“You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
— Francis Crick (1916–2004)
Lunch at Noon. For Annette, because she loves this sort of thing.
I was out driving the other day, cycling through the stations on the radio. The local classic rock station was playing an old Boston song, the one with the lyric
You know it’s now or never
Take a chance on rock ’n’ roll
and I thought “will there ever be a time again [not that I’m saying I want there to be, don’t misunderstand] that one will be able to write lyrics like that un-self-consciously?”. I can’t really imagine that.
In the 70’s, one could (apparently — I wasn’t there but for a few months) talk about rock ’n’ roll, drugs, music, and love as objective things and still be taken seriously. Now you can’t.
Except maybe in Adult Contemporary, and even then just of love. But the kind of folks that take A.C. seriously aren’t really taken seriously by anyone else so that doesn’t really count.
Thirty-five years ago today, the first humans walked on the Moon.
Here is a panorama from just after the landing (QuickTime required; sound). I’ve never before seen a single photo that conveys the isolation and sheer spookiness of that scene: two men, a quarter of a million miles away from Earth, standing in a vast barren land under a pitch black sky.
From this Financial Post story:
“We have been waiting for signs that the anticipated halo effect from Apple’s retail stores and iPod would materialize. This quarter’s results provided the first definitive data point, suggesting that Apple’s core businesses may not be destined to continual decline,” said First Albany Capital analyst Joel Wagonfeld.
May not be destined to continual decline. Well if that’s not a ringing endorsement that you’re on the right track, what is?
But seriously, I’ve been interested for a while to see how Apple’s retail initiative and then the surprise “crossover” success of the iPod would affect their computer market share. I’ve got to imagine that if they’ve been able to hang on this long just through word-of-mouth and repeat buyers — How else do people find out about and get persuaded to the Mac platform? Certainly not through traditional electronics sellers. — that the Mac’s future is bright. Or at least not destined to dim a little more each year, forever.
You’ve seen one picture of star trails, you’ve seen them all, right?
Astrophotographer Stefan Seip used an innovative technique — starting out of focus, gradually increasing the focus, and adding a second shorter exposure — to get this brilliant star trail photo.
He was the type of guy who wore a calculator wristwatch well into his late-twenties.
He would set it to chime on the hour.
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