America's history is certainly a most colorful one for a wide variety of reasons. From the very birth of that nation to its long journey to where the country is today, so many things had to happen in a very particular manner. Some good things good and some things bad - it's all part of what has become history.
Hidden Figures tries to shine a spotlight on some of the lesser known heroes of the space race. And we're not talking about anyone who got to go into space. We're not even talking about someone who was in Mission Control.
Instead this book focuses on the lives of African American female mathematicians, which feels like the minority lottery when you string all those words together.
History is filled with unusual twists and turns. The mix of high points and low points is what makes the human experience so memorable. But it's a bit of a struggle to do the right thing every time and it takes time for people to change no matter how right the cause can be.
Mercury 13 is one of those documentaries that tries to shine a light on one of those less than ideal moments right in the middle of one of humanity's greatest periods for scientific development - the big space race. And the struggle that women astronauts went through before they could take a more active role in exploring the cosmos.
It is disappointing that gender politics remains to be a terribly part of our society that still comes up again and again. And documentaries like this try to do their best to capture those past struggles so that we can learn from them and find a way to do better moving forward.
Most of my childhood was dedicated to the love of all things Transformers and to some extent robots. But I did happen to have an odd diversion to Starcom toys for one reason or another.These space-themed vehicles were only notable because of mechanized parts opening and of course magnets. And magnets are always worth loving, in my book.
I thought I only had a few vehicles, but looking at this catalog photo I now realize that I had the Tornado Gunship, the H.A.R.V. 7, the Laser Rat, the Six Shooter, and at least the Shadow Vampire. Part of me remembers having the Shadow Parasite as well, but maybe it was wishful thinking.
It's odd that I never actually got to watch the official cartoon that supported the toyline - Starcom: The U.S. Space Force, which in hindsight is a really stupid name. I tried watching a few episodes online, and I see that I didn't really miss anything in its very limited 13 episode run.
I can't fully remember why I had so many of these toys. I guess they were among the unusual US export overruns that ended up at places like the old Uniwide Warehouse Club. They're still toys that I look back somewhat fondly on and I wish I had taken better care of them. Beyond the magnetic gimmick, I loved the effort to make their smaller vehicles modular in the sense that the Six Shooter's cargo hold could contain any of the compatible figures like the Laser Rat or the or the Railgunner. I think I wanted to collect all of the little vehicles just to be able to store them on other vehicles. It was a thing.
I often make fun of the movie awards season - you know that period towards the end of the year when different studios shift to releasing much more serious movies that are clearly designed to stand a chance at getting nominated for an award or to. It's a weird quirk of Hollywood in order to ensure the movie remains fresh in the minds of votes when it does come time to make a decision.
The Martian came out a little earlier than that period, but you'd be foolish not to consider that this movie was right up there with the other Oscar hopefuls. but to be fair, it's a pretty epic movie and one that felt like it wanted to put a bit more effort into getting the science more or less right, which reminds us of other heavy science fiction movies like Gravity and Interstellar.
It took me a while before finally getting around to watching this movie for no particular reason. We missed it when it came out in theaters and so we ended up waiting for the home video release.
And no I rather regret not having watched this movie sooner.
The internet is large enough for the billions of people that occupy this planet. Through sheer numbers alone, you know we're in for a significant amount of diversity and therefore creativity as well.
Thus you'd think that it's probably accurate to say that somewhere in the world at any given time, someone is thinking of something to showcase to the world. And of all those creative, thinking people, at least one of them will put it on YouTube.
Here's a pretty interesting simulation of the effects of a very large, albeit perfectly spheroid, asteroid hitting the Earth. Yeah, you know this can't possibly end well.
While the target was only an old Chinese weather satellite, the demonstration has everyone thinking pretty much the same thing - this is the kind of weapon that will be capable of destroying suspected spy satellites in order or even GPS satellites assuming China deems them to be hostile to their interests.
It's not as if there's anyone else worth targeting with asat weapons - only the US has such a large and highly developed satellite network that worth being considered as a potential military target, if needed. Thus it comes as no surprise that the US is one of the first nations to file a diplomatic protest against the missile test.
It'll be interesting to observe how the international community will respond to this particular test. It's definitely diplomatic thing ice either way and no country will really want to get caught in the middle of yet another US-China series of tense and terse negotiations.
America's history is certainly a most colorful one for a wide variety of reasons. From the very birth of that nation to its long journey to where the country is today, so many things had to happen in a very particular manner. Some good things good and some things bad - it's all part of what has become history.
