SOFIA

Last year I became one of the first journalists to fly on a science mission aboard SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) developed and operated by by NASA and the German aerospace agency DLR.

In essence, SOFIA this is a giant, state-of-the-art infrared observatory packed into the aft fuselage of a highly modified Boeing 747SP. By making airborne observations high in the stratosphere, SOFIA’s instruments can gather light above 99% of our atmosphere’s water vapor. The flying observatory is now beginning to enter full scale scientific operations.

Our 10-hour long flight (dubbed Basic Science Flight 2) took off from U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Most of our circuitous flight took place over the Pacific Ocean. After about 10 hours in the air, during which we reached altitudes of 43,000 feet, we returned safely to Palmdale.

The mission consisted of tests and observations on the GREAT instrument (the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies), which were successfully carried out.

It was a thrilling experience, and I was most impressed with the professional workmanship of the entire NASA crew. Keeping this highly complex, unique aircraft operational and flying in a reasonably safe manner is no easy task requiring much coordination and teamwork.

My detailed report was published in the January February 2012 issue of Gruner+Jahr’s popular German science magazine, P.M. Magazin. An excerpt (in German) can be read here. (The magazine will continue to be available online in both print and iPhone/iPad app editions).

Click the image below to see my photo album:

 

Links:

SOFIA on Wikipedia

NASA’s SOFIA Page

DLR’s SOFIA Page (English)

DLR’s SOFIA Seiten (Deutsch)

Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI)

SOFIA Science Center (USRA Page)

 

 

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The Artist

Finally, I have made it to the theater to see The Arist. And, oh my, I was not only floored, but also almost speechless! This is one of the most perfect movies I have ever seen! When I close my eyes, I think I can see Charlie Chaplin smiling. It is a masterpiece.

With no less than ten Academy Award nominations, so much has been written about this movie that I don’t feel the need to add a lot more. (If you are so inclined, read the detailed reviews by movie critics Roger Ebert or Kenneth Turan).

Just this: if you think you don’t care for silent movies, do not be deterred. See it anyway! First of all, the movie is not “silent”. Secondly, there is a reason why the story was told this way. Go and find out! (But see it in the theater! It is meant for the big screen!)

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Etta James, 1938 – 2012

Jamesetta Hawkins, born January 25, 1938 in Los Angeles to a teenage prostitute, never knew her father and grew up in various foster homes. She became a major recording and performance artist under the name “Etta James”. She passed away on January 20, 2012 in Riverside, California.

Etta James on Wikipedia

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Trouvelot: Astronomical Drawings And Invasive Species

In June 1881, a brilliant comet streaked across the skies of the northern hemisphere. This image is part of a recently digitized series of illustrations by the French-born artist Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895).

Other images show Jupiter, Saturn and details of the Moon and Sun. Another records a meteor shower that lit up the skies one night in November 1868. [See Trouvelot’s Astronomy Illustrations]. All images were made available by the New York Public Library.

Trouvelot was less known for his astronnomical drawings, but more for his work as an amateur entomologist. This, however, had unintended results. As part of an attempt to produce silk in America, Trouvelot brought in gypsy moths from Europe — to be bred in the United States. Things went awfully wrong. Some larvae escaped and became an invasive species. To this day, gypsy moths are a devastating pest in America, destroying forest foliage in parts of the Southeast and Midwest, and in the northeastern United States.

I wish Trouvelot had stuck to drawing astronomical objects.

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Good-bye, Hal Takier (1917 – 2012)

Portrait of Hal Takier

Unfortunately I only met Hal in his old age, but I am grateful for the time we were able to spend together. Hal was one of a few remaining witnesses of a very special time in popular culture, and American history: the Swing Era. Always gracious, supportive, friendly and willing to share from the wealth of his experience, he and his wife Marge were regular attendees and contributors to a series of public events I co-produced and directed.  I will miss him dearly and remember him fondly. Hal left behind his wife of many years, Marge Takier.

Below is the first part of a three part mini-documentary made in 2001 of legendary Southern California swing dancers Hal Takier, Jean Veloz, and Freda Angela. Interviews were filmed by Erik Robison, Tip West and Mike Mizgalski and edited by Hilary Alexander. (Provided via YouTube):

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Journalist Toll Of 2011

Given the public uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the military campaigns in Afghanista and Pakistan, and the drug conflict in Mexico, last year was particularly bloody. Reporters sans frontières has released its annual tally.

66 journalists and 2 assistants were killed in 2011, which is slightly more than in 2010.

1,044 journalists were known to be arrested, which is almost double the number of 2010. The hotbeds were certainly the events of the “Arab Spring” during 2011. But reporters were also arrested, summoned to court and interrogated in connection with the demonstrations in Greece, Belarus, Uganda, Chile and the Occupy Wall Street protests in the USA.

“In some countries, bloggers have taken on a central role,” says Michael Rediske, the head of the German section of Reporters Without Borders. “Especially when conventional media are strongly censored or international journalists are not allowed into the country.”

But the organization warns that Internet activists reporting in blogs, on Twitter or via Facebook have increasingly attracted the scrutiny of authorities and of violent groups. Five Internet activists are reported to have died in 2011, three of them in Mexico. 199 bloggers were arrested, and 62 were physically assaulted.

Rediske also points out that the number of countries with Internet censorship has risen from 62 to 68.

The most dangerous countries for journalists in 2011: Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Mexico.

Link: Reporters Without Borders (English Site)

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Silent Movies

I am excited that there’s a new silent movie out: The Artist (2011). I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but I am looking forward to it.

When I was studying film theory in college, François Truffaut‘s fabulous Hitchcock (the 1967 book based on long interviews with Alfred Hitchcock) was a huge revelation for me. It turned me into a strict proponent of what I later coined “The Hitchcock Theorem”. It refers to the Old Master’s view that a good film should tell the story not in words, but mostly in pictures. Stories unsuitable for being told visually should remain novels. Some of them might be suitable for adaption into a stage play, but they should not become a screenplay. Hitchcock was very adamant about this.

When you look carefully, you will notice how many of today’s movies tell entire plots and sub-plots through dialogue between the characters. Hitchcock called this approach “lazy” film making, and he was opposed to this sort of screenwriting.

Inspired by the Truffaut’s book I wrote a college paper on one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, Psycho. Analyzing the film scene by scene, I was amazed to see that the majority of it has no dialogue, and not even music.

Hitchcock attributed many of his skills as a film maker to the fact that he began his craft in silent films, and he lamented that later film makers no longer had this opportunity.

Here’s to silent movies!

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7th Street and Broadway, Los Angeles 1934

Scott Harrison, who says he has worked at the Los Angeles Times for 48 years and started as a paper boy, found this image:

Click to enlarge.

The photo was taken by L.A. Times photographer William Snyder on Nov. 24, 1934. It was published the next day, accompanying an article about the first day of a strike by the Amalgameted Assn. of Street and Electric Railway Employees against the Los Angeles Railway Corp.

The article notes: This photograph taken at Seventh street and Broadway yesterday morning shows what little effect the strike on the Los Angeles Rail way street-car lines had on business activities in the retail shopping district. Normal trolley car operations are apparent. (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 25, 1934).

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The Palace

by Rudyard Kipling :. 1902

WHEN I was a King and a Mason – a Master proven and skilled
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion – there was no wit in the plan –
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran –
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known.”

Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread;
Taking and living at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart.
As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand
The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride,
They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.
They said – “The end is forbidden.” They said – “Thy use is fulfilled.
Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s – the spoil of a King who shall build.”

I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers.
All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
Only I cut on the timber – only I carved on the stone:
“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known.”

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L.A. Noire

I am not a video gamer. No, no, no! Not at all! But to my great surprise there is now a computer game I could see myself getting excited about: L.A. Noire. Its simulation of 1940s Los Angeles is simply stunning and mindboggling.

This is not an invented landscape! This is a representation of the authentic streets, buildings, landmarks and vehicles which really existed at the time, and the players navigate on a true map of the city. Here is a simulated police chase through downtown Los Angeles, circa 1947:

I never thought I’d say this, but this has gone on my “must try” list. Not that I’d really want to “solve a crime” or actually play the game — I’d be content with cruising around vintage Los Angeles for hours and hours.

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