It’s fifty years old and it’s a piece of junk. In another couple hundred years, it’s destined to be destroyed in a violent and fiery blaze of glory.
But it’s a lovable piece of junk. And maybe — just maybe — it deserves to be on some nation registry of history things.
It’s Vanguard 1, currently the old piece of space junk orbiting the Earth. And it’s celebrating half a century of weightlessness.
Vanguard 1 was the fourth artificial satellite put into space by man. The previous three long ago succumbed to the Earth’s gravity and atmospheric drag. But Vanguard 1 is still up there, having completed almost 200,000 orbits so far. It circles the Earth every two hours and fifteen minutes in a highly-elliptical path that takes it almost 2500 miles from the Earth at its highest before dipping to a low of about 650 miles.
And it’s that “low” that’s eventually going to kill it. With every orbit, it briefly touches the very outer limits of our atmosphere. So briefly that it will still be up there another 200 years or so. But eventually, it will run out of inertia and become nothing more than a shooting star for my great, great grandchild to wish upon.
It’s not much to look at. It’s roughly spherical, about six inches in diameter. Six short antennae protrude, one from each side. On Earth, it weighed less than three and a half pounds. In space, it weighs nothing.
It’s shiny on all sides, the first satellite to be solar powered. That was revolutionary at the time, and it allowed Vanguard 1 to transmit a good radio signal for more than six years. At a time when most satellites were burning up in the atmosphere or blowing up on the launch pad, trusty little Vanguard 1 was still up there, beeping its location to anyone who wanted to tune to its 5 milliwatt signal.
Even today, it’s being tracked optically and through radar. Its symmetrical shape and unique orbit has given us valuable information about the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere and the precise shape of the Earth. By tracking slight variations in its orbit, scientists determined that the Earth is slightly “pear” shaped; the southern hemisphere is a tiny bit bigger than its northern cousin. And by watching the orbit degrade slightly through the years, we can measure the extent that upper limits of the atmosphere rises and falls with the sun’s 11-year cycles. Such serendipitous research wasn’t imagined when it was launched. At the time, they were just happy to get it off the ground in one piece.
Vanguard 1 was launched on March 17, 1958, at a time when the Russians were beating us at everything and President Eisenhower was looking forward to retirement and to handing the reigns of the presidency over to Vice President Nixon in a couple of years. From its unique vantage point, it has watched as Man has gone to the moon. It watched Skylab orbit the Earth and fall back in the ocean. It has watched more than a hundred Shuttle missions and witnessed two Shuttle disasters. It has waved an antenna at the International Space Station a time or two.
Its beeper has fallen silent over the years. And the mirrored finish of its solar panels probably isn’t as glossy as it used to be. But it continues to circle the Earth proudly, knowing that it’s the granddaddy of all the satellites. Perhaps, before it’s too late, we can send a spacecraft to meet it in its orbit, gently pluck it, and bring it back home. It would be a fitting tribute for a piece of space junk that deserves a little more respect than most.
After all, Vanguard 1 is a survivor.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
My Office, My Playlist
Several years ago, Muzak (the corporation, not the irritating genre) had a saying something to the effect of “People are more productive when listening to boring music”. And with that, they sold hundreds of thousands of installations of Muzak (the irritating genre).
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, I worked in several offices that had piped-in music — Muzak, adult-contemporary radio, and god-awful country music. It was alternating annoying and soothing, but mostly it was irrelevant. The problem was that nobody could agree on what it should be — what style, what volume, or even if it should exist at all. It seemed like the only one that was happy was the office manager who picked the music.
The revolution toward personalized playlists started with Walkmans and portable CD players, but it really took off with iPods. Now we can add streaming Internet radio, satellite radio, and CD ripping to PCs to the mix. It seems that everybody is plugged in. And that’s fine with me.
I’m constantly amazed at the variety of tastes that exists in the officeplace. When the listener is shielded knowing that nobody else can tap into his style (by virtue of ear buds, tucked away into his aural cavities), all inhibitions are lost.
There are times that I have “peaked” into my co-workers’ playlists. The only thing I can be sure of is that I can never predict what other people are listening to. My own playlist (mostly smooth jazz with some light classical mixed into it) is no match for the mixture of heavy metal, country, blues, and American Idol mush that I know everybody else is listening to.
And that’s fine with me. Individualism is good. It empowers the office worker, giving him a sense of importance. His it department can tell him what version of Microsoft Office he has to deal with. His boss can tell him what font he has to use in PowerPoint presentations. His finance department can tell him what receipts he has to turn in after a business trip. His hr department can tell him what documentation he has to gather before he can fire his slackered subordinate.
But, by golly, nobody can tell him he can’t listen to Def Leppard while he works on his client’s latest proposal.
What harm can possibly come from that?
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, I worked in several offices that had piped-in music — Muzak, adult-contemporary radio, and god-awful country music. It was alternating annoying and soothing, but mostly it was irrelevant. The problem was that nobody could agree on what it should be — what style, what volume, or even if it should exist at all. It seemed like the only one that was happy was the office manager who picked the music.
The revolution toward personalized playlists started with Walkmans and portable CD players, but it really took off with iPods. Now we can add streaming Internet radio, satellite radio, and CD ripping to PCs to the mix. It seems that everybody is plugged in. And that’s fine with me.
I’m constantly amazed at the variety of tastes that exists in the officeplace. When the listener is shielded knowing that nobody else can tap into his style (by virtue of ear buds, tucked away into his aural cavities), all inhibitions are lost.
There are times that I have “peaked” into my co-workers’ playlists. The only thing I can be sure of is that I can never predict what other people are listening to. My own playlist (mostly smooth jazz with some light classical mixed into it) is no match for the mixture of heavy metal, country, blues, and American Idol mush that I know everybody else is listening to.
And that’s fine with me. Individualism is good. It empowers the office worker, giving him a sense of importance. His it department can tell him what version of Microsoft Office he has to deal with. His boss can tell him what font he has to use in PowerPoint presentations. His finance department can tell him what receipts he has to turn in after a business trip. His hr department can tell him what documentation he has to gather before he can fire his slackered subordinate.
But, by golly, nobody can tell him he can’t listen to Def Leppard while he works on his client’s latest proposal.
What harm can possibly come from that?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Best Sitcoms Ever
The sitcom was invented for television. It has a dilemma, a development, and a resolution all neatly wrapped into a 30 minutes package with some laughs thrown in for good measure. Here’s my list of the best of the best.
I Love Lucy
The granddaddy of all sitcoms. The one that established the rules by which we all live today. This is the one that established the three-camera standard that is the norm today. It was one of the first to be filmed in front of a live audience on high quality 35mm film, ensuring its preservation forever. We are eternally grateful for that.
Neither Ball nor Arnez needed the job — they were already at the height of their respective careers. And that let them take chances with the show, giving it a unique personality. Owning their own production studio helped, too. They were beholden to no one, only to the enjoyment of their fans.
WKRP in Cincinnati
Arthur thought turkeys could fly. And that pretty much sums up this ensemble farce.
One of the very best comedies to be cancelled at the height of its creativity. It was a true character study. Johnny, the washed-up stoned DJ. Les, the never-been-washed news guy. Venus, the nerdy teacher turned cool DJ. Herb, the slimy salesman. Bailey and Jennifer were a study in contrasts never seen since Mary Ann and Ginger. All presided over by the befuddled Mr. Carlson. And all revolving around loveable Andy, trying to make sense of it all.
It all fell together perfectly. Such an ensemble cast will never again be constructed. Nor should it be.
MASH
The Korean War lasted three years. MASH, the TV show, lasted eleven seasons.
But the MASH wasn’t about the war. In fact, the war was just one character in the series.
MASH was about love, pain, comedy, loss, farce, and everything in between. It was equally about the tragedies of war as the resilience of humanity. It was about distain for authority as well as the rule of order. It was about the weakness of man resulting in infidelity as well as the love of a man for his family.
MASH covered the entire spectrum of emotions and pathos. Who knew that a war could reveal so much about ourselves?
Mary Tyler Moore
Laura Petrie busted out of her capri pants and landed in Minneapolis as the naïve Mary Richards. She fell in love with Mr. Grant and he returned the favor, even though she could never call him “Lou”.
Over the years, the show evolved. Mary moved from the apartment with the kitchen on the left to an apartment with the kitchen on the right. Phyllis and Rhoda left for their own shows. Georgette and Sue Ann took their place. Ted never grew up. Murray never got a promotion.
And in the end, everybody was fired except for the goofball Ted. In the ultimate TV irony, everybody huddled, sang a song about Tipperary, and turned out the lights.
What’s missing?
I could have written about lots of other shows. Both of Bob Newhart’s hits. Andy Griffith. Dick Van Dyke. My Three Sons. And the trifecta of Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and the Beverley Hillbillies. Each of those almost made my cut.
But two shows won’t be on my list. How could I miss writing about “Friends”? And what about “Seinfeld”?
Well, I would have had to have watched them, wouldn’t I? But I gave up television as a vast wasteland the same time that Bob Newhart woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realized his second series was just a bizarre dream. I’m sure television has produced a good sitcom since then. It just hasn’t been in front of my eyeballs.
I Love Lucy
The granddaddy of all sitcoms. The one that established the rules by which we all live today. This is the one that established the three-camera standard that is the norm today. It was one of the first to be filmed in front of a live audience on high quality 35mm film, ensuring its preservation forever. We are eternally grateful for that.
Neither Ball nor Arnez needed the job — they were already at the height of their respective careers. And that let them take chances with the show, giving it a unique personality. Owning their own production studio helped, too. They were beholden to no one, only to the enjoyment of their fans.
WKRP in Cincinnati
Arthur thought turkeys could fly. And that pretty much sums up this ensemble farce.
One of the very best comedies to be cancelled at the height of its creativity. It was a true character study. Johnny, the washed-up stoned DJ. Les, the never-been-washed news guy. Venus, the nerdy teacher turned cool DJ. Herb, the slimy salesman. Bailey and Jennifer were a study in contrasts never seen since Mary Ann and Ginger. All presided over by the befuddled Mr. Carlson. And all revolving around loveable Andy, trying to make sense of it all.
It all fell together perfectly. Such an ensemble cast will never again be constructed. Nor should it be.
MASH
The Korean War lasted three years. MASH, the TV show, lasted eleven seasons.
But the MASH wasn’t about the war. In fact, the war was just one character in the series.
MASH was about love, pain, comedy, loss, farce, and everything in between. It was equally about the tragedies of war as the resilience of humanity. It was about distain for authority as well as the rule of order. It was about the weakness of man resulting in infidelity as well as the love of a man for his family.
MASH covered the entire spectrum of emotions and pathos. Who knew that a war could reveal so much about ourselves?
Mary Tyler Moore
Laura Petrie busted out of her capri pants and landed in Minneapolis as the naïve Mary Richards. She fell in love with Mr. Grant and he returned the favor, even though she could never call him “Lou”.
Over the years, the show evolved. Mary moved from the apartment with the kitchen on the left to an apartment with the kitchen on the right. Phyllis and Rhoda left for their own shows. Georgette and Sue Ann took their place. Ted never grew up. Murray never got a promotion.
And in the end, everybody was fired except for the goofball Ted. In the ultimate TV irony, everybody huddled, sang a song about Tipperary, and turned out the lights.
What’s missing?
I could have written about lots of other shows. Both of Bob Newhart’s hits. Andy Griffith. Dick Van Dyke. My Three Sons. And the trifecta of Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and the Beverley Hillbillies. Each of those almost made my cut.
But two shows won’t be on my list. How could I miss writing about “Friends”? And what about “Seinfeld”?
Well, I would have had to have watched them, wouldn’t I? But I gave up television as a vast wasteland the same time that Bob Newhart woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realized his second series was just a bizarre dream. I’m sure television has produced a good sitcom since then. It just hasn’t been in front of my eyeballs.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
My Blog Ranking
Sometimes you get a particular piece of news and you just really don’t know what to think of it. That’s the dilemma I face today.
Technorati is the authority for tracking blogs on the World Wide Web. I mean the authority. Nobody tracks blogs like Technorati does.
The blog tracking business is specialized. Not just anybody can track blogs. Technorati does it by inviting bloggers all over the blogosphere to put a little snippet of code on their page. Every time the page is refreshed, a server at Technorati gets pinged and the blog is tracked. Not rocket science. But pretty cool.
Heck, when I first established my blog last year, I balanced the corner of a heavy book on the “refresh” key and left it there overnight, just to raise my blog ranking.
Well, it didn’t work. (I think they have filters for that kind of stuff, anyway.)
Anyway, I just checked my Technorati statistics. According to their web site, they track 108.5 million separate blogs. (That’s million, with an “M”. Not as impressive as a billion with a “B”. But a lotta blogs, nonetheless.) There’s a whole lotta bloggin’ goin’ on out thar!
Out of that 108.5 million, my ranking is, uhm, 1,803,855th.
That’s when the good news / bad news starts to sink in.
Let’s see. On the one hand, I’m in the 98th percentile. Gee, that’s good enough to get into just about any Ivy League school. I oughtta be proud.
My guess is that there are a whole lot of dead blogs out there. Because it looks like there are just about 100,000,000 of them that actually have lower readership than mine. And my readership is just about as low as the belly of a flat skunk on the center stripe of a country highway.
On the other hand, I have almost two million blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted number one position. (That rank is currently held by “Boing Boing” at www.boingboing.net, described as “a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies”.)
Heck, I have 800,000 blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted one million position!
I’m not going to fret too much about it. I pretty much write what’s on my mind. Some of it is actually good. And some of it can be used for bird-cage liner.
I’m going to write what I want. A few people are going to read it. I may get lucky and get a book deal some day. All I need are about a million of my friends to commit themselves to balance a heavy book on the refresh key.
I think I just saw a pig flying by my window. With a melting snowball in his mouth. Maybe there is a chance for me after all.
Technorati is the authority for tracking blogs on the World Wide Web. I mean the authority. Nobody tracks blogs like Technorati does.
The blog tracking business is specialized. Not just anybody can track blogs. Technorati does it by inviting bloggers all over the blogosphere to put a little snippet of code on their page. Every time the page is refreshed, a server at Technorati gets pinged and the blog is tracked. Not rocket science. But pretty cool.
Heck, when I first established my blog last year, I balanced the corner of a heavy book on the “refresh” key and left it there overnight, just to raise my blog ranking.
Well, it didn’t work. (I think they have filters for that kind of stuff, anyway.)
Anyway, I just checked my Technorati statistics. According to their web site, they track 108.5 million separate blogs. (That’s million, with an “M”. Not as impressive as a billion with a “B”. But a lotta blogs, nonetheless.) There’s a whole lotta bloggin’ goin’ on out thar!
Out of that 108.5 million, my ranking is, uhm, 1,803,855th.
That’s when the good news / bad news starts to sink in.
Let’s see. On the one hand, I’m in the 98th percentile. Gee, that’s good enough to get into just about any Ivy League school. I oughtta be proud.
My guess is that there are a whole lot of dead blogs out there. Because it looks like there are just about 100,000,000 of them that actually have lower readership than mine. And my readership is just about as low as the belly of a flat skunk on the center stripe of a country highway.
On the other hand, I have almost two million blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted number one position. (That rank is currently held by “Boing Boing” at www.boingboing.net, described as “a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies”.)
Heck, I have 800,000 blogs that I have to leap-frog to get to that coveted one million position!
I’m not going to fret too much about it. I pretty much write what’s on my mind. Some of it is actually good. And some of it can be used for bird-cage liner.
I’m going to write what I want. A few people are going to read it. I may get lucky and get a book deal some day. All I need are about a million of my friends to commit themselves to balance a heavy book on the refresh key.
I think I just saw a pig flying by my window. With a melting snowball in his mouth. Maybe there is a chance for me after all.
Friday, October 05, 2007
That Dreaded Season
The Earth revolves around the sun once a year. And it rotates on its axis once a day. I’ve always had a problem with people who never can remember the difference between a “revolution” and a “rotation”. But that’s the subject for a different day.
The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.
I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.
That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.
And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.
In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.
It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.
Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.
The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.
Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)
The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.
The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.
I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.
That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.
And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.
In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.
It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.
Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.
The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.
Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)
The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.
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