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Sigh...

So Microsoft finally released World Wide Telescope the app that "made Scoble cry". Of course, he's all gushy over it. Of course he is, it lets him think he's experiencing nature without having to leave his computer.

Oh, what's that? No, of course it doesn't run on Macs. Did you really take any of Ozzie's or Microsoft's bullshit on openness seriously? It requires the .Net framework, etc. Same old story, with a new UI.

However, since I do have more than an small interest in Astronomy, (my first "real" book was on Dinosaurs, my second was on Astronomy), I decided, against all better judgement to check out the comments. (No, I didn't actually comment, I wasn't that decaffeinated.) Of course, there's Scoble insisting that the only way to really experience astronomy is with shit like WWT, because you can't see shit with anything but the Hubble. No, really, he said that:

RBA: Ok, wise guy. Show me a galaxy, even on a dark night, with even a $2,000 telescope. Simple: you can’t see shit. You need to have a Hubble telescope out in space that costs billions of dollars to see such a thing with any level of detail.

Just when I think Le Scoble has reached the nadir of stupid, he creates new digging technology.

But then, the very idea that Robert would understand the joys of amateur astronomy is ridiculous at the core. See, when it all comes down to it, professionally, Robert is about exactly two things:

Being faster

Being bigger

Everything he does has to be faster and bigger than anyone else. So the fact that he has no clue about amateur astronomy? No surprise at all.

He is no more capable of understanding the kinds of things that amateur astronomers derive joy from than a stump is of appreciating a beautiful sunset. (In the stump's defense, it's more practically useful than Scoble.) I remember the joy I got from a crappy little Tasco refracting telescope. Maybe a 3" lens. But on a regular basis, my dad and I would drive out to the end of Key Biscayne, and just look at stuff. Stars, the moon, venus. My friends and I would no more miss an episode of Star Hustler/Star Gazer than we would miss eating.

Robert looks at WWT, and thinks "This is the ultimate". Yes, if all you care about is bigger and better, perhaps. But nothing the WWT ever does will beat the nights in N.D. when, due to almost no light pollution at a friend's farm, we'd turn out all the lights on a summer's night, wait for our eyes to adjust and just stand there, watching the Universe. Seeing the myriad shapes in the Milky Way. Sometimes, someone would bring a telescope, and we'd stare even deeper into everything. The moon, the planets. Even the stars. No Hubble, no Chandra. I love the Hubble and all the others. I remember being riveted by Story Musgrave's Hubble repair spacewalks. Actually, I'm pretty much reading anything Story Musgrave cares to jot down. The best part about the Hubble repairs? It was low enough that if you were in the right part of the world at the right time, with a shitty little telescope, you could watch it yourself. Live. You didn't need to wait for Microsoft, or Google, or NASA to tell you when you could download prepared images.

There's nothing on the WWT that will ever surpass the night I saw a meteorite almost crash to earth. It didn't, but as it came down, it lit up the sky, leaving a trail of smoke and fire, roaring down to its doom. Maybe a hundred feet off the ground, it stopped. The WWT can't ever touch that. It shows you moments in time, static, unmoving, unchanging. I saw the Universe at work, as the dynamic thing it is. Gravity, heat, physics, chemistry, all of it, over Highway 2 heading east from Grand Forks AFB at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Or sitting in traffic in Clearwater, yet watching the launch of a shuttle from the other side of FL. "...can't see shit"? No Robert, it is you that can't see shit, and no amount of software or lens size will ever fix that.

The WWT can't replicate the night we all laid in truck beds and on car roofs, and watched the Aurora almost explode overhead, in a burst of yellow and green, moving, sweeping, and hissing. "...can't see shit" indeed.

I'm not knocking the views we get from Hubble, Chandra, et al. Seeing the images composited from all those observatories, those are magnificent too. They do truly show us things we'd never see otherwise.

But "you can't see shit" without WWT? Without Hubble? That's one of the saddest and most ignorant things Scoble's ever said. Which is saying something. Maybe one day, he'll stop letting his obsession with his online penis size blind him to what's available if you only go outside and look.

Technorati Tags:
Le Scoble, Robert Scoble, Astronomy, Amateur Astronomy

Categories: Other

Posted by John C. Welch at 10:38 | Permalink

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So Microsoft finally released World Wide Telescope the app that \"made Scoble cry\". Of course, he's all gushy over it. Of course he is, it lets him think he's experiencing nature without having to leave his computer.\n\nOh, what's that? No, of course it doesn't run on Macs. Did you really take any of Ozzie's or Microsoft's bullshit on openness seriously? It requires the .Net framework, etc. Same old story, with a new UI.\n\nHowever, since I do have more than an small interest in Astronomy, (my first \"real\" book was on Dinosaurs, my second was on Astronomy), I decided, against all better judgement to check out the comments. (No, I didn't actually comment, I wasn't that decaffeinated.) Of course, there's Scoble insisting that the only way to really experience astronomy is with shit like WWT, because you can't see shit with anything but the Hubble. No, really, he said that:

RBA: Ok, wise guy. Show me a galaxy, even on a dark night, with even a \$2,000 telescope. Simple: you can’t see shit. You need to have a Hubble telescope out in space that costs billions of dollars to see such a thing with any level of detail.

Just when I think Le Scoble has reached the nadir of stupid, he creates new digging technology.\n\nBut then, the very idea that Robert would understand the joys of amateur astronomy is ridiculous at the core. See, when it all comes down to it, professionally, Robert is about exactly two things:

Being faster
Being bigger

Everything he does has to be faster and bigger than anyone else. So the fact that he has no clue about amateur astronomy? No surprise at all.\n\nHe is no more capable of understanding the kinds of things that amateur astronomers derive joy from than a stump is of appreciating a beautiful sunset. (In the stump's defense, it's more practically useful than Scoble.) I remember the joy I got from a crappy little Tasco refracting telescope. Maybe a 3\" lens. But on a regular basis, my dad and I would drive out to the end of Key Biscayne, and just look at stuff. Stars, the moon, venus. My friends and I would no more miss an episode of Star Hustler/Star Gazer than we would miss eating.\n\nRobert looks at WWT, and thinks \"This is the ultimate\". Yes, if all you care about is bigger and better, perhaps. But nothing the WWT ever does will beat the nights in N.D. when, due to almost no light pollution at a friend's farm, we'd turn out all the lights on a summer's night, wait for our eyes to adjust and just stand there, watching the Universe. Seeing the myriad shapes in the Milky Way. Sometimes, someone would bring a telescope, and we'd stare even deeper into everything. The moon, the planets. Even the stars. No Hubble, no Chandra. I love the Hubble and all the others. I remember being riveted by Story Musgrave's Hubble repair spacewalks. Actually, I'm pretty much reading anything Story Musgrave cares to jot down. The best part about the Hubble repairs? It was low enough that if you were in the right part of the world at the right time, with a shitty little telescope, you could watch it yourself. Live. You didn't need to wait for Microsoft, or Google, or NASA to tell you when you could download prepared images.\n\nThere's nothing on the WWT that will ever surpass the night I saw a meteorite almost crash to earth. It didn't, but as it came down, it lit up the sky, leaving a trail of smoke and fire, roaring down to its doom. Maybe a hundred feet off the ground, it stopped. The WWT can't ever touch that. It shows you moments in time, static, unmoving, unchanging. I saw the Universe at work, as the dynamic thing it is. Gravity, heat, physics, chemistry, all of it, over Highway 2 heading east from Grand Forks AFB at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Or sitting in traffic in Clearwater, yet watching the launch of a shuttle from the other side of FL. \"...can't see shit\"? No Robert, it is you that can't see shit, and no amount of software or lens size will ever fix that.\n\nThe WWT can't replicate the night we all laid in truck beds and on car roofs, and watched the Aurora almost explode overhead, in a burst of yellow and green, moving, sweeping, and hissing. \"...can't see shit\" indeed.\n\nI'm not knocking the views we get from Hubble, Chandra, et al. Seeing the images composited from all those observatories, those are magnificent too. They do truly show us things we'd never see otherwise.\n\nBut \"you can't see shit\" without WWT? Without Hubble? That's one of the saddest and most ignorant things Scoble's ever said. Which is saying something. Maybe one day, he'll stop letting his obsession with his online penis size blind him to what's available if you only go outside and look.\n\n\n

Technorati Tags:\nLe Scoble, Robert Scoble, Astronomy, Amateur Astronomy\n