Random Precision

Jack Horkheimer, Directory of Miami’s Space Transit Planetarium and host of the PBS mini-show “Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler”, has passed away. I remember his show coming on OETA after Doctor Who in the 80′s, and I used to make ruthless fun of his corny delivery. (I still remember the intro voice-over: “Some people hustle pool, some people hustle cars; then there’s that man you’ve heard about, the one who hustles *stars*!”)

In retrospect though, I liked his popped-cork enthusiasm more than I did Sagan’s new-agey “We are all made of star-stuff”. RIP, Jack; we’ll keep looking up.

Android (www.android.com) has operated under a cloak of secrecy, so little is known about its work. Rubin & Co. have sparingly described the outfit as making software for mobile phones, providing little more detail than that. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones.

It’s a theme that I’ve hit more than once in my blogging, but it bears repeating: Android Matters. I believe it will succeed Windows as the platform most people use to do their computing and online communications. And because it is Linux without the X Window System ball-and-chain, it will become what Ubuntu can only aspire to be: Linux for ordinary people.

I just got a shiny new Samsung Vibrant, but I’m keeping my old G1, for the same reason that one might hang onto an original Apple I, IBM PC, or first-generation iPod: it’s an historical artifact, the first look we had at the shape of things to come.

“That guy has too much spare time” is one of the most odious, intellectually dishonest, dismissive things a person can say. It disguises a vicious ad-hominem attack as a lighthearted verbal shrug. The subtext of the remark is that the subject’s passions — this remark is almost always directed at someone engaged in some labor of love — are so meritless that their specific shortcomings don’t even warrant discussion.

The man has a point. Resolved: I’m never going to use that phrase again.

Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way.