And speaking of spaceships…
A few days ago, I was raving about the short film Stardust, inspired by (and, in a CGI sort of way, starring) the Voyager 1 space probe, and I have to fess up that I’m still pulling this up and watching it at a rate of about once a day. I’m just a wee bit of a Voyager fan myself, to the point of having a little plastic one sitting on the shelf, and Stardust pushes my buttons – in a good way – on many levels.
One of those levels is that rhapsodic, hypnotic piece of music playing in the background. I’m a sucker for anything with a prominent cello line (see also: early ELO), so this music stuck in my head. Thanks to persistent pestering by myself and others, Stardust sound designer/composer Guy Amitai has released the four-minute piece of music from the short on iTunes. Just as Stardust is dedicated to graphic designer and cancer victim Arjan Groot, the proceeds from the iTunes single go to cancer research.
A worthwhile purchase on so many levels. If you want to read up on the real history of the real Voyager 1 and 2 space probes, go here – I’ve included many important dates from the Voyager program in theLogBook’s new timeline menu, all meticulously researched via NASA’s wealth of archive material and several other sources.… Read more
Though I try not to get hung up on it, my mind is really good about playing the what-if game: what had happened if the course of my life zigged – presumably for great justice – when, as we all know by now, it zagged with a vengeance. Sometimes it’s “what if I’d passed on the chili dogs at Sonic and eaten something else or, perhaps, nothing at all” (a not uncommon thought when I’m on bathroom trip #7 at two in the morning), sometimes it’s major life decisions, and the beauty of the human brain is that it can pierce the veil of the possible and imagine what didn’t happen. I sometimes wonder if, perhaps, we’re closer to being Douglas Adams’ “pan-dimensional beings” than anyone truly imagines. But every once in a while, one pauses to consider a cosmic “if… then” statement that defies imagining. … 