Brother, can you spare a dime?
An evening pause: In honor of the anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash, Bing Crosby singing “Brother, can you spare a dime?”
Tag: history
Wikipedia bans global warming propagandist
Wikipedia bans global warming propagandist. Key quote:
Through his position, Connolley for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist. His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia.
The New York Mets 1969
An evening pause: Who says miracles cannot happen? In 1969, the New York Mets proved that they can. Even if you are not a sports fan, watch this short film (which only covers the World Series and not the entire astonishing season) and you’ll get a glimmer of how miraculous that victory was. Today, October 16, is the anniversary of that victory.
A Night to Remember
An evening pause: With the death of film director Roy Ward Baker yesterday, I think it appropriate to watch a clip from one of his classics, A Night to Remember (1958). This understated but frighteningly powerful film captured the reality of the Titanic’s sinking in a style that is unfortunately rare today.
Archeologists discover a sealed stone age home
Archeologists have uncovered a stone age dwelling site from 3500 BC, practically intact.
Sputnik
An evening pause: October 4, 1957, the space age began.
Remembering Willie Ley
Remembering Willie Ley. He never flew in space, and died just weeks before the Apollo 11 landing. Yet he probably did as much if not more to make it happen than any other man.
Listen to the sound of Babylonia
A researcher at the University of Cambridge is posting audio recordings on the web of Babylonian poetry, myths, and other texts, so that everyone can hear what the ancient languages sounded like. Key quote:
“In many cases [the works] are the equivalent of Old English tales like Beowulf,” Dr. Worthington added. “Through them, we meet gods, giants, monsters and all sorts of other weird and wonderful creatures. As stories they are amazing fun.”
Lost footage of Armstrong’s first step found
Lost video footage of Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon found in Australia.
The day the Constitution was ratified
An evening pause: As today is the day in which our Founding Fathers ratified the Constitution, I thought it might be worthwhile to allow Andrew Klavan the opportunity to give us his “A Young Person’s Guide to the United States Constitution.” To quote: We are going to have a little civics lesson, to make up for what you’ve been learning in school.
Earliest Kodak color tests
An evening pause: Though this sequence of shots from a 1922 Kodak test of Kodachrome film (possibly the earliest in existence) is hardly the stuff of drama, it is fascinating nonetheless, as it gives as an honest glimpse into the culture of its time. As you watch the different women pose for the camera, ask yourself: Has anything changed?
The Space War, in a nutshell
Bumped, with update below
This Christian Science Monitor article gives a nice summary of the present state of war between the President, the House, and the Senate over NASA’s future.
All in all, things do not look good. With so much disagreement, whatever Congress and the President eventually agree to is going to be a mess, accomplishing little while spending gobs of money that the federal government simply no longer has. The result will almost certainly be a failed NASA program, an inability of the United States government to get astronauts into orbit, and an enormous waste of resources.
The one shining light in all this is that we still have a unrelenting need to get into space, not merely to supply the International Space Station but to also compete with other nations. It is my belief that this need — and the potential profits to be made from it — is going to compel private companies to build their own rockets and capsules for getting humans and cargo into space. And I think they will do it whether or not the federal government can get its act together.
Thus, though the U.S. might find itself a bystander in the space race for the next decade or so, in the end we will have a vibrant, competing aerospace industry, capable of dominating the exploration of the solar system for generations to come.
So buck up, space cadets. The near term future might be grim, but the long term possibilities remain endless.
Update: This announcement today from Boeing and Space Adventures illustrates my above point perfectly. For decades Boeing has been a lazy company, living off the government dole while doing little to capture market share in the competitive market. Now that the dole of government is possibly going away, however, the company at last appears to be coming alive. Instead of waiting for a deal with NASA, Boeing has been going ahead with its CST-100 manned capsule, figuring it can make money anyway by selling this product to both private and government customers.