Former Swiss fighter pilot Yves Rossy used a winged jetpack to fly over Rio de Janeiro today, reaching speeds up to 186 miles per hour. All I can say, is that it is about time! When I was a kid, I was under the impression we’d all be using jetpacks to travel by now.
Anyway, Rossy cheated a little because he had to launch from a helicopter and then use a parachute to land. But the video is still pretty cool.
The 11-minute-and-35-second flight was not Rossy’s first. Rossy, who began working on the project in 1993, flew over the English Channel in 2008 and has also flown over the Grand Canyon. Speaking of wings and jets, it seems the most appropriate music to salute Rossy’s flight is “Jet” by Wings.
“Jet” is from the excellent album Band on the Run (1974). What is it about? According to Wikipedia, McCartney explained in an interview that it is about a pony he once owned. Well, we have come a long way since the days of traveling by pony. Here’s to my future jetpack, “with the wind in your hair of a thousand laces / Climb on the back and we’ll / Go for a ride in the sky.”
What do you think of the jetpack flight? Leave your two cents in the comments.
National Arbor Day is this week in the U.S. According to the Arbor Day website, Arbor Day has its seeds in the work of J. Sterling Morton. He was a Nebraska journalist and later Nebraska territory secretary who advocated for the planting of trees.
After Nebraska made the day an official holiday in the late 1800’s, the state eventually selected April 22 as the date because it was Morton’s birthday. Other states also began celebrating Arbor Day in the 1870s.
Today, National Arbor Day always falls on the last Friday of April. But some states celebrate Arbor Day on different dates depending on the planting season. Meanwhile, the holiday celebrating the planting of trees has spread around the world.
The Giving Tree
Planting trees is a nice thing to do for the earth for several reasons. And we humans benefit from trees in numerous ways too. Perhaps the best illustration of our love and destruction of trees is in Shel Silverstein‘s great children’s book, The Giving Tree.
In the 1973 animated video below, Silverstein narrates the book for viewers.
The late Shel Silverstein is also known for many other works, including books and songs recorded by Johnny Cash. Yet, he may be most famous for The Giving Tree, a book that many children grew up reading. For some reason, The Giving Tree was not a book in my childhood home so I came to it many years later as an adult.
I always find it interesting how different people react to the story. Some have very fond memories of the story and see it as a story of a loving tree who gives away everything it has. But others get angry when they think of the tale, seeing it as a story about a selfish boy taking everything from the tree.
Is it a story of love and charity? Or is it a story of selfishness and domination? What does the last line — “And the tree was happy” — signify? One may come up with several theories about the book’s meaning, but the ambiguity is why the book has become a classic. The book allows each of us to see different things, perhaps even understanding the story differently at different stages of our own lives.
No matter what you think of The Giving Tree, let’s take a moment to thank all of our tree friends this Arbor Day.
What do you think is the message of The Giving Tree? Leave your two cents in the comments.
While a week ago Google was punking everyone with their new “products” for April Fools’ Day, this new video seems to be the real thing. The video presents a view from Google’s “Project Glass” eyewear, which allows one to have all kinds of information accessible from the moment you wake up. As more and more the computer age integrates into daily life, it almost seems like the logical next step.
Don’t look for the eyewear at Best Buy right now. It is an ongoing project and the video is meant as sort of a teaser to get everyone buzzing. Still, a commentator on CNN this morning predicted that the product could be available in the next 12-24 months. And PC Magazine has a photo of Google co-founder Sergey Brin wearing the device. While I want the device right now, I am a little worried that it will lead to a lot of problems with people not paying attention where they are going. But I suppose there will be an app to warn you if you are going to get hit by a car. Then again, maybe it is a little creepy to have that much technology controlling our lives. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Would you try this device? What do you think of Project Glass? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Happy baseball opening day! One of the most famous works of art about the sport is the poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” by New York newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams. The 1910 poem is about the Chicago Cubs double-play combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance. In the poem, a New York Giants fan calls “Tinker to Evers to Chance” as “the saddest of possible words,” bemoaning the players’ ability to turn a hit into a double play. Richard Brundage narrates the poem in this video:
The line “Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble” always puzzled me. But “gonfalon” refers to a flag or pennant, so the line is a reference to the Cubs capturing the National League pennant, which they won four times (1906-1908, 1910) while going on to win two World Series wins (1907-1908). The poem first appeared in the New York Evening Mail in July 1910, and the Cubs would go on to win the pennant that Fall. But it was the last for the dynasty, as the poem’s author Franklin Pierce Adams got to see his New York Giants take the gonfalon in 1911 and the following two years (but not the World Series).
The poem’s biggest effect may have been the fame it heaped upon Tinker, Evers, and Chance. Fans have noted that the three men made double plays at around the average of the league and their batting averages were less than spectacular. So many believe the New York poem was the reason all three Cubs were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Meanwhile, the other Cubs infielder who was left out of the poem, Harry Steinfeldt, never made it to the Hall of Fame.
So whether your favorite player this day is a big-name star like the poetic double-play trio or a lesser-known player like Steinfeldt, enjoy your opening day, where every team is still in the race for the gonfalon.
For anyone like me who is tired of those tiny keyboards on smart phones, Google is introducing Gmail Tap. “Morse code is perfect. It’s just a dot and a dash. What’s simpler than that?”
