This is art:
This is life, imitating art:
That in both cases, the subject matter itself is art is just the icing on the cake.
May 182012
May 152012
“This is it. The Big Bang Theory television show lost all its credibility for me. I could put up with the laugh track (though I cannot understand why they need a laugh track for a realistic drama series) but not with this utter contempt towards elementary logic. Here is what happened: in one episode (S1E15), Dr. Sheldon Cooper tells us that Missy is his fraternal twin sister. But then, in another episode (S3E17), Dr. Cooper purportedly says, “I have a twin sister whose assaults began in utero. If only I’d had the presence of mind to reabsorb her then I’d have a mole with hair on it”. But a real-life Dr. Sheldon Cooper would never make such a mistake: he would know very well that one can only reabsorb an identical twin. This blatant disregard for logic is an insult to the viewers’ intelligence. I am sorry, but this show is unwatchable. Change the channel, please.”
The preceding rant is best delivered, of course, in the voice of Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Fortunately, I am not Sheldon Cooper, and I will still enjoy TBBT when it returns for its next season in the fall. Nor do I have any plans of joining the ranks of nitpickers who demonstrate their presumed intellectual superiority by spending hours watching and re-watching television shows and movies just to find the odd goof. I swear I only noticed this one by accident!
May 152012
I am really disappointed to learn this morning that the world will not come to an end December this year. According to a new discovery, the Mayan calendar may have had at least 17 baktuns, not 13 as previously believed, so we are good for something like another two millennia.
Just as I was getting ready to sell my house and all my earthly possessions…
May 142012
My humble request to Messrs. Ray and Mulcair today: stop wasting time and unite the left already!
One bright sunny day, the Conservatives try to pull the wool over Parliament’s (and the public’s) eyes by intentionally misleading us about the price of the planned F-35 purchase.
Another day, they are about to make Bill C-11 into law, turning me into a criminal (a criminal!) for the mere act of copying the contents of an (owned) DVD to my hard drive or watching a foreign DVD with the help of software that bypasses the region code.
Yet another day, they cut funding to science, potentially destroying unique national treasures.
Meanwhile, they award a teeny weeny contract for, what was it, transmission parts I believe… so tiny, it didn’t even deserve a press release, unlike much larger contracts worth thousands of dollars. The value of the teeny weeny one? $105 million.
Or how about slashing funding to Parks Canada so much, they may not even be able to keep canal locks open for a full season.
Then there is a totally unnecessary, boneheadedly ideological crime bill, implementing a “tough on crime” agenda at a time when crime rates are on the decline across the board. Who cares so long as the provinces foot the bill, I guess.
But never mind getting tough on crime, it does not prevent the Conservatives from closing the historic Kingston penitentiary… even though similar establishments are overcrowded everywhere (and that was before the new crime bill).
All this from a government that willfully ignores facts when they disagree with their agenda, or invents facts when it suits their fancy.
And they don’t even have a majority of Canadians supporting them. The only reason they enjoy a majority in Parliament is that the left cannot stop the bickering, and the Liberals and the NDP split the anti-Conservative vote.
Messrs. Ray and Mulcair: you are bigger than this. You know that Canada needs a better government in 2015. Unite already. I say this as a one-time supporter of the once proud Progressive Conservative Party of Canada: we need you.
May 112012
Here is a photograph of the cockpit of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, powered up for the very last time ever:
It is an emotional moment. But we must not let those emotions get in the way of reason. The Shuttle program swallowed up huge amounts of money and these orbiters, however wonderful, didn’t really take humanity anywhere.
Just consider: the Shuttle flew a few hundred kilometers from the surface of planet Earth. That is one one-thousandths (!) of the distance to the Moon, visited by Apollo astronauts over 40 years ago. But no human has been beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 flew in late 1972. Now if all goes well, in a few short years one of the very first missions of NASA’s new spacecraft, the Orion capsule, may take humans beyond the Moon, to the L2 Lagrange point. At last, this is real exploration again… not just a routine (albeit dangerous) taxiing between the surface and LEO.
And the taxiing is not going to stop for Americans. The Dragon capsule of SpaceX corporation is set to fly to the International Space Station next week. It is still an unmanned flight but if all goes well, perhaps the next time they’ll ferry not just cargo but also people.
May 102012
In 2004, NASA landed two rovers on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity. Both far surpassed expectations, operating much longer than their planned design lifetime of 6 months.
Spirit was ultimately lost in 2010, but Opportunity, having spent the last five months in hibernation during the Martian winter, is now driving again. It is amazing that this machine is still functioning. Imagine leaving a solar powered remote control toy in the sandy desert somewhere. How long would it survive and remain drivable?
May 102012
It’s one setback after another, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Last year it was Phobos-Grunt, Russia’s attempt to return to deep space beyond Earth orbit after a 15-year hiatus. Alas, Phobos-Grunt never managed to go too far… it failed to reach escape orbit and eventually fell back to the Earth.
And now, it’s the Sukhoi Superjet’s turn. After more than two decades, Russia is again trying to capture a small segment of the passenger jet market. Their demonstration model was on an Asian tour, trying to impress new customers. Well, they certainly created an impression… just not the impression they were hoping for. More tragically, 48 souls perished.
I suppose that from a Canadian (or Brazilian) perspective, this should be considered “good news”, since the Sukhoi Superjet 100 is intended to compete in a market that is dominated by Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer. But I don’t find this comforting. In fact, for the sake of the future of Russia’s commercial jet industry, I hope that this tragic accident will turn out to be a case of pilot error. Controlled flight into terrain.
May 102012
Astronomy is supposed to be a relatively safe profession. I suppose observational astronomers may occasionally injure themselves when working on a telescope, but it’s probably rare. For them to become murder victims is even more unlikely.
So why would a Japanese astronomer, working in Chile on the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, be murdered on the street just outside his apartment?
May 032012
Everyone who saw the 1986 disaster of the space shuttle Challenger remembers the words from mission control: “Flight control is here looking very carefully at the situation, obviously a major malfunction.”
I was watching a newly surfaced home video of the explosion courtesy of The Huffington Post. (Well worth watching. In particular, notice just how cold it must have been that morning, as evidenced by the clothing people wore.) This led me to a link about Steve Nesbitt, the NASA communications officer who uttered those sad but memorable words.
By the time NASA was ready to fly shuttles again, Nesbitt was already promoted to a new position. But he asked his bosses to be the announcer for the next flight, because “the last one ended rather badly.” Thus he became the voice of NASA in September 1988, when Discovery flew.
Nesbitt retired last year and the shuttles are now heading to museums. But, I admit, the emotional impact of the failed launch of Challenger remains just as strong today as it was 26 years ago.
Apr 302012
I am reading about plans to introduce commercials on CBC Radio 2. Looks like a done deal unless the CRTC disagrees, which I think is unlikely.
What has been done to CBC Radio in the past 25 years is just unconscionable. They are turning a once world-class national broadcaster into a run-of-the-mill radio network that is more and more indistinguishable from its commercial counterparts.
Meanwhile, here in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for much of the day there are no radio stations broadcasting anything that could be described as “high culture”. None. No classical music, no jazz, no arts programs, no literary programs, just commercial music, talk radio and the like.
Oh well. Thanks to the Internet, we can always listen to the BBC. Or ABC from Australia. Or Bartok Radio from Budapest. Or other national broadcasters from countries much smaller and much poorer than Canada who nevertheless believe that investing in high culture is not worthless elitism but an investment in the future.