Down and Nerdy: NASA's budget and scary logos

IN WHICH Briana basks in the glow of a new focus for the space program, and kids are frightened of the television.

Briana’s pick: NASA’s 2011 budget

Somewhere between Avatar and Brangelina’s impending breakup you may have heard that NASA outlined a new budget for 2011. And it says American’s won’t be flying to the moon anytime soon (unless, of course, we can hitch a ride with someone else). In a nutshell, for the next decade or so, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be shifting from a “mission” oriented focus (i.e. sending man to the moon via the Constellation Program) to a “technology” focus (i.e. developing a cheaper, safer, faster way to send man to Mars in 2020 and developing technologies that will make life here on Earth better in the meantime). You can read the detailed 2011 budget here. For NASA Administrator, Charlie Bolden’s remarks on the budget (and an easier-to-understand synopsis) click here.

All this talk about outer space reminds me of a couple bets that were made last year. When I proposed that by the year 2059, humans will have a permanent, fully realized colony (i.e. parents, children, space pets) orbiting the Earth, most people scoffed. My fellow space lover, and Classical 90.5 Station Manager, Daniel Gilliam topped my bet by proposing that man will have a permanent presence in 2025 (minus the kids and space pets). What do you think?

Until such time as we are both proved either right or wrong, check out NASA Astronaut Jeffrey Williams’ twitter page: . He’s tweeting from outer space. For real.

James’ pick: “The S From Hell”

Back in the 1960s, the Screen Gems studio updated its closing credits sequence, changing it from an innocuous lady holding a torch to an artsy little scene in which two parallelograms dance around one another and a tiny red dot. This six-second sequence was accompanied by the then-new sound of a Moog synthesizer.

Well, evidently, this sequence freaked out a whole bunch of kids at the time, according to a new short documentary called "The S From Hell," which recently debuted at Sundance. Here 'tis, in its entirety:

Fascinating topic, which I found a little bit more background on here. Consider this:
Maybe it was the movement that was shown on the screen that seemed scary. The scene began with two parallelograms, one near the top center of the screen and one rising from the bottom of the screen. The top parallelogram was at a distance and moved in closer while the lower one was closer and moved away. They began to move together, growing in legnth. When they got close to each other the two sections wrapped around a dot, which simultaneously appeared in the center of the screen, forming the S. The dot may be meant to represent a hub of a film reel. While this was happening, the words "SCREEN GEMS" came forward between the S and the bottom of the screen. Maybe all this action at once was too much for a young mind to comprehend. It was shown on a yellow background with the S being red sometimes, black other times. I think it looked more eerie on a black & white set, when the background showed up as white and looked much colder. Perhaps we felt sorry for the dot seeming to be captured and trapped by the two parallelograms. Some of the more neurotic viewers maybe felt the parallelograms would sneak up and capture them, maybe while they slept (hence the nightmares). Maybe the whole thing was planned to be a way to get us kids to watch less TV.
And now we head down the rabbit hole that is logophobia! I also stumbled upon the Closing Logos Group, which keeps a massive index of every closing sequence you can think of. Although the Screen Gems sequence was particularly noteworthy for being scary, it certainly wasn't the only one. Check out this great MetaFilter discussion on other unintentionally (?) scary moments in television.

[podcast]http://archive.wfpk.org/Podcasts/20100205-nerdy.mp3[/podcast]