moon traveller herald

  A Discussion: Boston Punk Rock: Landmarks, Bands, and the Scene - Saturday, September 14, 3:00pm–4:30pm Parker Hill – Registration is required.   Raw and simple, punk music emerged in the 1970s in reaction to mainstream rock of the era. It was DIY - you just needed three chords, and you didn’t have to be in tune.   That is arguably background for Saturday’s special discussion which features A.J. Wachtel who has covered the Boston Entertainment scene as a music journalist for over 40 years. He is the host on Wachtelligence podcast, where he has interviewed such Boston music mainstays as Rick Berlin, famed of Orchestra Luna, Steve Cataldo of The Nervous Eaters, Bob Margolin of the Muddy Waters Band, and many others.   The event is intended as a celebration of the city's vibrant punk heritage, spotlighting influential bands, iconic venues -- Who went to The Ratskellar?! -- and the indelible impact they've made on the genre.   In fact, the discuss...

  A favorite picture of Cecelia [in Chicago, late 1970s]

NIS T researchers have developed a system called lunar coordinate time with the express purpose to achieve precise timekeeping on the Moon.    We may recall US astronauts wore Omegas to the Moon. But maybe their time was off.   That’s because the Moon's weaker gravity causes clocks to tick faster than on Earth. That’s due to what Einstein reckoned was gravity’s influences on passage of time,   I guess you could “synchronize watches” as they did in every Mission Impossible heist, and you’d remain in time with your bro buddies, if not the cosmos.   That may not work when the great era of colonized lunacy arrives, and the machines inside different Ice Stations Gamma Alpha and Zebra call each other at an agreed-to time.   NIST boffins say this innovation paves the way for a GPS-like navigation system on the Moon, which would greatly enhance lunar exploration efforts by enabling precise landing and navigation capabilities.   Will they us...

Player Piano by Vonnegut describes the factory and the rise of automation in a dystopian but whimsical future. Machinists with their blackened hands. The punch press sound: 'Aw grump. Tonka Tonka. Aw grump. Tonka Tonka.' Vonnegut paints a picture where all humans face the fate of Native peoples run over by a colonizing power, in this case the power is technology, you have little but leisure time, your caught in a dream of 1984 with less harsh edges. He was something of a technical writer when he composed Player Piano [alternatively titled "Utopia."  [a press release and story writer for GE in Schenectady, NY after WW II] and was quite aware of "Cybernetics" because Weiner's writings were prominent. Norbert Weiner appears on page 14 of Player Piano, he comes up in conversation about time and motion.  Reading' And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut a Life" by Charles J Shields page 97 vonnegut is working at General Electric in Schenectady the job he got th...

 A rewrite My Secret Museum of Cybernetics i. Intellectual pretensions were welcome around my house growing up in Racine. I got a job at an after-school job at the library, and found  a book for every imagining I might have. At the point where Bob Dylan and Summer of Love mysticism was passing cars and rockets in my personal hit parade, I chanced upon the notion of feedback. It had a scientific aspect and a musical aspect [the latter in the hands of Jimi Hendrix, the Velvet Underground and Canned Heat]. I was assigned to write a thesis that could serve as an essay for college admission. So I had a mind to study. With Bronski's Science and Human Values in hand I began a piece on The Humanization of Science, in part a Renaissance study. In part a look at the history of alchemy. I'd often begin at the beginning of things and hardly get any further. At the same time I found out about Norbert Weiner and Claude Shannon - about cybernetics and information theory. Cybernetics, closely...