Tom Weller's Personal Planetarium Finally Invented!
For those of us old enough to remember, in 1986, Tom Weller won the Hugo for the science humor book Science Made Stupid. (It appears here in abridged form (unfortunately lacking the illustration to which I refer), and here on Amazon, where you can buy the whole thing.) It featured a cardboard cutout called a "personal planetarium" that you wear on your head, with pinholes for stars, described here in a LiveJournal entry:
. . . basically a black piece of paper, complete with randomly-placed dots for stars, that you tear out and strap to your face . . .
(I'm not sure why, but Weller's concept of the personal planetarium always made me think of Ronald Reagan.)
One more telling sign that we are living in the future is that the Personal Planetarium has now been invented and is available for sale!
A fun learning tool for all ages, the SkyScout personal planetarium puts the knowledge of an expert astronomer in the palm of your hand.
As the sales pitch says, The Sky Will Never Look the Same. Tom Weller joins the illustrious ranks of Arthur C. Clarke & Robert A. Heinlein as an author who actually predicted the future!!!
(Thanks, S. Wolfram, who got a personal planetarium for Xmas.)
AND do visit Weller's website and read his zucchini recipes:
Zucchini Mold
- 5 or 6 very ripe zucchini
- a large bowl
Roughly chop the zucchini. Put in bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Place in refrigerator for 6-8 weeks or until covered with fine gray hair. Throw away.
Weller is a great genius. (Oh, also, do read his book Minims which is available on his website, which features such fine sayings as You'll get further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.)
UPDATE: Tom Weller graciously provides us with a pdf of the Original low-tech Personal Planetarium. I recommend printing it out on cardstock for best results: http://www.tweller.com/planetarium.pdf.
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