“Because that’s the thing about Scooby-Doo: the bad guys in every episode aren’t monsters, they’re liars. I can’t imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough not to excite their kids would have been if they had stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grownups who lie to kids, and that it’s up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and to call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way you win isn’t through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone and power can do: you think.”
California Towhees are essentially large sparrows, with a sparrow’s short, rounded wings, long tail, and thick, seed-cracking beak – but towhees are larger and bulkier, just slightly smaller than a robin.
California Towhee is gray-brown overall, with reddish brown undertail coverts. The colors camouflage the bird very well in the shade unless it’s in motion. I often first hear the California Towhee foraging on the ground before sighting, especially among falling leaves.
They are quite at home in our small backyards and neighborhood parks.
I love the fact that I grew up a bird watcher cause if someone looks at some random ass bird they say “Oh, that’s a gold finch” but Im standing right next to them and I can say “no hon thats a gray brested blue footed black footed nuthatch eagle tit warbler”
If the size of Overture is too much for you to wrap your head around, enjoy this smaller model, made of what appears to be a toilet plunger, a flower pot, and a paper plate. This would never be used in the actual show, so why’d we make this? You’ll see soon enough ;)
Thoughts about the Mystery Curvy Thing
I noticed that the model has four long thingies sticking out from the crew area. They appear to correspond to Overture’s Mystery Curvy Thing (henceforth MCT):
I’ve been thinking a lot about the MCT. From the beginning I’ve suspected it involves communication with Earth, and that it needs to be out there outside the radius of the pusher plate at the back of the ship so its line of sight to Earth isn’t blocked.
That means Overture’s crew is keeping Earth lined up directly behind them, even after the relatively brief period at the start of the mission when they were accelerating. I said previously that they could reorient the ship once they were up to speed. But now I think that was wrong.
One problem with reorienting the ship is that maybe it matters what part of the structure they present to the interstellar medium. Space is mostly empty, but it’s not completely empty. Maybe there’s special shielding on the forward part of the crew-quarters donuts, such that the “bow” of the ship has to stay the bow in order for them to travel safely at 1% of the speed of light.
Or maybe it’s important to keep the (presumably radioactive) aft side of the pusher plate behind them. I assume the ship generates some kind of “bow shock” with a teardrop shape as they plow through the interstellar gas and dust; maybe it’s best for the crew if they keep the radioactive aft side of the pusher plate “downwind”, so any radiation is left behind as quickly as possible.
I also wondered how important it was for Overture to spin on its axis to provide artificial gravity. It certainly looks like it’s built for that, with those donut-shaped crew quarters. But did it have to be built that way? Could they have generated artificial gravity by designing the ship to tumble end for end, for example, with the pusher plate and crew quarters orbiting their common center of gravity?
That seems like it might cause issues in terms of those “bow shock” concerns I was talking about. But the big problem, I think, is communication.
Staying in touch with Earth is essential. How do you keep an antenna lined up to do that? If the ship were tumbling end-over-end it would be really hard. So the ship has to rotate on its axis. But even then, if the axis weren’t pointed directly at Earth, you’d have to constantly re-aim the antenna. With the axis pointed at Earth, though, you’re good. The antenna just points aft, and as the ship spins the antenna is always pointing the right way.
Which brings me back to the MCT. When I first was thinking about it as an antenna platform, I wondered why it was built so robustly. Using the docked shuttle visible in the upper right-hand corner of this image for scale, you can see that the MCT is roughly twice as wide as the shuttle’s 78-foot wingspan:
That’s huge. If the MCT is just a boom to get an antenna far enough outboard to see past the pusher plate, why make it so big?
One reason might be access. You need to maintain that communication equipment, and that means crew members need to get to it. The MCT might be shielded and pressurized, such that crew members can travel through it safely and easily. (Though they would experience extra-high g forces when they were out there. I bet they would have to reduce the ship’s rotation during antenna maintenance.)
But it wouldn’t need to be that big. There must be something else going on. And why is it curved? That’s the weirdest thing. Here it is again in the side view:
The MCT needs to hold up to the stresses of the ship’s rotation. It being curved makes that much harder from an engineering standpoint. Having it be so thick top to bottom makes that part easier – though again at the cost of having a much larger, more robust structure than you would need just to get an antenna out there far enough to see around the pusher plate.
So I’m looking at the curve, and it hits me: It’s a parabola.
The MCT isn’t a structure to hold an antenna out past the pusher plate. The MCT is the antenna.
I bet its lower surface is made of radio-reflective material. It bothered me for a minute that there’s no receiver unit visible at the focus of the antenna, out in space “aft” of the MCT, but then I realized that that actually makes sense: The crew could extend the receiver when they need it by “lowering” it on a cable from a suitable spot in the central structure, then reel it back in for safe-keeping and maintenance.
The more I learn about the thought that went into this story, the more excited I get about the parts I haven’t seen yet.
“Listen, theater can be any fucking thing we want it to be,” Odom said, leaning forward. “It is malleable. It is strong. It is sturdy. So shut the fuck up. We can make it whatever we want it to be. Kids can play adults. And old people can play young people. And black people can play white people and Asian people can play black people. If it’s done with a thoughtfulness and a care and a reason, we can do anything.”
Yes, Hamilton has underlined that point, but that doesn’t mean Odom is settling. Because no matter how successful Hamilton is, it can’t last forever. And part of why Odom continues to work so hard is because he knows it.
“You kind of just get used to things not coming through and being rejected and being in shows that are not successful. And so when it does come around, I think what keeps you grounded is that you’re kind of always wondering when it’s going to fall through,” Robinson said.
There’s a certain amount of uncertainty inherent in any actor’s life: Every major success is tempered by the question of what’s next. For now, Odom is focused solely on the daily challenges of Hamilton and reinventing himself in every performance.
And by the time he steps out of Aaron Burr’s shoes, he’ll have worn them every way possible.
“I know that it’s only a moment — it is fleeting,” Odom said. “But to have a show that means as much to historians as it does to rap legends, as it does to actors and writers and young theater practitioners and businesspeople and parents, this is the dream. This is it.”
”
–
Leslie Odom Jr. Is Not Throwing Away His Shot (Buzzfeed)
I tried using Google image search to find the photographer, but failed. The effort did lead me to a Chinese-language page on which a large version of the image appears; according to Google Translate the accompanying text says:
To Youth
I do not know what the road ahead to where you want to bring their own. What they did not want to seize what is caught. Like the flesh collision with the outside world as the opposition, does the world I am the only one who feels strange. As if in pursuit of what they can not find what ah. My heart is made of glass do, and why some people respond to certain heart hurts. Why not learn social institutions hand Wan, they are stupid it . I came into the world of object Yes… .
In the youth of those years, countless infinite loop problem, fishes continuously concatenated into line, coating line yourself, see also get out of the puzzle. . And he really going there. Such youthful sadness and beauty, to reflect a new sense of slough director hand to shoot a movie. Perhaps no one knows whether the problem is the answer. But we are beginning to understand something. as well as. We started cause. green. spring.
Overture is a massive ship, 448 meters in diameter and 1,100 meters long. She’s the only ship like this in existence, and it took a concerted effort to build her.
Now we’re talking. :-)
We get to see the pusher plate, yay! And more of that curved-arm thingy that does who-knows-what!
Excuse me; I’m going to need to go stare at this for a while…
