Yuri's Night

I can’t believe myself. I missed the fact that today is Yuri’s night! 45 years ago today, Yuri Gagaren was the first man to orbit the earth. 25 years ago today, John Young and Robert Crippen flew the first Space Shuttle flight to orbit. How cool is that?

Excuse me while I go party.

Media Heroes

For a long time, I’ve lamented the fact that the media doesn’t seem to know how to tell a news story. Before you get your journalistic panties in a bunch, let me explain. Quite simply, most media outlets are getting lazy, and getting their facts wrong. In some cases, they’re ignoring the facts altogether. Take this article by Tomas Sowall as a better example than I can give. I just wish I could write like he does. You’ll want to check out his other articles as well. Trust me. Agree with him or not, the guy is a good read.

The normal media outlets also seem to focus in on all the bad things going on, and ignore the really good things that happen. Until now, that is. Kudos go out to KSL for publishing an article about three boys who rescued their dad after an ATV accident.

Even more kudos go out to the boys themselves. The Red Cross honored them, and rightly so, for being true community heroes.

The Passing of Stansilaw Lem

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Stanislaw Lem, died yesterday. His stories were always unique, and original. Most of you will know him as the author of the story “Solaris.” Two different groups have made this story into a movie, including Andrei Tarkovsky, in 1972, and by Steven Soderbergh, in 2002. This last version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. Both versions were visually stunning, and are an interesting exploration of the nature of love and grief.

My first introduction to his work is still probably my favorite, The Cyberiad. Here’s a bit from the Wikipedia entry:

The Cyberiad is a cycle of short, amusing and somewhat cartoonish science fiction stories by Stanisław Lem. It was first published in Polish in 1967, and in English in 1974. It details exploits of two robots, Trurl and Klapaucius, in a fictional universe populated practically entirely by intelligent and highly anthropomorphic robots (hence the name Cyberiad). However, some of the stories involve main characters other than these two, typically some knight trying to win the heart of a princess. The stories focus on problems of individuals and societies (as seen in the somewhat absurd fairy tale cum scifi framework) and on the vain search for human happiness through technological means.

I loved these stories. On first reading they were quirky and fun. They are deceptively simple. The ideas they explored were more about humans than robots.

He will be missed.
    

Insert blog topic here.

It’s been a while since my last post and a lot has gone on in the news. Much of it is definitely blog worthy. Now I just need to decide what has me motivated enough to blog about here.

……………………

Nope. I got nothin’.