Assignment: Future

A little bit of genius care of Jennifer Strachan, assistant...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:24:32 -0400

A little bit of genius care of Jennifer Strachan, assistant general manager and director of public media at KPLU in the Puget Sound region.

npr: markmemmottnpr: Live-blogging the asteroid’s approach....

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:35:17 -0500

npr:

markmemmottnpr:

Live-blogging the asteroid’s approach. NPR provided me with protection. (Photo by Wright Bryan)

Mark Memmott, a blogger from The Two Way, was ready for anything. -L

Necessities. (Taken at the Westover Beer Garden in Arlington,...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 16:09:29 -0400

Necessities.

(Taken at the Westover Beer Garden in Arlington, Va.)

expose-the-light: Mars The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:41:07 -0400

expose-the-light:

Mars

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the Earth’s Moon for calibration information on the color and brightness of its images. (Scientists have been photographing the Moon for a long time and know its brightness and color exactly.)

thepenguinpress: From the General Motors Futurama Exhibit,...

Mon, 28 May 2012 03:32:09 -0400

thepenguinpress:

From the General Motors Futurama Exhibit, 1940. Featured in the Harry Ransom Center’s upcoming “I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America” exhibit.

Around the time this 1994 memo went out at NPR, heralding the...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:49:17 -0500

Around the time this 1994 memo went out at NPR, heralding the Internet’s imminent arrival in the newsroom, I had just been hired by the News & Observer in North Carolina to cover science, technology and Raleigh-Durham’s Research Triangle community. My only qualification: The Metro editor told me I was one of the first reporters they’d met who had a personal email address.

Back then the paper’s editorial style meant I had to define terms that were not yet in the dictionary. So stories on my beat often included clunky phrases like, “email, an electronic message sent from computer to computer…” I got back at the copy editors by planting Yiddish words from the “sch” pages of the dictionary. (“You can’t cut that. It’s in the dictionary!”)

nprradiopictures:

The Internet is coming!

Our very own Pam Fessler found this memo from waaaay back in the day while she was moving desks.#nprlife (Sam Sanders/NPR)

unknownskywalker: On the plane by Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:34:38 -0500

unknownskywalker:

On the plane by Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Please Welcome 'NPR Radio Pictures' To Tumblr

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:06:59 -0500

npr:

NPR’s Multimedia team has just cranked up a Tumblr of their own. It’s called Radio Pictures and I feel certain it will be a Tumblr worth following! —Wright

spacettf: Shuttle reflections by Ben_Cooper on Flickr.

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:59:46 -0500

spacettf:

Shuttle reflections by Ben_Cooper on Flickr.

A composite image taken Jan. 4 by a NASA photographer tracks the...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:56:30 -0500

A composite image taken Jan. 4 by a NASA photographer tracks the International Space Space as it crosses the Moon’s path in sky over Houston.

User Experience

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:42:51 -0500

User Experience

"My persistent concern is that I’ll become so busy producing media that I won’t consume enough of it."

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:19:12 -0500

“My persistent concern is that I’ll become so busy producing media that I won’t consume enough of it.”

- David Carr (via aakruse)

Tomorrow: David Carr
(via nprfreshair)

unknownskywalker: Rare, last look inside space shuttle...

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:15:28 -0500

unknownskywalker:

Rare, last look inside space shuttle Atlantis

Space shuttle Atlantis, which only five months ago flew the final mission of NASA’s 30-year shuttle program, is now being prepared for its public display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Its insides being pulled out to ensure it is safe for exhibit, as well as significantly lighten it for its planned steep-angled display, Atlantis is scheduled to be powered down this week for the final time.

View more picture at collectSPACE.com →

I love news releases with headlines that remind me that we live...

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:49:54 -0500

I love news releases with headlines that remind me that we live in the future. Like this one:

Space Station Commander Captures Unprecedented View Of Comet

That particular headline topped a Dec. 22 NASA release about a series of photos of Comet Lovejoy shot by astronaut Dan Burbank aboard the International Space Station.

Via wnycradiolab: Paperwork Explosion: a 1967 IBM marketing...

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:21:13 -0400

Via wnycradiolab:

Paperwork Explosion: a 1967 IBM marketing film from a young experimental filmmaker named, um, Jim Henson. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

If you watch one IBM marketing film today (or in your whole long life) make it this one. Check out an in-depth analysis of the film here or watch more of Henson’s experimental shorts here.

(Thanks to Josh Luxenberg for pointing me towards this insane gem.)

"I would like to see us say — over and over, until the point has been made — that the..."

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:09:00 -0400

““I would like to see us say — over and over, until the point has been made — that the newspaper that drops on your doorstep is a partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we have heard about in the past 24 hours — distorted, despite our best efforts to eliminate gross bias, by the very process of compression that makes it possible for you to lift it from your doorstep and read it in about an hour. If we labeled the product accurately, then we could immediately add: But it’s the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow with a corrected and updated version. If we did that, I suspect, not only would we feel less inhibited about correcting and updating our own stories, we might even encourage the readers to contribute their own information and understanding to the process. We might even find ourselves acknowledging something most of us find hard to accept: that they have something to tell us, as well as to hear from us. And if those readers felt that they were part of a communications process in which they were participants and not just passive consumers, then they might more easily understand that their freedoms — and not just ours — are endangered when the search warrants and subpoenas are visited on the press.””

- Washington Post reporter and columnist David S. Broder, who would have been 82 yesterday.

One audacious commuter — dark suit, no helmet, consulting...

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:22:15 -0400

One audacious commuter — dark suit, no helmet, consulting his smart phone as he navigates a D.C. rush hour on a Segway.

A “Fotbot” — or “Found Object...

Sun, 22 May 2011 16:14:21 -0400

A “Fotbot” — or “Found Object Robot” — designed by artist Amy Flynn of Raleigh, N.C. Flynn was among the artists featured at this weekend’s Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival in Reston, Va.

Your Ticket to Space Shuttle's Retirement Party?

Fri, 20 May 2011 18:37:00 -0400

NASA is holding seats for 150 randomly selected Twitter followers to attend the final shuttle launch:

“NASA will host a two-day Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on July 7-8 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Space shuttle Atlantis is targeted to launch at about 11:40 a.m. EDT on July 8, on its STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. It is the final launch of a space shuttle before the program is retired….

“The Tweetup will provide @NASA followers with the opportunity to tour the center, view the shuttle launch and speak with NASA managers, astronauts, shuttle technicians and engineers. The event also will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and NASA’s social media team….

“The goal of NASA Tweetups is to allow people who regularly interact with each other via Twitter to meet in person and discuss one of their favorite subjects: NASA.”

The 24-hour registration window opens at noon on June 1. More details at http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

(Photo of STS-129 Tweetup participant @astrogerly shared by NASA and taken by @outdoortype.)

End of the road: With Endeavour in orbit, preparations continued...

Wed, 18 May 2011 01:27:31 -0400

End of the road: With Endeavour in orbit, preparations continued at the Kennedy Space Center for what’s slated to be the space shuttle program’s final mission. Atlantis makes her way to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Tuesday morning.