People’s Drug Store, Seventh & K, Washington, D.C., circa 1920. Candy, prescriptions and abdominal belts.

Something big hit Jupiter. // The data sent out with Voyager. Earthlings in sound and pictures. // Total solar eclipse, Japan. // Radio telescopes of note. // Faces made with clothing. // Invading vintage postcards. // Measuring snails. // Antelope Canyon. // Taung Kalat. Buddhist elevation. // Matchstick oil rig. // Electric mountains. // Lyrebird mimicry. // Pandaphants. // BMW concept car. // Bellies. // 10 ancient cities. // Little clay worlds. // Star Wars uncut. // Cinema Museum. (h/t, Coudal) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the proto-rap stylings of Mr Gilbert Bécaud. 

But pleasing. And big.

Filmed at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, the second largest in the world.

Writing in the Guardian, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, Ben Stephenson, is very excited about his job:

Making drama is the best job in the world – the privilege of working with writers with a unique vision, the spine-tingling spirit of camaraderie between a production team, the privilege of broadcasting into the nation’s front-rooms. What could be better than that? But what I love about it the most is how passionate the people who work in drama are. Working in TV drama isn’t a nine-to-five job; it is a wonderful, all-consuming lifestyle. It gobbles up everything. It is glorious.

Glorious.

And with passion comes debate, discussion, tension, disagreement. If we didn’t all think differently, have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t, wouldn’t our lives, and more importantly our TV screens, be less interesting?

Indeed. Without “debate, tension and disagreement,” drama would scarcely be drama at all. However, the above is immediately followed by this:

We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.

Not left-field thinking, note, but something more specific:

We need to foster… left-of-centre thinking.

A slip of the keys, perhaps? Something missed on proof reading? Or an inadvertent admission of something we already know? Perhaps Mr Stephenson imagines the two things – left-of-centre and left-field – are interchangeable. But what’s “peculiar” or “idiosyncratic” about being “left-of-centre” in a drama department very often regarded as a broadcasting arm of the Guardian?

Ben Stephenson has been described, by the Guardian, as “the most important man in TV drama.”

40 years ago today, some hairless apes did a very daring and clever thing. Around half a billion other hairless apes watched it happen on TV. Such was the daring and cunning involved, and such was the uncertainty of the outcome, it’s worth reposting this. Here’s David Sington’s 2007 documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, in which the surviving Apollo crew members recount their remarkable, at times moving, experiences. There’s previously unseen mission footage, an excellent score by Philip Sheppard, and keep an eye out for Kennedy’s extraordinary speech, about 13:20 in.

Related: Freefall, Craters, Astronomical Odds.