Thursday, July 14, 2011

Extreme and Murderous Absence

Space is a vast and frightening thing; it is an extreme and murderous absence; it's the closest physical metaphor for the disturbing unknowns that follow death; space is a villain from a children's book -- it's the Nothing from The NeverEnding Story.
- Robert Brockway, writing the Cracked.com article "7 Awesome Images That Will Make You Mourn The Space Shuttle".

Last weekend Christine and I went on a very-much-needed brief vacation to Toronto.  As has become our habit, we took the Megabus there and back.  During the trip up last friday, I took some time as we passed through Buffalo to fire up Ustream on my iPhone and make good use of my unlimited 3G data...

On one hand, it was certainly impressive to realize I was watching the launch of a rocketship.... from over a thousand miles away (and orders of magnitude farther once it flew higher), in pristine quality, on a device pulled from my pocket, on a bus -- a true "This is the 21st century" experience.

On the other hand however, it was very bittersweet to see the end of this era.