Ray Bradbury

I see this morning that Ray Bradbury has left us.  I always wanted to meet Ray, not so much as a fan of his stories – to be honest, I haven’t read much of his sci-fi beyond what was required in high school – but I wanted to meet him just to say I did.

Most of the people who are “required reading” in our school English classes are as dead to us as Millard Fillmore.  Hemingway shot himself a year before I was born.  Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and others all wrote and lived in a dusty past that is long gone even to my generation, and I’m no spring chicken.

When I lived in the L.A. area a few years back, Ray Bradbury was still showing up at libraries and book get-togethers around the Southern California region.  I just thought it would be cool to meet someone who is iconic enough to have made it into our English curriculum.  Kind of like a kid learning about the Civil War in history class and then finding out Abraham Lincoln was holding a Q & A session at the local branch library.

Most of the people we get exposed to in school are of the distant past, or public figures who aren’t accessible to us.  But there was Ray, who lived in the future but didn’t drive a car and didn’t fly in a plane until he was forced to in middle age, still out there talking about writing and imagination and creativity to anyone who was interested.

He was in love with what he did, and even if it’s not my particular “thing”, I still enjoyed reading some of his other essays and interviews, like Zen in the Art of Writing.

I came close a few times but unfortunately never had a chance to actually see Ray Bradbury.  For some reason it was one of those things we think we’ll always be able to do later, but never seems to happen.

When Ray was about 12, he went to a fair and saw a performer called “Mr. Electrico” who shot sparks out his fingertips.  He pointed at Ray and shot him with a bolt, saying “LIVE FOREVER!”.

I think Ray Bradbury will indeed live forever.

Part II, As Promised

In my last post, I said I'd comment on "Why Americans Do Science Shows Badly" - so here goes......

As a society, we suffer from "nerd" syndrome.  People who enjoy science and technology are "different", and not in a complimentary sense of the word.  This isn't news to anyone, but I think the view from the other side is what most people don't think about.

Most people with a technical or scientific bent think that people who aren't like them are dumb.  That's why we have "Dummies" books for "the rest of us".  As an example, I give you Mr. David Pogue.

If you aren't aware of who he is, he does some Popular Science-type series on PBS.  At about the 6th grade level.  While I salute his attempts at scientific education, I find the man unwatchable.  The shows remind me of what might ensue if you gave some 11 year old boys a garage full of lab equipment on a rainy Saturday afternoon and then left for a few hours.

Everything has to blow up, and the simplest reactions/experiments have to be "WOW'ed" and ooh-ed and aah-ed over.   It dumbs things down to the point you feel stupid for even wanting to watch.

By contrast, I give you Mr. James May, from across the pond in the UK.  His series "Man Lab", while not hardcore science, takes a much sillier premise and makes it pretty entertaining.  And all done in a mature, understated English manner.  I have to say I've actually learned something from James May, while I can't even bear David Pogue long enough to see what he's trying to get at.

So there you have it, educators of the world.  Everyone except you is NOT an idiot, so quit trying to take science news back to the 7th grade level where things have to be dumbed down so "you'll get it".

Somewhere between the boring science teachers of our youth and the childish antics of a nerd attempting to be cool is the way to reach your audience.

It's Not About Science, It's About Technology

I'm always somewhat amazed when I watch PBS science shows, even the well done ones like NOVA, at how we see "science" with a capital "S" presented with a lot of shows on geology, paleontology, and even quantum physics (it lends itself to neat visuals), yet we never really see anything on the technology that we encounter in our daily lives.

Imagine how many people might benefit (and how many tech support calls would be avoided) if we had a show that told us how computers, software, and the Internet worked.  What really happens when you click a link, or type in a URL?  What does it really mean to delete a file, or create a new one?

90% of people who use a computer all day long at work don't really have an idea of how they work, or why we do things the way we do.

And it's not just computers.....the internal combustion engine is a completely different beast from the one I knew as a 16  year old.  How do modern, fuel-injected engines work, and how do they operate?   How does hybrid technology work?  Most people have so distanced themselves from knowing how a car operates that I"m surprised cars still have hoods.

Shows like these would raise the general level of technical knowledge among the population, and probably be more interesting to young people than dinosaurs, volcanoes, or geological processes that happened millions of years ago.  The universe formed....I don't really know how, but I'm OK with not knowing all the specifics.  It would help most people a lot more to know what causes that "Check Engine" light to come on, and what it's trying to tell you.

But showing "the go of it", as Michael Faraday used to say, would spur curiosity and help a lot of people understand technology and be more comfortable with it.

There will be a Part II of this post....on "Why Americans Do Technology Shows Badly"

Stay tuned!

Book Review

Just finished reading "Jerome Hunsaker and the Rise in American Aeronautics" by  William Trimble.   For somewhat of an academic work, it was pretty readable, and even though I've read pretty extensively in the aviation history genre, it did provide some new insight.

For one, the book is largely the story of the birth and adolescence of the Military-Industrial complex.  While Trimble is very complimentary to his subject, after getting into the book a bit you can't help but notice the cozy relationships between Hunsaker, his work at NACA, industry and the military.

I picked up the book largely because I have seen Hunsaker referenced in so many of the other things I've read about the early years of aviation and aerospace.  He was Donald Douglas' mentor at MIT, did a lot of work in the early days of naval aviation, and laid the footprint for the massive research efforts in WWII and beyond.

So always seeing him mentioned as a side note, it was interesting to see just who he was.  A talented engineer, but more than that he was a talented technocrat who knew how to work the growing labyrinth of government and business relations.  Things that today would land someone in jail for conflicts of interest and "double dipping" were just the way things were done.

We tend to lionize our technological heroes, taking them out of the context in which they worked.  And as often as not, they were the beneficiaries of the same methods of skirting the edge of propriety that we see today.  You don't have to get too far into Hunsaker's steering of contracts, consulting for industry when he was with NACA, maneuvering himself into promotions into created positions, etc. to see that he pretty much wrote the book of how to succeed in the burgeoning world of aerospace and government.

It's almost painful to read about the millions (billions in today's dollars) that was thrown around in the early days of the Cold War.  Because now we're broke.  But we - as a government and society - did create some monsters back then that we are still dealing with.

I make no political or personal judgement here about Jerome Hunsaker.  Like any other historical figure who gets a biography written, he was a product of his time and deserves to be seen in that light, not the way we'd see these things now.  He was obviously an intelligent and talented man.  It's always interesting to me to see how things were done in years past, and the book provides not only a biography of a man but of an industry.

And I got it on remainder, so it was a cheap peek behind the curtain of how things got to be the way they are!

An Idea Is Spreading

Ran across this site...TechShop - a kind of "franchised" maker space.   I recently ran across a woodworking shop in my local area and took a class there.  Really a unique opportunity to have access to tools and expertise that people like myself, who live in apartments, townhomes, or other places where a shop is impossible to get access to what we lack.

I hope this trend continues, and more and more hacker/maker spaces spread out, not just in major population cities but in empty and under-used commercial space.

The Damned Die Hard!

After a considerable lapse, I've determined that there's still life in the old blog yet!  I've scraped together a direction to proceed with this little piece of the web, so I've decided to resurrect it.

So watch this space!