Information on the Curiosity rover
A reader writes:
I hadn’t paid much attention to Curiosity (guess I’m not very curious) but
this brief video gives a good overview of the amazing gadget. Then this video shows how the landing was accomplished.
Truly awe worthy.
LA replies:
I agree they’re both informative and worth watching, though the male narrators in both videos have the white male voice that is ubiquitous today: not the voice of adult man, but of a chirpy, immature college student. White men cannot be allowed to sound adult or manly.
Also this from Wikipedia tells how the Curiosity rover examines the Martian surface:
The general analysis strategy begins with high resolution cameras to look for features of interest. If a particular surface is of interest, Curiosity can vaporize a small portion of it with an infrared laser and examine the resulting spectra signature to query the rock’s elemental composition. If that signature is intriguing, the rover will use its long arm to swing over a microscope and an X-ray spectrometer to take a closer look. If the specimen warrants further analysis, Curiosity can drill into the boulder and deliver a powdered sample to the analytical laboratory (SAM) inside the rover, that has a limit of 74 sample cups.
- end of initial entry -
Clark Coleman writes:
You wrote:
I agree they’re both informative and worth watching, though the male narrators in both videos have the white male voice that is ubiquitous today: not the voice of adult man, but of a chirpy, immature college student. White men cannot be allowed to sound adult or manly.
I looked into the two videos. They are both from a YouTube account called SciShow. Going to the home page for that account, following to the FaceBook page for that account, it becomes obvious that the whole thing is the work of one guy named Hank. He does all the voice-overs for all the videos, apparently. I cannot find any claim that any of these sites are official, that someone such as NASA has chosen this guy as a spokesman, etc.
So, some nerdy guy puts this all together and has a nerdy voice. “White men cannot be allowed to sound adult or manly” is a bit conspiratorial in tone to describe that situation.
LA replies:
First, the videos had a professional, official feel, including the narrator’s voice.
Second, you hear the same voice everywhere in the media. Basically all TV advertising shows white men as geeky losers who are bettered by white women and black men. Our entire culture tells young white males that being an ineffectual nerd or a creepy metrosexual is way to be. The only exceptions are the super-charged action movies, in which the white protagonists are “manly,” but only in a comic book sense, and are also tormented ciphers, like Christopher Nolan’s Batman.
Have you not noticed the normalization of these types as the representative white male?
Clark Coleman replies:
Of course I have seen how white men have been portrayed in TV shows and movies. I have discussed it previously at VFR. My point is that this particular example is not an intentional effort by Hollywood leftists to portray white men in that manner. It is just some guy with a YouTube account. The situation is bad enough without seeing this YouTube host as being part of a plot.
LA replies:
Your point is correct in the narrow sense but is irrelevant to the larger issue I was identifying. Whether these particular videos were produced by one person or by NASA or by Hollyood is irrelevant to the fact that this type of male voice has become ubiquitous in our culture.
Samson J. writes:
My wife and I recently watched the Noel Coward movie In Which We Serve, on your readers’ recent recommendation. It was fantastic, and nearly makes one weep to see what has been lost. In particular one of the things that struck me about this film (as with most films from the era) is the confident and sober quality of the male voice. If your readers cannot tell what you mean by saying that the modern male voice has been rendered effete, they should watch some old movies or news clips.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 13, 2012 10:47 AM | Send