The Art Neuro Weblog

The Shutle Returns To Launchpad
Here we go. It's been 2 and a half years of reports, revisions, investigations, re-engineering and re-design; it's cost US $1Billion; there have been 2 significant delays and it's still unpredictable and unforgiving. But it's on the tarmac ready to go again.

Managers believe they have licked the overriding problem of foam shrapnel, but warn that no one will know for sure until Discovery goes up. Ice from the fuel tank could also prove to be a deadly spoiler.

As for those little shuttle bandages, the astronauts don't trust them enough to ride home with them covering any holes, even those considerably smaller than the one that doomed Columbia.

An oversight group found the remedies to be so deficient that it ruled NASA noncompliant with Columbia accident investigators' 2003 insistence on practical space repairs. The task force also found NASA lacking on two other crucial requirements, shuttle hardening and elimination of fuel-tank launch debris.

I'm really scared for the astronauts. I can't watch these things any more.

The Week That Was In London
I've been a little pre-occupied this week so I haven't posted much stuff.
Suffice to say it was the week that saw London become the fist city to win a right to host the Olympic Games AND get mass bombed by terrorists in the same week. While the events and the images are shocking, and indeed my heart goes out to the victims and their family just as it did with September 11, I am more curious as to just how Scotland Yard intends to bring the perps to justice.

I also have to confess I'm a little bored of the sort of chestbeating done by politicians in the aftermath of each and every incident. Her Majesty the Queen visited the Hospital caring for the victims and quickly got up to make an impromptu speech that echoed her ancestors defiant stance against enemies of yesteryear. While admirable in sentiment, you sort of expect the monarch to do that in such times. And if such predicatble things aren't boring, then I don't know what boring is.

Meanwhile here are people on the planet who celebrate these tragic moments - like the family who were shown dancing on the streets in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They have reasons to do so; as Jean Renoir once famously observed, "Everybody has a reason". Well Mr. Renoir, the people with minds that hate, really work on having a reason. It seems to me, nothing concrete can be accomplished while these same politicians keep on providing reasons for these people to feel these nasty sentiments. Or maybe it simply is the case that we are living amidst a cultural war that is rending asunder the accomlishment of the Enlightenment. Maybe the current vogue of Medievalist thought, ranging from the sort of blurring of the line between Church and State, the fundamentalist religions trying to stake out a position in politics, the attempt to discredit rationalism, science, philosophy and indeed knowledge that we see almost every day; maybe these things are all symptoms of the same and single problem. Some people just aren't up to the challenge of living in the twenty-first century.

Predicatbly the loonies on the left and right are pointing fingers at each other on boards of baseball to Yahoo to whereever else people ordinarily talk things other than politics. It's a shame really, because these discussions bear no relationship to the hateful mind of the terrorist out there somewhere enjoying his adrenaline rush of a successful bomb or planning his next attack.
So I guess we'll see what Scotland Yard can accomplish in the coming week or months.

More Thoughts on Live 8
Channel 9 played some more cuts of Live 8, some of which weren't shown last time.
I missed a few acts in my last pot-shot review:

U2 plays 'Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band' with Sir Paul - How frickin' naff did that sound?

Annie Lennox observation II - She must be a very difficult person. She kept changing her expression from impassioned to irritated with a vaguely missed not to a sublime 'got it' to a 'WTF' as she played piano and sang. I thought, "Far out, it's not that critical Annie, it's only pop music".

REM - Michael Stipe looked like a freak with a blue band across his eyes. Still dull, tepid and boring after all these years.

Dido - She can't sing. She really can't sing. I can't believe she gets paid. She was so awful I had to walk away.

Pink Floyd - They played 'Comfortably Numb' on the second broadcast. It was cool. They look really, really old, and Gilmour's black strat looked really battered but hey, the leadbreak just cut the audience down; and was that Roger Waters smiling and grooving? They were the very definition the old-fart-ness of the Live 8 but still, they rocked.

Scissor Sisters - Who are these people? They were okay.

Celine Dion - She was doing some weird cabaret act in Vegas. She can sing, but she sure ain't no dancer. Actually, as she's 'matured' her voice has gotten richer. Very nice voice now compared to even a decade ago when she sang the theme for 'Titanic'.

Mariah Carey - She was practically busting out of her tight dress. She can still sing, but everyday she looks like she's headed out towards a Aretha Franklin sort of stature. I can sort of see why Derek Jeter dumped her... :)

The Who - How can they still be The Who when half of them are in the grave? The half-Who belted out 'Won't Get Fooled Again' because, well, Pete just turned 60 in may so they eally aren't qualified to play 'My Generation' any more. At least Keith lived up to the adage, "Hope I die before I get old"... Still, Pete's red Stratocaster sounded just as huge as it did on the 2000 Live DVD. You can see him wind up the output on the retro-fitted active circuit knob and his sytem howls. Most notably, he was on all Fender amplifiers tonight - you notice these things when you're a fan.

Sir Paul - I noted how bad he sounded. They must have re-mixed it during the week because he sounded much, much better in the same performance being broadcast again. In fact, the London gigs over all, sounded pretty crappy last week, compared to the stuff in Berlin and elsewhere. OTOH there was no saving Sir Bob Geldof's sad effort because that one still sounded crap.

It's at the point where some of these boomers are geting really old. Roger Daltrey looked like the local bank manager on his Sunday pub gig more than a rock star. In fact they're so old they are older than the G8 leaders yacking in Scotland. So maybe this is the last ditch effort by the Baby Boomers to salvage something from what has amounted to a really selfish self-serving generation that ate more than its fair share? When I see their slogan 'Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great', I think "certainly ain't mine".

It's a fine cause and all, but the whole thing left me very cold indeed. Maybe I'm too deep in my cynicism.

Yankee Comings & Goings
The New York Yankees are adopting a Youth policy more out of necessity. Since callig up Robinson Cano and Chien-Mig Wang to fill roster spots, the Yankees have shown a bit of spunk. now that Jason Giambi is hitting like a Juicin' Giambi is supposed to, The Yankees felt advneturous enough to elevate a 20 year old prospect into Centerfield. That's right. Melky Cabrera, who started the year as a distant prospect finds himself in the lineup at number 9, displacing Tony 'Woe'-mack to the bench.

While a lot of analysts predict that it is too early to bring up this prospect, it seems the Yankee brass are determined not to overpay for mediocre veterans anymore; certainly not this year. When asked if this was an attempt to showcase Cabrera for a trade, GM Brian Cashman emphatically denied this was the case. So I guess it's warts-&-all-growth-in-pulic-view time for the young Mr. Cabrera, who by most accounts is most probably the Yankee Centerfielder of the near-future.

Win or lose, it's a good sign and suddenly the Yankees are fun again; it reminds me of the 1996 squad that had a rookie Derek Jeter at short, with young arms from the farm Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte and a still pretty young Bernie Williams in center. This could be very promising.

- Art Neuro