Many silly things are written when celebrities die. One is that you cannot speak ill of the dead. Another is that you cannot mourn for those whom you did not know personally. A variant of this is that visible expressions of grief for those you did not have personal acquaintance with are ersatz, inauthentic, aContinue reading “Why It’s Okay To Mourn, To Cry For, The Passing Of Strangers”
Tag Archives: astronauts
From ‘Filling the Sky’ to ‘Sharing the Earth’
In On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (Random House, New York, 2006), Marshall Berman, in the chapter ‘The Street Splits and Twists’, which, among other things, describes the complicated relationship between women and Times Square, notes in his commentary on Ethel Merman: Gypsy is one of the most grueling of AmericanContinue reading “From ‘Filling the Sky’ to ‘Sharing the Earth’”
RIP Neil Armstrong
Upon graduating from high school–confused and directionless–I considered taking on an undergraduate education in the US. I pursued the application process for as long as I could, before the financial impossibility of it all made me cease and desist. Among the majors I thought of making my own was aeronautical and aerospace engineering, and theContinue reading “RIP Neil Armstrong”
RIP Sally Ride
Like many other schoolboys in the 1980s, transfixed by the awesome sight of the space shuttle lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center, by the legend of the moon landings, and by the culturally enforced vision of the astronaut as our era’s most intrepid pioneer, I had a thing for those that went into space.Continue reading “RIP Sally Ride”
Labor Relations in Low Earth Orbit: The Skylab Strike
Three weeks ago, the world celebrated the twenty-eighth anniversary of the end of the manned portion of the Skylab mission. Well, not really. Enthusiasts of manned space exploration certainly did; others had to be reminded. Students of the history of science can edify us about the scientific value of the three Skylab missions (meant toContinue reading “Labor Relations in Low Earth Orbit: The Skylab Strike”
Personal Identity And Wanting To Be Jim Lovell
Personal identity is a philosophical topic made for thought experiments. The problem of persistence of identity is quite simply posed; as the Stanford Encylopedia for Philosophy entry for personal identity puts it: What determines which past or future being is you? Suppose you point to a child in an old class photograph and say, “That’sContinue reading “Personal Identity And Wanting To Be Jim Lovell”
Samir Chopra 