Felix Baumgartner’s October 14, 2012 leap of faith from 128,000 feet above the Earth is already history, but I’m moved to comment on it from several perspectives. I had followed his odyssey from its inception, when I originally thought that it was simply a stunt to advertise the sponsoring organization, Red Bull. OK, it was an advertising stunt, but as …
Overdesigning
SpaceX has done it again, albeit with a bit of difficulty. They launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon module to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). The launch itself was perfect off the pad, but just about 90 seconds into the flight, one of the vehicle’s nine engines malfunctioned. The Dragon docked successfully with the ISS today, but …
Memories and (In)Accuracy
About four or five years ago, I found myself issuing caveats to others when describing something I remembered—or thought I did. The caveat was usually along the lines of, “I think I remember”, or “I’m not sure if I remember this or just think I remember this.” Call it the onset of entropic consciousness, or just aging, but there it …
Communications(?)
At times unfortunately for those with whom I communicate by any of several channels, I tend to be something of a purist in things grammatical, punctuational, and just about every other kind of -al that might apply. I acknowledge that English (and particularly American English) is a living language, but I still insist (quixotically, at times) that there must be …
Do It Differently
I came across this interesting item last week, which describes how a person’s world view was changed by way of technology. It got me thinking about how wedded many of us are to doing things the way we have always done them, or how others have always done them, or, in some cases, not doing something at all because to …
Sci-fi? No; reality!
This video/animation of the launch-through-landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), aka Curiosity, was initially produced in 2011, long before the successful landing of Curiosity on Mars. Except for the juvenile need to include sounds where no sound could carry (i.e., outside the two planets’ atmosphers), this is exceedingly well done, and worth about five minutes of your time. The …
Can’t Do A Thing About It
Living as I do within 100 miles or so of Yellowstone National Park, its geological instability is very present to me. Loosely speaking, the volcano upon which Yellowstone sits erupts—on average—every 640,000 years. The last such megaexplosion was…just about 640,000 years ago. Statistically, we can expect another such megaexplosion any time now. Geologically speaking, “any time now” covers a lot …
Crossing Boundaries
Have you ever been in a situation where—despite all your best efforts—some circumstance completely beyond your control crept into your carefully constructed reality, changing things for the worse, or even just forcing you to take some action that hadn’t anticipated? I got to thinking about this as a general phenomenon this morning upon seeing this item that shows that half …
No Lunch Break?
It seems that the injunction—real or perceived—to do more with less is having an impact on the lunch break. According to this item from LiveScience, fewer people than before are taking their lunch breaks, with a concomitant effect on their performance. I acknowledge that I haven’t worked in a formal organizational setting for a very long time, but even when …
Sometimes, It All Just Works
As of this writing, the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is old news, but the technology that allowed it to happen and also allowed me to partake of the excitement is what I wish to address today. The night of the landing, I was exhausted—so much so that I just couldn’t get my act together enough …