@pedant

This is Syzygy the younger: thankfully your VD pops up in mum’s  inbox auto.

Absolutely great blog &, again, Mum had no idea at all that 30 seconds referred to fuel. And “contact light”  -loved the analogy. I’m going to listen to it again. We did spend, maybe 10 minutes discussing the moon landing in history -7 minutes, really with the i…[Read more]

Seconding @pedant ‘s praise for First Man.  Gripping, claustrophobic, intense – and a remarkable amount of suspense given that we all knew that they would make it there and back again!

Also seconding commiserations & best to @missy – hope things start to improve soon.

@thane16 – ah cheers. I think you did remember my birthday (end of Feb) but thanks again!
oh – and (even) I remember Callan. More the film they did later which itself was probably a rerun on TV that I saw and then re-runs. Recently (last year) a channel hidden in the depths of the somethinghundreds had all the seasons from B&W to colour.
Hit and…[Read more]

@pedant @mudlark et al

Cheers for that, @pedant. I plan to dive into Chernobyl soonest. Time is at a premium at the moment as I try to wrangle this damn thesis into shape for final submission. But I’m looking forward to it. (Hope you’re taking care yourself btw)…

btw, if anyone is looking for something a bit timey-wimey over the summer then…[Read more]

Spoilers for the 2 vids provided. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t watched. But watch it.

@pedant (I raised my hand)

Following on from not knowing things….when Laylan asked about the viewfinder, I was thinking “yeah, uhn.  Why not, then, mm?”

I love his answer. It’s not a lack of English that causes him to stumble, it’s the nature of the…[Read more]

@pedant

That’s something unknown to me -the ‘odds.’ Heck a holy moly.

The book The Knowledge Illusion is similar -talks about how, in one experiment, a sampled group, when asked to draw a bicycle, left off important things. The bike didn’t need a basket or even a light but it certainly needed  -axel, bearings, brackets…

Before I read it all,…[Read more]

@Blenkinsopthebrave  indeed they do. Young syzygy returned to school on the 15th. I’ll check on the QLD school’s  archive, though.

I love how barely a month after the moon landing Woodstock happened. And then August 26-31 was the Isle of Wight Festival. 150 000 people there? Not sure. But around then The Stones had ‘Honky Tonk Women’ and Zager a…[Read more]

ha ha @thane16 – only Bowie could mime la-la’s.

@pedant will be wanting me to post Starman.

So I’ll post this

oh wow – thanks @mudlark @winston @thane16 @pedant @blenkinsop and @ everyone I’ve forgotten or who is yet to jump in with a memory. I’m gonna ask my brothers and sister what they remember (I’ll let you know!).

Unfortunately I just wasn’t quite yet alive when this happened so my main ‘space’ memories are either Challenger or Star Wars when I was…[Read more]

@pedant @Miapatrick @Cathannabel @JimTheFish

I bought the DVD of Chernobyl on Monday afternoon, watched the five episodes over three evenings and am left stunned. Deftly and concisely constructed almost entirely from the point of view of those involved as it happened, with all the muddle, panic and ignorance, the struggle to cope in the face of…[Read more]

@Whisht  @blenkinsopthebrave  @winston  @pedant @thane16

Sadly I didn’t see the first moon landing live, although I was well aware it was happening. At the time I was working as a supervisor on a large excavation in southern England. The hours were long, the work demanding – not to mention the after-work social life – and I simply didn’t have th…[Read more]

I was two during The Great Moon Walk, as Dad expressed it. He arrived here as a refugee & by the late 1960s, as a chemical & mechanical engineer, he would whisper late night stories, when I couldn’t sleep, centred on the universe & what exciting discoveries we’d  find.

He was amazed by the delicacy and inventiveness of space crafts. When I was…[Read more]

@pedant  We watched First Man and it was really good. Another movie I would recommend is an oldie but a goody about the space program called The Right Stuff, in fact I think I will watch again for the anniversary.

@whisht Thank you for the kind words. The world celebrated this as a shared accomplishment, I just wish we could get together and…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave  @pedant @whisht    Coincidentally we just now watched Apollo 11, a really good documentary  by CNN made entirely with remastered film and audio telling the story. It had no narration except Walter Cronkite when he was on TV at the time. I watched a lot of the lift-off and moon walk as a child on a black and white TV at home…[Read more]

@whisht the Radiohead’s beautiful -it all is. And I know where you’re coming from. Except clearly yesterday I didn’t/wasn’t. I was in the “white person, privileged position.” I figure the reason these things happen to me is because I’m in the wrong space. Also, there’s some lessons I need to learn & never do (or not yet…[Read more]

Man! I edited my 6 lines (young siggers) here & then it disappeared. I’d suggest no editing of posts, for now. I know others said that was happening.

Basically I was saying 1) mum loves Eno & his Music for Elevators 2) I like Reich & mum did a discography of his work as a uni project & got the 100% mark for this. It had to have every comma, dash,…[Read more]

@pedant    Gorgeous.

@pedant beautiful. Love the colour on the legs. It does resemble a “Dog Rose” as  I recall anyway from my Hons Drama project which included a rather cursory study of Elizabethean gardens.

@blenkinsopthebrave Confession, we don’t actually have a DVD player. Have always played them through the computer. These days we don’t even use a TV but…[Read more]

@mudlark @cathannabel @janetteb et al

I’d heartily add to the Years and Years recommendations. It is very RTD-esque but none the worst for it. It’s also a long overdue BBC foray into drama dealing with contemporary issues rather than desperately trying to avoid them in costume and/or crime drama.

@pedant

I’m very much looking forward to…[Read more]

@pedant My husband and I watched Chernobyl a few weeks ago and were absolutely blown away by it. As @miapatrick noted, they never descended into preachiness. And their portrayals of the effects of radiation on the human body were excruciating to watch … but important to see so that we understand the gravity of the situation. There was so much I…[Read more]