Everything About Mission Control Houston

It’s done in a style of Vogue’s 73 Question series (a great watch btw) but NASA didn’t really do a great job with the delivery. But I’ll give them a pass, they aren’t entertainers, they are engineers. But I I did enjoy learning a lot of new stuff.

Houston, we have a problem – there are too many questions about Mission Control. Luckily, Flight Director Mary Lawrence is here to answer as many as she can before her shift starts. Listen as she and her fellow flight controllers answer everything about Mission Control Houston: what time does it close, how many acronyms do you have to learn, is there a phone number for the space station, and many many more.

All of the flight controllers on screen are real Houston flight controllers and controllers in training.

Posted in Goofy, Interesting | 1 Comment

Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, January 18, 2017

  • I bet most folks think President-Elect Trump will wear a red tie for his inauguration, but I’d put money on a silver tie. However, if any part of his wardrobe has red, it will only be the sash which has “PRESIDENT” embroidered in gold.
  • Per last night’s ‘CBS Evening News’, three times in our nation’s history the out-going president boycotted his successor’s inauguration: John Adams didn’t attend Thomas Jefferson’s, John Quincy Adams didn’t attend Andrew Jackson’s, and Andrew Johnson’s skipped Ulysses S. Grant after Grant refused to ride with Johnson to the capitol.
  • The role of White House Press Secretary has always fascinated me. In many ways, it’s a thankless job, having to be in the direct line of fire for all the press while maintaining composure. There’s even a silly tradition of the out going one passing down a flak jacket to the incoming one. I say all that because I never put together that the current White House Press Secretary has the last name of “Earnest”, which as Obama put it yesterday when publically thanking him, is a good name to have for that particular role. Sure, you may think he’s rotten as all get out, but the name itself for that role is unique. It’s akin to Usain Bolt being a sprinter, Quentin Jammer playing cornerback, or if someone with the last name Cook was a chef.
  • The ‘Magnum P.I.’ Ferrari has been restored and is for sale. This might be my Hollywood dream car, I’d take this over the Adam West Batmobile.
  • Drew Barrymore has a new series on Netflix, it’s a zombie comedy, and judging from this trailer (language warning), I’m totally in.
  • Philly newspaper enjoying a Cowboys loss
  • Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is leaving Crackle for Netflix
  • We watched the first episode of HBO’s ‘The New Pope’, here are some spoiler-free thoughts:
    • It’s slow, in the same style as ‘Rectify’ and maybe a tad slower than ‘Breaking Bad’ when it first started out, but I’m totally cool with that.
    • James Cromwell is typecast as a man of the cloth. I took a quick glance at his IMDB page, and since 1999, he’s played that role at least eight times.
    • One quote that really stood out, “Rumors fly so quickly here that sometimes they arrive before the event has taken place.”
    • I done learnt me a new word:
      • calumny – 1 : a misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation <denounced his opponent for his defamatory insinuations and calumny> 2 : the act of uttering false charges or misrepresentations maliciously calculated to harm another’s reputation
    • I forgot Pope Benedict XVI is still alive, he’s 89 right now with a birthday this April. I didn’t think he’d live this long.
Posted in Personal | 4 Comments