Silver Jacket

Category: Books

  • Voyage to Uranus (For Adults Only)

    RidingrocketsEver wanted the inside scoop on the NASA shuttle program? This month, astronaut Mike Mullane, who’s gone spaceborne three times, reveals some of the dirty details in his new book, Riding Rockets. Reuters published an interview with him today.

    On the business side of things, he claims the shuttle is "the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown, by anybody." (Obviously he hasn’t experienced Captain Whizbang’s Olde Time TNT Caboose to the Stars.) On the whimsical side of things, he provides TMI regarding the depth of his preparation for astronaut selection. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses." Hallelujah.

    Today, that level of preening might designate Mullane a metrosexual. But in close quarters, internal hygiene is not so trivial. In an account by astronaut Harrison Schmitt of his 1973 trip to the Moon, Schmitt describes a stinky side effect of lunar life support:

    All of us had to live with hydrogen gas in the water used to reconstitute various foods (basically the same as today’s trail foods)… Although the convenience of having a continuous supply of fresh water should be obvious, hydrogen going into our guts with the food had to come out, much to the discomfort of crew mates.

    (Overall, accommodations suited Schmitt better than some of the camps on his geological field trips in Norway and Alaska. "Certainly you had no black flies or mosquitoes to bother you on the Moon," he told me recently.)

    On Mullane’s website, we find the following bold announcement: "Riding Rockets is written for adult readers. It is inappropriate for children." For a more tame tale, check out Sally Ride’s To Space & Back, written for young readers. (Full disc: I work for her.) But, as it turns out, kids are interested in poop too. (Who knew?) Sally’s book has a full-page photo of a shuttle shitter. And when she speaks to kids, the most popular question is, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?" Very carefully.

  • To Sleep, Perchance to Kick Some Ass

    PunchoutSunday’s New York Times Magazine carries an essay by D.T. Max on literary Darwinism, the use of evolutionary psychology to analyze the behavior of characters in literature. Near the end, it takes a moment to ask, "What can the purpose of literature be, assuming it is not just a harmless oddity?" Some possibilities:

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  • Legal Lessons Learned

    PhotocopySo I’m reading a National Geographic booklet aimed at elementary school students, called Looking at Cells by Rebecca L Johnson. In a spread called "Thinking Like a Scientist" that explains how to measure small things in micrographs, I see a picture of a paramecium, labeled "Paramecium x110". Next to it there’s the following chunk of text:

    Check It Out

    Suppose you have permission to photocopy the picture of theParamecium, and you enlarge it to twice its size. Would the magnification of x110 still be correct? Explain.

    Note how it says, "suppose you have permission to photocopy the picture," instead of, "suppose you photocopy the picture," or even, "photocopy the picture."

    Derrrrrr. Somehow the issue of copyright infringement has made its way explicitly and incongruously into a children’s science booklet.

    (The inside cover lists the picture credit as "page 27 (middle) ® M. Abbey/Visuals Unlimited".)

    I imagine the writer put it more simply before a lawyer or editor touched it up. Because we wouldn’t want 4th graders running around with enlarged b&w photocopies of a paramecium taken from Visuals Unlimited. Knowing kids, they might digitize the photocopies and post them on the internets, or store them on their iPods. How would VU make money THEN?

    I also imagine copyright-conscious kiddies, attentive to the wording’s specific subtext, enchanted by the possibilities of a Creative Commons future. "Suppose you have permission…" Wow! Suppose I have permission! It’s telling me to imagine a wondrous world where I’m legally allowed to photocopy this image I hold in my hands! What a spectacular sight that would be! Then I could perform ALL KINDS of measurements on it! But, aw shucks, for now I’m just stuck with my dreams.

  • Playing Their Game

    EndersgameAccording to an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Les Perelman of MIT has noticed two things about the scoring of the essay section in the new SAT. First, score is highly correlated with essay length: "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you’d be right over 90 percent of the time." Second, score is not correlated with accuracy: according to the official guide for scorers, "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts."

    Oh, boy, what fun! Manic fabricators will have a field day.

    I can’t help but reminisce about my own days of pre-college standardized testing. The College Board, which administers the SAT, also administers the AP exams. Taking the English Literature AP, I had a problem. I felt pretty good until I got to the big essay section at the end. It asks a question and then says, "Answer this using one of the books listed below or an equally high-brow piece of literature." I don’t remember the question, but I wasn’t comfortable answering it using any of the suggested tomes. I also could not bring to mind any other classic I had read recently that I could apply to the essay. Fuck.

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  • A Portrait of Yo Mama

    PortraitTwo friends from college, Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts, wrote a book called A Portrait of Yo Mama As a Young Man that was just published last week. I haven't read it yet but check the except here for a sample. (Not Safe For People Drinking Milk.) E.g., "Yo mama’s CD rack is 90 percent those chocolate CDs her sister’s company makes."

    The book's web page is [no longer] here, and an interview with the authors is [no longer] here.

    Kent made his name on campus through such acts as his 24-hour one-man standup comedy event, his bid to become dean of the faculty while still a student, and of course his infamous invitation to the 2000.5 Commencement. Andrew has had three humor pieces published in The New Yorker, including one entitled "All I Really Need to Know I Learned by Having my Arms Ripped Off by a Polar Bear." I used to have functional links to them but the powers at The New Yorker have rendered them nonfunctional. [Update: One is functional again.]

    I also did a little work with them on Brown's humor rag, The Brown Jug. Check some of their archived material here. [Update: link broken. New issues here.]

    update:
    After checking my referrer log, I noticed that someone came across this blog post by Googling "andrew barlow really had his arms ripped off." I mentioned it to Andrew, and he suggest that the, well, misdirected web surfer may have been looking for this. 

    update 2:
    Kent submitted the book to be considered for a Pulitzer Prize. He sweetened the deal with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon delivered to the office of the committee chairman. You can read his application letter here. He ends on a high note: "You should know that I am not just good at putting words together. I am also good at the physical act of writing. Do you have a penmanship award? Is there a separate application for it? Do I need to send more beer, or can you and the board split yours with the penmanship people?"

  • Lingo Mania

    DadMy dad's first book just came out: L.eadership in N.onprofit O.rganizations by B.arry D.ym and H.arry Hutson (B.arry and H.arry!). [I have added periods to prevent my parents (H.arry and Sally!) from accidentally discovering my blog via Google. See likely scenario.] He's a leadership and organizational consultant but has decided to write books too. No doubt there is some source of value (and income) in this line of work, but to be honest I fell asleep reading the back cover. It advertises features like

    "Chapters on leadership constructs such as fit, dynamics, readiness and flow which provide useful insights and methods to enable success,"

    and the "Overarching concept of alignment which reframes leadership as an active process where the awareness of and response to the interplay of multiple, relevant factors matters more than charisma, pedigree or power."

    Super. I am reminded of Office Space, or the multiple websites enumerating managerial lingo/jargon/buzzwords for giggles. Such as:

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