For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales. – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”
Ray Bradbury’s passing on the 6th set off a chain of thoughts and reminiscences about my lifelong love of astronomy and space travel. Ever since I was a small child, I dreamed of visiting other worlds, and eagerly devoured books and shows which allowed me to do so in my imagination. It didn’t much matter to me whether the stories were realistic or fantastic, hard science fiction or pure fantasy, illustrated or not; I was just as happy with Adam Strange’s travels by zeta-beam to the planet Rann as I was with John Carter’s astral projection to Mars or the voyages of the starship Enterprise, and every bit as fascinated by the real moon landings as I was by Dr. Dolittle’s lunar excursion on the back of an immense moth.
As so often happens, the fiction inspired me to explore the fact, and I read every book on astronomy and/or space travel I could get my hands on. I must’ve read We Came in Peace (a pictorial history of the space program published a few months after the landing of Apollo 11) dozens of times, and about 6 or 7 years ago was overjoyed to discover a copy in a used-book store in New Orleans while I was killing time between calls. By the time I reached high school I was determined to be an astronomer, but after I saw Cosmos I modified that to “astronomy popularizer” instead; I wanted to be a female Carl Sagan, writing books explaining science in general and astronomy in particular to lay people. I figured I might even get my own show one day, using my sex appeal to bring the viewers in. That dream never quite went away, either; when Denise won a scholarship in chemistry and her friend Jane (to whom I was also very close) excelled in pursuing a physics degree, we conceived of the notion of trying to sell one of the cable networks a show called The Astronomy Babes after the two of them had earned their PhDs. I would also go back for my doctorate in library science, and the three of us would host the show together, talking about astronomy and space science dressed in sexy outfits. I think it would’ve been a winner; we were all beautiful, intelligent and unusually busty, and each had her area of specialization (Jane would explain physics aspects, Denise chemistry, and I would handle the cultural and historical segments). Alas, real life intervened for all three of us, but it’s fun to fantasize about an alternate world where our show is entering its third season and I’m raking in royalties from Astronomy Babes DVDs, T-shirts, web promotions, etc.
Realistically, a show like that takes some serious putting together and we probably would’ve all had to relocate to Los Angeles. But I had one other astronomy-related fantasy which was much more achievable, and had I not fallen in love I would probably be living it right now. What I envisioned was that after building my house I’d semi-retire around the age of 40, then go on tour to all the parts of the country where interesting astronomy projects were going on while Grace ran the agency at home. I planned to take only one or two calls a day (mostly just enough to pay for hotels, food and gas), leaving plenty of time to do sightseeing, visit observatories, etc. Like my heroine Phryne, I would have established a sliding scale: high prices for most clients, typical ones for highly-paid science types and nothing at all for astronomers and other scientists who took the time to give me tours and answer my questions. I know I have a number of scientists as readers, and at least one astronomer, so I’m very sorry, guys; life always seems to take me in a different direction than I imagine it will. Had I gone down that path I probably wouldn’t be doing this blog, which I humbly believe will prove more important in the long run.
Though I still love astronomy, it’s grown increasingly difficult for me to follow the newest developments. Just a few weeks ago, for example, I read an article on the neutrino observatory in Antarctica which discussed neutrinos of different masses; now, although I was familiar with the idea that neutrinos might indeed have an infinitesimal mass, the last I heard (from an astrophysicist client back in 2000) was that the concept had been disproven…and here this new article is treating neutrino mass as an established fact! And now they’re saying the Higgs boson could be detected any day now; I despair of keeping up.
Space travel, on the other hand, has become exactly the opposite for me now: I still know what’s going on and have no problem understanding it; I simply don’t give a damn about it. The endless delays of the shuttle program (chasing the ridiculous goal of eliminating all risk in an inherently dangerous pursuit), the bureaucratic obstacles which blocked all efforts at commercialization of the field so that we’ve only recently reached a point which should have been achieved about 30 years ago, the psychotic waste of trillions on warmongering, oppression and political games when a hundredth part of that could’ve opened up the solar system to us by now…all of these have contributed to my present attitude on the subject, which might be best described as, “wake me up when you actually do something.” My attitude toward most recent science fiction cinema is similar; I see it as a lot of noise and flash with no real substance.
I no longer believe human beings will walk on Mars in my lifetime, nor that we will strike out for the stars anytime in the next several centuries unless we’re forced to by some unforeseen circumstance or easily enabled to by some unforeseen discovery; human society has turned in on itself again, as it has so many times before, and the hands that hold the purse-strings are more interested in their own petty power-games than exploring new worlds. A new Enlightenment will come, as it always does, but I won’t see it in this incarnation; so of late I’ve turned away from what passes for space travel in the real world, and devoted my attention instead to explorations of the mind. Though I will never set physical foot on another world myself I have walked a thousand of them in my imagination, and there is nothing to keep me from going outside on a clear summer night and turning my eyes upward to the stars.
One Year Ago Today
“Dirty Whores” analyzes the reasons for the persistent myth of the diseased whore, and contrasts it with the truth of the subject.
Interesting…and by the way: I am possibly the second astronomer (better: astrophysicists) among your faithful readers :).
Woo woo! OK, astronomers and astrophysicists, stand up and be counted! 😀
“I no longer believe human beings will walk on Mars in my lifetime… [t]he endless delays of the shuttle program (chasing the ridiculous goal of eliminating all risk in an inherently dangerous pursuit), the bureaucratic obstacles which blocked all efforts at commercialization of the field so that we’ve only recently reached a point which should have been achieved about 30 years ago… the hands that hold the purse-strings are more interested in their own petty power-games than exploring new worlds.”
Oh Maggie, I suspect you’re going to LOVE this:
http://mars-one.com/en/
Its objectives and timeline are highly optimistic, of course, and I’m keeping my expectations firmly in check, but my God – an entirely private, one-way, ongoing Mars expedition, put together by people who are similarly disenchanted with NASA’s glacial progress and financed primarily by throwing the entire process open to the global public? It’s tickled me in a way few things have recently.
[PS: my girlfriend has demanded acknowledgement of the fact that it was she who originally made me aware of Mars One 😉 ]
I wondered why my ears were burning this morning. Thought I’d left the heat on. 🙂
I’m surprised you never heard of the neutrino mass thing. I was hearing about neutrinos having mass twenty years ago as a potential explanation for why the neutrino observatories were detecting fewer than expected neutrinos from the sun. Then it was proven in 2002 that neutrinos can change flavor (oscillate), which meant they had to have mass. The entire field of cosmology has been completely turned on its head over the last two decades.
I share your despair about the space program. It seems to have become more of a political football than anything else, with each President putting out his “vision” that spends billions to re-orient the program. I do think there is hope, however, in the private sector. SpaceX is doing some amazing things. The went, in ten years, from foundation to docking with the space station. And I think these guys are serious about asteroid mining and moon colonies. If we stay alive long enough, we might still get to see the Earth from the outside one day.
As for The Astronomy Babes, I’m sure the show would have been a success (as long as you had, ahem, good guest stars). I’m also sure, to your delight, it would have caused rage in certain quarters, given the negative reaction to things like the EU’s kinda dopey “It’s a Girl Thing” video (http://tinyurl.com/7v94hfb).
I’m, also, hoping that the private sector might be able to do what the government programs didn’t. The biggest risk there might be government regulation – if that still mostly aims towards the ‘no risks allowed’ it might strangle the private programs before any of them manage to really start off.
This has been a frustrating time to live in. Things looked so promising when I was a kid, and have gone so badly off the tracks since.
Well, more accurately, I did hear of the neutrino mass thing when it was first proposed, then I heard it wasn’t true; I just missed the re-reversal. And since the consensus now seems to be that the universe is open, that misled me as well; last I heard even infinitesimal neutrino mass could represent the bulk of the universe’s substance since they’re so bloody plentiful, and that would close the universe.
Alas, according to Melissa Farley it’s more than my pathetic, damaged brain can handle.
Latest word is that neutrinos account for less than 5% of the mass of the universe. In particular, they are neither the dark energy driving cosmic expansion, nor the cold dark matter that holds galaxies together.
Well, Maggie, we have another similarity. Like you, I have long been fascinated with science. But when me, while you were looking up, I was looking down.
My native Yorkshire was full of limestone hills, and the northern UK is riddled with caves. Even as a child, I became fascinated with the fact that I could find the shells of sea creatures preserved in the stone, and that there was an entire dark world under our feet. when I came to the USA, I also lived in a cave area. So my favorite science was geology, particularly ground water and cave formation. I wanted to be a scientist.
This was despite people telling me that girls couldn’t be scientists. I continued to collect rocks and fossils.
Well, of course, never happened. Life as you say. I left school early, never got the education. I have however, belonged to caving groups, and explored wild caves in the USA and UK.
So what is it with us whores and science? Aren’t we all supposed to be way too stupid for that?
Brooke Magnanti is a forensic scientist, Grace is a practical engineer also fascinated by astronomy (I still remember an argument over whether a Bussard ramjet was actually possible), and I’ve known lots of hookers who were either in medical school, nursing school or veterinary school, or else already nurses. The stereotype that whores are stupid has always been especially fascinating to me, since throughout history (at least back to the hetaerae of ancient Greece) we were always among the most intelligent and educated of women. But then, it’s not the only stereotype which is exactly the opposite of the truth.
You know, if a TV show depicted two sex workers arguing about a Bussard ramjet, people would scream about how unrealistic it was. Maybe you’ve commented on this before, but do you think there is a connection between intelligence (or, more accurately, intellectual vigor and curiosity) and sexuality?
I think there certainly can be. People who are intelligent, open-minded and imaginative tend to be harder to restrain by arbitrary rules because they see no rational reason for those rules. And a woman with a mind of that sort who is faced with bills is far more likely than her duller, less imaginative sisters to recognize that sex work is a viable source of income, and far less likely to buy the propaganda designed to keep her from doing it. So although I don’t think it’s correct to make the broad statement that “whores are smarter than amateurs”, I do think it’s fair to say that the average intelligence of high-opportunity cost sex workers is probably higher than that of their amateur sisters, for the simple reason that in situations where there are multiple options of which sex work is the best, less-intelligent women are far more likely to discard it as a viable option due to arbitrary rules and false propaganda which are more readily disregarded by women of greater intellectual agility.
i think lots of the ”sex workers are dumb”stereotype comes from jealousy as with ”pretty girls are dumb”.also,with the modern idea that in order for a woman to have value as a person,she has to use her mind and that resorting to the use of sexuality is degrading,people picture sex workers as stupid and/or uneducated,who have to resort to this type of work,because they cant do anything else.
I think you’re right. I admit, I rarely let clients see that on my own, I was really a nerd. It wouldn’t have fit with the wild woman persona I developed. That was a useful work character, because it was so different than the real me, and easier to take off.
But it also helps with the fantasy, if the clients see you as some sort of sex cartoon body total wanton.
I don’t know, I was always pretty happy when I would hook up with prostitutes who had common interests with me outside of sex. I mean I had one ask me if a wall scroll I had was from Sailor Moon. It wasn’t, but hey, at least she knew about Sailor Moon!
If I can ever afford escorts, I might request a hot nerd girl.
And my wall scroll is Sailor Moon. 😉
Pity about “The Astronomy Babes”; a meeting between them and the be-monocled, eccentric astronomer Sir Patrick Moore would have been, er, interesting 🙂
So you were going to take astro-physicists on as free clients? Damn.
You know – as I read this – i thought that you and Grace need to meet Brian May – the guitarist from QUEEN. He’s a PhD in astro physics and I believe the dean of some college in UK – and blogs about physics. I’m sure Grace would get into him too because of his musical background. He may need a bass player – you never know. 😉
I took a course in planetarium science my last year in High School, believe it or not – the small rural school district in Mississippi that I lived in actually had a very nice planetarium. Those were great times and I remember a scientist from NASA telling us that the “next” thing would be the space shuttle – an orbiter!! I LOL’d … after going to the moon – we were going to restrict ourselves to, essentially – the upper planetary atmosphere!! The shuttle was the “vision killer” for sure.
So the space program is dead for now – and that planetarium burned down and was rebuilt as a welding shop. 🙁
Mars is not out of the question though – because I’ve actually had the opportunity to do some technical analysis on the computer and electronics of the Apollo space capsule. Let me tell you – we went to the moon flying a contraption that was SCARY primitive. We’re now capable of THOUSANDS of times more from a technical standpoint so Mars is simply a dream that someone has to get off their ass and get moving in order to realize.
What were you? One year old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon? I was 7 and remember it like it was yesterday. You know – people THINK the US is politically polarized now – but it was WAY more so in the 60’s. In the 60’s – we lost a President to assasination as well as his brother (when he was running for President) and we lost the most well-known civil rights leader of our history to an assasin’s bullet. The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was nothing more than a fucking full-on RIOT. We had an unpopular war going on – people burning draft cards. We had women burning their bras (not necessarily a bad thing), and we had a plethora of left-wing terror organizations like the Weathermen and Black Panthers along with the right wing Ku Klux Klan in the South. The U.S. was really on FIRE politically as well as socially.
Part of the reason we came through that was due to the space program and landing on the moon. Idle hands really ARE the devil’s workshop – and that goes for a nation also. The space program gave everyone enough hope that we’d get through all that – and we did. It’s too bad people like Obama don’t remember that – he’d rather spend money on drones than on something that enriches human existence.
You think the 1960’s were polarized? In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC) nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) to death in the Senate Chamber while Representative Lawrence Keitt (D-SC) held off other senators who came to Sumner’s aid with a pistol. Sumner kicked his bolted down desk to escape from Brooks and ran down the aisle before he collapse unconscious. Brooks followed him and continue to beat him until his cane broke.
In 1874, the White League, a paramilitary organization allied with the Democratic Party, defeated the New Orleans Metropolitan Police and Louisiana state militia to put a Democrat into office as governor after a disputed election. The coup was put down by Federal troops.
I was a few months shy of three, but my father thought it important to sit me in front of the television and explain it to me as best he could to my limited understanding. So I don’t remember it clearly, though I do recall seeing it happen (if that makes any sense). I can say the same about Apollo 13. The only Apollo mission I can clearly remember multiple details and images from is the last one, Apollo 17, which happened when I was 6.
Maybe we can have a contest of sorts on the second fantasy. LOL!
😉
You’d probably love to talk to my aunt… she has a BS in Astrophysics, a MA in Library Science, and is working on another degree in space… I think space warfare.
You might be interested in the book Whoosh, Boom, Splat… there are instructions on building a simple pulse jet (the type of engine used in the V-1 flying bomb) out of a jam jar. The author, William Gurstelle, has a lot of books like that — teaching science (and history) by building your own demo devices (like t-shirt cannons!).
Did you see the video the father and son who launched a video camera and iPhone (for tracking) in space?
I’m currently saving my money for a good telescope… I’m not sure if I want to get one that has an EF mount so I can attach my camera or one that has a webcam attachment. I have the app Space Walk for my iPad… I can point the iPad in any direction and it’ll show what stars, planets, satellites, galaxies, etc, are there.
Oh… my first book on space travel was pre-Sputnik. It was interesting reading about escape velocity being an unproven mathematical theory.
Jeff used to joke that the science textbooks at our grammar school were so old they said, “Someday Man may walk on the moon.”
Here’s a book that just came out which looks very interesting: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
Holy cow, I didn’t know that big picture would show up; I just pasted a link and that’s what I got.
Yeah, Amazon does that now; it’s highly annoying, but I fixed it. The only way to stop it is to embed the link; a naked link generates a big obnoxious ad. For a couple of weeks last year it did that even when one tried to embed it, but they fixed that pretty quickly (after getting 40,000 complaints the first day, I’m sure).
I don’t buy it – from the description of the book – he’s simply trying to sell “nothing” as “something” … which only backs up the question one square on the checkerboard – but I’m willing to play anyway. If “nothing” is “something” – then what made the “nothing”?
There is a holy-hell shitload of mass in this universe – and it had to have come from somewhere.
Here’s a fairly brutal review of that book …
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
I have no problem with science – I am an evolutionist … I believe what is proven and can be shown to me. I cannot tell you there is a God – but I can tell you that I can’t rule him out – and nothing science has shown me so far has ruled him completely out of the equation. When I say “God” – I’m not necessarily talking a guy in a white beard – “he” could be a “she” with huge tits … or “he” could be some intelligence that I cannot conceive of. God may be interested in the universe and we small humans – or he may be completely disinterested. I say this so that everyone knows I have no stake in religion – my world nor my beliefs would be shattered if it turned out that all of this was a big accident. I’m not really living my life in a manner that I may be rewarded a “paradise” when I die. i don’t know if there is one. If the Hindu’s are correct – I will certainly not reach “Nirvana” in this lifetime and likely not the next.
That said … my alarms go off in spades when “scientists” start throwing around terms like “God Particle” – as if they are on a mission to disprove God. This is not the object of science – and never has been. The object of science is to explain the universe – and coming up with terms like “God Particle” betrays a philosophical agenda.
This quest to “disprove” God is a folly – it will never be solved. Even if you can explain how something comes from nothing – you cannot explain how the natural laws that made that so came about.
Were I to deftly argue the religious view of this – of course, “something” did come from “nothing” because GOD created the something from nothingness. Having said that – I can then also argue that he created the physical laws and activated them at the moment of creation.
Prove me wrong, Scientists.
Scientists with an agenda – do not want to hear this – but they need to hear this – they can never win this arguement because it has nothing to do with science and everything to do with philosophy.
There is no “end question” that, once solved by “scientists” – the notion of God disappears. It’s an infinite train of questions and answering one begets another.
Modern science fiction does not lack substance. I just played Dawn of War II until two in the morning and I regret nothing.
DoW II is not a story, it is a pornographic spectacle of the Apollonian ideal. The characters are embodiments of the knight in shining armor. They are asexual, fanatical and immortal, indeed one of their number is dead but keep in a tomb where he may still serve the brotherhood. They obey without question nor doubt. They have such purity and faith that their presence hurts the demons that they fight.
Their enemies embody Chthonian nature. The orks’ technology comes not from their reason but their blood, all of it encoded into their DNA at the dawn of their race. Their crude, ugly technology is a match for the Blood Ravens’ despite the endless rituals and worship. The Orks live for their own pleasure, following only the one of them that is strongest. Intelligence, skill, reason and sheer physical strength are all the same to them, unified into one. No Ork could be a brilliant scientist but cursed to die a early death of cancer or disease.
With the Elder, femininity itself become the enemy. The leader is female and the entire race is androgynous. They do not fight, directly overcome with force and fury of arms. Rather they hide and plot in the shadows. They relay on the intuition of their female leader. Feminine wiles are the weapon they use most, creating a conflict between the Orks and the Blood Ravens. When the Blood Ravens overcame their feminine treachery, they were no match for them, especially against the almighty Terminator Armor.
That turns a Blood Raven into an even more perfect warrior, now a hulking brute that loses all but a trace of weak, soft humanity. Both of his hands now end in weapons, such that even actions as violent as throwing a grenade are impossible.
These relics had been stolen from the Blood Ravens and not used as a tool for destroying their foes but placed in a vault and used as the centerpiece of an Art collection for a decadent and corrupt servant of the Imperium of Man. Used, to look pretty.
The final foe is Motherhood itself, the Tyranids. The Tyranids absorb all into themselves, consuming all and turning it into more of themselves. They are all the same mind and driven by one desire. The Hive mind is more powerful than the Imperium of Man and it is saved only by the sloth and delay of the Tyranids. A Tyranid fleet is so overwhelming that the Imperium ships cannot flee from it, nor see out of it. Whenever a weakness is found, they breed. Breed generation after generation in mere days until, without thought, without unconscious action, a defense is found against it. And Tyranid weapon, Tyranid ammunition is alive. Every time a tyranid attacks it is a act of birth, a child born for the sole purpose of penetration and destruction.
Yeah, um, sorry. See, this is why I like reading your blog, so much interesting ideas to think about. Like, I had this game for over a year, put 106 hours into playing it and just now realized that the characters ride around in a giant space dick. You see, the ships are long and they have this armored prow on the front end. And this is to protect against enemy fire, but it also works as a ram, so the ship can penetrate the enemy ship and send Space Marines into it.
I’m glad I could help you get that out of your system. 😉
So how far did you get?
I read the whole thing. Since I’ve never played that kind of video game I had trouble understanding a lot of it, but figured I owed it to myself to try.
The game is actually part of a entertainment franchise called Warhammer 40k. The themes it explores may interest you since it’s in many ways a fictionalization of Christianity vs Paganism. Where the Imperium of Man is Christianity, with a God figure and the Space Marines, the guys I was talking, are his angels. They’re sometimes called the Angels of Death. A big part of the history is actually recreating the Christian Fall from Grace with something called the Horus Heresy. But in addition, there are a lot of parallels between this series and the early history of the Church.
I guess the themes present in the greatest works of western culture also echo through our more base entertainment and even in works designed to create excuses for gory mayhem still have these ideas present in them.
I know about Warhammer from seeing guys play the tabletop miniatures version in game stores. Yes, I have hung around in game stores at various times in my life. 🙂
The funny thing was, that I was just trying to make a joke about this:
And all that analysis came out as trying to find a way to make throwing an ax into a giant alien’s face sound sophisticated.
‘ere we go….
This is almost as involved as some sci fi novels I’ve read. Exept live-action.
I suspect this is why TV, movies and newspapers are dying.
The unlikeliness of getting to go to space in this lifetime is one of the better reasons to sign up for cryonics.
You read multiple books by Hugh Lofting? I think I’m in love!
Seriously, that I so cool. I really enjoyed those books as a youngster. Voyaging under the sea inside the shell of a giant sea snail was a neat idea.
Every one. If you asked 9-year-old me what her favorite books were, the Dr. Dolittle series would’ve been strong contenders. About four years ago I suddenly got an urge to reread them and bought them all online; they were as wonderful as I remembered. 🙂
Maggie, out of curiosity: did you get to see the transit of Venus?
I did not. Strangely enough, despite my interest in astronomy I’ve never been much for events like that; I think it derives from being raised in Louisiana, where there was no point in getting one’s hopes up for such phenomena because there was at least a 90% chance they would be rendered invisible due to clouds. Probably the coolest thing I ever saw while actually looking up was a rather spectacular fireball which lasted a good second during the Perseid shower around 1979.
The stupid whore stereotype is about the most common there is when it comes to whores, even more common than the daddy issues weak victim meme.
I’m still convinced that much of the resistance to legalizing prostitution or decriminalizing it comes not from a wish to rescue women, but rather, from a general dislike of male-female sexuality.
A lot of neofeminist rhetoric seems to assume that the “penetrative act” is an act of violence and subjugation in and of itself, and women who feed thid need in men are traitors, deluded or duped victims or children who aren’t competent to know what’s best for them.
I’m fairly convinced that a general dislike of male sexuality in general is at the root of all of this. if you press individuals on issues, it usually comes down to “men are dangerous, how can you abuse women that way (meaning any sex at all not initiated for the sole reason of pleasing a woman on her precise terms), how can you view women sexually?”
The whole “sex object” thing is a red herring.
Either that, or it’s women threatened by other women’s sexuality.
it seems to me that painting whores as stupid , as well as as victims, more or less makes them out to be either enemies or children to be cast aside or “educated”.
And most of the middle-class resistance to legalizing prostitution seems ot come from women who don’t like the idea that their men have options. One actually said this directly, when pressed —
it waters down the “sacred spiritual” in sex and it means I can’t trust that my man won’t just step out on me. if we argue, he can go get it elsewhere. Meaning:
If we argue and I refuse to have sex as a bargaining tool, then he can go elsewhere. it reduces my power in the relationship.
There’s a mix of different types of resistance.
But at the root of the most ideological (and not opportunistic) resistance, it appears to be largely an indifference to or dislike of male sexuality in general.
In short:
Anything male is criminal.
Anything female is standard.
This is the new misandrist way of looking at the world.
It also explains the gap between the free-sex free-love ideals of the don’t-judge-me Sluttiness-is-great-and-empowering side and the other branches of feminism.
Most of those on the “sex should not be judged” side are pro-legalization.
“If we argue and I refuse to have sex as a bargaining tool, then he can go elsewhere. it reduces my power in the relationship.”
Any woman that plays that game with me even once will be removed from my life. I’ll go without sex the rest of my life before I play that game again.
Cosmos:
it changed my life.
I decided to make documentaries and do news (originally science news) as a result of this. it guided me through most of my life. I owe Carl Sagan for much of my formative interest-making.
I remember sitting rapt, 8 years old, glued to the TV and shooing everyone else away when Cosmos was on. I’d commandeer the TV for repeats. It literally took me away to another universe.
Another one that did this was Connections (if you saw that), far better than the 2nd and 3rd series, …
But PBS and Cosmos basically made my childhood. The single most formative thing I ever watched. Ever.
I believe Carl Sagan was quite the civil libertarian, too.
As a huge coincidence, my ex (who was a prostitute) in Korea watched the same thing, but in Korean, in school. Though she was older, she said it was better than her entire highschool education. She bought the (large, badly translated) Korean book, written in stilted, Old-School Korean, and read it cover to cover.
When I stayed at her place, I noticed it, and it sparked endless conversations. she once took me to a hilltop just to talk about stars. I have to say, in all my time in Korea, the (non-sex) times I spent with her were among the greatest.
Her lack of further formal education never once dulled her interest in or intelligence with science in general. Alas, in Korea, in such a hierarchical place, without social status and a good university affiliation, it’s hard to pursue interests on your own. Unless you’re a whore and have lots of free time. Even then, nobody respect you for your intellectual interests.
It’s really that bad. I’m glad she’s getting out of the country.
You’re really going to like the last part of this coming Thursday’s column. I mean really like. 😉
I’ve kind of put my hopes on space mining. All this screaming about ‘renewable energy’ will hopefully push us into space to look for rare earth materials so they can make all those windmills.
And there is some hope http://www.jpaerospace.com/ these guys do cool stuff.
First, take a listen to this.
Like you, my first memories are of watching a man walk on the Moon. On the MOON! I mean, I could go outside and look at the thing, and know that people had WALKED on it!
And like you, I’m disappointed in how we’ve stagnated. But it had to be. We beat the Russians, and so there wasn’t much need to keep beating them at the same thing. We’ve only done as much as we have since Apollo because the general public won’t tolerate our doing nothing at all, even though some parts of the general public (who have no understanding of how small a part of federal spending the space program really is) keep wanting us to do exactly that: nothing at all.
What will make space happen in a big way is when somebody turns a profit out there. Then, you will see gargantuan amounts of money being spent, by the private sector AND by governments, and things will really take off. Think of the Internet: it wasn’t until people started making money off of it that it became the ginormous thing it is today.
I’m a bit more optimistic about what will happen in my lifetime (I’m not quite a year older), and a WHOLE LOT more optimistic about what will happen in a hundred years or so. The words to remember are “exponential growth.” It starts out slow but gets a lot faster over time. And “the next several centuries?” You’re into history, so you know how long a hundred years is. There’s almost nothing which can be ruled out in such a time period.