Jeff | I'm a connoisseur of leisurely things.

August 20, 2005November 21, 2005

Space Exploration

I’m a big proponent of space exploration. I think we’re not devoting enough money to it, even in 2005. Sure, people will disagree with me, and that’s fine. That’s what makes all of this (life) beautiful. However, like with everthing else, there is perspective.

The cost of redesigning the Shuttle fleet to accomidate safety features recommended after the Columbia accident has so far exceeded $1.5 billion dollars, and as of August 2005, the Shuttle foam problem still exists. This being said, I will guestimate the final cost to repair the Shuttle fleet to be $5 billion. I think thats an over-estimated figure by 50%, but it will help to illustrate my point. 🙂

The war in Iraq, as of today, has cost over $188 billion. Here’s another tid-bit; the war in Iraq costs about $2,500 per second.

Theres your perspective. 🙂

…

I was sitting in the local Nissan dealership today, waiting for my car to be finished with one of its required routine maintenances, and they showed on the news that the cost of bringing Discovery from California (where it landed) back to Florida ontop of a specially designed NASA 747 over the required 2 day flight would cost just over $1 million. The people in the waiting room with me grunted and groaned, and in broken English mixed with Spanish, French, and Russian, I heard the word “why”. People, the $1 million is insignificant. Space travel can get expensive, but it is necessary. Where would we have been if Lewis & Clark, Magellen, Columbus, etc. didn’t spend the money needed to explore. Where would we be?

Rather than butcher the English language, or re-hash someone elses fine work, please click here to read about all of the benefits that space exploration has provided for you, and how it has impacted your daily life.

August 19, 2005November 21, 2005

Ferries; Saving Time and Aggravation

I just got back from a lovely 6-day trip to my summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. Being that I live on Long Island, the normal thing I like to do is to hop on the LIE (I-495 East) toward NYC, take the Cross Island Parkway North to the Throggs Neck Bridge, and follow that to I-95 North, which I take to Providence, then veering off to I-195 East toward Cape Cod. Anywho, on a good day, doing a healthy 70-80mph and no traffic, the total trip time from my neck of the woods to Woods Hole Massachusstes, which is where the mandatory ferry to MV is located, takes nearly 5.5 hours.

This most recent time – on August 10th – the trip took closer to 7.5 hours, as there was a 10 mile backup – I mean a DEAD STOP – on I-95 in Connecticut. I sat there, dumbfounded because there is no where else to go. I-95 is the only road. I saw two corpse-carriers roll by me, and 30 mins and a 1/2 mile later I got to the scene of the accident to which there was none. There was a car and two white vans on the shoulder, all damage-free. No bodies, no skidmarks, no carnage. Bummer.

Anyway, I’m sitting in traffic at about exit 75 on I-95 North, realizing that if I took the Orient Point, NY / New London, CT Ferry (aka the Cross Sound Ferry), I would have been “on-time”, as the accident occurred before the ferry port in Connecticut. Taking the ferry would have required more “preparation time”, but I wouldn’t have sat in traffic for 3 hours and the possibility of missing the MV ferry wouldn’t have been an issue.

I didn’t miss the MV ferry, but it was close. Driving to the Orient Point side to pick the ferry up, taking it, and arriving in New London Connecticut would have saved me tons of time and aggravation.

It is for this reason, that unless I leave in the middle of the night, I am now forever taking the Cross Sound Ferry to CT if I need to go to New England, and I highly suggest that you all should think about it to. 🙂

Cross Sound Ferry

August 8, 2005November 21, 2005

The Dukes of Hazzard Movie

Well, Mr. Ben Jones (Cooter) was right. (See my blog entry below “Ruining the Dukes.” I had normal expectations before seeing this movie, but I was eager to see it none the less.

I finally did get to see it this past Sunday, and while it wasn’t a total letdown, I was disappointed. I’ll try and explain what I mean, and #1 is the “most important”.

No Cameos. Before going into the movie, I knew that none of the surviving members of the original series were not asked to be a part of the new film. I don’t know any self-respecting fan of the show – especially when you are creating a movie about it – can came to the decision not to have the original cast members come back for even one scene. Sure, the original cast for Boss Hogg and Uncle Jessie have passed on, but the others still remain.
Improper Casting of the Duke Boys; Remember that season of the Dukes where John Schneider and Tom Wopat had contract disputes, and “cousins” of Bo and Luke were brought in to fill their roles? Remember how you felt, and how you feel after watching reruns on cable? That’s what it felt like when I got to the movies and saw Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott as the Duke boys. Don’t get me wrong – I like both of those guys in other films/tv they have been in, but as the Duke boys, it was disheartening to see something as fake as their acting. As for Uncle Jessie’s character, Willie Nelson played a fine role. He was cast properly.
Improper Casting of Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coletrain: If you think for a minute Burt Reynolds was a good choice for Boss Hogg, you’re sorely mistaken. Boss (J.D.) Hogg and Roscoe were a comedy team – it was almost like Laurel and Hardy, and I’m sure I’m not the first person to make that comparison. Those two characters from the original show were a comedy show within themselves. How one could cast Burt Reynolds and M.C. Gainey as Roscoe needs to have their head examined. Again, great actors – loved Gainey in “Breakdown” w/ Kurt Russell and also loved nearly every movie Burt Reynolds did, but their performance in the Dukes of Hazzard was poor. The original comedy duo of Boss and Roscoe were not evident and sorely missed.
Great casting of Jessica Simpson for Daisy! 🙂
Sex, Drugs, and the Confederate Flag; Boy did the producer/director miss the boat here. First of all, there was sex (not shown) and implied drug use in the movie, neither of which I disagree with, but it didn’t fit the show. It’s just simply factually incorrect. In addition, the rebel flag on the roof of the General Lee in this movie was a focal point for racism. There was a scene in the movie where Bo and Luke drove the General to present-day Atlanta and wound up in the ghetto someplace, and 20 black guys surrounded the car and had something to say about the flag. The directors played the racism card. And, if you know anything about U.S. History, the Confederate Flag (Southern Cross / The Confederate Battle Flag / the Navy Jack / etc – whatever you want to call it), has nothing to do with racism. That flag is/was a symbol of regional pride and heritage. That flag traditionally represented the South’s resistance to Northern political dominance, and only did it become racially charged during the Civil Rights Movement.
Enus. Close, but no cigar. Again, missing the comedy trio of Boss Hogg, Enus, and Roscoe.
Flash was there, but it isn’t too hard to get a basset-hound to show up at the set and say nothing, is it?

Those are the things I found generally wrong with the movie. Now, what did I find that I really loved?…The car chase/stunt scenes. There was plenty of great action involving the General Lee, a modified 1969 (and 1970 in the original series depending upon the episode) Dodge Charger. This car, by far, was then and is still the star of the show. In the previews I watched late this past Spring, I assumed a few stunts I saw were computer generated. I was happily mistaken, as in the ending credits they showed a “bloopers” scene, and the jumps they did were in fact real, and done with real cars. It is for this reason, and this reason alone that I could recommend this movie to you. If you’re sa long-time Dukes hardcore fan, you’ll be disappointed in the movie in the grand scheme of things. Seeing Jessica Simpson and the General Lee made this movie a lot more watchable.

I beg someone — in a few years, please make a sequel. This time, please do it right and get a better cast, and get some of the original people back to do this movie justice.

August 1, 2005November 21, 2005

Check out an IMAX show

That guy on the left there looks like he’s watching an IMAX movie. That’s just how good it is. 🙂 You haven’t been to the movies yet if you haven’t seen an IMAX show. What is IMAX, you ask? Well, check out their homepage www.imax.com, but in short, it’s the biggest, most technologically advanced movie theatre around. Up to 8 stories high, with all sorts of crazy sound-systems and video, the movie screen wraps around the theatre, so peripheral vision is seeing part of the movie too.

It’s really wild, and I haven’t been to one in a long time until the other day. Definitely renewed my interest in that stuff. I believe the title of the show I saw was a movie from James Cameron, called “Aliens of the Deep”, which showed in great detail life at the bottom of the ocean (3,500 meters deep), and how this life (that exists w/o photosynthesis) might be how life is like in cold oceans on planets and moons of these planets in our solar system.

Definitely check it out, and for a list of the theatres closest to you, click on the link below and do a search.

IMAX Homepage

July 30, 2005February 14, 2006

When Unlimited Does Not Mean Unlimited

For those of you that might know the inner-workings of the Internet, you might be familiar with a section of the internet called Usenet. Wikipedia refers to Usenet as a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University Graduate Students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post email-like messages (called “articles”) to a number of distributed newsgroups, categories that resemble bulletin board systems in most respects. The medium is sustained among a large number of servers, which store and forward messages with one another. Usenet is of significant cultural importance in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as “FAQ” and “spam”.

I subscribe to a pay-service (one of many pay services) called Giganews ($20/month). These pay services offer many days retention of articles, in addition to fast download speeds.

At my house, I have a new fiber optic connection from Verizon, called Fios, which, at the current time, allows me 15Mbit of download connection. In lay-speak, a 15Mbit down connection is the equivalent of transferring the content of a full CD (~700 megabytes) in about 7 minutes. Or, about 3.5 seconds to download 1 song from iTunes.

Anyway, Usenet is used for many purposes, and I use it to download SHN and FLAC (sound files that don’t get compressed so there is 100% digital quality) of live shows from bands that allow taping, such as Phish and DMB.

Giganews has had a pricing structure that I’ve loved since day 1 – “unlimited downloads for $24 per month.”

Apparently “unlimited” doesn’t always mean “unlimited”.

I was “capped this week”, and by that I mean I could no longer download at the high speeds I just explained. Instead, I was capped at 20% of that maximum, though I’m still paying the same price. After some research, it appears that Giganews capps the “heavy users” who exceed even the highest bandwidth. I do download about 500GB/month, but I do it during off hours (middle of the night). I was also never informed that “unlimited” has its limits.

After emailing technical support, they told me that not only do they not see a problem with my account, but they do not cap users. Unfortunately, other people have experienced the same as me shown here.

So, if you’re thinking of a subscription based 3rd party usenet provider, do not go with Giganews.

July 27, 2005November 21, 2005

Grounded Again

Perhaps too much celebration, and not enough careful eye. Sure, it was awesome to hear the Shuttle is now flying, and it’s now extremely disappointing that the Shuttles have been indefinately grounded once again due to camera footage showing foam insulation breaking off the main fuel tank from Wednesday’s Discovery launch. Apparently, the foam did not hit the orbiter, but it was just this kind of incident that led to the dissintigration of Columbia.

Time will tell if Discovery comes back safely in 11 days, and how long it is before the next Shuttle launch happens.

Abundance of caution is good, just frustrating. 🙂

July 26, 2005November 21, 2005

NASA’s Return to Space; A Collection of Comments

I was 10 when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. Old enough to understand what happened, and to understand the consequences. In 1985, a faulty o-ring, a seal on the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) failed, and as the shuttle passed through the sound barrier – or, in scientific terms, the area of maximum pressure – its engines are throttled down to 2/3’s capacity. After it breaks through, the familiar term “…go with throttle up” is sent from Texas to the shuttle. After Challenger’s engines were increased to 105% of capacity, the o-ring failed, igniting a fire, and the Challenger exploded.

Years passed before the next shuttle launch, and o-rings were redesigned.

On February 1st, 2003, the Columbia – one of NASA’s oldest shuttles – disintegrated over re-entry over the western United States. Foam insulation from liftoff broke off one of the SRBs, hit the shuttle wing, and during re-entry 2 weeks after liftoff, super hot gases entered the wing, and disintegrated Columbia over Texas as it traveled at several thousand miles per hour.

Today, after almost two and a half years of a complete redesign of NASA safety culture, the shuttle Discovery was launched, and it was a picture-perfect one at that.

Without drowning in Nationalism, it is quite something to think about. We’re the world’s remaining superpower, and even with all of our problems, we are always pushing the envelope of exploration, just like the people that ‘discovered’ America did.

Everything in life has a degree of risk. It is measured. Space Travel is risky. It’s also necessary, for the question that will always be is asked is “who are we?” and “why are we here?”. Space exploration is the only way to attempt to ever find an answer to this question.

The Shuttles will be retired in 2010, when the ISS (International Space Station) is due to be completed. Between now and then, remaining shuttle missions are devoted to completing the ISS. After that, a new “shuttle” will be designed to brings us to the Moon and to Mars. Hopefully, mankind will still be around to see this feat, and I hope I’m around too.

Congratulations to NASA and all involved. The work you do is so relevent to our existence, and I wish there were no problems that mankind had to work through, so 100% of our effort could be put on finding ourselves and others in the Universe.

Below are comments from 2003 and today, from people all around the world.

(Most text courtesy of the BBC)

THEN
The US space shuttle Columbia has broken up soon after re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board. All contact with the shuttle was lost about 15 minutes before it was due to land at the Kennedy space centre in Florida.

NASA has not confirmed what happened to the spacecraft but its vapour trail was seen to disintegrate into several smaller trails in the sky and there are reports of a loud boom and falling debris.

Both Nasa and the White House are flying their US flags at half-mast.

My heart is broken at the loss of seven people today. My windows rattled but at that moment I did not know why. I assumed it was some jet planes over head. It was about five minutes later I turned the TV on and started to hear the news.
Ladyenglish, Texas, USA

I felt so shocked when I listened to the news in the morning. Hard to believe the tragedy happened again, which happened seven years ago. I feel so sorry for the people that have lost their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, wives and husbands. I feel so sorry that we have lost the bravest men and women who risk their lives to make our dreams come true.
Jun Zhang, China

In 1983 (if I recall correctly) the shuttle Columbia flew piggy-back over Manchester, UK, on a 747. It was a magnificent sight to witness, and now 20 or so years on, I’m seeing the demise of the same orbiter and her crew. I’m so sorry for the loss.
Andy T, UK

We saw the launch at Cape Canaveral a fortnight ago whilst on holiday. It is so sad that the shuttle we saw leaving will not be coming home.
Caroline Hack, Northern Ireland

An overwhelming tragedy. Our American friends continue to amaze me with their resilience in the face of catastrophe. The road to recovery has no doubt already begun.
Ian, Canada

We can’t ever forget that space travel is dangerous, that exploration, by nature, carries risk. The best way we can honour these astronauts, every astronaut who has died in their work, is to keep reaching up.
OTR, USA

America is the only country remotely interested in space travel; through them people from around the world are finding out about space. This is a sad loss not just to America but to the whole world.
Daniel Clegg, England

NOW:

“Take note of what you saw here today. The power and the majesty of the launch, of course, but also the competence and the professionalism, the sheer gall, the pluckiness, the grittiness of this team that pulled this program out of the depths of despair 2 1/2 years ago and made it fly,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a press conference following the launch

“Oh! It was amazing!” said Thor Hurlen of Aalesund, Norway. “You see it on television, but now, to experience it for real and to feel its power — it’s just fantastic.”

For the Burrows family, who were visiting the United States from Burnley, England, Tuesday’s launch was moving.

“I got a lump in my throat,” said Hazel Burrows, 40, as she hugged her 8-year-old daughter. “I had to have my hankie ready because I had tears in my eyes. It was just so emotional.”

Hazel’s husband, Leigh, 30, said the joy of the launch inspired him.

“It was quite emotional, really,” he said. “Thinking about all the things that are happening in the world right now, especially in the United Kingdom with the bombings and things, this just kind of provides you with hope for the future. Something so amazing. Something so positive, you know?”

As he packed his truck to leave, Dave Apostol of Melbourne, Florida, reflected on his first shuttle launch.

“It was awesome!” said Apostol, who camped out overnight to get a spot right by the riverside. “It’s a testament to man’s dream. It’s like the Super Bowl of man’s technology. It’s the Super Bowl of man.”