Water, Water Everywhere
Just when you thought the Mars craze had passed, you get contact reestablished with Spirit (see Andy's post below) and the Europeans have apparently confirmed water on Mars (the last time you heard about it, it was just a suspiscion presumably).
My hope is that we can blame water on Mars on an impact-created exchange of molecules with Earth.
Let me tell you why.
As someone who writes and enjoys science fiction in a variety of forms, my fantasies are reliant on the idea that we are, as far as we know, alone. For one thing, this allows a region of mystery which one can fill with fiction. If we meet a bunch of lizard-chimps on Mars who tell us "You know what, we've traveled f-in everywhere and there are no f-in wookies," well, our ability to dream that there are wookies is hampered. For another, our entire relationship with the universe radically changes. Even if all we find are microbes or maybe tuna fish, they become an integral part of the story of us and the universe. It's like if you were to write stories about life in your apartment and suddenly your dying cousin Larry moves into your bedroom... Larry now figures into your stories; even if you never have meaningful conversations with Larry and generally despise him, you're stuck with him being part of your apartment life. You can't just write him out of the story, because, well, he's dying and that's a rude thing to do to someone terminally ill. This is how it will be with the microbes. You'll look up at the stars at night and think about the millions and millions of miles of nothing but burning gas and floating rocks and, oh yeah, a bunch of parasites next door. And when we finally discover some hot, super intelligent aliens half way across the universe, we're going to have to bring them home to our solar system and introduce them to the microbes, who will do nothing but swim in circles and drool.
What are we going to do? Ignore them? They're life! You can ignore Jupiter, you can ignore Pluto... but you can't ignore life. It just doesn't happen too often. And it happened twice in the same solar system and you want to forget about it? No. Impossible.
Life on Mars is going to be a part of our day-to-day interstellar realities whether we ask for it or not. We could hope that it won't be found, even though we would really like the initial thrill of discovery...
Which is why I can only root for life on Mars to be some kind of backwash of the cosmos.
And now you know.
Input by Mike at 9:36 PM
The General vs. the President
I watched the entire Democratic New Hampshire debate last night because I'm a nerd and was a poltical science major. Anyway, all throughout the debate I kept thinking, "Is it possible for anyone to do worse in a debate than Wesley Clark is doing tonight?"
It was as if he didn't expect to actually be asked questions. He had no answer for numerous inqueries, embarassed himself in trying to explain away Michael Moore's comments on Bush, and relied on stupid cliches all night long. (My favorite? "This election is about the future, and that's why we're here tonight." Thanks, General.)
I was shocked at his answer to Peter Jennings question about Michael Moore calling George Bush a deserter while onstage with Clark. The General basically said he didn't think it was relevant, didn't bother to check the facts, and thought Michael Moore had a right to say whatever he wants (Don't infringe on our free speech! Even if it is factually wrong!!) Clark is a General in the United States Army and someone is calling his Commander In Chief a deserter right in front of him while campaining for his presidency. Clarks says he doesn't care and it's not even relevant to him. Probably because Moore is such a great "leader." His word, not mine.
Anyway, the National Review's Byron York has a great column on this same subject.
Byron York on Wesley Clark in the debate
Input by Scot at
1:26 PM
The Red Menace
Good news from the Gusev Crater: after a scary day and a half, Spirit, NASA's robotic Mars exploration rover, has reestablished contact with an eager flight team here on Earth. The contact came early this morning in the form of a 20 minute data burst broadcast from the red planet. For the scores of scientists involved in the project, this means the hundreds of millions of dollars and countless man hours put into landing the rover on Mars won't be wasted after only a few weeks of exploration. More importantly, for me, this means more mind blowing, high quality images of Mars. Since Spirit touched down on the third, I have spent about half an hour of every morning studying the latest pictures and reading press releases about the minutiae of the Martian landscape. I have never spent this much time on a .gov website before. In fact, before the Mars project, I can't say I've ever spent any serious amount of time on a US government endorsed website.
This has major implications for our president. His administration is in charge of one of the most popular websites on the Internet (as of today it is ranked 302 on Alexa) and there isn't anything on the site that connects him to it. Think about it, every day thousands of nerds visit this site and try to found out as much about Mars as they can. What if they also found out that George W. Bush supports the search for signs of extra-terrestrial life and is dedicated to furthering our understanding of our universe through blah, blah, blah, vote for Bush. It doesn't matter that he's taking credit for something he doesn't have a whole lot to do with. Politicians do it all the time. It worked for Gore, didn't it? I can't say that I voted for W. his first time around or that I plan to vote for him in November, but if he were to change the focus of his campaign from the War on Terror to the War on Space, I might at least watch one of his debates.
Input by Andy at
12:02 PM
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
The Ladder Device
Possibly the easiest way for Palestinians to convince Israel to stop with its damned wall is to threaten an arms race of the wall vs. Palestinian ladders.
As the new security fence, priced at $1.9 billion dollars has been breached.
Input by Mike at
11:36 AM
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Some Random Fun
Got this link from NOL Mauler and thought I would share.
uber guitar playing
Input by Mike at
8:27 PM
OFFICIAL: Family Guy About to Go Back into Production
Family Guy is about to go back into production any day now despite there being no official word from Fox, according to an article in the New York Post last week. In the article Seth MacFarlane says: "We're sort of waiting on an official word, but to the best of my knowledge, the plan is to start producing a batch of new episodes without necessarily knowing where they're going to wind up." Several options are open for the eventual home of the new episodes including Fox, or the Cartoon Network, but eventually they will end up on DVD.
Click for the New York Post article.
Input by Scot at
2:29 PM
Let's Get Ready to Rummmmmble!!!
I don't know why this makes me laugh so much... But it does.
Howard Dean after Iowa
I think it's the pro-wrestler mode (if Jesse Ventura's election means anything, it might just be that Howard Dean should do this more often) spiced with a maddened "YeeeeaAAAH" at the end.
Input by Mike at
12:45 PM
Monday, January 19, 2004
Remember the Vernacular
Or sometimes the best laid plans ignore the actual geography. I at once cringed and laughed a few years ago when Malcom X College here in Chicago had the slogan "Capping Off the Millenium" on banners around their urban campus, somehow missing the double entendre in the street definition of cap.
On Saturday, it happened again. Marshall Field's ran an ad in honor of Martin Luther King Jr, which was filled with excruciating iconography. The worst of which read in big wood-cut Soviet-style lettering:
Celebrate
THE MAN
(and then smaller text which cleared up that the man was Martin Luther King Jr)
I know the phrase is somewhat common, but the ad's large and equal emphasis on THE MAN seems to allude more to Urban Dictionary's definition than to the traditional honorary phrase, especially when coupled with a typeface reminiscent of a cruel and faceless regime.
Perhaps it's unfair of me, but in both these cases I'm puzzled as to how such copy/design escapes the various levels of the editorial process... Someone somewhere along the line must recognize that the wording or design emphasis could be changed to avoid embarassing puns in the vernacular of the target audience. Do they knowingly reject such interpretation, or is it just a mistake of circumstance? I have a hard time fully believing either.
Input by Mike at
2:28 AM
