☛ March To The Moon: photo from the Gemini IV mission depicting astronaut Edward White during NASA’s very first EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity), June 3, 1965, 19:45 GMT, shot with a Zeiss Planar 80mm lens mounted on a Hasselblad 500c 70 mm camera on Kodak Ektachrome film. Photo ID: S65-30431_G04-H. Flash is required to access some features. All photographs are in the public domain. Processed images (all except RAW) should be credited to NASA/JSC/Arizona State University.
Original captions read as follow:
Astronaut White floats in zero gravity of space northeast of Hawaii. White is attached to the spacecraft by a 25-ft. umbilical line and a 23-ft. tether line,both wrapped in gold tape to form one cord. In his right hand White carries a Hand-Held Self-Maneuvering Unit (HHSMU). The visor of his helmet is gold plated to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the sun.
This is one of 363 hi-res restored photographs related to the Gemini IV mission. Processed (enhanced) photographs for all Gemini missions were recently made available by NASA online. Each photographs is offered in three different resolution. The one I’m using is the smallest one: it’s a 553 kB 600×626 PNG file. One can also download a medium resolution (a 7MB 2205×2300 PNG file), a full resolution (a 28.1 MB 4410×4600 PNG file) or even an uncompressed RAW image (a huge 60.9 MB 4410×4600 TIFF file). Learn more about how the scans were made and how the original photographs were restored and enhanced.
The Gemini Program was the second human spaceflight program ran by NASA. It was preceded by the Mercury program (during which astronaut Alan Shepard became the very first American to orbit in space: see previously here “50 Years Ago: First American In Space”) and followed by the Apollo program (which ran from 1961 to 1972) and the Space Shuttle program (from 1981 to 2011).
An overview of the Gemini program is also available at the John F. Kennedy Space Center website:
The Gemini Program was conceived after it became evident to NASA officials that an intermediate step was required between Project Mercury and the Apollo Program. […]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced December
7, 1961, a plan to extend the existing manned space flight program by development of a two-man spacecraft. The program was officially designated Gemini on January 3, 1962. It was named after the third constellation of the zodiac, featuring the twin stars Castor and Pollux. The program was operationally completed with the Gemini XII flight.
First spotted via WIRED.com
• February 9, 2012 ― Published in Communication, Photography, Technology | Tagged: archive, astronauts, Gemini, Hasselblad, human spaceflight, man, NASA, space, vintage
― Mais quelle est votre attitude maintenant vis-à-vis de la religion?
― Je n’ai pas d’attitude. J’ai été élevé dedans. Je pourrais répondre «Je suis toujours athée, grâce à Dieu.» Je crois qu’il faut chercher Dieu dans l’homme. C’est un attitude très simple.
☛ L’Express: “Luis Buñuel: athée grâce à Dieu” by Michèle Manceaux, May 12, 1960, p. 41.
Image from Luis Buñuel’s interview in L'Express, May 12, 1960, p. 41
That’s the original form of the quote known in English as “Thank God I’m an atheist”. Here’s an English translation of the original exchange between Luis Buñuel and Michèle Manceaux (as quoted above):
― But now what is your attitude towards religion?
― I have no attitude. I was raised in it. I could answer “I’m still an atheist, thank God.” I believe we must seek God within man himself. This is a very simple attitude.
Seventeen years later, Luis Buñuel had a different attitude toward the subject of religion. He discussed it during an interview he gave for The New Yorker:
Buñuel’s work is born of the humor of a sad man distressed by his own vision of the world but with a fond eye for the mass of self-deceptions that make life bearable. He is one of the most mannerly men I have ever met. The only thing that stirs him to impatience is the sort of charity that is seen as a virtue by people who don’t question the anguish that makes charity necessary. “I’m not a Christian, but I’m not an atheist either,” he says. “I’m weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine ‘I’m not an atheist, thank God’ It’s outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called ‘Mexican Bus Ride,’ about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It’s guilt we must escape, not God.” (The New Yorker: “Long Live the Living!” by Penelope Gilliatt, December 5, 1977, p. 54)
There’s most likely a small confusion when Buñuel quotes his own aphorism: instead of “I’m not an atheist, thank God” ―which doesn’t correspond what he said in 1960― one should read “I’m an atheist, thank God”. That’s the “aphorism” Buñuel didn’t agree with anymore in 1977.
Image from Luis Buñuel’s interview in The New Yorker, December 5, 1977, p. 54
• February 5, 2012 ― Published in Art, Communication, Movies | Tagged: aphorism, atheism, Buñuel, god, guilt, religion
A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.
☛ W.H. Auden The Life of a Poet by Charles Osborne, London: Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 1995, p. 339. Amazon.
I was able to track down the original source for this quote with the kind assistance of Alan Jacobs, editors of The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton University Press, 2011; Amazon).
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was an Anglo-American poet. From the BBC website:
He continued to publish poetry including ‘The Age of Anxiety’ (1947) for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He collaborated with Kallman on the libretto for Stravinsky’s opera ‘The Rake’s Progress’ (1951). From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford University.
Below is a selection I made from Auden’s obiter dicta. What are those exactly? They are a collection of passing remarks made by Auden and noted by his friend and biographer Charles Osborne (obiter dicta is Latin for “said in passing”). They are not part of any poem or book written by Auden and remain undated. There are four pages of such remarks. They appear at the very end of Osborn’s book, on chapter 13 (PDF).
I always have two things in my head – I always have a theme and the form. The form looks for the theme, the theme looks for the form, and when they come together you’re able to write. (336)
The problem with the behaviouralists is that they always manage to exclude themselves from their theories. If all our acts are conditioned behaviour, surely our theories are, too. (337)
The older one gets, the more one values the age of friendship, as if it were a vintage. (337)
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain. (338)
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. (338)
I don’t go along with all this talk of a generation gap. We’re all contemporaries, anyone walking this earth at this moment. There’s a certain difference in memories, that’s all. (338)
I admire the young when they’re anti-money, but what they mustn’t do is take money from papa and then criticize his way of life. (339)
• February 2, 2012 ― Published in Art, Communication, Literature | Tagged: class, poet, poetry, professor, sleeping, student, teaching, W.H. Auden
What I realized during this Australian Open is that Nadal sets the tone for this state of affairs more than anyone else, certainly more than Federer. Roger is so cool and frictionless that, most of the time, he seems less like a prism of epic intensity than a dispassionate analyst of it.6 Djokovic, since his ascent, has been so much better than everyone else that he’s largely been able to act like a careful clinician, the administrator of his own talent. And Murray has lost to the other guys so often that his anger and frustration seem basically inconsequential. In other words, the game may be epic for the fans, but you won’t always catch that ground note of holy-shit intensity if you only watch the other three players. Left to themselves, they don’t exactly project deep contact with the secret fires of time.
Nadal, though? He plays like he’s fighting giants. It’s not just the sneer, or the muscles, or the hair, or that forehand — you know, the one where he swoops the racket all the way around his head like he’s whipping the team pulling his chariot. It’s also that frantic tenacity that used to drive me so nuts. Federer seems devastated when he loses but he also seems to sense losses coming and accept them before they arrive. When Nadal falls behind, he turns the match into life and death. He gets mad. He hesitates less. He hits the ball harder. He doesn’t look sad or scared. He looks defiant, and he plays like he’s possessed.
☛ Grantland: “Nadal vs. Djokovic: Here We Are Again, My Friend” by Brian Phillips, January 30, 2012.
Great sport journalism for what must have been, by all accounts, an epic 5 hours 53 minutes Grand Slam match (I haven’t watched it). This colorful analysis offered by Brian Phillips ―which could have been titled “Battle of the Titans” or more simply ”Titanomachy”― is just as interesting as those produced by David Foster Wallace (see “Federer as Religious Experience” by David Foster Wallace, August 20, 2006).
The match was played at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia. It started on Sunday January 29, 2012 and finished around 1:40 the next Monday morning (Australian Eastern Standard Time).
About Brian Phillips:
He is a staff writer at Grantland, and his work has appeared in Slate, Deadspin, The New York Times Magazine, The Awl, The New Republic, The Hudson Review, and Poetry, among other publications. (The Run of Play: About)
In 2007, he founded The Run of Play: “a blog about the wonder and terror of soccer”.
I first found Phillips’s article via more than 95 theses, Alan Jacobs‘s Tumblr blog.
• February 1, 2012 ― Published in Art, Communication | Tagged: Djokovic, Federer, Grand Slam, loser, loss, Lost, mythology, Nadal, sport, tennis, tragedy
