Inside the Box

or, What I’m Doing for Summer Vacation. Contrary to popular opinion, my summer employment is not Classified, Top Secret, Need to Know (right now, I have mental pictures of these words stamped in red ink) or anything else that prohibitive and therefore enthralling. There are parts that involve export-restricted and proprietary stuff, though, so for those I’m not going to write anything that isn’t published or publicly available.

Here’s the scoop. There are several companies that are taking on the challenge of commercial spaceflight; among them are Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites of Ansari X-Prize fame, SpaceX, and Armadillo Aerospace. Also included is Blue Origin, owned and funded by the founder of Amazon.com. In addition to having headquarters near Seattle and a launch site in West Texas, I’ve heard that they also have in their lobby a model of Jules Verne’s projectile-vehicle from his novel From the Earth to the Moon, as well as a door from the set of Battlestar Galactica. Cool.

The Play’s the Thing

Hamlet.

Shakespeare’s meditation on death and desire has seen four hundred years of presentation and interpretation, but its most recent production by the Royal Shakespeare Company is really something quite special. David Tennant and Patrick Stewart have now taken these roles to a film version of the performance, which can be found here.  While standard filming techniques (editing, closeups, etc) are employed, it is certainly not a movie; the film medium simply allows the audience to move about the stage. However, it does allow director Gregory Doran to explore the subthemes of privacy, narcissism, and humanity, while highlighting some wonderful acting.

Toto, I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore …

So I have two prompts so far to inspire posts: Hamlet, as recently performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and life in the Midwest.

I’m going to take the latter first, as I had to search for the RSC production. Since it will take me three hours and a bit to first watch and then digest the general awesomeness that is David Tennant and Patrick Stewart (as well as the time needed for me to just stop quoting the play), I’ll take the easier option first.

I’ll first acknowledge my biases, although not necessarily in order of importance. First, I am from Texas, and thus think that Texas is the gold standard by which everything of merit regionally should be measured. It’s certainly better than *your* state. Second, I’m an engineer, and third, I’m a Christian. Both of these have an influence on my priorities, or even just what I notice.

Things about the Midwest, as they occur to me:

Corn.

Oh my goodness, there is a lot of it. And soybeans. Fields and fields and fields of the stuff. To be fair, it’s really good. There’s just a lot of it. I confess that when I first arrived at Purdue I was expecting a small town set in the middle of nothing but corn. What I found was almost that; however, because there is a river running through town (or rather, the town was built around the river) there are also trees. In addition, I didn’t expect …