Aug252005

Coming Soon: The Next-Generation Space Telescope

My entry awhile back on the recent space shuttle mission triggered a comment-section discussion between myself and my friend Robert about, among other things, plans for a new space telescope to replace the aging Hubble. Well, Robert, just for you, I’m linking to this article about that new telescope, which has just reached a big manufacturing milestone related to its primary mirror. Fantabulous factoids about said mirror and the telescope to which it belongs follow:

The [James] Webb [Space] Telescope features a 6.5-meter (20 feet) aperture primary mirror comprised of 18 beryllium segments and will be the largest deployable telescope ever launched. …JWST will peer into the infrared at great distances to search for answers to astronomers’ fundamental questions about the birth and evolution of galaxies, the size and shape of the universe and the mysterious life cycle of matter. The space-based observatory will reside in an orbit 940,000 miles from Earth at the L2 Lagrange point.

The Lagrange points, for the non-geeky among us, are places in space where an object will be stationary relative to both the Earth and the Moon, rather than continuously changing position like ordinary satellites.

This has been another interesting but essentially useless exercise in trivia, courtesy of Simple Tricks and Nonsense. You may now return to your regularly scheduled Web surfing.

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Aug242005

Modern Jewish Girls in Sandy, Utah?

In case you were wondering, you can indeed find my friend Ruthie’s book, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, here in the Salt Lake area. Anne and I went shopping last night at a local Barnes and Noble store and located it with no trouble at all. There were, in fact, two copies available. And we weren’t even at the big store downtown. We were out in stiflingly dull, virtually monoethnic, suburban Sandy. The book was located in the Judaism section, which is next to the Bibles and around the corner from the LDS stuff.

So who would have thought there was a Judaism section at the Sandy B&N? I was stunned…

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Aug242005

Brock Peters

All the standard obituaries for Brock Peters, the imposing actor who died yesterday at the age of 78, are emphasizing his role as Tom Robinson in the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird. But for me, he’ll always be the voice of Darth Vader.

Continue Reading…

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Aug232005

Space Stuff

There are some interesting tidbits over at Space.com today that probably won’t make it onto the evening news, so I thought I’d provide a valuable public service and bring them to the attention of my three loyal readers.

Continue Reading…

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Aug232005

Klingon Fairy Tales

The off-beat Web site of off-beat publisher McSweeney’s — which produces anthologies of short fiction with titles like Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things — today posts up a very funny list of Klingon fairy tales, i.e., familiar fairy-tale titles given a perverse twist. I don’t think you have to be a Trek fan to enjoy these, so long as you understand the basic characterization of Klingons. (Hint: their entire culture is based on combat and personal honor. And personal honor that is obtained through combat. And combat over matters of personal honor. And… well, you get the idea.)

Here are my favorites:

“Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others”

 

“The Three Little Pigs Build an Improvised Explosive Device and Deal With That Damned Wolf Once and for All”

 

“Old Mother Hubbard, Lacking the Means to Support Herself With Honor, Sets Her Disruptor on Self-Destruct and Waits for the Inevitable”

Go check out the rest… Qapla’!

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Aug222005

Ruthie Gets Published!

My friend Ruth Ellenson has just emailed me with some very exciting news: her first book hits the stands today! (How ironic, in light of the previous entry‘s gloomy assessment of modern American reading habits, but this isn’t the time for pessimism…)

Yes, it’s true, I happen to know a published author. (Imagine me gripping my lapels and looking smug as I say that.) Actually, she was the editor of this volume rather than the author, since it’s a collection of essays, but hey, it’s still her name on the cover, right? Close enough to famous for my money. Here’s the message she sent me:

Continue Reading…

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Aug222005

Kids Today…

Writer Peter David tells a heartbreaking story today about a little boy who loves Spider-Man. He wears Spidey-branded shoes, plays the Spidey video game, owns the Spider-Man movies on DVD and regularly watches the animated series on the Cartoon Network. But he’s never read a Spider-Man comic. Even worse, he has no interest in reading one. Zero. Zip. The very source of the character and stories that he’s made the center of his young life holds as much appeal for seven-year-old Steven as sitting through a grad-school lecture on macroeconomics. (Not that a lecture on macroeconomics holds much appeal for anybody except the tiniest handful, but you get my point.)

It is stories like this that are propelling me down the road to premature Grumpy Old Man-hood.

Continue Reading…

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Aug192005

Vive la Book-vending Machines!

Say what you will about the French — and I know people who will say plenty — they are the clever folks who brought us the wonders of the self-cleaning street toilet. And now they’ve come up with another “duh, why haven’t we had this before?” invention: the Maxi-Livres book-vending machine. Five such machines, stocking 25 titles that range from The Odyssey to a French-English dictionary, have been installed in various locations around Paris. According to the linked article, the books cost only $2.45, an incredible bargain these days, especially when you factor in exchange rates. And the thing that makes these machines really cool?

…Maxi-Livre’s distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books.

 

“We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda,” [Maxi-Livre president Xavier] Chambon said. “So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely.”

While my first choice will always be a quirky, independently-owned bookshop — preferably one with a live-in cat or other animal mascot — I really like this idea. If nothing else, it would solve that nasty problem of what to read on the train-ride home if you finish your book during your lunch break…

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Aug192005

Boomer Trivia

What does it say about me that I know more about Baby Boomer pop culture than my parents?

To explain: my folks don’t have their own e-mail addresses, e-mail apparently being something akin to the arcane arts of blackest magic as far as they’re concerned. That means that all their buddies who are e-literate tend to send their jokes and stories and other assorted spam to me, hoping that I will be a good son and relay it to the parental units. Most of the time I don’t bother because very little of it is worth their time, or mine, either. (I especially despise the would-be heartstring-tuggers!) But every now and again something comes through that’s kind of fun and worth passing along.

Case in point: a trivia quiz that arrived yesterday, composed of questions about TV, music, and historical events from the late 1950s and ’60s. When I first opened the message, I was confident that I’d know quite a few of the answers, since I spent a good part of my childhood watching re-runs of the previous decade’s television programming, but imagine my surprise when I got more of these correct than my parents. Obviously something is seriously amiss in the space-time continuum…

Here’s the quiz, slightly edited by me for grammar and such:

Continue Reading…

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Aug182005

Joe Ranft

Boy, this one is sad: Joe Ranft, part of the creative team at the computer animation film company Pixar, died yesterday in a horrific accident (he was a passenger in a car that went off a Southern California cliff into the ocean). He was only 45.

Most people have probably never heard of Ranft unless they’re major animation buffs, but he was a big-time force behind four of Pixar’s amazing raft of hits — Toy Story and its sequel, A Bug’s Life, and Monsters, Inc. all benefited from his writing talents. He also provided character voices for several other Pixar films, most notably Heimlich, the overweight and food-obsessed caterpillar, in A Bug’s Life. If you’ve watched the DVD supplements on any of those films, you’ll likely recognize his face.

In addition, a check of his filmography reveals that he had a hand in several other significant animated films of recent years, including Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, and the film that, as much as anything, is responsible for the modern renaissance of film animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. I myself am not a big fan of animated movies, but looking over this list I realize that I am a fan of most everything Joe Ranft worked on. What a bummer…

If you’re interested in reading more, The Hollywood Reporter obituary is here, and the blog Cartoon Brew has remembrances and links to other relevant material here.

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