Floating in Zero G

I read Boing Boing religiously, but today's post by Xeni about her zero gravity experience is my favorite in a while. Her description of how natural it felt, and of feeling the urge to "fly" even once she was back on earth, made me nostalgic for something I've never experienced.



When I first read that she was taking that flight I thought it sounded really risky. (I sometimes get nervous on normal airplanes.) But now I'm just jealous that I still don't know how life feels without gravity. Maybe that's why I like swimming. I guess for now, floating in water is as close as I can get.

Wow, that's annoying

I was looking at something on Wired News when I saw an ad for this company called SitePal that lets you create custom avatars to use on your website. You choose how you want the character to look, and then record your voice, and then the character's mouth moves (badly) as if it's speaking what you recorded. I get frustrated when I have to deal with stupid people, and apparently that extends to fake people as well, so I hope this doesn't become the new trend in customer service.

They're kind of... sort of... floating

I just turned on my TV and saw the end of a newsy piece about a photographer named

Gay Ribisi. Yeah, apparently she's also Giovanni Ribisi's mom, and he's cool and all. But the photos they were showing on this news report were freaking awesome! She takes them all underwater, so it looks like the people are floating in space. I wish her website had a gallery. I hate this "Coming Soon" stuff. In the little clip I saw on the news, she was photographing a teenage girl painting her nails underwater. I want to see more of her work! Google, why are you letting me down? All I found were a few random mentions of her work as a producer, and her personal Scientology homepage. I sent her an email, so I'm hoping I'll get a note when she updates the website or maybe has a show in L.A. If I hear anything, I'll write a post about it.

W.T.C.

I'm home alone today and thinking about September 11th. I loved living in New York, but being there that day sucked a lot, and I'll never forget walking home to Brooklyn under a cloud of death and burning and chemicals that I could still smell in the air a month later.



I take September 11th very seriously, but I like this drawing by Natalie Dee a lot.

Retro technology

This New York Times article talks about people who like high-tech things that look old-fashioned, like these Pokia phones. I can see the appeal of having a real handset to talk into, but that thing won't exactly fit in my pocket.

Life in space



Responding to Keith's comment on my previous post, I started thinking about what it would feel like to travel into space. I did a Google search for interviews with people who've experienced it. A few highlights:



Here's an interview with astronaut Roberto Vitorri of the European Space Agency. My favorite quote:

In microgravity there is no laying down. Technically you could sleep in any position. The technique is to use a sleeping bag strapped to the walls, roof or floor, and then strap yourself to the bag. This is to avoid a sleeping cosmonaut floating round the station.

Here's an interview with NASA astronaut Dan Barry. A neat quote:

The clouds are so white it is hard to look at them. They're so bright you have to put sunglasses to look at them or your eyes will just close all on their own. Sunrises and sunsets are particularly spectacular, because if you remember we are going around the earth every 90 minutes, which means we see the sun rise and 45 minutes later we see the sun set and 45 minutes later we see another sunrise.

Here's a Scholastic interview with astronaut Sally Ride, where she answers the all important question, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?"

The space shuttle has something that looks very much like a toilet. And on Earth, a toilet works because of gravity. It pulls the water away from your body. In space, you have to use something to pull the liquid from your body, so the space toilet uses air suction. It pulls the liquid from your body, and it works very well.

Here's a Scholastic interview with astronaut Mae Jamison. She talks about what it feels like when the shuttle takes off, among other things:

It takes about eight minutes to get from the Kennedy Space Center into orbit. During the last four minutes, you feel a lot of pressure across your chest. You feel like you weigh about three times what you weigh on Earth.

Here's an audio interview where kids from a Texas elementary school talk to Commander Mike Foale through the International Space Station's ham radio. Many of the questions are pretty basic, but I learned that you can wear contact lenses in space (even in zero gravity, surface tension keeps them in your eyes). This is a fun interview just because of all the perky young voices introducing themselves and asking questions.



And, here's a thirty-eight minute audio interview from NPR's Fresh Air program with Astronaut Captain Jerry Linenger, who spent several months on the space station Mir. (I'm still listening to this, and right now he's talking about the overwhelming feelings of isolation he experienced.)

More Genesis:




This NASA page has an update, and a

video, both amazing and tragic, of the spacecraft plummeting to earth. If I made the kind of art that involved video clips, I would want to make something based around that little movie. At first you can't tell what you're even seeing, but after a while the tiny, shaky blob starts to look more like an expensive spacecraft, just in time to see it smash into the desert floor.

Space sadness

I'm sad that the Genesis capsule crashed down. This page has some pictures of how it looks now, sticking out of some desert sand. And here's a page about the data Genesis was collecting, and an artist's conception of what the spacecraft looked like in action. When I first read about this mission, I was excited about NASA bringing stardust back to earth. When I heard about the crash, I felt like all that potential magic had crumbled. But maybe the stardust broke free when Genesis crashed in the desert... And maybe even now as I type this, little bits of magic, sparkly stardust are starting to drift around the entire planet, granting wishes for regular people like us. It's sad that the scientists won't get to study the dust, but maybe stardust shouldn't be trapped in a lab anyway.

Robot radio

I know I haven't written much lately, but this morning I came across something cool that inspired an entry. I was searching for some kind of audio entertainment that might make the time pass quicker while I was working, and came across NPR's Studio 360 website. Studio 360 is a weekly radio program "where art and real life collide." Browsing the archive, I found a recent program that focused on robots.



The show's guest was Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab and head of iRobot, the company that makes robot vacuums. He and I go way back, so I thought it would be neat to listen to his thoughts. It was. He talks about preferring "flesh-based companions" over robot dogs, how H.A.L from 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired his work, and My Real Baby, the robot doll he helped create.



Also discussed:



--The Robot Hut, a toy robot museum in eastern Washington that I'd love to visit someday.



--Girl robots, like the ones in Austin Powers and The Stepford Wives.



--Music composed by computers



If you have some time, listen to the program online! Even the interstitial bits, with sound clips from robot songs and robot-themed movies are fun.