"No questions about the Moon"

[PhantomWolf]

If I'd known I would hve gone and seen Buzz last year at one of our annual flight shows. He was taking questions from the peanut galley too. I would have loved to ask...

"If you were to be able to return to the moment when you punched Bart Sibrel, I'd like to know if you would have done things differently? For instance, would you have kicked him a few times as well?"

[margamatix]

Forgive me, I'm English, what is a "peanut galley"?

[LunarOrbit]

It's a figure of speech that just means he was taking questions from the audience.

[margamatix]

Ok, ta.

[Kiwi]

phantomwolf said:

If I'd known I would hve gone and seen Buzz last year at one of our annual flight shows. He was taking questions from the peanut galley too.

Yep, Buzz Aldrin came all the way down here to New Zealand to attend the "War Birds Over Wanaka" airshow, a display of World War 2 and earlier planes. I didn't know he was coming here and just saw him on TV one evening while the show was on. A few days or weeks later he was up in a modern version of the vomit comit in the U.S. promoting its "weightless" flights.

It's great to see an elderly man who is a world hero doing the sort of stuff that he does. He's in the same class as our Sir Ed Hillary and it's a great pity that some people are so ignorant of his accomplishments. Go, Buzz!

Margamatix talks about Buzz's conscience. I wonder if he is aware that Buzz was a very active member of his church in 1969 and took communion shortly after landing on the moon. And yes, unlike Margamatix and his claims, there is real evidence for this.

[PeterB]

G’day Margamatix

Neil Armstrong was interviewed back in September 2001 by Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley. The interview covered all aspects of Armstrong’s life in addition to Apollo 11. You might like to read it, at: www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/

Select Apollo 11, then click on the link titled “Neil Armstrong 2001 Oral History Interview”

The transcript of the interview is 106 pages long. Below I’ve listed the page numbers which roughly cover various aspects of Armstrong’s life. You’ll see that they didn’t talk about just Apollo 11 - it’s covered in only 12 of the 106 pages, and preparation for Apollo covers 16 pages. This is a man who’s lived a rich and varied life.

Childhood: 1 – 6
Early flying career: 6 – 14
Korean War service: 14 – 23
Further studies: 23 – 25
Test pilot years: 25 – 41
Astronaut training: 41 – 53
Gemini 8: 53 – 59
Apollo preparation: 59 – 75
Apollo 11: 75 – 87
After Apollo: 87 – 106

It’s also interesting to note Armstrong’s comments about the end of Apollo and what’s happened in the time since…

Brinkley: “The Apollo program closed in 1972. Is it surprising that we haven’t gone back to the Moon in so long, and did you ever imagine that it would take so long for people to return, for us to return?”

Armstrong: “Well, had you asked me that question 30 years ago, I would probably have said, no, I can’t imagine that we’ll make such a small number of steps over the next three decades. But, looking back on it, I find it fairly understandable in the light of conflicting requirements for resources that the country has. It has a lot of other important challenges. I suspect that we’ll get some chances.”

[PeterB]

Incidentally, Margamatix, what's your avatar a picture of? I just can't work out what it is and I'm getting more curious by the minute. :-)

Cheers

[dwight]

Just by the way, our man Neil Armstrong, who legend has it never makes public appearances, or grants interviews...is going to be seen on:

September 6, 2005
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
5:30pm - Neil Armstrong (Gemini 8, Apollo 11)
Global Leadership Forum
Plenary Hall, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre

While Malaysia is a ways away, with today's modern 1960's technology (the 747) it should be only a matter of price stopping anyone from attending.

Cheers,
Dwight

Dry sarcasm learned exclusively in Maidstone, Kent.

[JayUtah]

As long as we're translating English to English, please let someone who has a parliament instead of a congress indulge me in an explanation of what, in U.K. electoral parlance, exactly is meant by the "swing" in representation -- that statistic that is given as a percentage and appears to represent some effect of an election. Thanks.

[Kiwi]

peterb said:

Incidentally, Margamatix, what's your avatar a picture of? I just can't work out what it is and I'm getting more curious by the minute. :-) Cheers

I wondered the same thing, and concluded that it's the laundry of an aspiring politician thrown on the rails at a horse-racing track. And there's an annoyed English Sheepdog at bottom right with the top of its head and ears partly covered by the rose-type thingy that politicians wear.

[LunarOrbit]

The filename of his avatar is "dragon.jpg"... so I'm guessing it is a dragon, but I can't see it.

[Bob B.]

peterb said:

Neil Armstrong was interviewed back in September 2001 by Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley. The interview covered all aspects of Armstrong’s life in addition to Apollo 11. You might like to read it, at: www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/

In that interview is this (page 88):

ARMSTRONG: Well, I recognize that I’m portrayed as staying out of the public eye, but from my perspective it doesn’t seem that way, because I do so many things, I go so many places, I give so many talks, I write so many papers that, from my point of view, it seems like I don’t know how I could do more. But I recognize that from another perspective, outside, I’m only able to accept less than 1 percent of all the requests that come in, so to them it seems like I’m not doing anything. But I can’t change that.


Edited to add:
I saw Neil Armstrong and heard him speak at the Centennial of Flight celebration in Dayton, Ohio in 2003. John Glenn was also present. Neither one of them spoke of their astronaut experience because they were there to talk about the Wright Brothers. It was quite an honor to see two living legends.

[PeterB]

As long as we're translating English to English, please let someone who has a parliament instead of a congress indulge me in an explanation of what, in U.K. electoral parlance, exactly is meant by the "swing" in representation -- that statistic that is given as a percentage and appears to represent some effect of an election. Thanks.

Jay

The short answer is that it represents a change in the percentage of votes for two major parties between two elections.

In Parliamentary countries, the country is divided into electorates of roughly equal numbers of voters. Australia, for example, is divided into 147 electorates for national elections, with each electorate (or “seat”) containing about 70,000 voters.

In Australia (as in the UK or America) there are two main parties. In Australia, they’re the Liberal Party (politically conservative, and currently in power), and the Australian Labor Party (politically more left wing). At election time, each party will field a candidate for each seat, and a number of independents will also stand for election. Generally, the contest will be between the two major parties.

To determine who wins a seat, a candidate must have more than 50% of the votes cast in that electorate (different from the UK, which is first past the post). If no candidate gets 50%, the candidate with the lowest primary vote is excluded and his/her votes transferred the next candidate chosen by the various voters. This process is repeated as often as necessary until one candidate reaches the 50% goal. As a result, initial votes might look like this:

Smith (Liberal): 47%
Jones (Labor): 43%
Brown (Greens): 7%
White (Independent): 2%
Black (Independent): 1%

Black’s votes are distributed in accordance with the voters’ preferences, followed by White, and, if necessary, Brown, until either Smith or Jones reaches 50%.

The final result might look like this:

Smith (Liberal): 53%
Jones (Labor): 47%

So Smith holds the seat with a margin of 6% (53 – 47). This is known as the Two-Party Preferred result.

At the next election, Labor fields another candidate. Despite a swing against the Liberals, Smith still holds the seat:

Smith: 51%
Chang: 49%

So Smith now holds the seat by 2%, meaning there’s been a swing of 4% against Smith.

Does this help? Or is it now as clear as mud? There’s a fair amount of information on how elections work in Australia at the Electoral Commission web-site: www.aec.gov.au/

* End thread hijack *

[ajv]

what, in U.K. electoral parlance, exactly is meant by the "swing" in representation?

Wikipedia - Swing (politics). Also, note the Swingometer article and the picture at the top of the BBC story.

[JayUtah]

Makes sense; thanks.