Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
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March 31, 2006 Identify the artifact All right, gather 'round, Space Cadets. Who knows what this is?
Well, I don't know either. But when I saw this offered by somebody on a machining forum a few years ago, I had to have it. Why? Well, probably every fan of classic science fiction grew up with the works of the Big Three -- Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein. It seems that Asimov and Clarke had an ongoing pun contest, in which each would try to outdo the other in shaggy dog stories. One of Clarke's shots was a two-pager titled Neutron Tide. It can be read in its entirety here. The punchline is
And at a time when typesetting was still a craft, the story was very cleverly set so that the reader had to turn the page for the last words. Anyway, when I saw this offered for sale, I snapped it up. Because no matter what other purpose it may serve, I instantly recognized it as a "star-mangled spanner." Maybe I should letter USSN Flatbush on it. As for the Asimov/Clarke punfest, I believe Asimov's response was this one.
March 24, 2006 You find the darndest things... ...in Google ads. I was googling to identify some evil green stuff sprouting through my new lawn. Google likes to throw up topical ads which their software seems to think are somehow related to the search terms. Hence, the following: Turf Weeds Prices It just goes to show ya. You can take a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
March 22, 2006 Ah, sweet mystery of life... I have discovered my purpose in life. It is to receive spam and junk mail. This is my contribution to ensuring that the economy continues to hum right along. After all, every economic system ever invented is just one vast pyramid scheme, and somebody has to be at the bottom, holding up the top. That be me. Today, I received a truly wondrous piece of snailmail spam (normally, that would just be "junk mail" but in this case, there's an Internet component). Witness:
Yes, that's right. These kind folks would be happy to submit my web site to 20 different search engines, for a mere $65 per year. Twenty search engines? You mean, there's others besides Google? And yes, it says "THIS IS NOT A BILL. THIS IS A SOLICITATION." How many people are going to get that far, and how many instead are just going to assume it's a bill from their just-started hosting service, and dash off the check? Try this simple web search: in Google, enter "listingcorp.com" and scam. (OK, so I did it for you). I stopped reading after the first three hits. Gee, I wonder if this isn't being run by that nice Dr. Mohammed Abacha, who is forever writing me to tell me that some more of my relatives have died in yet another fiery crash on that nasty ol' Sagama Express Road in Nigeria, and have left me umpteen bazillion shekels...
March 19, 2006 Flogging stuff on ebay This weekend, I bit the bullet and listed a bunch of stuff on Ebay. These are automotive press kits which are recent but no longer current. Most are my own, some are discards from other automotive journalists. The thing is, I get about six shelf-feet of these things per year. They're useful, but once the stories on those particular cars have been written, or the next model year's press kit has arrived, these just take up space. Why, in this age of the Internet and electronic text and image files, does anybody still fool with paper press materials? Simple. They're a lot easier to work with when you're at your keyboard, trying to pull together all the details of some car for a story. It's the same reason nobody likes to curl up with an e-book on a laptop computer. Many car companies do provide online resources, but I usually go to those only as a last resort. I would love to have the space to store these things indefinitely, and have my own automotive reference library, but do the math: I've been at this for nearly 20 years. 20 x 6 shelf-feet = 120 shelf-feet = about five floor-to-ceiling shelves full of the things. Or figure a minimum of 30 lbs per shelf foot. That's nearly two tons of paper (or, the weight of a midsize sedan) that has to be stored somewhere, or moved at some later time. The late Len Frank, also a freelance auto writer, liked to quip that he had "the only automotive library managed entirely by silverfish." As it is, I do keep the press kits for certain cars more or less permanently -- cars in which I have a personal interest, or cars on which I anticipate someday doing historical research. It hurts a bit to sell off sure-thing future collectibles like Bugatti and Ferrari press kits, but I have to be a bit ruthless on weeding stuff out. The trouble with California houses is that they do not have attics or cellars, and quite an industry has sprung up for storing people's junque offsite. That, or people keep their cars outside in the sun and (occasional) rain, and pack cellar-grade junque into the former garage. What do the manufacturers think of these things appearing on Ebay? I don't know. I sense that they do disapprove of pothunters going to car shows posing as "journalists" to collect press kits, and then immediately flogging them on Ebay. That's bad form and rather rude. And journalists on staff don't want any semblance of impropriety in selling off their excess kits when they're obsolete. But I'm freelance, and don't dump a kit unless it's obsolete. Ebay used to be a hotter market for these things. Buyers have become more discriminating. There are many car manufacturers whose press kits just aren't worth listing anymore. (I won't name names, but think of some really boring car brands, then do an ebay search for press kits covering that brand). Conversely, seeing how press kits for certain car marques sell is a good indication of how much a brand resonates with the public -- does the XYZ GT have a fan base, or are people buying it just to have something to drive around? Those "drivers" aren't going to look for appliance memorabilia. Car companies spend quite a bit of treasure and effort in producing such press kits. (In years past, I wrote, and sometimes did graphic design, on perhaps a dozen of these, for various American and European car manufacturers). These are not the handouts that the public gets at car shows; these are often lavishly produced articles, generated by outside writers, photographers, graphic designers, and production people, then sent out via priority shipping services. I don't know the per-item cost of such kits but it must be several tens of dollars. There aren't more than, say, 1000 people on the planet who are on the distribution list for these. Figure all the car magazines, other magazines with automotive sections or interests, and the auto writers for all the larger newspapers and TV outlets, and that's about it. A typical press kit may consist of a custom-printed 3-ring binder or portfolio, with printed materials in tab-divided sections on each car line, color photos, and a CD-ROM with several hundred images, PDF and Word files. Likely as not, the CD-ROM encompasses the text and graphics in some sort of self-starting multimedia presentation (Macromedia Flash, Quicktime, or whatever). Car companies may or may not resent these appearing on the market; I don't know. But I do feel it would be a shame to just throw the fruits of so much effort away. Somebody, somewhere, loves that XYZ GT and wants to collect every scrap of paper ever written about it. So putting these up on Ebay makes somebody happy, keeps them in circulation, and out of landfills (and in somebody else's cellar). What doesn't move on Ebay, I donate to a local automotive museum. Apparently they sell these things at large swap meets to generate revenue to keep their museum alive.
March 13, 2006 New maps of Mars Just last week, Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter successfully inserted itself into Mars orbit. Once it manages to drag its apogee (apoares?) down to establish a less elliptical orbit, over the course of several months, the real science begins. As an aside, this may mark yet another high water mark of space exploration, just before another huge pullback; see Mars Orbiter Likely Lockheed's Last. Google likes to insert cutesy, topical artwork in its hompage logo, and today, it's a cartoon Mars, and a couple of Martians, being scrutinized by Earth:
The reason: Google has launched Google Mars. It's all part of the plan, you see: Google seems intent on mapping the entire Universe, or at least the solar system. Apparently, they've reserved domain names for all the major planets: Google Earth should be familiar to most people by now, it's one of the neatest earth-mapping applications on the Web. Anyway, back to Mars. Google offers a color-coded relief map, a "visible light" map (in black and white) to show albedo features, the largest of which might be visible in a good telescope on a steady night when Mars happens to be close to Earth (about every two years), and a map in infrared light. Perhaps most dramatic of all, there's a downloadable "fly-through" of Valles Marineris. The caldera at the top of the solar system's largest volcano, Olympus Mons looks like this at maximum zoom, in the "visible light" view:
Zooming out a bit, the area looks like this in the topographic view:
All of this is very impressive, but for fooling around at the telescope and identifying what the heck those dark splotches are, a more useful utility may be found at CalSKY. Right this instant, Mars would look like this in "spacecraft view." For orientation, that's Syrtis Major at the right and the round, light-colored Hellas Basin below it.
Nothing beats a real three-dimensional globe for visualizing spatial relationships though: last year, in time for the Mars opposition, I finally broke down and bought a Mars globe from Sky & Telescope. (Note that by happy coincidence, that's Syrtis Major again).
This is apparently made by Replogle Globes. I remember going to their factory on Ravenswood in Chicago, to pick up a much earlier Mars globe, about 1974 or 1975. Replogle also makes a 20X exaggerated relief globe, 18 inches in diameter. Price is not for the faint of heart, but reading the description, you'll realize why: it's made by a "rapid prototyping" method in which computer-controlled laser beams solidify liquid plastic in a tank -- essentially, three-dimensional printing.
Here's one vendor that carries the complete line of Replogle Globes. There are others. Prices all seem to be the same. And just how much can one see through a telescope? Click on the "Astrophotos" navigation button in the left column for one example, shot in my suburban backyard under very good but not outstanding seeing conditions (with a CalSKY view alongside for comparison).
March 6, 2006 Hey, mister, what kinda pizza izzat? My friend Don S. in far southwest suburban Chicago -- heck, he's out in "what the Indians used to call The Boonies" (apologies to Utah Phillips) sent me a link to yet another fine product from Amazon.com. (Is there anything these guys won't sell?) Yup, they're selling ten-packs of Chicago's own Vienna Beef hot dogs, packed on dry ice. Lessee, that comes to $5 a dog, apparently that includes shipping (1-3 days) in the Lower 48. I suppose that's competitive with movie theater and ballpark prices. But Don asks the all-important question, "what do you get if, under Amazon's More Buying Choices, you click on the button that says Order it used?" These items are shipped by a fairly recent (compared to Geno's and Uno's and Due's and Home Run Inn) Chicago institution, Lou Malnati's Pizza. Last year, my high school friend Ernie M. and I went to the Lou Malnati's near his place in the northwest 'burbs, and it was pretty good, except that I kept hearing the name as "Illuminati's Pizza." Now, there's a concept: not Mystic Pizza, but Masonic Pizza. It turns out that Lou Malnati's ships a whole line of Chicago favorites, from Italian beef sandwiches to ribs to, of course, pizza. Thirty-six bucks for a 9-inch deep dish seems a bit steep but if you have to inject a Chicago pizza into your arteries, well, that's the way it goes. Which reminds me. While working in Germany in the 1980s, I couldn't get decent deep-dish pizza anywhere. I'm sorry, but neither fresh fruit (except maybe pineapple, and only with Canadian bacon) nor an egg, sunny-side-up, have any business on top of a pizza. So I bought The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook by Bruno Pasquale Jr. and made my own. Strangely, Amazon has this as list price $93, their price $59. Ninety-three bucks for a paperback pizza cookbook? Sheesh, and I got tomato sauce stains on mine. But wait, what's this? Apparently the same book, same reviews, different ISBN number, for under $10. That's more like it. My favorite Chicago pizza remains Bacino's on Lincoln Avenue, just north of Webster. My idea of a good time was browsing through Bookseller's Row next to the Biograph Theater (where John Dillinger got rubbed out by da Feds), then head on down to Bacino's and dine in the room that was papered with old auto racing posters. On a recent trip back, I see that Bookseller's Row is gone and Bacino's has redone the Racing Room. Too bad. My favorite was the spinach and mozzarella stuffed pizza.
When Big Birds come home to roost Driving down the freeway, coming back from a car A few minutes ago, I heard the distinctive rumble of four big radial engines. Looked out the window, and there it was, a yellow-tailed B-17. Certification that I'm hallucinating will have to wait for another day, and other evidence. So I did some digging on the web, and identified the most likely suspect:
The "Landings" site says
So it looks like I'll be hearing that certain sound quite often from now on. If I volunteer to wash it, will they let me have a free ride?
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