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Where were you on the night of the Apollo moon walk? I was in a motel in south Mississippi.
Forty years ago on July 20 my parents and I checked into a roadside hotel somewhere in Mississippi to watch the moon landing.
There was no way we were going to miss this his event in human history.
We were on vacation, but the moon landing was on everyone’s mind. We knew the Apollo 11 patches. Gulf Oil ws giving away cardboard models of the Apollo lunar lander and space ship with fill-ups. The model was fairly detailed and I had trouble avoiding crinkling the tabs as I tried to insert them into the appropriate slots.
We were worried we wouldn’t get to our destination and checked in soon enough. We had been following the lunar landing news on the car radio during the day. It seems that we checked in late and were barely checked in before I was at the foot of the bed watching with the TV on at the time of the moon walk, which was just before 10 p.m. Central time. The reception was blurry, the picture was grainy, the TV was black and white, but it was live.
But we had seen it live. That was our goal.
The TV networks devoted so much time to the space coverage that we knew details such as how Neil Armstrong would pull a handle that would release the camera on the side of the lander that was aimed at the ladder that Neil Armstrong would descend.
We had high expectations of the TV coverage, in part from Apollo 8’s flight around the moon with the reading from Genesis during Christmas 1968. But they didn’t need the dramatics of Apollo 8. There were walking on the moon — in the same decade as the first launch of a man into space.
After Apollo 11 and other moon walks, I would look at the moon, but it looked different. It seemed more familiar — it was no longer beyond reach.
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Lost Remote: When “good enough” journalism is better — which version do you like best — version 1 or version 2.
From the reporter who did version 1:
You can certainly argue that their story is better than mine, but does the small increase in quality justify the significant increase in costs, especially when the money isn’t there to spend?
WSJ: R.I.P.: Budget Woes Spell Doom for Roadside Rest Stops –Drivers Looking for a Break Keep on Trucking; Virginia Leaves Door Open for July 4 Holiday. Also great slideshow.
WSJ: M-80s: The Big, Illicit Bang
By law, a firecracker sold for on-the-ground consumer use can contain no more than 50 mg of explosives. An M-80 has at least 3,000 mg. (Contrary to urban legend, that is not equivalent to a quarter-stick of dynamite, which typically contains at least 20,000 mg.)
New York Times: How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains
One of his main messages is that overeating is not due to an absence of willpower, but a biological challenge made more difficult by the overstimulating food environment that surrounds us. “Conditioned hypereating” is a chronic problem that is made worse by dieting and needs to be managed rather than cured, he said. And while lapses are inevitable, Dr. Kessler outlines several strategies that address the behavioral, cognitive and nutritional factors that fuel overeating.
BBC: Giving up my iPod for a Walkman — a 13-year-old tries an iPod for a week
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
Thereifixedit.com — a funny site
