Seeking The Real
From Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning Was the Command Line:
I was in Disney World recently, specifically the part of it called the Magic Kingdom, walking up Main Street USA. This is a perfect gingerbready Victorian small town that culminates in a Disney castle. It was very crowded; we shuffled rather than walked. Directly in front of me was a man with a camcorder. It was one of the new breed of camcorders where instead of peering through a viewfinder you gaze at a flat-panel color screen about the size of a playing card, which televises live coverage of whatever the camcorder is seeing. He was holding the appliance close to his face, so that it obstructed his view. Rather than go see a real small town for free, he had paid money to see a pretend one, and rather than see it with the naked eye he was watching it on television.
And rather than stay home and read a book, I was watching him.
Such is the experience I imagine on Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope. I wouldn’t know actually, it doesn’t work on a Mac. Nevertheless, according to his latest column in Fast Company, it brought a tear to Robert Scoble’s eyes.
The other night, the Boy Genius and I spent a few hours in the dark with my telescope. We watched Ganymede slip behind Jupiter. We peered through the inky darkness to find the Lagoon Nebula. And as a finale before bed time we looked at Albireo, a beautiful blue and gold double star in Cygnus.
The sights in my 6 inch reflector certainly can’t rival those of the Hubble, or what you can see on Google Sky or the World Wide Telescope. But they are the real deal, the actual photons traveling for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years, in some cases a vew into the very history of the Universe itself, hitting the back of my eyes.
There’s simply no substitute for looking up yourself at the night sky. It’s what links us to our earliest ancestors who looked up and drew patterns in the skies to illustrate stories and try to make some sense of their own place in the Universe. It’s where the very building blocks of our bodies came from. And if we manage to survive the coming centuries, it’s probably where we are going.
Sitting in front of a monitor, looking at artificially colored and processed images is no substitute for the real deal. It’s just another example of how we look for representations of our reality, instead of experiencing reality first-hand.
Hey Mikey
It’s hard to believe but after a 19 year run on WFAN, the Mike and the Mad Dog show is no more.
If you are from Long Island and of a certain age (*cough*), you spent your morning in traffic listening to Stern and your afternoon sitting on the Northern State listening to Mike and the Mad Dog. Chris Russo’s nasaly whine spoke for every Long Island guy and Mike was the voice of reason. Together, despite their frequent public feuds, they were the voice of the New York sports fan.
Their bailiwick extended far beyond the world of sports - movies, culture, politics - nothing was safe from the duo. My own personal favorite moment came only a few years ago - Mike was discussing “The Passion of the Christ” and Chris Russo interrupted him with a completely un-ironic “don’t give away the ending Mikey.”
I hardly listen to terrestrial radio anymore. There’s nothing even remotely resembling a local voice in any radio station anymore. Air America was interesting for about a year but quickly divested itself of anything remotely resembling an interesting original voice. NPR is like white bread.
I still listen to shortwave and work the 2 meter ham bands, but otherwise I’m perfectly happy to have my XM radio.
More commentary from Tom Watson and the Mike and the Mad Dog Blog.
Blogger Deported From China
Fellow NYer Noel Hidalgo was deported from China for filming a protest held by Students for a Free Tibet, in Tiananmen Square.
Coverage here and in Nate Westheimer’s blog.
Whatever you think of the propriety of holding protests in foreign countries during the Olympics, it’s pretty clear to me (at least) that if we’re ever going to have the promise of a bright big beautiful tomorrow where social media can transcend borders, liberate the oppressed and allow free exchange of commerce and ideas accross borders, this sort of jack-booted behavior on the part of the Chinese authorities needs to have the spotlight of truth shined brightly upon it.
At The Aldrich
Thomas Hawk complains (rightfully so) that museums in San Francisco have issues with photographers.
Here in the North East I’ve never had such a problem in any museum I’ve visited. And in some of the smaller museums, like the Aldrich in Ridgefield, CT, they’ll even go out of their way to point out what’s interesting, new and exciting. And they are kid-friendly, to a fault.
Must be a cultural thing.
Update: 10 Zen Monkeys has a decent rundown of the Thomas Hawk / SF MOMA incident and aftermath. It’s amazing to me (well, maybe not) how quickly they throw in the ‘pervert’ accusation. That’s the last bastion of someone who has nothing else to accuse someone with.
And the rest of the sheeple just go blindly on ….
The Mighty, Fallen
I’m sitting in a half empty theater watching The Clone Wars with my kids.
Put a fork in it folks, it’s dead.
