The Armchair Astronaut

This video comprises 6 must-see minutes of the Internet.

On one level, it quite compellingly points out how our obsession with building an engine to propel us to faster than light (FTL) speeds is silly. The bigger challenge by far, even if we built a USS Enterprise, would be finding our way home again :)

On another (less abstract) level, it tries to visualize the path traced through space by an object "at rest" at the equator. In this, the frame of reference it chooses is one that accounts for the Sun's and Earth's motion, but not the movement/ drift of the Solar System itself. I was disappointed when, on a further 'zoom out', they didn't show a projected 3D path for the Solar System relative to the Galaxy near the end... but I suppose that is hard to show?

Here's the thing that hits me: despite all this relative motion at ridiculous speeds, the constellations as we see them don't change for thousands of years... I know! As if we needed more proof for how far and unreachable they are!

Finally, on a poetic/ romantic level, it reminded of one of my favorite pair of poems: The Morning Song of Senlin and The Evening Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken. Both of those are worth reading in full of course, but still... below the fold, I quote what I think is an appropriate excerpt from the latter

The Intimate Grandeur of Hugo Cabret

What a way to close out the year! This is a visual - nay sensual, in the most epistemological sense of the word - tour de force that one cannot help but bow to.

Bravo Martin Scorsese, for your evident love of cinema and for the patient crafting that has gone into this masterpiece. Bravo, Asa Butterfield for being innocence personified, for acting as few adults can ever hope to once or twice in their lives. Not that Sasha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley, and the other child actor, Chloë Moretz didn't put up a mighty fight as he stole the show... Bravo, Robert Richardson (cinematographer) and Dante Ferretti (art director) for rendering 1930s France and the timeless imagination of Georges Méliès so magnificently!

Way back in February of 2012 I had resolved to watch this movie (along with a list of about 10 other movies with Oscar buzz); until the 30th of December, I had managed to watch every one of them except Hugo. As fate would have it, I would watch it in the closing hours of the year, in an almost private screening, right before descending into four solid hours of bacchanalia and revelry. Now, twenty four hours later, my body feels the tiredness from those four hours, but my mind is still fixed on the movie...

This movie has been amply reviewed and raved about, and so this is not a review. This instead is an account of my experience of the movie, which was not optimal in a sense, but fitting. I'll explain, I promise...