First thoughts on Sunday morning III.

Let us take a moment to consider Superman. He is a legendary figure, both in the fictional world he inhabits and the real.  Everyone knows that the radiation from our yellow sun gives the last son of Krypton an astonishing catalogue of abilities:  the strength to lift a 747, the power of flight, heat vision, invulnerability, and so on.

But what are the physics of invulnerability?  Superman can crumble concrete between his fingers and bathe in lava if he so chooses. Bullets bounce off his skin, and he is unharmed by vacuum of space - but how does his sensory system interpret these extremes of input?  Is Doomsday's punch just an excessive amount of pressure?  The heat of the earth's core a warm caress, and the chill of the arctic a cool breeze?

We know that in extreme situations Superman can be hurt and feel pain, which suggests that as with homo sapiens*, there's a spectrum of tolerance, albeit a spectrum with a stratospheric top end - but what about the other end of the range? If Superman is indifferent to the impact of steel-jacketed slugs, what does he feel when Lois Lane kisses him?  Logic suggests that the touch of a woman's lips would be so far below the threshold of Superman's sensory apparatus as to be non-existent.  An amourous woman might just as well hit him in the mouth with a sledgehammer if she hoped to get his attention.

This might well explain why DC's 52 reboot has initiated a physical relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman.  Who else could exert sufficient strength to kindle the fires of passion in the Man of Steel - and survive the experience should Superman reciprocate?

However, the romantic in me says that logic has nothing to do with it.  Perhaps Superman only needs to feel a kiss in his heart.

- Sid

* I think it's fair to say that Superman's extraterrestrial origin qualifies him as a separate species - homo kryptonis, or perhaps homo eximius.

And a matching plushie at home.

I was surprised to notice that one of my coworkers has a teeny little Cthulhu idol on her desk at work.  Apparently followers of the dark cult of the Old Ones are everywhere.

Fhtagn!

- Sid

Chris Hadfield, King of Space.

As it turns out, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wasn't actually proclaimed King of Space in Kazakhstan, in spite of what Reddit would like you to think, but maybe he should have been.

Chris Hadfield has probably done more to raise the profile of space exploration than anyone since Neil Armstrong. (Or perhaps William Shatner.) His Twitter™ feed, loaded with incredible photos from his 146 day tour of duty on the International Space Station, has close to a million followers, and the video for his cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity has been viewed 13,479,763* times in the seven days since it was posted on YouTube™, making it the most popular video of the last week by about 12 million views.

Unfortunately, there's an odd dichotomy regarding space exploration.  On one hand, both NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency, for you international visitors) are facing reduced programs and budget cuts right across the board as governments struggle with widespread economic problems.  Up against that, there's an undeniable interest on the part of the general population:  early videos of the Curiosity Rover on Mars were so popular that the volume of viewers crashed the NASA server, and Chris Hadfield's musical efforts have pulled in more Twitter™ followers than Avril Lavigne's.

The interesting thing about the massive popularity of Hadfield's orbital updates is that there wasn't an engineered publicity process behind them. It wasn't the result of a structured media blitz, or orchestrated by some kind of agency, it was one guy talking it over with his family and taking it from there.**  On that basis, it has to be one of the greatest single-handed viral promotional events of all time.  Hopefully someone in a position of authority will take note of what he's accomplished, and realize what it means as an indicator of interest in outer space.

All hail King Christopher.

- Sid 

*And counting - up to 13,523,098 since I started writing this posting.  It's actually about 14 million - Larrivee, who made the guitar featured in the zero-g performance, has nabbed another 500,000 views of Hadfield's video on their own channel.

** Is it just me or does that sound like a really Canadian approach?


UPDATE: 14,103,113 views, Monday May 20th.

UPDATE: 15,036,588 views, Sunday May 26th. 

 
UPDATE: 50,764,341 views, Saturday January 23, 2022 - gosh, it's been a while since I've visited this post.