Latest Tweets:
PLUS they were able to watch it on a device that fits in their pocket and can access it as often as they choose.
A speck.
Actually we’re not there. That’s an image from the Hubble Deep Field. It was pointed away from Earth, so everything in the image is most certainly not Earth, our Solar System or even our galaxy.
Also, since the image is of objects billions of light years away, odds are pretty good we will never be there in any of our lifetimes.
Hope you feel even less significant.
(Source: afterthesmoke)
The logical choice.
No, it isn’t. “Vulcan,” before being used by Roddenberry in his wonderful TV series, was the god of fires and volcanoes. Lets see: both things that this little bit of ice and rock doesn’t have. The logical choice would be to use one of the other names that were up for the vote: either Styx or Cerberus (I’d choose Cerberus).
This is the kind of stuff that feels like we’re retconning our own entertainment onto history and science. Naming it Vulcan doesn’t even do the concept of Vulcan in the show any justice. Please, scifi fans and nerds of every stripe (even the “fake” ones), try harder.
NBC actually has a decent article about this issue and astronomical naming conventions.
(Source: daisyandtheblondies, via vhspositive)
There have been two great epic-scale adventures of the post War era: The fall of the Soviet empire and the Apollo program. Neither of them has gotten a great movie yet.
The Apollo program was the only truly uncharted adventure of our time. Where anything at all could have happened. Since then all we’ve had is manufactured thrills. And fought each other.
For those of us who weren’t born in 1969, today was the one day in your life that will always be in the history books. Armstrong was, one must say, the most famous person on the planet. 1000 years from now Barak Obama and Mitt Romney, Brad Pitt, the Kardashians, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire, Beyonce and Britney and every single person with a Twitter account no matter how many followers will have been forgotten, but still every school child will know Neil Armstrong’s name along with Columbus, Galileo and one or two others.
And he maintained it without Tweeting, blogging, podcasting, starting a fragrance line or starring in a reality show. He did a handful of interviews over the 40 years since Apollo, and that is it. No building his brand or thinking of other ways he could exploit his accomplishment. He did something absolutely unimaginable, at total risk before the eyes of the world, broke through our sense of the limitations of mankind, then he went to Ohio and taught math. What he did was left to stand on its own, without layer upon layer of grossness piled on top of it.
Someday, we may see another of his kind. But we’re not probably not anytime soon.
(via paulftompkins)
