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Showing posts from July, 2009

Fly me to the moon!

July 20 1969 is one of those dates that many of us remember. I was 7 then. We had a black and white TV with a cherry wood casing and yellowish buttons and dials. There was only one TV channel and most of the time it was airing not Slovenian but Yugoslav programs. However, TV Ljubljana was perhaps the only TV station from behind the iron curtain that had a live transmission of the moon landing. One of the commentators was an engineer, a colleague of my father, otherwise specializing in geology and earthquakes. Yes, it was a big step for mankind. Are we still making steps or do we prefer sitting in the pub? In June I visited the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Hollywood has this ability to show space travel, rockets, and shiny equipment as if they were out of this world. But in a museum you see the real stuff. A computer that has less capacity than the processor in my microwave. The knobs, the buttons, the wiring, the clothing and zippers, primitive even compered to my skiing outfit. It al