Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Man And Satyr
One day in winter, they bumped into each other in the forest and started talking. The man cupped his hands around his mouth to warm himself. Stayr asked curiously, "What are you doing?"
"It's so cold here, I can't fell my hands,"explained the man. " I can make them feel warmer by blowing at the this way."
Stayr did not really get the point. Later, he was invited to the man's hut.
The man saw the bright flames in the fireplace, so he decided to cook a meal. He whipped up two servings of hot soup, one for Satyr and the other for himself. They sat down together to enjoy the soup.
As the soup was too hot, the man held the bowl near his mouth and started blowing. Stayr cool it down this way!"
Stayr stood up and said, " I don't think we can be friends any more! You're too weird! You're blowing hot and cold with that same breath of air. Unbelievable!" Then he left and they never met again after that.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian, Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of Saint Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797): The Former Slave, Seaman and Writer
Olaudah Equiano, was a former enslaved African, seaman and merchant who wrote an autobiography depicting the horrors of slavery and lobbied Parliament for its abolition.
In his biography, he records he was born in what is now Nigeria, kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child. He then endured the middle passage on a slave ship bound for the New World. After a short period of time in Barbados, Equiano was shipped to Virginia and put to work weeding grass and gathering stones.
In 1757, he was bought by a naval captain (Captain Pascal) for about £40, who named him Gustavas Vassa. Equiano was about 12 when he first arrived in England. For part of that time he stayed at Blackheath in London with the Guerin family (relatives of Pascal). It is here that Equiano learnt how to read and write and to do arithmetic. However, Equiano spent much of his time at sea, both on warships and trading vessels.
He served Pascal during naval campaigns in Canada and then in the Mediterranean. In 1763, Captain Pascal sold Equiano to Captain James Doran. He was taken to Montserrat and sold to the island's leading merchant Robert King. During the next three years, by trading and saving hard, Equiano was able to save enough money to buy his freedom for £40.
He came to London before returning to sea, working as an able seaman, steward and, once, as acting captain. He travelled widely, including the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Arctic (in an attempt to reach the North Pole, under the command of John Phipps). Returning to London, he came into contact with the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp when his friend, John Annis, was kidnapped by his former owner. Between them they tried to save Annis but were unsuccessful.
In 1775, he travelled to the Caribbean and became involved in setting up a new plantation colony on the coast of Central America. Equiano did everything to comfort and 'render easy' the condition of the enslaved people brought to work on the plantation. Equiano himself was badly mistreated. A slave trader named Hughes tried to enslave him and strung him up with ropes for several hours, but Equiano managed to escape in a canoe.
He returned to London and worked as a servant for a while, before finding employment with the Sierra Leone resettlement project, which was set up to provide a safe place for freed Slaves to live and work. He also formed the ‘Sons of Africa', a group which campaigned for abolition through public speaking, letter writing and lobbying parliament. In 1788, Olaudah Equiano led a delegation to the House of Commons to support William Dolben's bill to improve conditions on slave ships, by limiting the number of enslaved Africans that ships could carry.
Equiano knew that one of the most powerful arguments against slavery was his own life story. He published his autobiography in 1789: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. It became a bestseller and was translated into many languages.
The book began with a petition addressed to Parliament and ended with his antislavery letter to the Queen. The tens of thousands of people who read Equiano's book, or heard him speak, started to see slavery through the eyes of a former enslaved African. It was a very important book that made a vital contribution to the abolitionists' cause.
Equiano worked hard to promote the book. He went on lecture tours around Britain and Ireland and spent much of the 1790s campaigning against slavery. He was helped by abolitionist friends, such as Thomas Clarkson, who recommended his book and wrote letters of introduction. You can see one of the letters of introduction (written in 1789) in the source materials. He visited Birmingham in 1789 and Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Cambridge in 1790. In 1791, he toured Ireland. Equiano spoke at a large number of public meetings, where he described the cruelty of the Slave Trade. The following letter was written by Equiano in 1792:
"Sir, I went to Ireland and was there eight and a half months and sold 1900 copies of my narrative. I came here on the 10th and I now mean to leave London in about 8 or 10 days and to take me a wife (one Miss Cullen) of Soham in Cambridgeshire. When I have given her about 8 or 10 days comfort, I mean directly to go to Scotland - and sell my 5th. Editions. I trust that my going has been of much use to the cause of Abolition of the accursed Slave Trade. A gentleman of the Committee, the Revd. Dr. Baker, has said that I am more use to the cause than half the people in the country - I wish to God, I could be so."
In 1792, Equiano married Susan Cullen, from Ely, at Soham church. After his marriage, Equiano visited Scotland, Durham and Hull. In 1793, his travels took him to Bath and Devizes. These travels turned the public against the Slave Trade, raising awareness of the horrors of the trade, changing attitudes towards enslaved people and inspiring others to join the abolition campaign.
Equiano died in March 1797. The Slave Trade in Britain was not to end until nearly a decade later. It would be forty years before slavery itself was abolished in the British Colonies.
APOLLO 13
Apollo 13 was the third Apollo mission intended to land on the Moon. The craft was successfully launched toward the Moon, but the landing had to be aborted after an oxygen tank ruptured, severely damaging the spacecraft's electrical system. The flight was commanded by James A. Lovell; with John L. "Jack" Swigert, Command Module pilot; and Fred W. Haise, Lunar Module pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles.
The mission was launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST. Two days later, en route to the Moon, a fault in electrical equipment inside one of the Service Module's oxygen tanks produced an explosion which caused the loss of both tanks' oxygen, depriving the Service Module of electrical power. This forced the crew to shut down the Command Module to conserve its batteries and oxygen needed for the last hours of flight, and use the Lunar Module's resources as a "lifeboat" during the return trip to Earth. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, and the mission was termed a "successful failure".
Crew
Prime and back up crew
By the standard crew rotation in place during the Apollo program, the prime crew for Apollo 13 would have been the backup crew for Apollo 10 with Mercury and Gemini veteran L. Gordon Cooper in command. That crew was composed of
- L. Gordon Cooper, Jr (Commander)
- Donn F. Eisele (Command Module Pilot)
- Edgar D. Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot)
However, Deke Slayton never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission, as both were out of favor with NASA management for various reasons (Cooper for his lax attitude towards training, and Eisele for incidents aboard Apollo 7 and an extra-marital affair). He assigned them to the backup crew simply because of a lack of flight-qualified manpower in the Astronaut Office at the time the assignment needed to be made.Slayton felt Cooper had a very small chance of receiving the Apollo 13 command if he did an outstanding job with the assignment, which he didn't. Despite Eisle's issues with management, Slayton always intended to assign him to a future Apollo Applications Program mission rather than a lunar mission, but this program was eventually cut down to only the Skylab component.
Thus, the original assignment Slayton submitted to his superiors for this flight was:
- Alan B. Shepard, Jr (Commander)
- Stuart A. Roosa (Command Module Pilot)
- Edgar D. Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot)
However, for the first time ever, Slayton's recommendation was rejected by management, who felt that Shepard needed more time to properly train for a lunar flight, since he had only recently benefited from experimental surgery to correct an inner ear disorder which kept him grounded since his first Mercury flight in 1961. Thus, Lovell's crew, backup for the historic Apollo 11 mission and therefore slated for Apollo 14, was swapped with Shepard's crew.Thus the original crew selection for the mission became:
Prime crew:
| Position | Astronaut | |
|---|---|---|
| Commander | James A. Lovell, Jr. | |
| Command Module Pilot | Ken Mattingly | |
| Lunar Module Pilot | Fred W. Haise, Jr. | |
Backup crew:
| Position | Astronaut | |
|---|---|---|
| Commander | John W. Young | |
| Command Module Pilot | John L. Swigert | |
| Lunar Module Pilot | Charles M. Duke, Jr | |
Ken Mattingly was originally slated to be the Command Module pilot. Seven days before launch, Charles Duke contracted German measles from one of his children. This exposed both prime and backup crews, who trained together. Mattingly was found to be the only one of the five who had not had measles as a child and thus not immune. Three days before launch, based on demand of the Flight Surgeon, Swigert was moved to the prime crew.Thus the crew for the flight was Lovell, Haise and Swigert.
Crew at launch:
| Position | Astronaut | |
|---|---|---|
| Commander | Jim Lovell Fourth spaceflight | |
| Command Module Pilot | Jack Swigert First spaceflight | |
| Lunar Module Pilot | Fred Haise First spaceflight | |