From the Earth to the Moon: My Apollo Space Nerd Film List

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Former Apollo astronauts meet with the media at the Apollo/Saturn V Center prior to an anniversary banquet highlighting the contributions of aerospace employees who made the Apollo program possible. From left are Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin who flew on Apollo 11, the launch to the moon; Gene Cernan, who flew on Apollo 10 and 17; and Walt Cunningham, who flew on Apollo 7. This is the 30th anniversary of the launch and moon landing, July 16 and July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details-KSC-99pp0840.html

I’ll admit it. I’m a space nerd. I am a complete and utter space nerd. Specifically of the “space” that occupied the popular imagination from the years 1957–1975. The “space” of the Space Race, which saw the United States and the Soviet Union battle for supremacy of the heavens and be the first to step foot on the Moon. A battle you could play on your computer in the obscure strategy game Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space (no longer “Buzz Aldrin’s” for licensing reasons, but nonetheless available for FREE download). Play me via mail with difficulty set to 3 and historical model ON. I DARE YOU.

But I digress. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the mission which launched Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins not only to the Moon, but into the annals of history reserved for Washingtons, Napoleons, Caesars and Cleopatras.

There’s a quote from Armstrong—one which doesn’t involve steps or leaps small or large—from the last milestone anniversary of Apollo 11. The last milestone, it would turn out, where all three of the original crew would be alive to mark it. In a rare public appearance, Armstrong said how kids used to come up to him and tell him they had learned about him in science class. Now (in 2009), they come up and say they had learned about him in history class. Time does not stop, particularly for those fated to become a great of history.

I remember well the 30th anniversary of the moon landing. I was about 11 and it consumed a good portion of the first half of 1999 for me. I’ve often felt like someone born out of time, from my love of film photography, to my taste in music, films and desire to consume alcohol in the workplace. Never have I felt that sense more acutely than in June and July of 1999. I was in awe of the Space Race, particularly of the milestones that got the technology (then humans) into orbit and on to the Moon. But no one—bar my wonderful science teacher—seemed to share my wonder. There were no great museums of industry and technology in Melbourne (or Australia for that matter) that put the Space Race front and centre like riches of the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Space Centre or Huntsville. Although “we” in Australia had played a key role in the success of the entire US space program and of Apollo 11 in particular, I felt, at this time, this was not recognised or well remembered (thankfully Working Dog Productions would rectify this the following year with The Dish).

The Internet (sic.)—also known as the Information Superhighway—helped immensely to feed my passion. NASA was in the midst of their own public digital revolution, having recently published the comprehensive Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and making available freely and easily the best photographs from the Apollo program. I got in heaps for downloading several 400kb JPEGs, clogging up the phone line, but holy Alan Shepard, I’d be damned if I’d ever seen anything so beautiful in my hitherto short life. It’s amazing how good JPEGs that size look on a 640x480 screen.

But most memorably of all for me were the movies and documentaries that brought history to vivid life. Firstly, there was Apollo 13 which, even though covered an entirely different mission, featured the best (to date) filmed representation of a Saturn V launch. And boy...that subwoofer (a feeling I’d only know once I had the DVD and a surround sound system). Then there was a little-seen TV movie called—imaginatively—Apollo 11 which dramatised the leadup to the eponymous mission and the landing. I think I originally saw it on channel 10, but it lived on—like so many childhood memories—on a VHS recording. I don’t remember much about it, other than Xander Berkeley (who was in Apollo 13 and would go on to play George Mason in 24) was Buzz Aldrin and it probably isn’t as good as First Man.

Above both of these, though, sat the defining television experience for 1990s Richard (aside from A*Mazing, Captain Planet and Widget the World Watcher). From the Earth to the Moon was a 1998 HBO miniseries, before anyone—in Australia at any rate—knew what that really meant. Its twelve parts charted the epic journey of American manned space exploration from the chalkboard calulations of ex-Nazi engineers through to the end of Apollo (with a detour to 1902 to witness Georges Méliès making the journey on 845 feet of celluloid before astronauts would make it on 7.5 million pounds of thrust). And, oh my gosh, that Michael Kamen score.

Although such a series could, in lesser hands, fall into a docudrama funk, each episode is written and directed by its own creative team, leaving each one with its own unique feeling and flavour. The executive creative team of Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer ensure coherence and consistency, but never compromise. The narrative’s points of view vary from episode to episode, each focusing on a different element that ultimately constitutes the whole. Even though that “whole” is NASA of the 1960s, the sum of its parts does indeed—somehow—feel greater than the whole. If I had to pick two standout episodes, they’d be the sombre and underplayed Apollo 1 and Spider, dramatising the conception and construction of the Lunar Module. But there’s too much goodness in this series to fit in these bulging paragraphs—MARK FU$#ING HARMON—so I’ll just finish it up with this: From the Earth to the Moon has been confined to cable TV (how I first viewed it—thanks Optus Vision!), VHS, then two versions on DVD. Next month it’s out on Blu Ray and I will delight in watching it anew as soon as it is out.

To mark this most awesome of milestones, the golden anniversary of humanity’s greatest achievement, I will be watching the best of the best of films about or pertaining to Apollo 11 and the Apollo program. If I find the time (heh) I might even write a few words about them as I go. In no particular order:

1. For All Mankind (Al Reinert, 1989) 
2. Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995) 
3. In the Shadow of the Moon (David Sington and Christopher Riley, 2007) 
4. The Dish (Rob Sitch, 2000) 
5. First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018) 
6. When We Left Earth: the NASA Missions (Discovery, 2008)
7. The Space Race (Christopher Spencer and Mark Everest, 2005) 
8. Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller, 2019) SEEING IT IMAX, BEACHES 
9. From the Earth to the Moon (HBO, 1998) BLU RAY ARRIVING AT MY DOOR 17 JULY!! 

Godspeed, movie watcher.

The Alphasmart Neo 2: the Anti-Winword.exe

The following was written on my latest acquisition: an Alphasmart Neo 2 word processor. It's basically the world's least impressive LCD screen mated to a a full-sized keyboard. For a writer, it is mana from heaven in a world riven with gadgets and gizmos of increasing price and decreasing utility. Despite its spartan appearance, the Neo 2 is not all that old, its manufacturer only ending production in 2013. Its sheer existence—in the post-convergence period—is a miracle worth exploring later on. But now, the words.

---

Here I am. Typing away for the first time on this thing. Just me, a proper keyboard and my words, displayed on the world’s most piss-poor LCD screen. I’m in heaven.

Introducing the Alphasmart Neo 2. In this age of convergence—let’s face it, post-convergence—this is a device which does one thing and nothing else. It’s a word processor, not dissimilar to the types which used to be mated to a printer/typewriter thing, and spit out the fruits of it labour on the wonderful dot matrix printer paper I and many of my cohort grew up drawing on. I feel I can just write with this thing. It doesn’t matter much what I write, but the words are coming down the fingers. I expect such a device will get some looks, but it works really well. So well, I might have grab a couple of them to ensure I have a backup or two.

I think I can probably just sit here and watch the world going by. My touch typing is okay, although I have some troubles as I migrate between Mac and PC keyboards. The Apple Extended Keyboards—the best keyboards ever made—mark their home keys as K and G; PC keyboard tend to mark F and J. Take a look on your keyboard, they’re little bumps which help tell the fingers where to go next. But I digress, none of this should prevent me from writing something of at least a vague interest on here. And technological determinism is bullshit.

I wouldn’t call myself a writer, but words matter to me. Words matter to me so much that I piss about trying to find not only the perfect words, but the perfect tool with which to scribe them. I was listening to an interview with Geoff Dyer recently on the sort of podcast that talks a lot about Writing (with a capital W). Dyer is, of course, an incredibly talented yet incredibly unpretentious writer who has a knack for making almost any topic interesting. His latest book is a blow-by-blow critique—though 'critique' is far too serious a descriptor—of the Richard Burton/Clint Eastwood film Where Eagles Dare.

The interviewer asked whether Dyer has any particular writing system (longhand; word processor) or whether he has anywhere in particular he must write. Dyer gave one of those disarming answers that fills mere mortal wordsmiths with joy. He, of course, uses a computer (what sane person wouldn’t) but can write almost anywhere or—as he corrects himself—he can not write anywhere, that is to say it is equally easy and equally difficult regardless of his location.

That is, I reckon, an entreaty to all of us to get out (or in) there and get those words on the page. They won’t write themselves. Now, how the fuck do I get the words out of here?

Microsoft Word sucks so much I can't even be bothered coming up with a pun for this title

Microsoft Word for Mac. Version 16.23. Look at that goddamn paste options pane. WTF even is that? Who needs that many pasting options????

Writing is important to me. Words are much of my life, whether it’s my day job in marketing or teaching my three year-old seven syllable words (/ˌpætʃɪˌkɛfələˈsɑːrəs/). Words are my trade and like all tradesmen, I need good tools to get the job done.

For paper-based scribing, I use a Lamy Safari fountain pen which is a nice balance between practicality and pretension. For the computer-based input, I use an Apple Extended Keyboard II (I’ve got a few units and the requisite adaptors—enough to have one at home and one at the office). These are good tools—in fact the mechanical AEKII is regarded by some as the “best keyboard ever made”. But moving away from the hardware of writing to the software, things very quickly fall apart.

Word “processing” has, at various stages of the term’s use, meant an electronic typewriter, a piece of software and even a person trained to type. These days, it almost exclusively refers to software and the first piece of word processing software that springs to most people’s mind is the Monopoly Man of the digital word: Microsoft Word.

In which Microsoft Word is a bloated piece of crap

I know, it's fashionable to hate Word. Once upon a time, it was a plucky newcomer, competing with the big boys in the world of word processing. But now it is an ungainly, bloated piece of crap that claims to do too many things and doesn't do any of them particularly well.

At uni, I spent several years trying to come to grips with the intricacies of Word. I thought that if Word was everywhere, it must be OK, right? Somehow, it must be my own technical knowledge that was lacking. All I needed to do was learn...and I would win at Word! Hahaha, you poor fool, naive dummy past Richard.

Turned out there wasn't any real level of insight or knowledge that would make Word do as you vainly commanded. I found this out through my own blood, sweat and tears—well sweat and tears anyway—after coming close to losing my sanity writing my parliamentary internship report (complete with tables, breakouts and charts) with Word. Actually writing "with" Word probably doesn't do justice to those months of toil. I completed my report "despite" Word? Wrestling with the keys of fate, linked charts of catastrophe and wretched text wrapping of wickedness, I toiled to complete, against all odds, my parliamentary internship report? Hmm. Better. I mean whose sphincter hasn't irreparably tightened when an attempt to nudge an image one millimetre up the page results in the disappearance and dislodging of 46 pages of carefully laid-out text, charts and tables?

In fact, if I had the power to eradicate something from the surface of the earth, Word would rank highly on any list I dreamt up. Sure, it would probably sit behind war, famine and plague, but it would be higher than most others would place a software package. Why? Because Microsoft Word is a plague. It is like a virus that has infected almost every home and commercial computer.

Word is so bad that this is where I invoke Adobe in a positive light(room)

For me, I’d like to invoke Adobe as an example of one way forward for Microsoft and Word—yep, a I'm citing Adobe as a positive paradigm...the world has gone topsy-turvy. Adobe, like Microsoft, has a bit of a problem with legacy. Where Lightroom was once a revolutionary program for editing and managing digital assets, a dozen years of legacy coding have left recent releases running very slowly, even on blazing fast machines.

To address these issues (and ready the program for a cloud-based future) Adobe has released a reimagining of Lightroom called Lightroom CC (Creative Cloud). This version is entirely new and shares only a name with the older software. Developers are unencumbered by 12 year-old code free of the restraints of backwards compatibility. They are free to develop a program for the future of photography, not the legacies of the past. But Adobe hasn’t killed the “old” Lightroom. They rechristened the original version Lightroom “Classic” and are continuing to develop and support both programs side by side. The intention, however, is clear: the future is Lightroom CC, but we’ll have a while to adjust.

Adobe’s solution to the legacy problem is the best of both worlds. Developing for the new paradigm while supporting the old. Now why can’t Microsoft—with their subscription service and large development teams—think about doing the same. Do we really need word processing, charts, tables, mail merge, Word Art, shadows, outlines, address books, templates, ducking autocorrect, auto formatting or “smart” tags in one program? Or do writers want to sit down and write?

Funnily enough, Microsoft have actually done this already...kind of. In moving the focus of Office to the 365 subscription service, Microsoft developed Word Online as part of the package. This allows subscribers to view and edit documents in a web browser without opening the desktop app—so basically Google Docs, but you have to pay for it and it's still the same Microsoft rubbish. It's too baroque for my liking, but it's a step in the right direction.

And yes, Microsoft Word of 2019 is better than Word of, say, 2003, but the improvements are mostly ribbon deep. I still find myself stuck in a type-autocorrect-backspace-retype-autocorrect again-backspace-retype-autocorrect yet again loop, expecting the software to understand after the first two corrections that I did indeed want to begin the next line with a lower case letter. And don't get me started on formatting...that styles pane is a goddamn pain should you dare want anything other than Verdana or that standard bearer of default mediocrity: Calibri. Sure, the menus have been cleaned up, but I'll be damned if I don't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find how to switch a function off after accidentally turning it on through an inadvertent key stroke.

Beware the Anonymous Capybara...

It’s often noted that George R.R. Martin still writes using WordStar 4.0 on a DOS-based machine. In his words, it does everything he needs and nothing he doesn’t. Plenty of niche developers out there are working on word processing software to meet this criterion—which is fine—but the monopolistic leaders in this space are doing nothing to improve the lot of the rest of us. As much as I'd like to take Ulysees or Scrivener into the workplace, it would not be accepted by the powers that be as a replacement for Word. Where is the business-friendly commercial word processing product that does everything we need and nothing we don't? Oh hi, Google Docs. I see you there. Yep, I think you're about ready for the big time...so long as some anonymous capybara doesn't edit you off course...

Instead of burying the bloat in the “ribbon”, perhaps Microsoft can stop and think about their baby from the ground up. Maybe then I’ll shudder less whenever I see a .docx attached to an email in my inbox and I’ll open it without cursing the sender and the medium.

Further Reading

Death to Word by Tom Scocca (2012)

Journalists Just Can't Quit Microsoft Word. But Some Are Trying by Rachel Withers (2018)

Why Microsoft Word must Die by Charlie Stross (2013)

WordStar: A writer's word processor by Robert J. Saywer (1990, updated in 1996)

Microsoft Word Is the Only Word Processor for People Serious About Words by Heather Schwedel (2016)

We're winning the war on Word, fellow writers. Enjoy the freedom by Jason Wilson (2018)

This post was drafted in Notes for iOS on an iPhone XS. Notes is a simple cloud-based word processor which comes with Apple iOS. It's actually pretty useful, as is its MacOS version.

The typing experience on the iOS varies from mediocre to terrible, but I’ve used plenty of laptop keyboards worse than an iPhone’s touchscreen. 

It was edited in Google Docs on a desktop computer (with Apple Extended Keyboard II) before making the jump to the Blogger CMS. 

15* Days Which Would Be More Appropriate as Australia Day than January 26

Photo: Phil Whitehouse, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

*I'm adding some additional brilliant brain farts as they come

1 January — Constitution of Australia comes into force (1901)
3 March — Commencement of the Australia Act (1986), which finally instituted Australia's legal independence from the UK
3 March — Graham Kennedy's infamous 'crow call' on The Graham Kennedy Show (1975)
3 March — Tony Abbott's then-record 'eight flag' press conference, featuring the PM flanked by — you guessed it — EIGHT Australian flags (2015)*
15 March — First Cricket Test Match (1877)
16 March — Advisory Council of Science and Industry formed by PM Billy Hughes. It would become CSIRO (1916)
18 March — Neighbours first aired (1985)
29 March — First Federal Election (1901)
30 April — Nikki Webster's birthday (1987)
21 May — Assent of Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 extending electoral franchise to Indigenous Australians for the first time
27 May — Henry Parkes' birthday (1815)
27 May — Referendum on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967, recognising Indigenous Australians in the Australian population
13 June — Vegemite first goes on sale (1923)
23 June — Tony Abbott's record 'ten flag' press conference, featuring the PM flanked by — you guessed it — TEN Australian flags (2015)
4 September — Steve Irwin is taken too soon by some form of marine monster of nightmares (2006)
5 September — Naomi Robson wears lizard on shoulder while reporting on the death of Steve Irwin (2006)
24 September — Sydney wins hosting rights to the 2000 summer Olympics (1993)
26 September — Australia II wins seventh and final race to claim the America's Cup (1983)
24 November — John Howard's Coaltion government is defeated; John Howard loses his own seat of Bennelong (2007)
26 November — Official launch of the Holden FX (1948)

*temporary record superseded in June 2015

So on and Sofort

It might seem strange as a photographic enthusiast, but I’m over cameras. There was a time, when I was working in photographic retail, that I visited DPReview a dozen times a day and was forever pressing F5 on nikonrumors.com, waiting for the rumoured release of a brand new 12 megapixel full frame DSLR.

Not any more.

After selling these products for years and seeing the same people come into the store and purchase mark I, II, III and IV of the same cameras, I realised we had reached the point of diminishing return with digital cameras. Incremental increases in autofocus speed and image quality had not improved the photography of these chumps. All they were getting were larger photos of the same unimaginative crap. For almost all photographers today, the limiting factor is not the camera, but the idiot behind it.

This is why it’s so nice to find a camera which makes me excited to go out and take photos again: the Leica Sofort.

The Leica Sofort is an instant camera that uses Fujifilm’s popular Instax Mini instant film. It is essentially a slightly more brutalist — and more expensive — version of a Fujifilm Instax Mini 90. Why would you go the Leica over the much cheaper Instax? For the same reasons anyone buys a Leica product: because it’s a Leica.

Operation of the camera is straight forward, with a power button, flash and exposure settings on the back, and a lens that offers close range (1–3m) and distance (3m+) settings.

This simplicity makes the Sofort a blast to use.

Travelling overseas recently, I shot around 60 exposures with the Sofort, and part of me thought, in the event of a mugging, I’d much rather lose one of the “real” cameras in my bag than my irreplaceable Sofort frames — don't take that as an invitation!

Instant film allows photographers a different way of seeing. As someone who came into photography at the tail-end of the last instant film era, I can appreciate why the new films and cameras are so popular.

For me, instant film is a sort of visual notebook far more tangible than what can be done with a smartphone and its in-built camera.

The importance of physicality can’t be overstated. My 2 year-old son knows exactly what the Sofort is for. I’ll get the camera out, and before I’ve even turned it on, he’ll be saying “CHEESE!” with the toothiest grin I’ve seen. I’ll never forget his first gasps as the picture developed right before his eyes — a picture of himself. Then I was able to leave a couple of frames on his grandfather’s fridge before we jetted back to Australia. Cue the old man voice saying "you can't do that with digital".

The only slight letdown is the quality of the lens. Yes, I know this is instant photography, but the Sofort isn't cheap and the Leica name is synonymous with extreme glass, so it's sad they sully their good name with cheap plastic. Instax film is very capable when shot with real glass. I can only assume it must have been cheaper for Leica to repurpose the Fuji Instax lens, rather than designing their own. No doubt the inevitable Leica Sofort Super Elmar starting at $599 (plus $299 for the Limited Edition Ostrich Skin Edition) will address some of these issues...

So is the fun of instant photography exclusive to the Leica Sofort? No, of course not. Any Instax camera provides a similar experience — and the larger format Instax Wide looks very enticing — but none does it with the same bold presence as the Leica Sofort. Anyone who truly loves images owes it to themselves to give one of the Instax lineup a try.

Overheard: Google Home

“Oh I soooo want Google Home,” one woman said to her colleague as they commuted into the city.

The benefits were self-evident, she said, like being able ask the omnipresent connected listening device to convert ounces into grams when cooking in the kitchen, “But because my husband works with computers — like, how do I describe it, like…”

“Like a competitor?” The colleague asked.

“No, not a competitor, but he works with like with spyware and that sort of stuff, Google products are off the shopping list.”

The colleague made a sympathetic disappointed noise, “I love my Google Home. It’s so good.”

“He’s concerned about like security and hacking and stuff.”

“Oh yeah, but you know, you’d like to think a company like Google would be protected from hackers and stuff,” the colleague said.

“Yeah if you couldn’t trust Google, who could you trust? They’d have to be safe from all that. They’re so big.”

“Exactly. It’s just so great, so convenient, just being able to ask it anything…”

“My husband always talks about how these things are always listening…but seriously, good luck to anyone listening to our conversations. They’d be bored in a few seconds!”

25Mbps is more than enough

Watching last night's Four Corners on the clusterfuck that is our National "Broadband" Network, I got angry. I got angry that the rarest beast in Australian politics — a truly visionary policy — got trashed for the purpose of political point scoring.

I got angry that the people who are vested with responsibility for the future of this country can't (or won't) see a future that many can, where fast, future-proof technology (yes, fibre is as close to a future-proof technology you'll ever find) places us at a substantial competitive advantage.

I've written extensively about the Coalition's clusterfuck of an NBN many times before on this blog, critiquing the Coalition's policy from its announcement in 2013. But even going back only 4 years, to that infamous press conference where Turnbull and Abbott pretended to be friends announcing the Liberal's deficient NBN policy, even I'm surprised how much their assumptions have dated.

At the press conference, both Abbott and Turnbull said 25Mbps was "more than enough" for home users and that the network would be completed by 2016. They said that instead of the "expensive" fibre option connecting 90 per cent of Australians, the Liberal's use of the existing copper network would allow the network to be rolled out faster and cheaper than Labor's policy.

The network is now scheduled to be completed in 2020 — only four years late — and will likely end up costing about $20 billion more than the Liberals originally claimed. All this for a woefully inferior product.

But what's most interesting about the 2013 press conference is just how inadequate 25Mbps is — a fact known to most tech people then as now.

As Four Corners mentioned, data use by Australian internet users has more than doubled over the past two years. Going back even further to the time of Abbott and Turnbull's awkward presser shows how wrong assumptions of data use only a few years ago were. Since June 2013, total data use has skyrocketed by more than 350 per cent, with fixed-line connections accounting for the vast majority of increase.

If that increase occurred in only four years, imagine what will happen over the next four? Or the four years after that? Very quickly, the NBN begins to look like a DIY crystal radio set in a 4K HDTV world. Then what? A future government will likely have to spend billions more upgrading the network, when it could have been done once, done properly and be done with fibre.

Politicians Jumping On-Line to Surf the Information Super Highway

Insert naff cyber stock image here

I repeat, yet again, my call for the internet companies who terrorists have again used to communicate to be held legally liable for content.

— John Mann (@JohnMannMP) June 4, 2017

The above UK Labour MP’s Tweet is a great example of everything wrong with most of our elected officials’ understanding of the internet. As remarkable as the internet is on a technical level, it is no longer remarkable in daily use, yet for many of our politicians, it remains a novelty worthy of its own romantic comedy (Now Showing: You’ve Got Hate Mail).

“The Internet” needs capitalisation because, to these taxpayer-funded dullards, it is a new frontier where criminals, paedophiles, and — terror of terrors — Muslim extremists wait in prey for their next victims. It isn’t just another piece of critical infrastructure in need of investment and protection, like highways or the power grid, it is a niche curiosity. It is the Information Superhighway. It is Cyberspace. It is the animated shooting stars of Netscape 3.0. It is best viewed at 640x480.

This is what makes the current push by some politicians to allow the state access to encrypted services, at best, silly and at worst, incredibly dangerous.

Encryption is vital to the functioning of our information-based society. Without it — and I’m not exaggerating here — society falls apart. It isn’t some optional extra beloved of terrorists to plan their nefarious deeds in the dark, it is what keeps our online banking safe, our personal data secure, our private conversations private. It’s what gives business the confidence to do business without the worry of proprietary data ending up in the hands of competitors. Of course, no system is completely secure, but without encryption, you’d may as well tattoo your bank PIN on your forehead for all to see.

Without trust that the everyday transactions we make (financial or otherwise) are free from illegitimate interference or interception, the very systems which underpin modern society collapse.

Ultimately, attempts to make systems less secure for the evil few ultimately make systems less secure for all. The tools used by the "good" guys to access the "bad" guys ultimately end up being used by the "bad" guys against everyone. This is not a theory, it was recently borne out by the WannaCry ransomware attack which was based on Windows vulnerabilities hoarded by the NSA, but reportedly not shared with Microsoft until they were leaked to the public.

Our pluralistic societies are regressing. The United States is joining Syria and Nicaragua on axis of inaction on climate change; the United Kingdom seeks to join China, Iran and North Korea and other autocratic states in controlling the internet. The worst part is of all this is that there's no evidence such controls will make ordinary people safer, in fact only the opposite.

Worst of all, no evidence has been presented that encrypted message services played a role in the latest atrocity in London, but even if these services did, they bear no more culpability than the manufacturers of the knives they carried, or the maker of the van they drove, or the operator of the roads on which they travelled.

In the vast majority of terrorist incidents in the West, the perpetrators have been known to the authorities. How will access to WhatsApp or iMessage or Signal help agencies when they fail to act on the information they already have?

Alas, even those politicians who should know better are pushing to undermine the foundations of our information society. The man who "practically invented the internet in Australia", Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has declared war on encryption — and the apps he himself has admitted using instead of secured government comms — saying of encrypted messaging apps, "security services need to get access to them".

It's sad that the tech literacy of our parliamentarians hasn't progressed much since the Commonwealth Minister for Communications —ya know, the guy in charge of teh Interwebs — stated that broadband was primarily for consuming porn and gambling, and that Mr and Mrs Average would never want such a service (and that the state had little role in ensuring reasonable access to decent internet). Or who can forget the Attorney-General's misadventures in the land of metadata ("well...well...well...the web address")? It would not be an issue if these dunces had responsibility for, I don't know, tiny lapel pin flags, or garbage collection, but they claim to make laws that affect millions of people and billions of dollars without the slightest hint of curiosity.

With democratic leaders sounding every bit the autocrat these days, there has never been a more exciting time to be innovative, agile...and encrypted.

With Friends Like These...

The business lobby's tone deaf response to Mark Kenny's entirely story about the groups' offices being shut on a Sunday demonstrates why they're going to lose — if they haven’t already lost — the battle over penalty rates.

The lobby groups and their acolytes got their knickers in a knot over the story, saying that as a professional group and not a service provider, there was no demand for them on a weekend and were thus shut. This is true, but it completely misses the point of the story.

Their response misses the optics — as PR flacks are fond of saying — of the situation, which is that those who are so very eager to cut weekend penalty rates value their own Saturday–Sunday weekends. This was the point that Kenny admitted he was trying to make. He succeeded, even if his targets didn't get the hint.  Some labelled Kenny's story a "stunt", while others continued the habit of scoring own goals,  criticising the story by saying "it's called a normal working week, duh“, to which Kenny replied "exactly".

The blindness to these optics means business groups have lost this battle before it has begun, even if they had "masses" of evidence to support their dubious claims (they don’t). They try to blame the SDA — whose agreements have often reduced penalty rates in exchange for higher base rates of pay — not realising the old adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. Some have tried to insult workers by saying they’re “lucky” to have a job and should go without penalties entirely. Basically every negative sentiment workers feels about employers is being confirmed.

It’s very difficult for captains of industry large and small to claim victimhood at any time, let alone when profits in some sectors are at record highs, trust in business is low and they’re campaigning for even more funds from the public purse by way of company tax cuts. Trying victimhood on for size while advocating slashing the take home pay of their lowest remunerated workers is not a good look. Combine this with an almost sociopathic disregard for the effect of pay cuts on workers, and you've got a battle that's already lost for employers.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Closed Sundays

Shameless cliche of a stock photo from Wikipedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Artaxerxes

You really have to question the PR and business acumen of Australia's most egregious rentseekers. Completely predictably, Fairfax's Mark Kenny spent a few minutes on Sunday afternoon calling some of Australia's peak business lobby groups.

Surprise, surprise, no one picked up. These offices were closed on Sunday. I guess the 24/7 economy is a case of "do what I say, not what I do".

This Sunday silence goes to the heart of the hypocrisy of those loudest voices in favour of cutting the take home pay of our poorest remunerated workers. The weekend is still special to them.

Perhaps just to get a taste of weekend work, the lobby groups' phones can redirect to the mobiles of their respective CEOs. It might interrupt their day in the MCG corporate box hobnobbing with all the other knobs, but it might help them understand why Sunday isn't just another day.

If nobody in their offices has the skills to redirect their phones, then I'd be happy to teach them for a fee on Sundays.

T minus 4 Years

Donald Trump was sworn in as President overnight in an inauguration that was bleak and miserable as the weather in Washington D.C.

Despite the inevitable forthcoming Twitter protestations to the contrary, crowd numbers were down substantially on the past two inaugurations. Anti-Trump protests abounded in the city, with reports of some damage to shops and property.

Those expecting the new President to strike a conciliatory tone in line with the loftiness of the event were sorely disappointed. Trump basically reaffirmed the worst of his campaign sloganeering, telling the world he's going to govern for the anxieties and worst excesses of White America.

Mine — and most of the world's — only hope is that if this is to mark the end of Pax Americana, they do so with a whimper rather than a bang.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Score

When Alexandre Desplat was originally announced as musical score composer for Rogue One, I was intrigued. Here was a very accomplished, Academy Award-winning composer — whose work to date could has been powerfully rhythmic, but pretty low-key — being asked to write in the tradition of one of the most iconic film scores of all time. Not an easy task. To me, hiring Desplat was a very positive sign that the filmmakers wanted to take these Star Wars anthology films in a very different direction from the saga. Alas, Desplat's place in the Star Wars canon was not be be. In September, it was announced at the last minute that Star Trek composer and J.J. Abrams favourite Michael Giacchino had replaced Desplat.

I felt bad for Desplat, but knew Giacchino is a safer choice for this type of film. Rogue One was touted as a war film, and Giacchino has spent more time writing for World War II-themed properties than almost any other living composer on the planet. Desplat ostensibly departed the project due to 'scheduling' conflicts, but given the talk of reshoots (and the evidence of many scenes in trailers not present in the final film) it wouldn't be surprising if the departure was also due to changes in the film's tone.

Michael Giacchino is a pioneer in multimedia music scoring. The first gig that brought him to wider attention was as composer to the score of the maligned Lost World Playstation game. The game sucked, but the music was great and was indeed the first video game to feature a recorded symphonic score. Giacchino's work on this game led to him scoring the first Medal of Honor game, a game produced by Steven Speilberg and his studio Dreamworks Interactive. Giacchino went on to score the game's sequels, MoH: Underground, Frontline (my personal favourite), Allied Assault (using the pre-existing scores from the other games) and — after a hiatus from the series — Airborne. He also scored the first Call of Duty game, bringing the composer back to World War II yet again. These scores are truly great works in any medium. Giacchino's scored a heap of films and television series since his Medal of Honor days, but it is these early scores Rogue One most closely resembles. The games' heroic themes for the Allies and bombastic goose-stepping marches for the Axis are transplanted into a galaxy far, far away, with a great effect.

The Star Wars series is a natural fit for Giacchino. In fact, he's seemed destined for this role for a long time, with his work on films such as Abrams' Star Trek franchise, Jurassic World and others positioning himself as a natural successor to Williams as the composer who can meld bombast with nuance. Abrams, naturally, opted for John Williams to score The Force Awakens so Giacchino — a long-time Abrams collaborator — was cast as a stormtrooper in the opening on Jakku instead.

Which brings us to Rogue One. Fans looking for a rehash of themes from the original trilogy will be disappointed. This score is almost wholly originally. The cover of the album may credit John Williams as the "Original Star Wars music" composer, but this is mainly a marketing exercise. Just as the film uses iconic characters sparingly, so too does Giacchino quote Williams' themes infrequently, but judiciously. Instead of dumping in the Imperial March every time a Star Destroyer appears on screen, Giacchino very smartly develops his own Imperial themes, derived from those of A New Hope, rather than the Imperial March of the Empire Strikes Back.

There was disquiet about Williams' use of the Imperial March in the prequels, owing to the fact that in the timeline of the films, neither the Empire or its theme had been established. Giacchino wisely quotes from it sparingly and instead chooses to develop the Death Star's four note motif (duuh duh-duh DUUUUUUH) and even employs Darth Vader's original motif (sometimes called the 'Imperial motif', but referred to a pre-ESB Williams as 'Darth Vader's Theme') of bassoons and muted trumpets which has not been heard since the original 1977 film.

All in all, this is a very good score that serves the film exceptionally well. The same people who threw the banal critique at The Force Awakens soundtrack as not having a 'hummable' tune will probably dislike this score. There probably isn't enough Williams for the casual viewer's liking, and interweb-based film score forums (yep, such things exist) will issue keyboard criticism after keyboard criticism, but this is a very good score. As Gordy Haab (Battlefront), Mark Griskey (The Force Unleashed), Joel McNeely (Shadows of the Empire) and other composers have shown, there can be exceptional Star Wars scores without the original maestro at the helm. Sooner or later John Williams won't be around to compose a Star Wars score; we were very lucky to get a seventh saga score from him. I can't think of anyone better than Michael Giacchino to inherit the Star Wars musical mantle.

Highlights: 
Krennic's Aspirations — The re-emergence of a very familiar character and some very familiar themes.
Hope — Once you've seen the film, the opening of this track will probably give you nighmares. It's instantly iconic and will be a track long remembered, to paraphrase a certain memorable villain.
The Imperial Suite — a concert version of Giacchino's new themes for the Empire, like an ur-Imperial March. A lot of similarities to some tracks from MoH: Airborne.

Other Albums You Should Listen to:
Medal of Honor: Frontline (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube)
Medal of Honor: Airborne (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube)
Battlefront OST, Gordy Haab (YouTube)
The Force Unleashed OST, Mark Griskey (YouTube)
Shadows of the Empire, Joel McNeely (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube)

Say NO to Lif3

​There's a wonderful section in the late Christopher Hitchens' Letters to a Young Contrarian where he discusses a daily ritual of frustration that made him feel alive. Every morning, he would sit down to read the New York Times, checking whether the 'bright, smug, pompous, idiotic' motto 'All the News That's Fit to Print' was still there to the left of the masthead. Yes it was. Did it still irritate him? Yes. Then at least he knew he still had a pulse.

I also indulge in a "daily infusion of annoyance", perhaps it is a form of secular self flaggelation. Mine is to visit the Twitter page for Lif3 Smartchip, a $70 piece of snake oil-infused plastic that protects you against the imagined dangers of mobile phone radiation. Because health. And the children. And the health of children. And really, don't you want to protect the children?

Never mind the fact that the overwhelming volume of evidence indicates electromagnetic radiation from mobile and cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers and other 'smart' devices isn't dangerous to human health. Never mind the slight inconvenience that there's no known biologically plausible mechanism for low power EMR to damage cells. Never mind the sober recommendations of the vast majority of national and international health bodies which indicate there's no reason to be concerned about EMR radiation. But overwhelming evidence aside, as Lif3 themselves say, 'why take the risk?' It is, of course, much easier to make a quick dollar by ignoring decades of evidence. Oh, and did I mention the children?

Daily I will visit Lif3's Twitter account and if I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do the insult me with their moronic claims and what do they take me for and why do they bother with their snake oil BS — all while earning the eye-rolling ire of my patient wife — then I know I too still have a pulse.

Unfortunately I can't check Lif3's Twitter page when logged in to my own Twitter account. I have to either log out or use private browsing because these fine corporate citizens have blocked me, along with many others who dared to question their pseudoscientific snake oil. But at least they're thinking of the children...and their parents' wallets.

Melbourne: Most Insecure City in the World

Eureka Skydeck, 2013

The Economist Intelligence Unit has named Melbourne the "Most Liveable City in the World" for the sixth straight year. Huzzah! Break out the champagne, but just make sure it's a 1996 Bollinger La Grande Annee Brut. What? You can't afford a $600 bottle of champers? Then too bad, because these rankings aren't for you.

Despite social media crowing from every civic leader from the Premier down, the "Global Liveability Ranking" means very little by itself and means even less to those who already live in those benighted cities fortunate enough to make the cut. Melbourne, like the rest of Australia, is desperate for external—preferably foreign—validation, has taken these rankings and run with them for decades, without actually thinking about what they mean. 

The beneficiaries of this aura of "liveability" are the executives earning a whole heap more than you. These global rankings are generated by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the sister company to the more well-known magazine. The goal of the EIU is to help "businesses, financial firms and governments to understand how the world is changing and how that creates opportunities to be seized and risks to be managed". Translation: they don’t care whether your local public school is falling down, only whether there are quality private schools nearby for executives with expense accounts to send their little darlings to.

The rankings are devised for senior executives schlepping into town (in business class, of course) for a two-year stay to restructure the local business (synergise efficiencies and such, the action formerly known as sacking people) before leaving with a well-earned pay raise and a promotion.

The people for whom these rankings are divined will not be searching for an affordable home within a 60 minute drive of the CBD, nor will they be worried about the quality of public education from their nearest state school. They won't be struggling to find amenable employment or efficient public transport because the issues that matter to you and me will be looked after by their cashed-up, tax-dodging multinational employers. 

Don’t just take my word for how meaningless these rankings are, take a look at this quote from EIU themselves on the top 65 “Most Liveable” cities: “Although 17.2 percentage points separate Melbourne in first place from Warsaw in 65th place, all cities in this tier can lay claim to being on an equal footing in terms of presenting few, if any, challenges to residents’ lifestyles."

Soooo basically, tax-dodging multinationals, you can send your overpaid staff anywhere in that top 65 and they will likely not be stabbed or robbed or fleeced and <zinger>will be free to do same to the local government </zinger>.

This is not to say Melbourne isn't a great city—it is. We have great healthcare by international standards, pretty good schools and an abundance of decent coffee [note to self: pitch EIU Global Coffee Index]. But it's strange to think of Melbourne being up there with Vienna. Both are nice cities, but Vienna has a proximity to Europe that Melbourne simply can't match. It is also the home of many international institutions and global initiatives that are simply more important to the world than, say, the Australian Open. It also has dumptruck loads more culture than Melbourne, a functioning public transport system (one that has been updated since the 1930s) and, most importantly, the Leica Shop.

But remember, regardless of how relevant this ranking is, we still beat Sydney. And that’s the important take home lesson from all this: Sydney sucks.

Imperial Evidence

Well done, voters of Queensland (ABC)

I'm usually fairly derisive of Q&A. I regularly admonish its fans and audience as being part of #QandAland, a happy land where harsh political realities cease to exist and we all sing kumbaya around a camp fire, holding hands with a leather-jacketed Malcolm Turnbull who has taken his rightful place as the leader of the Liberal Party (polite applause).

Most of the time, it is a pretty terrible exercise in inertia that gives Fairfax its main news stories for the next week. Sure, it's fun seeing Richard Dawkins and "Big" George Pell field incendiary questions about how evolution is just a "theory" or if an atheist can be a good person, but it's less a debate than a sideshow. There will never be a middle ground reached—there can't be—and the producers are perfectly happy to keep it that way.

Occasionally, however, the show can be revelatory. Duncan Storrar's questioning of a hapless Kelly O'Dwyer demonstrated how out of touch the Turnbull government was (and is), and how low the Murdoch papers will stoop with ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with their noxious world view.

Last night's National Science Week-themed Q&A also offered some gems, along with a great lessons in how to deal with the incurious, ignorant, chemtrail-addled obscurantist bore in your life (c'mon, we all have at least one).

Simple rule: don't argue with Professor Brian Cox unless you are discussing something which is impossible for him to have knowledge of, like the number of cracked Ikea coffee mugs in your cupboard (although he could probably give you a global mean) or on the finer points of Australian New Wave cinema.

One Nation lunatic-elect Malcolm Roberts gave a textbook performance as a conspiratorial nutjob. He challenged Professor Cox to present "empirical" evidence of climate change (it's almost like Malcolm knows what those words mean), and when presented with said evidence, claimed it was doctored. It's classic conspiracy believer stuff, with evidence against their tinfoil worldview appropriated as evidence for their conspiracy.

Think moon landing hoaxers: for them, the extensive photographic and data record of the Apollo program is fabricated, therefore this evidence the average person considers supports the moon landing is seen as evidence against the moon landings in the conspiratorial mind. Any evidence presented by authorities in inherently untrustworthy because it comes from Big Pharma, Big Farmer or the Guvment or Big Space (which is how I assume they refer to NASA).

Even though Brian Cox would have known he would be unlikely to alter Roberts's unfalsifiable position by presenting actual evidence, Cox's approach is a good one to keep in the critical thought toolbox when dealing with nutcases.

First off, Cox presented data. Now, presenting data almost never whips your a conspiracy-minded opponent into contrition, but it's worth a try. At least you know you have evidence to support your contention.
Secondly, when Roberts inevitably objected to the data, Cox asked specific questions as to why he objected. When Roberts claimed the data had been "corrupted" and "manipulated", Cox asked "by who?" By NASA, of course.
For many observers, this will be enough to demonstrate your opponent is a loon. Indeed it was enough for the residents of #QandAland to start laughing. Conspiracy theorists are, by and large, great at creating a compelling macro-scale worldview, but are woeful at detail. Once again, this doesn't change the mind of the conspiracy theorist, but it does deny them credibility among reasonable fence-sitting people.

For #QandAland, this is probably just the first appearance of many by this particular One Nation loon-elect. In an effort to concoct a sense of "balance", the ABC has gone out of their way to make sure fringe individuals like Pauline Hanson and Lyle Shelton get oxygen on programs like Q&A and The Drum. It is even less reason to engage in the alleged "debate" the show engenders.

I think Brian Cox said it best last night on the show when trying to communication the Australian Academy of Science's climate change report to Sovereign Idiot-elect Roberts: "...you can never get any sense on programs like this. They're adversarial things..."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ultimately, you're unlikely to change the closed mind of a deliberately ignorant individual. As a rational being, you're already at a disadvantage compared to the science denying loon because you require evidence to support your claims—the denier does not adhere to such inconvenient niceties. No amount of peer-reviewed evidence is going lead someone like Roberts along the road to a Damascene conversion.
But not everybody out there is intentionally ignorant. Sometimes, people just receive bad information and carry it with them. So here's advice from UQ PhD student Diana Lucia, as offered on Radio National's Ockham's Razor:

...next time you’re at a dinner party and find yourself sitting next to a science denialist, return the favour, latch onto every illogical inconsistency they throw at you and force them to address it. Find out exactly what they object to and where they have been getting their information from. I doubt you’ll force them to have a sudden epiphany by the time dessert is served, but you can be part of the process that breaks down the barriers to begin to change people’s minds. 

Until next dinner party...

Good resources:
How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming, Grist.org
Science deniers use false equivalence to create fake debates, Skeptical Raptor
Don’t let denial get in the way of a good science story, The Conversation

Telecom Australia's "Fun & Knowledge Telephone Book"

Consider this my gift to the world.

I have a saved search in my eBay app for "Telecom Australia". Don't ask me why, but I think it has something to do with a time long gone when governments actually owned and built things, rather than making excuses for why they can't or shouldn't.

I'm not saying government-owned monopolies didn't have there problems, but on the other hand, there's little doubt the decades-long regimes of privatisation have left a lot to be desired. With privatisation has come the privation of job security and indeed labour security of any kind.

At Telecom's privatised and <sarcasm> greatly loved</sarcasm> successor, Telstra, a new CEO is installed every few years and undertakes the review to end all reviews. They try to find new efficiencies (read: people to sack) and ways to "foster relationships with [their] key stakeholders, operate at best practice in issues management, build [their] reputation through ongoing promotion of positive activity, and leverage our technology and expertise to make positive contributions to the community" (actual line from Telstra's 2015 Annual Report, p.17).

After all, what else screams "SUSTAINABILITY" than embedding "...social and environmental considerations into our business in ways that create value for the company and our stakeholders" (ibid. p.27).
But I digress, on one of my eBay searches, I found this delightful publication: Your Fun & Knowledge Telephone Book. It's a freaking Telecom colouring and activity book. How could I not?

Ostensibly I have bought it for my son, but really I have bought it to gift to all you as well so that the imperfect past can be remembered into an uncertain future.

I've scanned each page using my Epson V700 and lovingly cleaned it up so that you too an learn about the history of the telephone and the new technology called "touch tone".

After you've read the books, colour in the pages!

Download the PDF (11mb)

Book Review: NASA Graphics Standards Manual

Graphic designers Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth have been busy. In addition to their day jobs as associate partners at iconic design firm Pentagram, they have been reprinting and reissuing old and seemingly mundane graphics standards manuals – guides made by designers and issued to clients to establish unity and consistency across visual communications – in sumptuous new editions.

First was the pair’s reissue of the New York City Transit Authority’s Graphics Standards Manual, Massimo Vignelli’s and Bob Noorda’s iconic and comprehensive redesign of the New York subway signage and identity. An original ring binder version of the manual was was found in, of all places, a basement locker at Pentagram. Reed and Smyth immediately recognised its brilliance not only as a functional manual, but as a piece of design in its own right. After scanning the manual page-by-page and presenting it online, they crowdfunded a limited print edition which lovingly (and accurately) reproduced the original manual better than ever. Like many major projects of this scale, the politics behind the project is often just as interesting as the designs themselves. The NYCTA Manual is no exception, with the long, storied history of Vignelli and Noorda’s work the subject of Christopher Bonanos’s fascinating essay included with the crowdfunded print edition.

Now the pair have turned their sights heavenward with a reissue of the NASA Graphics Standards Manual – the source of the famous (or infamous) red “worm” logo. In 1974, Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn of firm Danne & Blackburn responded to a request from NASA for a corporation-wide rebranding. This rebranding was part of an ambitious effort sponsored by the federal government to improve and, importantly, humanise government agencies; a project creatively named the Federal Graphics Improvement Program.

(L–R) NASA Seal 1958–present; NASA insignia (the "meatball") 1958–1975, 1992–present; NASA logotype (the "worm") 1975–1992

Since the late 1950s, NASA used its famous (again, or infamous) “meatball” logo, consisting of heavy serifed letters, a space capsule orbiting the letters, a red arrow and various other symbolic iconography. It was (and remains) complex, difficult to accurately reproduce and was not designed for a technological era where computers were playing a greater part in reproduction of designed elements. Fax machines and photocopiers couldn’t reproduce it properly and it looked terrible at smaller sizes. Design wise, it was a corny mess of comic elements unbefitting of the most forward-looking agency in the world. Such a design would not do; it could not do.

I won’t go into too much detail about the life and times of Danne & Blackburn’s masterful creation – Bonanos’s included essay again does a much better job at that – except to say that while the logo (and associated graphics standards) was and remains a thing of beauty, many at NASA hated it. By 1992, the new administrator Dan Goldin decree that everything old would be new again, and the meatball was reinstated as the official NASA logo. The worm would be nothing more than an experimental interregnum, irrevocably bound up with disasters, like Challenger, of 1980s NASA. The future was now the past and the only way forward was backwards, to hark back to the golden era of NASA and the Apollo programme. Or so it might have remained had our über design nerds Reed and Smyth not given the NASA Graphics Standards Manual the same tender, loving and caring reproduction they had done with the NYCTA manual.

Which brings us to the reproduction itself. First off, it is an object of extreme beauty. The book just oozes quality and Reed and Smyth’s passion for not only this manual but for book design in general is evident from every facet of the delivered physical object. The book arrived packaged in a “static shielding” pouch; a shiny sheath that couldn’t be any more “space age” short of being launched on a shuttle and returned to Earth. It’s also a material that would be immediately familiar to anyone who has worked with computer components that come sealed in such a material when new to avoid damage from electrostatic discharge. Very suitable for this book.

Upon removing the book from said shiny pouch, we are treated to the worm in all its red glory. Interestingly, the red is only specified as “solid red plus solid yellow”, but each copy of the original Manual included a page of “NASA Red” perforated swatches to send to printers and designers to match, a page lovingly reproduced in this reprint, although sadly not perforated!

The opening pages are given over to a forward from designer Richard Danne and the aforementioned essay from Christopher Bonanos – both detailed and necessary contributions that add a great deal of context and value to the manual that follows.

Each page of the manual has been reproduced in the best possible quality, but remains unaltered. It is presented exactly as it would have been seen in its original form: recto printed with the hole-punched edges visible on each page. Even the tabbed dividers are reproduced in full. What was most surprising were the fold out pages, the first of which featured a large grid drawing of the worm for large applications. It’s a great throwback to the pre-desktop publishing era when such sheets were indispensable for accurate, reproducible design. It took me back to the lettering books that were all the rage with us kids in the early 1990s, before WordArt came along and destroyed literally everything good about desktop design. There is little I hate more than Microsoft Word and I will curse it with my dying breath.

But I digress, these fold out pages – all ten of them – are quite something. Each provides important details for application of the identity, from an introduction to layout grids, to how building signage should look and even to the worm’s placement on the space shuttle. Sploosh.

The final few pages feature reproductions of the initial presentation given by Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn to NASA executives in 1974. These pages stand out as they are printed on full-bleed black. The quality of the printing and the stocks is exceptional. This is a striking design choice, evoking the feeling of sitting in a darkened (and probably smoke-filled) room and seeing these 35mm transparencies projected before you. Well played, Reed and Smyth.

As mentioned in Bonanos’s essay, this meeting resulted in Danne & Blackburn winning the job, but also at this very early stage, perhaps revealed hints of NASA management simply not getting the design. When the designers asked for the executives’ feedback, Richard Danne recalls one exchange between NASA administrator Dr. James Fletcher and his deputy Dr. George Low:

Fletcher: “I'm simply not comfortable with those letters. Something is missing.”
Low: “Well, yes, the cross stroke is gone from the letter A.”
Fletcher: “Yes, and that bothers me.”
Low: “Why?”
Fletcher: [Long pause] “I just don't feel we are getting our money's worth!”

And then, a few minutes later:

Fletcher: “And this color, red, it doesn't make much sense to me.”
Low: “What would be better?”
Fletcher: “Blue makes more sense ... Space is blue.”
Low: “No, Dr. Fletcher, space is black!”

Anyone who has presented new ideas to managers would probably recognise an exchange of this sort. Even NASA ain't immune to that shit.

As a visual identity document, the Graphics Standards Manual is comprehensive. It lays out virtually every possible usage of the worm logotype. Most importantly for a document of this sort, it is accessible to the design layperson, even (or especially) if that person is literally a rocket scientist. In fact this is one of the great mysteries of the worm saga: why many at NASA, people who literally built the technology of the future, never took to this futuristic logo.

There was a strong amateur graphic design ethos at NASA: each mission patch was designed by the astronauts themselves and even the original NASA seal and meatball was designed by an amateur, James Modarelli, the head of Lewis Research Center’s Reports Division. To these rocket scientists (and engineers and physicists and chemists and administrators and comptrollers etc.), NASA’s logo isn’t about a consistent corporate identity, in fact such a concept is anathema to such a group. It was about something more human: the NASA family. Sure, the meatball was corny, but it was homely, and had been there through the good times and the bad.

For if you're ever confused where to put your worm on your Hubble Space Telescope

If that’s the case, then this whole Graphics Standards Manual speaks to an even more exciting time, when creating a new identity meant creating a new purpose: reshaping the future. The worm really speaks to the power and the optimism of design that is lost in today’s constant churn in identity and design (ugh...Instagram, what have you done..??!!).

Reed and Smyth have done a tremendous public service by reissuing this manual. It’s not just about good design, it’s about the potential for design to change things for the better. However, design can’t exist in a vacuum (ha), as the restoration of the meatball demonstrates. Design is subject to the whims of humans, just as it is reliant on those same people for its creation and implementation. Design needs humans and even the best design can be brought down by the people who created it.

Pages of typefaces make Richard happy

Interestingly, just as Reed and Smyth were working with Richard Danne to publish their reproduction of the Graphics Standards Manual, NASA released the original in PDF format on their website. Coincidence? I doubt it. Methinks there may be some passionate design nerds at NASA who would dearly love to see the worm back, and this was one way to honour the work of Danne & Blackburn.

Naturally, people inside and outside of NASA have very strong feelings about their logo. NASA is no normal agency – ask me my feelings on ATO or ASIC corporate identity and I will struggle to give you two shits – it is an agency which stokes the imaginations of entire generations around the world. To me, the worm is NASA. It’s what I drew on space shuttles and fantastical spacecraft of the imagination as a kid, even though the worm had been confined to the design dumpster of history a couple of years earlier. It’s the identity of the NASA I saw popular culture growing up: in movies such Flight of the Navigator and Space Camp (don’t judge me); in hours of documentaries, and pages upon pages of books and news stories. I was and remain a gigantic space nerd and there was nothing in my experience more futuristic than the four letters of the worm.

But now everything old is new again, and as comes with so much of today’s thoughtless appropriation of the past, we praise the past with little thought for the future. As the terminator of the worm, administrator Dan Goldin said when reinstating the meatball in 1992, “the magic is back at NASA”. Sadly, I reckon it was on its way out.

The Worm: 1975–1992. Forever in our hearts and imaginations.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Graphics Standards Manual
Published by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1975
Reproduction by Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth
Published by Standards Manual, LLC, 2015

ISBN: 9780692586532

Extent: 220pp
Hardcover, case-bound, with silver static shielding (plastic polyethylene terephthalate) pouch

Election 2016: So Very Tired

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove regaling Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about how big the one that got away was (Facebook)

Making predictions about an election and its outcome is a stupid thing to do. So here goes.

Turnbull is toast. There is no other way I can put this, regardless of the outcome of the election, he is gone sooner or later. Why? Well, if the Liberal Party loses, Turnbull loses. Duh. But if the Liberal Party wins, but only does so with a reduced majority (a current likely outcome), whatever authority the PM has left in the party room falls away thanks to the emboldened Abbott delcon (delusional conservative) rump.

These delcons would (delusionally) be able to claim that the switch to Turnbull did nothing to improve the government’s electoral performance. Of course the reality is the switch to Turnbull gave the Liberals a fighting chance when they were heading for almost certain oblivion under Abbott. Everyone else knows this, hence why this rump is termed delusional. These delcons would view a less-than-resounding win for Turnbull as a win for their brand of fringe politics. As they have done for the past eight months, they would continue to make Turnbull’s political life a living hell. On every issue at every opportunity, they’ll be aggressively ensuring Turnbull sticks to the deals he has made with the delcon devils on issues such as marriage equality, sex education and carbon pricing. These compromises, which have perhaps irreparably damaged Turnbull’s public standing (particularly in #QANDAland) have been his price of power. A few months ago, Turnbull could have counted on an increased majority to stifle dissent within the ranks, but barring a major stumble from Labor, such a scenario is difficult to imagine.

For Turnbull, winning is insufficient. He must win and he must do so with a thumping majority. Anything less means a replay of Labor in 2010...and possibly a return to the Mad Monk.