolkien’s Monsters: Tonight, on the History Channel – If I can just remember the DVR … since this will no doubt be the only thing on History Channel ever to never to be repeated.
Competitive Awesome: Yum…Camel Balls! – Extra sour!
You know the name, but just who were the Luddites? – A little bit of noteworthy history.
Happy 40th, Monty Python! (And Now, For Something Completely Different) – Certainly one of the great cultural influences of our time. At least in the subculture I inhabit.
Great billboards – Nice hourglass.
Product Ideas for Google Reader – Google Product Ideas – A great way to solicit (and vote on) feature ideas. Of the 2,000 ideas received, they’ve come up with responses (“Answered Ideas”) on a dozen … none of mine, alas.
Busted burglar – I guess if you’re going to be burgled, it’s good to have a burglar with a sense of humor.
Baked Ziti Recipe – Mmmmm … baked ziti …
See my baby? O – M – G . – TEH CUTE!
France Announces $2.2 Billion Electric Car Charging Network: Sarah Parsons
Sputnik at 52: Ed Darrell
Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message – How to win friends and influence potential dates. Say “Howdy” and talk about zombies and atheism, not about how hot the other person’s picture looks. Ooookay.
Parishioners asked to pay criminal defense of Rev. Don Armstrong – The Pulpit : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
Kristol Compares Obama’s Olympics Pitch To ‘George W. Bush-Like’ Bullying – “For them to be cheering America’s loss here on the right, I think is sort of disgusting.” Yup.

Surveys

And just to demonstrate that I can talk about something other than the Blogathon …

I always feel duty-bound to answer phone surveys. My wife’s a statistician, for one thing. For another, I feel like my point of view is probably askew from the mainstream in a number of areas (oh, to be a Nielsen Family), and it’s nice to get a bit of representation here.

On the other hand, I’m well aware of the concept of push polls and the like, and so I’m always hypersensitive to biased questions when I’m on a phone survey. I’m also sensitive to social engineering type attacks, and always consider whether the info I’m being asked for could be to my detriment if I give it out.

The result is, unfortunately, that I spend more effort mentally parsing the questions and answers as I do coming up with responding accurately. Which is a shame because … well, it is.

If Man first walked on the Moon today

A nice video (via Les, with good commentary) put together by Slate, speculating on what media coverage of the first Moon Landing would have looked like if it were 2009, not 1969.

Yeah, I suspect so. While there may be some “Golden Age of News” blinders in our memory, the fancy-shmancy graphics, the man-on-the-street commentary, story arc titles, panels of talking heads, and Twitter feeds (fergoshsakes) all look like the sort of non-information dreck that’s taken over TV news. All that was missing was someone interactively drawing orbits around the Moon on a huge touch screen panel, and someone on Fox speculating that it was all a hoax to distract attention from Obama’s birth certificate …

The Google Maps bit, though, was clever. That’s information, folks, a way to show a map of what’s happening where on the Moon. There are things the news media can do to inform, rather than entertain. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much money in that.

20 July 1969

My memory isn’t very good.

Which is to say that I remember lots of facts, but much of my personal memory, my life, tends to be a gestalt, a blur of impressions and fragments. People wonder why I blog, and take so many photos? That’s why.

So my own memory of the first Moon landing isn’t the sharp, crisp, “everyone remembers where they were” kind of thing that so many people (who were alive at the time) is posting today.

I would have been 8 years old — a bit younger than Katherine now, but still in that range. We were with my Mom’s folks up in Santa Barbara, on De La Guerra Terrace. The TV was in the downstairs (virtually a basement, except that they lived on such a slope). And I remember the event happening, and perhaps even some images on their black and white TV (was it actually black and white?) of the landing, and then of the climbing down. I remember my folks, and Nono and Nona, watching the TV.

And that, unfortunately, is that. No remembered great resolve to someday go into space myself, or anything like that. Flickers of memory far less substantial than the video.

A shame, that. Though less of a shame than how mundane it all became, before we decided that, no, spending money on manned space flight was a waste.

The long retreat

One day I fear I’ll have to answer to Katherine — or to her children — about how we let this slip away …

The international space station is by far the largest spacecraft ever built by earthlings. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it often passes over North America and is visible from the ground when night has fallen but the station, up high, is still bathed in sunlight.
After more than a decade of construction, it is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.
And then?
“In the first quarter of 2016, we’ll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft,” says NASA’s space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.
That’s a polite way of saying that NASA will make the space station fall back into the atmosphere, where it will turn into a fireball and then crash into the Pacific Ocean. It’ll be a controlled reentry, to ensure that it doesn’t take out a major city. But it’ll be destroyed as surely as a Lego palace obliterated by the sweeping arm of a suddenly bored kid.

The ISS is not a perfect endeavor. But it’s there, and it’s a small sign that we’re still interested in something bigger than our (literally) mundane concerns. It’s an appeal to our better natures, to our ideals — and deciding it doesn’t fit into a given year’s budget cycle shows the flip side to government programs that never seem to die: some things you can’t just give up on for a little while then pick up again when you’re ready.

Unmanned probes are fine, even clever. Manned space missions are flashy. But an orbiting habitat is … humanity’s toe-hold in space. But not nearly important as some Congresscritter’s district’s big defense contract, I guess.

I think of the big “spinning wheel” space stations from SF novels of my youth — or, heck, from 2001: A Space Odyssey — and reading this makes me very sad.

Unblogged Bits for Wednesday, 06 May 2009

Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….

Valerie Tarico: Church-Going and Torture Approval — What’s the Connection?: Valerie Tarico
Majority Of Americans Want Pot Legalized: Zogby Poll: The Huffington Post News Team
Two Series Review – Since we twisted BD’s arm into watching “Avatar,” it’s only fair I share his review of the first two series. As soon as he can get over to the house, we’ll get him S.3.
Cantor Tries, Fails To Offer GOP Health Care Plan On Morning Joe (VIDEO) – “We have top men on it.” “Who?” “Top. Men.”
Fed Inspector General Knows Roughly Nothing About The Fed (VIDEO) – Wow. That’s … um … disturbing.
Sessions: SCOTUS Filibuster Should Be Rare – We will see.
The Straight Dope: Am I imagining or are women’s breasts getting bigger? – Inquiring minds want to know!
Government Still Blocking Information on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty: rebecca
AGs v. Craigslist: Putting the Bully Back Into Bully Pulpit: mattz
Pam’s House Blend:: BREAKING: Maine Gov. Baldacci signs marriage equality bill – Go, Maine, go!
James Dobson’s Hate Crimes Freak-Out – Look! Resusable (legal) code! It’s not a bug, James, it’s a feature!
SPACE.com — Star Trek’s Warp Drive: Not Impossible – Don’t book your flights quite yet. It’s still in the “hey, it might not be impossible” stage.
Your Blog is a Weapon? – See, this is the sort of thing that the Hate Crimes folks are actually (and, in this case, correctly) worried about.
Rampant boobies to reign at Disneyland! – Huh. Never thought of someone doing this (duh), nor that Disney would have folks watching out for it. I give this a month before rampant boobie-flashing forces a change back in policy. Hmmmm. Have they changed this at Walt Disney World, too?
Over The Gray, Bland Rainbow: admin
Update to the Military Proselytizing Story – Well, at least they did something. But, yes, they need do something more.
Mormon GOP Congressman from Utah threatens to prevent D.C.’s new marriage provision from becoming law – Nice support for representative government there, Rep. Chaffetz.
Top 10 Reasons Your Chargeback Will Be Denied [Insiders]: Ben Popken

Happy Anniversary, Spirit!

The Mars “Spirit” Rover, is celebrating its five year anniversary. It was only supposed to operate for three months. These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the…

Spirit looks back upon its trail

The Mars “Spirit” Rover, is celebrating its five year anniversary. It was only supposed to operate for three months.

These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day,” said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead.”
Together, the rovers have driven more than 20km, and returned more than 36 gigabytes of data. This has included a quarter of a million images.
Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water. Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum.

The two rovers are showing their age, but continue to push on. Because of a jammed wheel, Spirit has to drive backwards to go anywhere — but wheel scraping revealed some valuable info about minerals just below the surface dust.

When NASA manages to do something right, the results are amazing. Spirit and its sister, Opportunity, will have the Mars surface to themselves for a while, though — as both NASA and ESA have both postponed their next Mars probes due to budget issues.