Dish Earth Channel 212

[Duke Nukum]

Remember in the 1990's when Algore wanted to put a satellite up to show a picture of the earth all day?  That was a dumb, especially for the government to do because a video camera probably wouldn't yield any interesting data.

Well, now Dish Network has mounted a tv camera to one of their satellites and they are showing live images of the earth 24/7 with 1970's rock music and now I see the wisdom of Algore.

You see, ever since I was a small boy I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, when I sleep at night, not having any idea of where I am or who I am and when I was little I found this especially disturbing.  But now when that happens all I have to do is remember to put on channel 212 and I know where I am!  And from there I can usually figure out the rest.

Unfortunately, it's not in HD but then they aren't really using a high definition camera.

For other people who occasional forget where they are or where they keep their stuff.  But only if you have Dish, but if you don't you could always call up a friend who does and ask them to look for you.

[thundley4]

Is it good enough quality that we'll be able to see the mushroom clouds in real time?

[Happy Fun Ball]

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.

In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who are hurled out of it for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.

Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life form in the Galaxy which is not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is.

For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here."

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

[Duke Nukum]

Is it good enough quality that we'll be able to see the mushroom clouds in real time?

Maybe but it would probably look like tiny clouds, it really is rather poor resolution.  Maybe they will put up a better camera if the channel proves popular with people like me who often find themselves lost.

[Ptarmigan]

It would be cool if it used HD camera.

[The Village Idiot]

Did they need a billion from the govt for that?

The NASA channel was kinda interesting sometimes

[Duke Nukum]

Did they need a billion from the govt for that?

The NASA channel was kinda interesting sometimes

Oddly enough, I don't think they did.  If they had they would have to send a team of astronauts up to repair it first.

I had the channel on for much of the weekend but mostly because they have the Sirius Bridge channel playing and it was kind of interesting to check in every so often even though the resolution isn't very good.  It's like watching myself on TV, only I'm really, really tiny.  And  all of you too!

[The Village Idiot]

Oddly enough, I don't think they did.  If they had they would have to send a team of astronauts up to repair it first.

I had the channel on for much of the weekend but mostly because they have the Sirius Bridge channel playing and it was kind of interesting to check in every so often even though the resolution isn't very good.  It's like watching myself on TV, only I'm really, really tiny.  And  all of you too!

not even a pixel in HD

[Duke Nukum]

not even a pixel in HD

Yeah but that would be true even if they used a good camera.  I think most weather satellite data is 1KM tops but weather data not a single picture but a composite of scans over a period of as long as 20 minutes.

[The Village Idiot]

Yeah but that would be true even if they used a good camera.  I think most weather satellite data is 1KM tops but weather data not a single picture but a composite of scans over a period of as long as 20 minutes.

Thats true. Still I think I should request a few billion in stimulus to create the Civilian Space Agency

[Duke Nukum]

Thats true. Still I think I should request a few billion in stimulus to create the Civilian Space Agency

I've been thinking about it, and I think what we need is a holographic system and I think it's like that Twinkee thing from the Douglas Adams books.  We shouldn't even have to launch anything into space.

[The Village Idiot]

I've been thinking about it, and I think what we need is a holographic system and I think it's like that Twinkee thing from the Douglas Adams books.  We shouldn't even have to launch anything into space.

I remember the probability drive... I am not sure I remember the Twinkee

[Duke Nukum]

I remember the probability drive... I am not sure I remember the Twinkee

Happy Fun Ball quoted it above.  I just Americanized the type of cake used.  If Douglas Adams had been an American he would have used Twinkies 'cause they're immortal and look like something that could be inserted into something else.  Like a battery.  Instead he was forced to use references like fairy cake and the Ford Prefect and Paul McCartney.