Just to add to the deliciousness of mistermix’s post below, xkcd is more or less live-cartooning the Rosetta landing* on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (h/t @edyong209)
Nothing in my day promises to be as challenging/exciting as what that craft (and its controllers) are doing. You?
*That link is a little wonky. If the cartoon (number 1446) doesn’t come up, click on the random button at the top, and then click again on the xkcd logo. Sorry.)
Image: Robert Salmon (how cool is it that a whale-fishery artist goes by the name Salmon?), South Sea Whale Fishing II, 1831. Connection to this post made obvious at the xkcd link, btw.
raven
HIll and gully rider, hill and gully. . .
I was glad to visit the Whaling Museum in New Bedford a while back.
raven
REAL Whaling, in Moby Dick (1956) Singing Hill and Gully Rider. . .
MomSense
@raven:
I was just saying to my boys that we need to take their youngest brother to that museum. He’s the only one who hasn’t been.
Tom Levenson
@raven: Fun place. Haven’t been in a few years; would like to go back. Also, to my shame, have never been to Mystic Seaport, with its (last surviving, I think) whaler to explore.
raven
@MomSense: It’s weird that there are two just a couple of blocks apart.
Bobby B.
John Huston’s “Moby Dick” is a very funny movie (it helps if you play a Carl Stalling cd over the sound and smoke a bowl etc.) but “Bartleby the Scrivner” is short story comedy gold. Melville kicked ass.
Cervantes
@Tom Levenson:
If only it were the last surviving whaler.
But yes, your meaning was perfectly clear. And those are two good museums.
JPL
Who knew that listening to a group tooting their own horn would be this exciting.
beltane
As a kid, I used to love going to the pre-gentrification South Street Seaport in New York. It was dirty, nasty, and sketchy just like a seaport should be.
Cervantes
@beltane:
You remember the fish market, too, I’m sure.
Under the Brooklyn Bridge lived rats the size of small dogs.
beltane
@Cervantes: Oh, yes. I’m pretty sure those rats also had syphilis, caught from a cheap whore. You could feel all the ghosts in lower Manhattan back then. Now it’s too expensive even for them to remain.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
MomSense
@raven:
There is a whaling ship captain’s house near the whaling museum. Rotch or Roth house? I think a bunch of different museums and houses were merged together into the National Historic Park in the 90s.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: There’s a whaling museum on Nantucket as well, as it was the industry’s epicenter before New Bedford. Leave it to Melville: “Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.”
max
Nothing in my day promises to be as challenging/exciting as what that craft (and its controllers) are doing.
Gah. An hour away and I’ve got outside work to do.
max
[‘Nothing to do for it but keep running back inside.’]
raven
@MomSense: Not sure, I got rained out of a fishing trip when I was in Providence so I just drove. I had no idea where I was or where I was going!
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
The Royal Navy blows a raspberry in the general direction of the Nantucketers.
chopper
@Bobby B.:
i was once asked in high school english class to summarize Bartleby the Scrivener, so i used the poem someone once wrote:
there once was a writer named bartleby
who gave his employer a startleby
refusing to scriven
or even to livin’
and expired in jail of faint heartleby.
beltane
My husband and I are both descended from long lines of merchant mariners, ships’ captains, and others who made their living from the sea. We have belatedly come to the conclusion that living in the mountains causes us some degree of psychological distress.
PaulW
Lander status: BRAVE
Cervantes
@MomSense:
Yes, it’s nowadays called the Rotch-Jones-Duff House. All three families made a lot of money in New Bedford and Nantucket but the house was never a ship captain’s house.
MIT’s architecture library is named after scion Arthur Rotch, who was himself an architect (and an alumnus).
beltane
While the Europeans land on a comet, the CIA makes and distributes Osama bin Laden barbie dolls as part of its efforts to do…something: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW2ju6irLSg&feature=youtu.be
rlrr
@Gin & Tonic:
Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.”
Captain Jack Aubrey disagrees…
Felonius Monk
@Tom Levenson: There’s a very interesting Whaling museum out on Nantucket. Have you been there? I haven’t visited the one in New Bedford; I am curious how they compare.
MomSense
@Cervantes:
Definitely time for a return trip to New Bedford. I’m forgetting more than I ever knew about it.
JPL
@MomSense: The last time I visited New Bedford was fifty years ago and it was to a convent. My father’s cousin was a nun. It might be time for a revisit.
MomSense
@JPL:
We’ll do a b-j field trip!
Elizabelle
@Bobby B.:
I prefer not to.
max
@PaulW: Lander status: BRAVE
Mission Control: AAAAAAAAA
max
[‘They say they have touchdown.’]
max
Signal’s up.
max
[‘Woo.’]
JPL
@max: and then there was cheering.
Citizen_X
It worked! Kick ass!
Good job, ESA!
max
ESA Operations @esaoperations · 10 minutes ago
RECEIPT OF SIGNAL FROM SURFACE European Space Agency receiving signals from @Philae2014 on surface of comet #67P/CG #cometlanding
ESA Operations @esaoperations · 3 minutes ago
Harpoons confirmed fired and reeled in. Flywheeel will now be switched off. @Philae2014 is on the surface of #67P #CometLanding
ESA Operations @esaoperations · 2 minutes ago
In just a few minutes, CIVA-P panoramic imaging is programmed to start obtaining first surface images #CometLanding
max
[‘Philae should run out of power on…Sunday morning about 3 am or so.’]
chopper
i can’t believe we landed on a fucking comet. that is fucking awesome.
chopper
@MomSense:
i’m not sure the wife would approve, but what the hell.
Bruuuuce
Philae has landed! And we can tell that it’s not a NASA mission because one of the top dogs referred to Philae as “he”.
Fscking wow!
Waiting for two things: (1) visuals from Philae, and (2) congratulations from Philae’s peers, the robots inhabiting Mars.
Until then, wow!
Karen in GA
Well, the comet’s harpooned. What else is on?
/I kid
Karen in GA
Just tried posting using the wifi at work and got this:
So I turned it off and I’m using cellular data or whatever the kids call it now. My jokes suck and I don’t offer much in the way of insight, but am I that bad?
It’s the smell, isn’t it. I knew it.
the Conster
@beltane:
My father’s mother’s cousin was Angus Walters, the captain of the Bluenose – the schooner on the Canadian dime out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. His whole family were sailors. My mother’s side of the family all came from North Dakota. My favorite place to be is the beach with my feet in the water.
MomSense
@chopper:
Heh.
Woodrowfan
no worries, the Senate will be Republican soon, and they LOVE science! I am sure NASA will get a huge budget increase..
oh, wait. nevermind…
catclub
Nominative determinism is real.
Cervantes
@catclub:
Perhaps more real than we know, but the direction is important: “salmon” probably comes from the Latin for “leaping.”
EthylEster
Is there more than one cartoon?
I see Landing but no fish…mentions of harpooning.
Am I missing something?
Tom Levenson
@EthylEster: Yeah. The whales were an earlier sight-and-caption gag (Philae had to harpoon itself to the comet…). Now that its landed, cetaceans in space are less necessary.
sm*t cl*de
Philae? Is everything OK?
Are you OK, griffin?