On Thursday the Mars Rover Perseverance landed on Mars.
We live tweeted the last minutes of the landing @justicebuilding. You should check it out. This is a big deal. Our exploration of Mars is going to lead to humans landing on Mars, which is going to lead to colonization of Mars.
"2BR Capsule, Mawrth Vallis, in the Neil Armstrong development, Recently redone with new water reclamation and next-gen O2. Buy for 690 or rent at 3950 per Mars/month, food resupply pod every six months included"
As the planet heats up, people call global warming a hoax. When the planet got sick with Covid, people attacked social distancing and masks. When the FACDL listserv self-immolated this week, after the dust settled and all the lawyers finished attacking each other, they did next what comes natural- they attacked US!
*"Rumpole posts all our emails!"; "Yeah, none of this would have happened if Rumpole didn't run the blog"; "Get him!" someone shouted. 'Hang him!" someone else screamed. That guy who stormed the Capitol wearing fur and Vikings horns chimed in, looking for a large flag pole to swing at us.
It was a blood bath. We were pummeled. and no one came to our defense. It is like we were the Americans in our favourite Gordon Sinclair recording.
The attack was the height of calumny. Here we were minding our own business, writing a motion to dismiss, when our email in-box started receiving emails with captions like "You cannot believe what these idiots are saying about you!"
It was Outrageous. Salacious. Faceless. Shameless. And not in the least, Mendacious. If we could find more adjectives that rhyme, we would keep going.
Lost in all the attacks we endured was the original problem. Apparently David Ovalle of the Miami Herald sniffed out our post on the PVH/Covid controversy. Some lawyers spoke to the intrepid Herald scribe and gave him some FACDL emails which he put in the story. Now mind you, we posted ONE email after our Capitan spoke with the author and received permission to do so. No good deed goes unpunished. The furor rose. One member called for others to resign. Aspersions were cast. Invectives were hurled. Unfounded accusations that would make a Broward Prosecutor smile were made.
And when the dust settled and everyone was licking their self-infected wounds and there was no one else to attack, someone had the bright idea to blame your humble blogger. It was like lighting a flame to a can of gasoline in Texas so you can melt the ice in your bathtub to flush your toilet while your senator is in Cabo. In other words...WHOOSH! The mob turned, and in moments we were electronically tarred and feathered. "He posts every email we send" they whined. "Been doin it for years" someone grumbled. "Has no respect for us" someone else chimed in.
In other words, in that famous poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller decrying the rise of Nazis "First they came for..." , the prediction of the poem came true: "Then they came for me."
It was not pretty.
We are still being trashed. (sniffle 😥).
We are not going to Mars because of global warming or climate change. We are going because our nature, our essence, is to explore and discover. We walked out of Africa and spread across the globe because we are explores. We honor Columbus despite his horrific failings because we are explorers. We cry when we watch a space launch or a machine land on Mars because our fiber yearns, just yearns...and we celebrate.
ReplyDeleteWe will go to Mars and people will live there in some sort of a colony. And, we will go farther because this is what we evolved to do over a million years.
But not because of climate change. If there was a planet next door with conditions that can not support life, that is cold, that has an atmosphere akin to ours at 100,000 feet, where no one could survive without equipment, luck and constant aid from Earth, we would gladly go and live there and explore it. All this even though Earth with its climate changing is still an ideal environment for us to live in. And, we are doing it. Because that is Mars. And Mars means exploring.
You sound a bit whacky bruh. It’s a waste of time and money.
Delete@2:04
DeleteBruh. While you and your 20 something year olds friends stick to the basement while playing online video games and watching MMA fights we’ll continue pushing the envelope and exploring the outer limits of our galaxy.
Cap Out .......
Are you involved with space travel? If not you are a serious nerd !
DeleteAnd yet, absent that spirit we would not have developed a ton of the stuff we use everyday. We benefit from doing more than just by being there.
ReplyDelete@2:04 - that's what the Italians told Columbus before he met Isabel and Ferdinand.
ReplyDeleteMy calculations are 40000 miles per hour. Am I right? How do images go 290 million miles so fast? I need convincing that this is real and not "fake news" shot in the Nevada desert.
ReplyDeleteDear Friday, February 19, 2021 2:04:00 PM;
ReplyDeleteWhy does Rice play Texas? No, seriously, why would Rice play Texas?
Kid
Rice vs Texas? Good question. There are hundreds of Southwestern Alabama State U's who dream of playing a top tier football school, especially at home. The media attention and money is huge. Remember Appalachian State? They actually beat Michigan once. They are still reaping the benefits. These schedules are made 4-5 years in advance. Let's say you are a Division II school and trying to recruit quality players who cannot quite make it to Division I but have potential. Knowing Podunk U will be playing Alabama while you are there makes a world of difference.
ReplyDeleteDear Saturday, February 20, 2021 5:37:00 PM;
ReplyDeleteClose, but no cigar. Rice plays Texas, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
Although the Rice–Texas rivalry was highly competitive at the time of Kennedy's speech, with Rice holding an 18-17-1 edge over Texas from 1930 to 1966, Rice has only beaten Texas in 1965 and 1994 since Kennedy's speech.