moon traveller herald

Mr Wizard [Don Herbert] died. He was 89. Richard Goldstein's obituary in the New York Times pointed out that success in conveying the excitement of science was based on his skill in communicating to kids. Herbert was born in Waconia, Minn., went to La Cross State Teachers College, and started out as Mr Wizard in 1951 on WMAQ-TV in Chicago. His show was on early Saturday mornings. "What really did it for us was the inclusion of a child," Herbert said. The show when it started was just him doing science at the lab table. It was like a lecture. When they cast children talking with him, the show took off. Herbert said ideally they had to be around 11 or 12. "Once they got beyond 13, they became know-it-alls." Mr Wizard helped us fight the Cold War. Respond to Sputnik. During 60s and 70s, about half the applicants to Rockefeller University in New York cited Mr Wizard when asked how they first became interested in science. Of course I remember the joy of ...

Been working with a team: Nuno, Jake and me. To get a technology cartoon. Working like a year on this off and on. And finally got something I like. Running under name of "Zorb" [Zorb Bickowitz, nee Barf Bickowtiz] http://www.theserverside.net/tt/cartoons/TalesFromTheServerSide.tss

Cecelia and I had a nice dinner one evening up at Harvard Sq not very long ago. The students were packing for summer. I remember looking at young people in a restaurant, many of them of the school, and thinking how privileged they were in health, training and connections. I don’t mean privileged in being snooty or anything like that because I didn’t see anything like that. In reading Bill Gates’s commencement speech I was heartened; not that I could articulate it earlier, but I thought a message of some kind somehow similar was needed. He noted that complexity was a problem at the time of the reformation of Europe after World War II, that George Marshall, he of the Marshall Plan, pointed out the difficulty individuals had in processing the mass of facts presented by press and radio at that time, pointed out in fact at a Harvard Commencement 60 years ago. http://www.theserverside.net/blogs/thread.tss?thread_id=45849

alt 5.4.2013 On a sunny Derby Day Milwaukee the East Side up by the pagoda-looking gas station around 1971 got lost got lost just a few blocks from home. Saw these placed I had never seen before the brown faces that I knew from the buses. let's see how's this going to go? And kids came out climbing over rubble singing "hippies in town" singing "hippies in town" me and dave and jim did a sort of  cold tremble seemed like sirens everywhere in the air we were over the milwaukee river and when a car engine would start it was like a slow explosion as we found our way bippity-bop-slop-drop back to the well-known main drag say east ogden ave Now on Mission Hill with many in their graves but not the 3 musketters and there is an old hippie fellow traveller playing I'm a Little Mixed Up Key to the Highway Cool it Down First I look at the Purse Dead Flowers Im Ready. ~~~~~~~~~~...

Blinking lights on the wing tips … spewed clouds apsiring .. the cities like ocean liners in the ark.... JetBlue flight over American night in 21 st century.. Went to Orlando. Again didn’t get to Kerouac’s house. Orlando is just a place I go to, hit the hotel, do the conference [this was Microsoft TechEd 2007 ], find a restaurant and go home. Got idea for future: Take an extra day and go to Cape Caneveral. [The picture at right is light on our bedroom window.. what I was glad to come home to. ] A lot of work. Did go out to dinner. Watched some television. Red Sox playing the Yankees on Sunday night. Stanley Cup Finals Monday night. Richard Serra on Charlie Rose show [Did see 30 sec of the penultimate Sopranos episode on HBO: Tony goes to bed in a cheap garret apt with a rifle on his breast. I guess the idea is: Tune in next week.] Yankees don't suck Yankee-Sox was a typical tight one. I turned it off when it got tied [for the second time, perhaps at 5-5]. Think Yankees won 6-5 on a...

There is a poet named Antler who wrote a book called Factory [City Lights #38, 1980]. He was originally from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and, like a lot of folks in that neck of the woods, he worked in factories, in his case a can factory, which I took to be a branch of Continental Can. It was a system of regimentation, oppression, life-sucking and automation. This is not the Andy Warhol Factory. Fact is I used to work in a factory filling Continental cans with wax. They were lidded, maybe with Antler created lids for all I know. Factory, the book, is a helleva screed that paints a true picture of the day of the factory worker in tremendous litany of felt experience. Antler is not too well known, but Antler’s writing was acclaimed by Allen Ginsberg. Here’s a bit. He’s looking at himself in relation to another, probably long time worker, and comparing. Don’t we both know the way to the prong of our alarm in the dark? How long could I work without looking up at the clock? How long ...