Say Goodnight, Gracie

(not STS-135 but still a nice photo; "beep beep beep")

I was in second grade when the first Space Shuttle launched.  My teacher had asked the day before if one of the students could bring in a TV for us to watch the launch in the classroom.  This was before the days of DirecTV, the web (!), cable (for the most part), pretty much anything that involved TV in quantity vs quality. Broadcast TV in Puerto Rico at the time meant 3 stations and a scattering of wannabe's.  The notion that "this is going to be on TV without commercial break tomorrow and we're going to watch it" was as big a deal as it sounds.  Think Walter Cronkite-JFK assassination and then turn it around.

I remember her closing the windows to darken the room (it was a small b&w set that someone brought in) and us sitting on the tiled floor up-front from our desks around the blue light, not really knowing what the deal was but.....

3....2...1....

and it took off.   COLUMBIA.

My other classroom memory of the Shuttle, sadly, was in seventh grade when the principal came in and just blankly said "it blew up".  The teacher was not pleased, and not because her class had been interrupted.

Thirteen lifetimes later, it seems, it's over.  I'm not sad for the Shuttle program itself; there's always a better way to do something, even if it takes some time.  Give it time.

(link & image go to 30 years of Shuttle launches, with nice music)

That must have been a huge settlement check

"The Big Apple Circus is a great family event. The kids especially enjoyed Bello's performance. The accident was a fluke (getting hit by lightning is more probable), but the most important thing is the kids are fine and our understanding is the performer is as well," the children's parents, Lou and Patricia Imbriano, said in a statement.

Jon Stewart is Edward R. Murrow

This is the smartest thing I've seen on television (*) in many months.  And to find it within the context of "comedy" is truly mind-bending.  An actual in-depth interview with John Yoo, the author of the legal documents which rationalized the use of torture as a means to an end in a "time of war".  It really makes one wonder why the only place where he could find a fair audience was a comedy news review show.  Either he's doing something really wrong (he is) or they are doing something really right (they are).

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-11-2010/john-yoo-pt--1


(*) Never mind that I didn't watch it on TV, since one can only find the eviscerating full-length interview online.

David Gregory's Head is Two Feet Wide

This is a screen grab of David Gregory interviewing John Kerry (who is neither a small nor a small-headed man) on yesterday's Meet The Press. How is it possible for someone's head to appear dramatically larger than that of another person's, which is sitting four feet in the foreground? Is this some sort of blue-screen shenanigan, in that the interview may have been done by the participants remotely?

Two interesting articles about Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick

This

... from which I learned that the incident at Chappaquiddick occurred two days before the first moon landing! The writer is entirely correct in that today's cable news and talk radio would have engaged in wall-to-wall coverage of the former, completely ignoring the latter.

And

This

... from which I learned that Mary Jo Kopechne did not die of drowning, but of asphyxiation, trapped in a car only mostly filled with water, over the course of several hours. My assumption for however many years I've known about this incident is that it was one of those things that happened rather quickly, and while wholly avoidable, could simply be described as one of life's horrible accidents. This new knowledge really brings the moral implications of the act to an entirely new low in my opinion.

But having said that, the second article does also bring up an interesting ethical point, which is that if one thinks of the good/bad that a person's life brings to the world in arithmetical accounting terms, his life is squarely in the black. Fair enough, but I couldn't help comparing this evaluation to the life of another icon which died recently, whose life was considered to be one of monumental contributions to the world, save for one specific act... Could one argue that Michael Jackson's life, in the balance, was one of good, even if the accusations of his being a child molester were to be confirmed? Does that mean that a child molester can be "a good person"? Does this mean that I can be both a thief and a patron, as long as the former is monetarily outweighed by the latter? Most of our lives are a mass of gray-area actions, some not so good, some slightly better than average, but not usually in the extreme one way or another. What can be said of a person who, at a specific time and place, was as horrible as anything that ever was, but otherwise was admirable? What does this mean in the context of law and order? I'm confused.

"The View", for assholes

A funny thing is happening (as they said in a certain movie, although probably for reverse qualities) at Fox News when they start broadcasting their (live) B-roll on the internet (link goes to feed, as of 9pm 6/3/08), complete with pizza-eating burps, "excuse-me I'm going to the bathroom"'s, "we gotta do some TV now so let's be quiet and let the grownups speak" (as a means of introducing Chris Wallace and Karl Rove, for the TV feed).

It's Big Brother (the show) meeting Big Brother (the real fucking thing).

Karl Rove (in rear) reports on the blogosphere and online whatnots,
for the benefit of the internet news crack addicts.

That's My Bank

[...]Democrats said they noticed an occasional Clinton-friendly tone from Mr. Drudge, whom New York magazine quoted as saying on his program: “I need Hillary Clinton. You don’t get it. I need to be part of her world. That’s my bank.”

News story

This really has me all steamed up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SImhkapRuIs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgothamist%2Ecom%2F
(link above goes to this video link)

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_199211634.html

I was working in midtown today... but on the west side, "safely" about a mile away in the early PM when this happened. Had no idea about it until the other half called me from work to see where I was (he works in an E.R. so he's privy to these things more immediately than yours truly boring web developer). You can still (midnight now!) hear firetrucks go by outside MY HOUSE IN BROOKLYN rolling in to help out.

My proposal for a tourist season slogan: "New York City: Home of the 27-alarm fire". What we'll do is implode a building every year at the exact same time, like the New Year's ball drop, and invite people from all over the world to come see it. The twist is we don't tell them which building. Seeking a good vantage point for the event then becomes as much an effort in game theory / positioning as that of having a good exit strategy. No other city in the world could pull it off; we don't just have a handful of oversize skyscrapers... we have MOST of them. I'm sure the t-shirt sales would produce a healthy net gain after just a few years of promotional losses.

I'm in The New York Times

A news story published today in the New York Times (and nytimes.com, linked above) features yours, this time, truly.

Not exactly the central focus of the piece, but you can see me at timecode 2:39 of the video piece.

The article was about the March for Change grassroots drive to promote the Obama '08 campaign, which I wrote about here.

I didn't know Matt Drudge was so damned funny

god bless his crooked, opportunistic little heart

Drudge's 12th jumped shark this week