Those guys didn't invent the scale-model solar system!

The scale solar system constructed by Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh is the kind of thing that usually delights me no end.  Since an early age I have gained a huge amount of pleasure from imagining the mysteries of scale.  I remember an article I read somewhere that described the amount of space inside a hydrogen atom as equivalent to a cathedral.  A pinhead on the altar represents the nucleus and the electron is somewhere in the distant back pews.  These kinds of images are my cathedral, constructed by the effort of scientists over the past few centuries, some of whom developed their ideas despite severe persecution.  I hope that the model solar system made by these men has a similar effect on some people as did the various analogies for deep space and time to which I was exposed as a child.  I don’t think there can be too much reverence and wonder. 

       So why am I so grumpy?  It’s because I keep reading that this was the first scale model solar system.   Admittedly, when you dig deeper and find out that the artists now say it is the first “with orbits,” they may be technically correct, but it is far from the first such project.  I have personally seen other scale solar systems on the National Mall in Washington DC, USA, and on a bicycle path in York, England.  I’m sure there must be dozens of others, if not hundreds.  What is more, over the years, web authors, notably Exploratorium,  have posted instructions on how to make a scale solar system. 

         In 2001, members of Neighborhood Bike Works youth program, where I worked in Philadelphia, made a 1:500,000,000 scale solar system into a bike ride.  Like the solar system walk on DC’s Mall, it was an experience for participants that Overstreet and Gorosh’s creation can’t provide with a video.  We rode our bikes to Neptune.  Teenagers and pre-teens calculated the sizes, made scale models of the planets, and delivered them to locations in Philadelphia and its western suburbs via bicycle.  I dug up some pictures of that event.   

Model of Mars (about the size of a pea) held up in the former location of Comet Cafe on 41st Street in Philadelphia, summer 2001

Saturn at Mount Carmel Church community center on 58th Street

Thinking back to the effort put in by those West Philly kids made it sting to hear that these guys did it “first” in Nevada.  Our scale solar system was an interactive experience for its young creators.  It also provided food for thought to anyone in the city who was familiar with the locations in which we placed the planets.  I love the art of Burning Man and similar events, but when it comes down to it, I’m much more inspired by scale solar systems that plop the whole picture down in a familiar landscape that people can relate to.  I would also have been more impressed by Overstreet and Gorosh’s solar system if it hadn’t been hyped  as completely original.

Leonard Nimoy has left the planet.

(If you'd like to listen to  people sounding a shofar while reading this, click the link at the bottom of this)

     Memory, as anyone who is concerned with evidence knows, is not something we can rely on to always state the truth.  But some things happen to us that are so memorable that the memory is revisited, and, hopefully, preserved in a more truthful form in the process.  I have a very strong memory of a day I’ve thought of alarmingly frequently over the past 45 years.  I don’t remember the date and time, but according to the internet it was Saturday, 6 September 1969.  The time was 17:15 British Standard Time.  This was the occasion of the first episode of Star Trek that I witnessed.  

 I lived with my mother, father, brother, sister, cat, and two golden retrievers.  Locating this scene in this particular house is part of what dates it—this couldn’t have been a repeat because we would move shortly after this date.  The living room was a semi basement with a window that opened onto the yard.  As children, we would regularly use this as a front door to the house, clambering out over the windowsill to the sandstone pavers to play on the  small lawn beyond.  I have no idea what game was transpiring but I remember at one point going back into the room and seeing something on the television.  I don’t know if I turned on the TV, or if someone else was watching, perhaps my mother or grandmother.  What I do remember is that my life was changed forever.

      At the age of nine, I was already profoundly disappointed by most television.  There were programs that had plots that interested me, and I wanted to love them.  Then as now, I would give anything calling itself science fiction a try.  Trouble is, so much of it let me down in one way or another.  Much as I loved Thunderbirds, Johnny Quest, or Lostin Space, for instance, I knew I was settling for less than was possible in one way or another.  (Too bad JonathanFrakes couldn’t redeem Thunderbirds, but that’s another story).    The only exception was Doctor Who, which has disappointed me to some extent, but certainly hadn’t before 1969.  Another part of the setting for this day is that at that point in history space travel was real.  Armstrong and Aldrin had walked on the moon.  The BBC had broadcast all night for the first time when Apollo 11 landed.   There was nobody around me giving any hints that this sort of thing would ever stop.   Science fiction needed to keep up, but there was no real indication that it could.

     There in the living room, on a 405-line black-and-white TV, was The Devil in the Dark, the ninth episode of Star Trek broadcast in the UK.  I’ve seen this episode so many times since that there’s no way I could say exactly what I thought of it then, except that I knew that everything had changed.  Dr. Who wasn’t the only show in town any more.   My recollection is that I went outside to inform my brother that there was a new programme, and that he was unimpressed by my efforts to make him quit playing outside.

  
     The Devil in the Dark is a great Spock episode.  Yes, McCoy does have the infamous line “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer,” illustrating that there will still be bricklayers in the future, but Spock is the hero of the tale.  He determines the truth of the situation before everyone else because of his creative and scientific mind.  He reacts to the situation not with the fear, greed, and violence exhibited by everyone else but with logic and compassion for an alien being and for the natural environment.  Years before Bill Clinton claimed to feel our pain (he was smoking weed at Oxford at the time, I imagine), Spock actually did feel the horta’s pain when he mind-melded with the sentient lump of lava.  Compassion may not be a feeling that the Vulcan character is supposed to be able to experience, but Spock does care for others.  Spock’s logic, far from leading to a cold uncaring, requires that another being that can think, however alien it is, is essentially like us and deserves to be cared for.  Spock’s creators gave him logic, and, while he allegedly has no feelings, his character passes the Turing Test for being loving.  Spock is loyal, courageous, thoughtful, curious, imaginative, and never self-important.  

   
     As I said, I don’t remember what I thought of The Devil in the Dark, but I did see Spock the scientist win the day, did see him risk everything and cry out  “Pain!” as he experienced the feelings of the horta.  Leonard Nimoy gave me that performance, and I was hooked.  He is far and away my favorite Star Trek character, and I’ve liked pretty much all of them.  Science Fiction doesn’t have to be about scientists, but as far as I’m concerned it is way better if it is is! Nimoy, like William Shatner, wrestled with the problem of being identified with one character in his career. In that regard, I’m part of the problem.  I loved Leonard Nimoy  because of Spock, and I’m glad that, apparently with a greater ease than Shatner, Nimoy came to embrace Spock more. 

     There are arguments about what is the best of Star Trek.  City on the Edge of Forever is a standout (and Spock also saves the day again..).  I’ve heard it said that The Trouble with Tribbles is the most popular episode.  My favorites include both of the above, The Devil in the Dark, obviously, from the original series and The Best ofBoth Worlds parts I & II, and TheMeasure of a Man from TNG.  There are dozens of other great episodes, and a few that bomb.  But my favorite Star Trek creation of any kind is what I consider a single mini-series, the three contiguous movies, TheWrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, and The Voyage Home. I know that WoK is usually hailed as the best, but to me it only works with the other two.   These last two were directed by Leonard Nimoy, and in the world of Trek they are his greatest achievements.  And The Wrath of Kahn does contain his best scene as Spock, in my opinion.  

      I’m going to miss Leonard Nimoy.  To be honest, it’s not until now that I realized just how important his presence was in the most recent two movies.  Unlike my memories, what he gave us is solidly preserved.  Still, the loss is palpable.  In The Immunity Syndrome a starship crewed by Vulcans (a weird separate-but-equal glitch in Trek’s civil rights record) called the Intrepid is destroyed by a giant space blob.  Spock is stricken by a telepathic wave of anguish as the Vulcans simultaneously die.   For better or for worse that kind of sensation is unavailable to humans.  But  I’m glad to be here with you all, with Facebook providing something like that Vulcan ability.  It’s time to remember the importance of the few and the one.  Leonard Nimoy just took the Kobayashi Maru test and did as well as anyone in history.  Thanks for all your work, Leonard.

Here's some shofar for you all