Bring on the soup dish

[austin_dern]

A note: when one is out of paper plates or towels to use as means of holding cooked or otherwise bulky food prior to eating it, it is possible -- and there even are advantages -- to use the real, ceramic plates as plates, instead of as large ceramic pieces filling up shelf space. And I'm proud to say it only took me a day to realize that. I mention this just in case you ever think mathematics PhD's might have a narrowly focused sort of intelligence and be sort of dumb in everyday life.

For amusement value, I've uploaded a picture from some Star Trek: Enterprise episode. When you've got it loaded, here's my caption: ``And after this, you're going to come back and take one with a camera, right?''

Somewhere in the various news about space science discoveries, which I don't follow as much as I should given that I've always been fascinated by it (the third book I remember reading was a science popularization, author and title long forgotten, explaining in part how the Moon was ripped out of the Pacific), headlined an article about one of Saturn's exceedingly many moons with, ``Enceladus More Interesting Than Previously Thought.'' I'm trying now to remember, when's the last time something in space was found less interesting than previously thought? ``Albiorix Just A Rock''? I don't think I've ever seen an instance when a close-up look at a planet, satellite, asteroid, or other turned up nothing big and unexpected. Maybe the Mariner pictures showing that Mars didn't have canals, cities, or hemisphere-encompassing fields of lichen were disappointments, but that's before my time. Still, ``Space Object More Interesting Than Previously Thought'' seems like the way to bet for the foreseeable future.

Trivia: The southern span of Timothy Palmer's arch bridge across the Merrimack river near Newburyport, Massachusetts was found unsafe and sold at auction in 1809. Source: Yankee Science in the Making, Dirk J Struik.

Currently Reading: The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Of course, such science journalists (there are some surviving?) do need to leave room for events such as the Tempel 1 impact and its aftermath, lest we be left with little more range for surprise than "HOLY FARK! Object WAY THE HELL MORE interesting that any sucker had imagined!", although I would like to see CNN loosen up a little in that direction.

I want to see an in-the-future episode of Star Trek include a Franklin Mint collectors' plate from a previous-in-time series.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know, planetary science is probably the easiest sort of science journalism to make interesting to the lay public. You need a good amount of background material to explain why, oh, identifying an amino acid generated by a bacteria species in one of those deep underground lakes is novel; but that volcanoes might have re-sculpted the entire surface of Titan within the past ten years? You don't need to sell why that should be neat.

One of the things I think Star Trek desperately needs, or would need if it were still being made, is some hint of popular culture, even junk culture like Franklin Mint plates. Everybody can't go wandering around listening to Klingon opera and public-domain symphonies all the time.