Prime Mover of Arecibo Radio Telescope Dies

This is sad news: W. E. Gordon, Creator of Link to Deep Space, Dies at 92 NYTimes (Feb. 26, 2010):

William E. Gordon, an electrical engineer who conceived, designed, built and operated the world’s largest radio telescope, which has been described as Earth’s ear to outer space, died on Feb. 16 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 92.

The story made me think back to my teenage years when I trooped out one weekend, with some scientists, to the Ohio State University radio telescope north of Columbus, in Delaware, Ohio. (Apparently this telescope later came to be called "Big Ear.") The main receiver on that thing-a-majig - was a flat rectangular thing that tilted on just one axis. But the whole apparatus was awesome. I tried to imagine -- without much success -- how one would decipher the signals it received.

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Winter 2010

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A Timely Reminder: The Ignored Tragedy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

"Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake." Nicholas D. Kristoff, Orphaned, Raped and Ignored NYTimes (Jan. 30, 2010).

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Hoboken Metal

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Liberty Park.2010.1.14.C

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2010.01.07E

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The System Worked

Peter Baker, "A Phrase Sets Off Sniping After a Crisis," NYTimes (Dec. 29, 2009):

To the list of phrases it may be best for political leaders to avoid after a major security incident, add “the system worked” right after “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Just as the public did not really share President George W. Bush’s assessment of how things were going after Hurricane Katrina, so too was there a good deal of skepticism when President Obama’s homeland security secretary declared faith in a system that failed to stop a guy who tried to blow up a passenger jet on Christmas Day.

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Kites & Kite-Flyers

December 24D

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Winter 2009 in Jersey City

The place makes a nice antipasto salad.

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This part of Jersey City is a neighborhood from a bygone America. This is not so much because of the (undistinguished) architecture. It is because the homes and apartments are close together, the population of the neighborhood is relatively stable, and people in the neighborhood know each other (though sometimes only by sight). The population is predominantly but not entirely Italian-American.

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Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church
344 Sixth Street

From the church's web site:

"During the first few years of the early 1880’s the Italian speaking population of Jersey City began to increase rapidly, but they had no church of their own. In the towns, villages and cities of Italy the local church had been to these people a spiritual and social force. By the end of 1884 Bishop Wigger directed Father De Concilio to organize the Italians of Jersey City into a parish and to build a church. Father James S. Hanly, the pastor of St. Bridget’s was assigned to guide the new parish through its embryonic years.

With the money contributed by the congregation, two lots, 340 and 342 Sixth Street, between Monmouth and Brunswick Streets, were purchased for about two thousand dollars. A small frame structure already on the site was used as a temporary chapel. The first Mass celebrated was in February 1885."

Winter 2006