Weekend, backwards-wise
Feb. 3rd, 2003 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupFell asleep an hour ago while watching 24 Hour Party People. I was enjoying the film, but I got really sleepy after having wine with dinner. E. actually called up out of the blue and we went to a little bistro in Pawtuxet and had a nice time. I hope I avoided sounding like a complete git. Anyway, I woke up, as I usually do after naps, feeling both wistful and animated, like I realized something important and bittersweet in my sleep and now whatever it was is gone. Naps are the enemy.
Working backwards, I had just got home from doing research at Brown. I decided that spending 3 hours on a bus just to go to URI to do it for free wasn't worth it, so I paid Brown $50 to get access to their library. They had a lot of the magazines I needed right in the stacks, so I didn't have to deal with microfilm. Felt pretty good. Only bad thing about the day was the "wintry mix" weather, with huge icy puddles of slush everywhere and insane winds blowing around everywhere. But I like this routine of bus-riding and walking all over College Hill. Could get used to it.
Watched Ghost World again this morning. I was disappointed that the DVD didn't have more special features, though it did have the full clip from that Indian song that plays in the opening credits. That alone made it worth it to see again -- what a gloriously goofy thing to hit upon. The movie itself touched me as it usually did, with recognition on many levels and sadness at its truth. It really has an impact that goes beyond how "good" the film was as a piece of film, because so many of its themes are ones that I've thoroughly internalized in other ways. I think that more than I even enjoy the film, I'm just grateful that such a film even exists, since by all rights it shouldn't -- it goes so far against the grain of what a Hollywood movie is supposed to do. It was also easier to watch it on the small screen -- I think the first time I saw it, I wanted so much for it to be good, it kind of wrecked the moment. (Kind of a "local boy makes big" thing about Clowes, who I had been reading for almost ten years.)
Last night Lawrence of Arabia was on TCM, and I'd never seen it before, so I stayed in to watch. (The weather wasn't good for going out, anyway.) I finally figured out how to hook up the speakers to the cable box, and watching in stereo was pretty intense. Definitely an enjoyable flick.
The night before I watched The Apartment, which I had rented. Another touching, somewhat uncomfortable to watch film. I am beginning to think that I should only watch incredibly stupid movies and television programs because I get upset when I empathize with the characters.
It's that people never learn about bad technology. Two out of six of these things have not just failed, they have BLOWN UP, and now people have died, not once but twice, because no one can think of a damn way to fix a problem during the flight.
The first time, in '86, it was because there was no way to jettison the crew compartment. Okay, so let's close that barn door after it closes and put a parachute on the crew compartment. Now on this one it looks like those people were dead the second that piece of foam fell on the wing, but no one bothered to look, because there was nothing anyone could have done about it anyway.
Am I the only who thinks that this is completely insane? Whether or not you are sending to people to their death, you don't have some kind of backup plan? And for years it has been known that these tiles fall off. DON'T SEND PEOPLE TO DIE ON A CRAFT THAT ROUTINELY HAS HEAT TILES FALL OFF. And the truth is that for those of us with long memories, the whole story of the shuttles is one of duplicity and gambling with lives in order to save money.
In the summer of '86 I went to camp with a kid whose father was a reporter and had snagged a copy of the commission that investigated the Challenger crash. I read it several times, over and over. The story it described was almost fantastic. A program that was adopted because no one else could think of what else to do with NASA and because building the parts for the shuttle would fatten up the politically powerful aerospace contractors. A program in which a lot of components were never rigorously tested, including whether or not the vibrations of liftoff or other events would knock off those all-important heat tiles. A program in which the solid rocket boosters were sent out to the low bidder, Morton Thiokol, even after many serious warnings that their design was catastrophically flawed. And the story of the O-rings is one of such incredible arrogance and of tragedy that could have been averted if the right person had picked up the telephone.
The politicians want to have a space program without paying for it to be safe. This is still true today. It pisses me off.
So I have been in a very interior-monologue kind of mood and I think that being on my own for a few days has been good so far. In addition to my research, I feel that The Plan has some more momentum and has taken on a firmer shape in my mind.
There's also news about the house in Maine, but I suppose that can wait until tomorrow.
Working backwards, I had just got home from doing research at Brown. I decided that spending 3 hours on a bus just to go to URI to do it for free wasn't worth it, so I paid Brown $50 to get access to their library. They had a lot of the magazines I needed right in the stacks, so I didn't have to deal with microfilm. Felt pretty good. Only bad thing about the day was the "wintry mix" weather, with huge icy puddles of slush everywhere and insane winds blowing around everywhere. But I like this routine of bus-riding and walking all over College Hill. Could get used to it.
Watched Ghost World again this morning. I was disappointed that the DVD didn't have more special features, though it did have the full clip from that Indian song that plays in the opening credits. That alone made it worth it to see again -- what a gloriously goofy thing to hit upon. The movie itself touched me as it usually did, with recognition on many levels and sadness at its truth. It really has an impact that goes beyond how "good" the film was as a piece of film, because so many of its themes are ones that I've thoroughly internalized in other ways. I think that more than I even enjoy the film, I'm just grateful that such a film even exists, since by all rights it shouldn't -- it goes so far against the grain of what a Hollywood movie is supposed to do. It was also easier to watch it on the small screen -- I think the first time I saw it, I wanted so much for it to be good, it kind of wrecked the moment. (Kind of a "local boy makes big" thing about Clowes, who I had been reading for almost ten years.)
Last night Lawrence of Arabia was on TCM, and I'd never seen it before, so I stayed in to watch. (The weather wasn't good for going out, anyway.) I finally figured out how to hook up the speakers to the cable box, and watching in stereo was pretty intense. Definitely an enjoyable flick.
The night before I watched The Apartment, which I had rented. Another touching, somewhat uncomfortable to watch film. I am beginning to think that I should only watch incredibly stupid movies and television programs because I get upset when I empathize with the characters.
It's that people never learn about bad technology. Two out of six of these things have not just failed, they have BLOWN UP, and now people have died, not once but twice, because no one can think of a damn way to fix a problem during the flight.
The first time, in '86, it was because there was no way to jettison the crew compartment. Okay, so let's close that barn door after it closes and put a parachute on the crew compartment. Now on this one it looks like those people were dead the second that piece of foam fell on the wing, but no one bothered to look, because there was nothing anyone could have done about it anyway.
Am I the only who thinks that this is completely insane? Whether or not you are sending to people to their death, you don't have some kind of backup plan? And for years it has been known that these tiles fall off. DON'T SEND PEOPLE TO DIE ON A CRAFT THAT ROUTINELY HAS HEAT TILES FALL OFF. And the truth is that for those of us with long memories, the whole story of the shuttles is one of duplicity and gambling with lives in order to save money.
In the summer of '86 I went to camp with a kid whose father was a reporter and had snagged a copy of the commission that investigated the Challenger crash. I read it several times, over and over. The story it described was almost fantastic. A program that was adopted because no one else could think of what else to do with NASA and because building the parts for the shuttle would fatten up the politically powerful aerospace contractors. A program in which a lot of components were never rigorously tested, including whether or not the vibrations of liftoff or other events would knock off those all-important heat tiles. A program in which the solid rocket boosters were sent out to the low bidder, Morton Thiokol, even after many serious warnings that their design was catastrophically flawed. And the story of the O-rings is one of such incredible arrogance and of tragedy that could have been averted if the right person had picked up the telephone.
The politicians want to have a space program without paying for it to be safe. This is still true today. It pisses me off.
So I have been in a very interior-monologue kind of mood and I think that being on my own for a few days has been good so far. In addition to my research, I feel that The Plan has some more momentum and has taken on a firmer shape in my mind.
There's also news about the house in Maine, but I suppose that can wait until tomorrow.
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say, buddy -boy,
Date: 2003-02-03 03:32 pm (UTC)Re: say, buddy-boy,
Date: 2003-02-03 09:08 pm (UTC)