The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Archive for the ‘Du Jour of the Week’ Category

If I Squint My Eyes Just Right, You Sure Are Pretty

Yes, friends, the International Space Station (ISS) will have two residents for a full year: American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. Which is awesome and nuts (the typical mission is half this duration, a mere six months in OUTER SPAAAAAACE!!!).

Astronaut Scott Kelly, left, says he doesn’t want “to Russian to things with Korni.” (Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, right.) At least that’s the only thing I can think of that would lead to this posed shot.

There are seven main areas of focus during this year-long mission:

  • Functional
  • Behavioral Health
  • Visual Impairment
  • Metabolic
  • Physical Performance
  • Microbial
  • Human Factors

If you want to read more about this, you should! You can check out this article from nasa.gov or any number of articles that have been written about it.

What I’m interested in is the emotional impact, specifically:

  • How will relationships over such a long and very real absence change? Scott, with two children, and Mikhail with a wife and daughter … Plus undoubtedly extended friends and family. What will the relationships look like at the end of the mission as opposed to the start?
  • How complicated will the handshake sequence be at the end of the year? (e.g. Shake hands, bump fist, pour imaginary contents into imaginary test tubes, pretend to wait patiently for the results, read imaginary lengthy report, look shocked, pretend one of the guys is pregnant and the other guy is the father, go through incredibly long montage of classic pregnant man moments, pantomime birth, show that the child is … SCIENCE)
  • Will the feelings of isolation evolve into a mistrust of what could end up as a disembodied “voice in the sky” telling them their daily schedule? (The schedules for the astronauts are communicated to them from the ground, at Houston’s Johnson Space Center.)
  • Will they, to keep up physical performance, engage in wrestling? After all, it is a resistance-oriented form of work out and the resistance is supplied by another person (ideal for situations where there is no gravity). Also wrestling can become ideal as time ticks and human contact becomes … missed.

P.S. In addition to the study on the two people on board the ISS, there will be another study comparing Scott Kelly to his twin brother and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly.

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More Bang for Their Buck

Have you heard about this? Some networks are slightly speeding up the speed of shows, a small enough amount that most people won’t notice, but enough to fit in a little bit more commercial time so they can generate more ad revenue?

Imagine if you could do this in conversations.

“Excuse me, I want to hear what you’re saying but I’ve got a lot to do today so … Just speak into this mic and I’ll listen to you later at a 10% faster speed.”

Or you can do this without being rude. If life is moving too fast, move to a small town in the south where the accents are slow and the pace of life is slower. If life is moving too slow, move to a city where to-the-point conversations are the norm (I’m looking at you, stereotypical New Yorkers).

Here’s an example someone made a while back of a 7.5% speed up of a Seinfeld episode on TBS, and a more recent 9% speed up of Seinfeld. Comedy with timing skewed? That’s especially wrong.

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Kids These Days

Edna herself!

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
– Second Fig, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I was thinking about this poem today, a favorite of mine, and it occurred to me. One might argue the project I am working on is an ugly house built upon the sand. Of course, that’s a pessimistic view, so I’ll just gleefully stick my head in the sand and not walk further down that road.

But what else could this beautiful two line poem convey?

Kids. Kids are in desperate need of a solid foundation and sometimes life throws other things their way and they find their youth spent upon the sand (and not the actual sand, like those lucky southern California kids, with their unchanging perfect weather and what nots).

Stability is key for youth, it allows the youth in question to be the unbalanced object in a world of constants. If instead the kid is growing up surrounded by change – parents, house, schools, friends, whatever – then something stable will hopefully jump up. And most likely that stable item or person won’t be recognized, and almost certainly it won’t be appreciated, but perhaps one day it will be.

But if there is no stability, that kid could end up the stable item and miss that topsy turvy lifestyle (in later years, when money is available and responsibilities are relatively few, that topsy turvy lifestyle could be found and be quite detrimental – I’m looking at you, child stars). Or perhaps the kid will be the unstablest of unstables, and shock the comparatively stable adults who can’t help but get angry at this child. Maybe instead of anger as the chief emotion, patience should instead be the one to try to go to first. Another beautiful line:

Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

George, the party animal.

This gem is from the tongue-tying-ly named George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon.

I figure any kid who represents a shining palace is certainly representing such a thing on sand. Because one wrong comment can show the lack of foundation that shining palace is built upon.

And, as a person who thinks of himself as living in a pretty lovely house on solid rock, I’ll remind you that when you live in the ugliest house on the block, you don’t have to look at it … you get to look out at all the shining palaces built around you. (A judgmental paradise.)

What’s my point? What is the purpose of this Andy Rooney Jr. kind of rant? I guess I’m just suggesting that people remember that we are all built upon a foundation that is part sand, part concrete, and that all of us should try to serve as concrete rather than sand in the lives of those around us, and even those who may be far away but who we value.

Sincerely,
That Old Sentimental So-and-So

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