"So can I be a planet again?" |
- This morning the New Horizons spacecraft went past Pluto like a bat out of hell... a bat with a camera and a hard drive and some kind of wireless that gets signal at 5 billion km. (Photo credit Emily Lakdawalla). And the history of our knowledge of the solar system is being transformed before our eyes, if we care to watch.
- Today is also Bastille Day+226 years. (And my nephew's birthday -- Hey, Alan!)
- Just sayin' -- Tina Loo's recent essay on the wrongness of the Mother Canada zombie monster proposed for Cape Breton Highlands National Park is the best thing on the subject I have seen in any media. It may be that the whole thing is running on fumes and hype, rather than real dollars.(CBC News: "To complete the first phase of the project by the planned deadline of 2017, the foundation needs $25 million. It ended the year with $6,000 in the bank.") Peter Mansbridge has backed away, which is a straw in the wind.
- Also at Active History, Ian Milligan, one of the founders, is retiring from that blog. His own blog, I might say, is ground zero for Big Data History -- history that mines the internet for digital sources, more or less.
- Historiann has a new post up on writing and publishing an academic-trade book crossover, an notion that seems to tantalise a lot of scholars. And it's on a Canadian subject (also feminist, First Nations, francophone...). Note: the current post is only part I, and most of the payoff looks to be in part II. Update, July 16: actually II is a bit of a letdown: not really goin' cross over, after all.