Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in beamjockey's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
3:23 pm	Higgins at Capricon 30 I'll be giving two slide talks and two panels at Capricon this coming weekend. Thirty Capricons, and I've attended every one.  Wow. Capricon (near Chicago) is supposed to have a teleconference hookup with Boskone in Boston.  It will be interesting to learn whether this works well.  I think it would be cool to be on a transcontinental panel someday-- and there will be lots of people at Boskone I'd like to converse with. K will also be a panelist on "Mental Health Treatment: How Far Have We Really Come?" Saturday  at 10 AM. Here's my own schedule.  See you there. Searching for Weirdness in the Vaults of Life Magazine Time: Friday - 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM Category: Panel-Event Track: Other Location: Birch A Panelists: Bill Higgins Puppets, Jetpacks, and Ballet on the Moon: Recently Google placed online TWO MILLION images shot by Life magazine photographers. There's something for everyone in this mountain of negatives, from flying cars to behind-the-scenes photos of classic science fiction movies. Bill Higgins conducts a tour of Twentieth Century oddities lurking in the archive. Assault On The Moon: Chasing Lunar Water Time: Saturday - 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Category: Panel-Event Track: Science Location: Ravinia B Panelists: Brother Guy Consolmagno, Bill Higgins In a surprising development last fall, observations from several spacecraft found evidence for water molecules distributed widely across the face of the Moon. Then NASA's LCROSS spacecraft, crashing deliberately, uncovered another trove of frozen water near the Moon's south pole.  Join Bill Higgins and Brother Guy Consolmagno to review these novel results. The Golden Age of 2010 Time: Saturday - 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM Category: Panel-Event Track: Other Location: Ravinia A Panelists: Brother Guy Consolmagno, Phyllis Eisenstein (M), Bill Higgins, Fred Pohl, Bill Thomasson What would SF pioneers think of the world today? Cancelled TV Shows You Should Love Time: Saturday - 8:30 PM to 10:00 PM Category: Panel-Event Track: Media Location: Birch B Panelists: Michael D'Ambrosio, Bill Higgins, Phoenix, Jim Rittenhouse, delphyne woods (M) From Firefly to The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. to Wonderfalls, there are many shows that existed for less than a season but are available on DVD. What are some of these flops that you should know about and watch with the sadness of knowing there will never be any more episodes? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
1:12 am	Out Shopping, part 7: Someone You Should Not Attack with a Stick Spotted in a row of piñatas. Batman does not look quite himself today, although he does seem to be fairly cheerful. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
1:04 am	Out Shopping, part 6: Bring Me the Head of Stan Freberg! Sometime before Halloween, I found a mask for sale. It had a familiar look. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
7:43 pm	Out Shopping, part 5: On Wings of Buffalo Imagine that you went to sleep in 1980, and magically woke up in a truckstop in the year 2010. And found yourself confronting this product: There is the familiar, comforting, century-old visage of Mister Peanut. Yet what he is offering is strange, and possibly terrifying. RAGING BUFFALO WING PEANUTS Back in 1980, no peanut product was Raging, nor did it contain Buffalo, nor Wing. (Conceivably a package of peanuts might have come from Buffalo.) Why are those four words juxtaposed? What could they possibly mean? You look again at Mister Peanut. He smiles. He does not appear to be raging. You can only hope that this will all turn out to be a dream. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:23 pm	Out Shopping, part 4: Rossum's Universal Registers Big supermarkets increasingly feature automated checkout stations where customers scan barcodes and weigh produce themselves, in lieu of human cashiers. Apparently they use some of the same software as the more traditional cash registers: The spot which should be filled in with the cashier's name is occupied instead by Fastlane113, presumably the robot's name. Up till now, I didn't know those robots had names. I will be sure to greet Fastlane113 by name the next time I shop at Meijer's. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
7:13 pm	Out Shopping, part 3: Advertrousers I dislike displaying a manufacturer's logo on my clothing, unless I am particularly fond of the manufacturer. These pants gave me pause. Apparently I am expected to wear the logo of Old Spice, Dupont, Office Depot, or Home Depot on my pajamas, NOT because of my pride in being a customer of Old Spice, Dupont, Office Depot, or Home Depot, but because I am rooting for the racing car sponsored by these firms (number 24, number 14, or number 20). At night, beneath the covers, my legs will somewhat resemble my favorite stock car. America is a strange country. (If you need a pair of these, they might still be available on the Knoxville Road Big Lots in Peoria.) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
7:00 pm	Out Shopping, part 2: Chicago's Own Apparently there is now a brand of little cigars named for Al Capone. The dispenser is decorated with a little hat. A furor arose in the Nineties when a beermaker tried to use Al Capone in its billboard campaign: “1929—Al persuaded all his friends to try Old Style” Chicago journalists, politicians, and an Italian-American group-- what's a good verb here?-- encouraged G. Heileman & Co. to remove these billboards. In their place, another Italian-American was celebrated. Which I liked much better. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
6:17 pm	Out Shopping, part 1: Tom's Expired I rejoiced when the local instantiation of Meijer's Thrifty Acres turned out to stock my all-time-favorite junk snack food, a bag of Tom's Bacon and Cheddar Fries. This crunchy treat-- distinguished by having the lengthiest Ingredients list I have ever encountered-- has previously been available mostly in gas stations along obscure routes. I did once find a couple of bags in a shabby grocery in Luxora, Arkansas, but I never set foot in Luxora again. The ever-loyal whl used to send me bags occasionally from Water Valley, Mississippi. Never had I found T'sB&CF so near to home. You can see why I was delighted. Dismay set in upon taking a closer look. From Odds & Ends The sell-by date was February, 1910. Let us pause in a moment of silence to mourn these noble Fries. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 18th, 2010
3:28 pm	1947: Immortal Strawberries and Lichtenberg Figures in Brooklyn Yes indeed, Fritz Goro did take more pictures of Lichtenberg figures in Dr. Arno Brasch's laboratory on his visit during chilly February of 1947; as I mentioned in an earlier posting, they are tagged "Capacitron". This was the name of Brasch's device for generating an electron beam. He was using it to irradiate foods in the hope of killing bacteria, allowing the food to be preserved without decay for long periods. As you may recall, I spotted some of these pictures and recognized what they were. The earliest account in scientific literature of producing Lichtenberg figures with a particle accelerator appeared in 1956 (though it mentions that the novelty had been known among beamslingers for years; accelerator salesmen gave them to customers as souvenirs). I was able to show that Goro's photos had illustrated a story in the March 10, 1947 issue of Life. Looking at a larger sample from the shoot, some of the pictures seem a bit overexposed, lending them a mad-scientist air. "At LAST! My high-voltage ELECTRON FACTORY has finally created a STRAWBERRY that will last FOREVER!! BWA-Hahahahahah!" ( See photos of strange creations from the mighty Capacitron... ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
9:02 am	User-Assigned Labels Now Invited for Google LIFE Photos The other day I noticed that the Life magazine photo collection at Google now allows users to provide tags or "labels" for the images. This might help alleviate the helpless feeling I get when I realize that I'm looking at a photo, and I know what's in it, but there is no indication that Life does. For example, Allan Grant's pictures of the bizarre lunar ballet on the Destination Moon set are entitled "Preparation Moon Ballet," because somebody incorrectly deciphered handwriting on an envelope full of negatives. The Time for Beany pictures are entitled only "Beane TV Act," and the only tag they carry is "1950s," which will not be helpful to someone searching for information about Beany, Cecil, Stan Freberg, Daws Butler, Bob Clampett, puppets, or KTLA. On the other hand, there is a smug emotion associated with (believing myself to be) the only guy that knows about some cool thing buried among two million images. If I label Fritz Goro's 1947 pictures of a Lichtenberg figure as "Lichtenberg Figure," than it is no longer a delicious secret possessed by me and those I choose to share it with. Any schmo can type "Lichtenberg Figure" and find it. Another problem: Suppose I get past the smugness, and nobly decide to share my secrets with humanity. I pull up an image and type in a bunch of labels. Okay, the photo is tagged. But the photographer shot several rolls that day long ago. Should I go to the next picture from that shoot, and label it? Some of these collections have over 200 pictures. My altruism will wear thin, somewhere around Photo Three. Google does have some way of associating pictures from a particular assignment; you can access these through their "Related Images" and "More" links. Maybe if I offer labels for one or two photos, it will help other searchers discover a trove of related images. Anyway, if users get into the habit of adding extra tags, and if these provide more signal than noise, we may find that this archive becomes even more useful. Though the thrill of finding unidentified treasures will become less frequent... (Another discovery: they've added more pictures from Goro's shoot; previously there were half a dozen or so, and now there are 159 tagged with "Capacitron." Off to see if there are any fresh Lichtenberg figure shots!) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
12:52 pm	Netflix Geography: A Shiny Toy The New York Times provides a fascinating visualization of Netflix data: maps of movie rentals for 12 cities in the U.S. Pick a film (they're sorted alphabetically, or by popularity, or by critical acclaim) and a city. Get a map showing the neighborhoods where people want to watch that film. Mouse over a zipcode, and get a list of the most popular films in that zipcode, and the ranking of the film you're studying. Compare its popularity in Miami, Chicago, and New York. Mad Men Season 1 neighborhoods are very distinct from neighborhoods where Lakeview Terrace did well. And so forth. People across the blogosphere are trying to teasing out class, taste, and ethnic distinctions. Here's an example from the Times itself. Here's an interesting critique of apparent flaws in the infographic. It's not clear whether the map is plotting actual rentals of DVDs, or the instances of a title in queues (the list of desired films a viewer is waiting for). It's suspicious that very recent films, available on DVD for only a few months of the past year, show up as terrifically popular. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the most popular title in the database, yet it was only the 20th in box office gross among films released in 2008. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
7:14 am	Around Livejournal: A Literary Martian, Lutheran Puppets, and Ho£me$ A science fiction writer attempts to survive on Mars: My old friend David D. Levine has gone to Utah to particitpate in a two-week simulation of a mission in a Martian habitat. (The link is to Day Zero as the crew arrives; go forward in his blog to see what happens next.) Art Clokey, creator of Gumby and other animated characters, passed away Friday at age 88. From 2007, my thoughts on Davey and Goliath in the 21st century. Worth reading: An envious hradzka examines Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's word rate. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
2:09 pm	Unimpeded Movement over Difficult Terrain, or Beetle Bailey's Aircar Thanks to rcking for this tip. This is what watching too many cartoons (or maybe too much Supermarionation) as a child can do to a DARPA procurement official: The objective of the Transformer (TX) program is to demonstrate a 1 to 4 person transportation vehicle that can drive and fly, thus enabling the warfighter to avoid water, difficult terrain, and road obstructions as well as IED and ambush threats. The vehicle will be capable of driving on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, while flight functionality will require Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL). [...] Current transport systems present operational limitations where the warfighter is either anchored to the ground with HMMWVs and thus vulnerable to ambush, or reliant on helicopters, which are limited in flight speed and availability. TX provides the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable. This enables the warfighter to approach targets from directions opportune to them and not the enemy. Register now for the Proposers' Day Workshop if you want to see how this plays out. Personally, I'd love to see how Proposers propose to create a vehicle which, unlike helicopters, is not limited in flight speed and availability. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
12:30 pm	Tonight: Rocket Belts on NCIS The rocket belt world is abuzz with anticipation. Rocket belts appear in the 5 January episode of the detective show NCIS* on CBS. Dan Schlund flew the Powerhouse Productions belt. Kinnie Gibson, former stuntman, former rocket belt pilot, and owner of Powerhouse, coordinated the stunt flights. I understand the writers consulted Kathleen Lennon Clough and Derwin Beushausen about historical information. Here's a Ventura County Star account of the filming. NCIS comes to us from Don Bellisario's Belisarius Productions, purveyors of palatable television cheese-- often incorporating flying machines-- since 1980. It is Mr. Bellisario and his colleagues we have to thank for Magnum, P.I., Airwolf, Quantum Leap, JAG, and Tales of the Gold Monkey, among other series.** (The episode is entitled "Ignition," which is intended to evoke rocketry, I suppose. I don't think "ignition" can be said to occur inside a rocket belt, because "combustion" doesn't take place. Rocket belts run on the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into hot steam and oxygen, which is sort of the opposite of combustion. Probably "Decomposition" wouldn't be as snappy a title for an episode. Though, given that the protagonists are constantly dealing with grotesquely-murdered bodies, and that viewers are pretty much guaranteed to witness at least one autopsy in every episode of NCIS, "Decomposition" would probably be an appropriate title at some point. Perhaps it has already been used.) NCIS is the most jolly of the many autopsy-detective shows that parade across our TV screens, so at our house we are looking forward to watching this. We enjoy cheese. *Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a real-life law enforcement agency of the U.S. federal government. **If they had all followed the 21st-century trend in naming TV shows, these series would have been known as M, P.I., A, QL, JAG, and TOTGM. In this sense, JAG was ahead of its time, and Magnum, P.I. was partially ahead of its time. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
9:53 pm	Isaac Asimov (Deceased), Non-Nonagenarian Happy New Year, everyone! It just occurred to me that tomorrow is the 90th anniversary of the birth of the late, great Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). He was involved in science fiction fandom in the 1930s, soon after it began. Eventually, he achieved his ambition to become a writer. And then some. He authored or edited something over 469 books. His body of work spanned a phenomenal range of subjects. I have read seventy or so of his books. He became our most celebrated science writer. I can scarcely begin to tell you about his achievements. I will say that on the one occasion I met him, he was as delightful as I had always hoped he might be. He was a sought-after speaker, and a beloved toastmaster. If you care to enjoy a wonderful 1974 talk about science fiction and the future, listen to this MP3 from The Time Traveler Show, courtesy of the Science Fiction Oral History Association. Happy birthday, Doctor A, wherever you are. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
7:26 pm	1978 Obituary: Warren Scott Fitzgerald, Mysterious Founding Father of Fandom Thanks to crack librarians in Boise, we have an obituary for Warren Fitzgerald. Since he dropped out of active participation in both the Scienceers and the rocketry group by the end of 1930, he may well be the first fan ever to gafiate. (If you wish to comment, please do so here.)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
11:18 pm	Geographer Acquires Some Geography Welcome kathythorne to Livejournal. She's blogging about getting a small farm going, while her husband continues to chase gravity waves. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
6:39 pm	Mystery Fan of Harlem: Now We Know More Thanks to diligent correspondents, we have considerably more information about Warren Fitzgerald, black co-founder of both the Scienceers, an early science fiction fan group, and of the American Interplanetary Society, a pioneering rocketry group. We have his ancestry, further census data, military record, and job description. I'm disabling comments on this entry; instead, please add any comments here, in the original entry.
Monday, December 14th, 2009
2:33 pm	Hunting for the Home of First Fandom's Warren Fitzgerald I may be on the trail of the birthplace of science fiction fandom (for certain values of "birthplace"). Last week Rob Hansen pointed out, to Boingboing and Tor.com, that 11 December 1929 was the occasion of the founding meeting of the Scienceers, which seems to have been the first science fiction fan club, at least the first club where the members met in person rather than corresponded. Science fiction fandom is still going strong after 80 years, and many of us are curious about its early history. Rob has wondered if more information can be found about Warren Fitzgerald, who hosted the first meeting at his home. An account of the Scienceers by Allen Glasser recalls that Fitzgerald and his wife were black, and they lived somewhere in Harlem in late 1929. They hosted multiple meetings of the Scienceers at their home. Fitzgerald also joined the American Interplanetary Society in 1930; its founders included David Lasser, Nat Schachner, Fletcher Pratt, and other SF people. I may have found a 1930 U.S. Census form with information about Warren Fitzgerald. (If you have trouble accessing this, and you want to see a PDF of the form, let me know.) Footnote.com allows a search on names for the 1930 census. There was a "Warren Fitzgerald" in Manhattan, New York, New York, living at 211 West 122nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. This is the only hit in the state of New York. (Ancestry.com gives others in the state but only one in the city of New York. I didn't look behind their paywall for more info.) Is this Fitzgerald our Fitzgerald? He is listed as a roomer with homeowner James Jessup. Gertrude L. Fitzgerald also lived there, as did five other roomers. Warren was 30, Gertrude was 36, and they had been married for five years. He was born in Pennsylvania. His father's birthplace was listed (in accordance with Census practice) as "Canada-French," and his mother was born in New York. His occupation is listed as "meter prover" in the "meters" industry. He was a military veteran of "WW," meaning World War. Gertrude worked as a servant for a private family. Fitzgerald's "race or color" is coded as W, meaning White, while everyone else in the building is listed as "Neg" for Negro, as are most of the other people living on his block. This all seems consistent with what we know from fannish and rocketry sources about Warren Fitzgerald, with one exception: the census worker listed him as white and not black. Allen Glasser wrote: "He was a light-skinned Negro -- amiable, cultured, and a fine gentleman in every sense of that word. With his gracious, darker-hued wife, Warren made our young members welcome to use his Harlem home for our meetings -- an offer we gratefully accepted." Perhaps light skin made coding his race ambiguous. Google Map link to 211 W. 122nd St. Google has a Street View picture of what may be fandom's first meeting place. From Odds & Ends Warren Fitzgerald remains a mystery. He has attracted interest from some historians since black participants in SF fandom-- or in rocketry-- have been rare, yet here is an example right at the beginning. Fitzgerald parted company with the Scienceers, and SF fandom, after the American Interplanetary Society got started. Apparently he dropped out of AIS after its first year. Next questions: Do we have the right guy? Try to determine whether there were other Warren Fitzgeralds in New York at that time, and if so, rule them out. Check with a genealogy buff; an expert may know how to find out more from census records. Check 1940 Census, and later ones, to see what became of Fitzgerald. Would WWI military records shed any more light on him? ( More info about the census form ) Edited to add: Frank Winter confirms, on p. 146 of Prelude to the Space Age, that according to the 1930 AIS membership list, this is indeed the right house. (74 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
11:54 pm	A Splendidly Incoherent Rant I like to listen to lectures on my Ipod. Recently I loaded up a talk delivered by Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library, at the University of Oregon on 12 Novembrer: "Digitize, Democratize: Google, Libraries, and the Future of Books." I am grateful to UO for making this lecture available here . It was an excellent talk, covering past revolutions in publishing, the digitization of library materials, Google Books and the controversy surrounding it, the role of research libraries in our age, and some anecdotes from history and literature that illuminated these issues. Prof. Darnton is an insider; Harvard's library, after all, is one of those whose volumes were scanned to get Google Books launched. Then the audience began asking questions. Most of them quite good ones. And he gave good answers. But at 57 minutes into the talk, a woman (not identified in the podcast) rose to address Darnton. Suffice it to say that I found her words worth transcribing. Google America. So, just paraphrasing you in framing my question, do we want it? Do we want something so ubiquitous, omniscient, dominating, and controlling as part of our national defense and as national defense is the most powerful country in the globe and do we need to increase our defense expenditures to defend Google as a technological infiltration of all there is? Having said that, why don't you compare it to oil, the information highway to the old feudal system of charging a toll --every time you wanted to pass a fiefdom you had to pay another toll-- and this is the same as a river of information and books can be parallel to our medical records and everything else and, and why don't you look at it as a new economy, for one, and two, why don't you look it as oil, as something that depletes the earth's resources, because it uses so many metals, and rare substances, that have to be mined, and devastate other nations to support this monster that we don't need. And it's also very rude. It introduces rudeness and coldness to our culture! And I went around thanking people at Columbia University for not having their laptops out every place you go and every restaurant and every cafe every street corner and every park bench like has happened in Berkeley. It looks like a factory town. And I wonder why we don't look at this thing with contempt and condemnation and allow them to take over every apparatus: our legal system our medical system our energy system and every. Single. Thing. And how can we stop it? Maybe we should look at it as the next abortion clinic, the next animal experimentation, attitudinal framework-type thing-- So the question is, why are you trying to sell this thing to us? You know, it's a high-class selling, it's high-class selling it's privileged selling trying to get the elitism of Melville, intonation of Melville and Emerson, you know, to-- I WANT YOUR ANSWER! This nonsense is even more impressive to the ear than it is here in print. Darnton replied with great aplomb, but I am left wondering whether he made a dent in her passionately-expressed distress. I thought you might like to join me in admiring this specimen. (9 Comments |Comment on this)