Archive for the ‘Technology’
The Antisocial Network at last
Hell is Other People: Walk One from Scott Garner on Vimeo.
Of course if one were really antisocial she would not join any social networks at all.
You are what you shoot
Breakfast still-life by Pieter Claez
Instagramming Your Food May Signal Bigger Problem, Researcher Says.
Doing research on how Instagramming your food may signal a bigger problem is an even bigger problem.
And devoting space to an article about research on how Instagramming your food may signal a bigger problem is the biggest problem.
So there are people who feel compelled to share every detail of their daily lives as if the rest of the world gives a flying fig about their digestive systems. How does the media deal with this? By giving a flying fig. Try harder, people, you’ve got nothing.
That said, it is rude to delay meals by taking pictures of the food on the table. You can spend as much time as you want photographing your own food, but lay off our plate.
The problem of Wernher von Braun
Von Braun, the Nazi who built the space program, with US President John F. Kennedy. Photo from space.com.
On Thursday, September 20, 1945, Wernher von Braun arrived at Fort Strong. The small military site on the northern tip of Boston Harbour’s Long Island was the processing point for Project Paperclip, the government programme under which hundreds of German scientists were brought into America. Von Braun filled out his paperwork that day as the inventor of the Nazi V-2 rocket, a member of the Nazi party, and a member of the SS who could be linked to the deaths of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Two and a half decades later on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, von Braun stood in the firing room at Kennedy Spaceflight Centre and watched another of his rockets, the Saturn V, take the Apollo 11 crew to the Moon.
That he was responsible for both the deadly Nazi V-2 and NASA’s majestic Saturn V makes Wernher von Braun a controversial historical figure. Some hold that his participation in the Nazi war effort necessitates classifying him as a villain. But while his actions during the Second World War were monstrous, he wasn’t motivated by some inherent evil or personal belief in Nazi ideology. Von Braun was motivated by his childhood obsession with spaceflight, a somewhat uncritical patriotism, and a naive grasp of the ramifications of his actions in creating one of the War’s deadliest weapons. How can we treat someone who brought technological triumph to two nations, in one case as a purveyor of death and destruction and in the other a bringer of wonder and inspiration?
Read Wernher von Braun: History’s most controversial figure? by Amy Shira Teitel.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
