Powered by Twitter Tools.
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.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
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
New Yorker: Priced to Sell Is free the future? — In Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, the value of free — as in no charge for content, no charge for use. It’s a big issue for newspapers, but others are affected too. Best example from Gladwell is YouTube, which is paying more for bandwidth and technical costs than it is making in advertising. Why don’t advertisers want to be on this category leader? They don’t want to be associated with most of the content created by volunteers.
The Seattle Courant: Thanks, Everyone — an online-only newspaper in Seattle folds.
Why?
The Courant failed because I didn’t have enough cash and I didn’t find someone who could handle the business side, such as finding customers, technologists and managing projects. The trick I had to pull off was to be able to fund the Courant while I not only built a newsroom, but also a technology firm to support it. I couldn’t do it all.
But for those who believe hyper-local is a sure thing, the Courant’s founder, Keith Vance, is less sure:
My advice to anyone who seeks to create something like The Seattle Courant is to make sure you have at least enough money to get you through the first year and someone who’s as committed as you are to the business. To generate revenue, focus your efforts on providing technology solutions to your customers and not just selling banner ads. You have to be able to do something that other people can’t, or don’t want to do. Going to city council meetings and covering press conferences counts as something people don’t want to do, but news doesn’t make money it costs money. One way to think of it is that instead of a print shop that supports a newsroom, we need to build a technology firm that supports a newsroom. It’s really not that different, it just requires a different skill set.
WSJ: Ivy League Endowments Finally ‘Dumb’
The fiscal year for most endowments ends Tuesday and nearly every one has had big declines, but smaller endowments are poised to outperform heavyweights like Harvard University and Yale University by significant margins. Endowments with less than $1 billion generally held up better by putting more money in fixed income and less in alternative investments like hedge funds.
WSJ: Ruth Faces Living Off a Scant $2.5 Million — Ruth Madoff that is
While watching “North by Northwest” by Alfred Hitchcock recently, I realized how trains make much better movie settings than planes.
In the movie, there’s the scene in the train’s dining car where Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flirt. There are the scenes in her room, both humorous and romantic. And then, of course, there’s the last scene, where even 12-year-olds realize that the train going into the tunnel has some other meaning.
Trains are great settings because they have so much potential for action and to move the plot. There are the public settings, dining cars, observation decks and great scenery in the background. There are the private settings, rooms — and beds. In a plane it’s almost entirely public, and it’s all sitting. Can you image Cary and Eva Marie being sat together and as they flirt, the child in front of them decides to put his seat down. It might be funny, but it would spoil the moment.
The only private space on a plane is in the rest room, and that’s just where the bad guys go to arm the bomb or get the weapons ready.
Trains allow entrance and departure. You can get thrown off a moving train without anyone’s notice and live to re-appear. If “Silver Streak” had been set on a plane, how many times could George have been thrown from the plane?
And people can even change costumes in trains, which lets you include scenes about the luggage or the accidental opened door to the wrong compartment
Trains, as do all forms of public transportation create areas of conflict. The authorities are waiting at the train’s departure point, how will our stars escape? There’s also the increase tension when the train is running out of control. In the out of control area, trains and planes are evenly matched there.
There are two advantages planes have over trains. The movie “Snakes on a Plane” wouldn’t have the impact on a plane. And Goldfinger would not have been sucked through the window if he’d been on a train.
Five favorite movies with trains being essential to the plot are:
“The General” with Buster Keaton
“The Lady Vanishes”
“North by Northwest”
“Silver Streak”
“The First Great Train Robbery“
Powered by Twitter Tools.