From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.discordia,alt.journalism.gonzo
Date: Sun, Feb 2, 2003 10:35 PM
(I posted a portion of this last night. This is the
fleshed-out
version I am sending to the Free Press as my next column.
Same to you.
I feel great sympathy for the families of these outstanding
people
and at least feel encouraged that the expressions of
regard &
compassion are some evidence of an awareness & civility
that evidences
itself all too rarely.)
We do a lot of arguing about standards these days,
what is "right" or
"wrong" from various viewpoints, but as usual,
the foundations on
which those things are based seem to take a back seat
to the
bitch-slap fight over what color to paint the walls.
I wonder how we
came to live in such a world, dedicated to the almighty
impasse. Oh, I
have a sense of history and the march of time. I know
how it came
about, in a linear sense. Perhaps what I am asking is
more a matter of
WHY.
As I write, I have been enjoying a new program on NBC,
called "Mister
Sterling," which is an improbable tale of a rather
clueless junior
senator. He has acquired his seat through the death
of his predecessor
and has ridden into the job on the good name of his
retired senator
father. He is all too amazed at the subterfuge and compromise
being
foisted on him in the name of Business As Usual. One
would think he'd
never read a newspaper. He is trying to do the Right
Things, with
patchwork success. It is a fiction, of course, but overlaid
on a very
tangible reality. He wants to oppose an SDI funding,
but votes for it
to preserve numerous jobs in the California space industry
because a
union representative says to him, "When I go home
to all those people
who have mortagages and children to feed, what do I
tell them,
senator?" As with "The West Wing," we
would like to think our leaders
try to proceed in a certain spirit, but we know its
mostly a series of
back-scratches and blocking moves. The evidence is irrefutable.
I have sometimes been told that I can be unrealistic,
that you "gotta
do what you gotta do." Hey, I know that; after
all, it was in the
first episode of "Futurama." But what happens
when what you "have to
do" collides with what you simply can't manage?
What are you left with
when the immovable object meets the irresistible force
for a certain
length of time? As a rule, train wrecks, EPA Superfund
sites (for
which Bush has cut a meaningful portion of funding),
lives with bent
A-frames and fast food that tastes like Heaven, but
affects the body
like the effluent from an EPA Superfund site. The idea
of checks and
balances, both within government and out there in the
wide world of
Today, has fallen prey to rubber checks and all too
precarious
balances. Progress is a wunnerful thing, yes indeedy,
but its gone on
long enough. I preferred it when it had only one head
instead of
eight.
I once read that we received about three dollars of
benefit for every
one invested in the space program, during the Gemini
and Apollo years.
The breakthroughs required to make those missions possible
yielded
materials and computer advances that in turn created
new industries,
new jobs. However, those gains have become hard to put
one's
proverbial finger on as time has passed. I have yet
to see a fuel cell
in a car outside the ooh-aah of high-tech expositions.
Instead, we
have gas-hog SUVs with an increased rate of horrific
rollovers because
their center of gravity is so high. Hmph. Centers, Gravity
and High,
attorneys at law.
It has become rather unclear exactly what the shuttles
have yielded,
aside from satellite placements. While I am quite aware
of the value
inherent in keeping an eye on things of military interest
for obvious,
jittery reasons, it doesn't seem to hit home as it once
did. I don't
need orbital mapping to tell me that the weather is
worsening or that
pollution is increasing, although advance warning about
hurricanes or
predictions of the jet stream's pending direction for
the sake of
farmers cannot be valued in mere dollars. While I would
like to feel
more enthused by the reach of the Hubble telescope or
the Mars probes
for their simple spiritual values, the only appealing
thing I can
really say about the idea of colonizing Mars is that
so far, the place
has no dogs. I want to be less selfish and maintain
SOME vision, but I
do wonder when it will more clearly trickle down to
where I live. I
suspect I have a better Mac today due to the NASA-rooted
advances in
chip design. I am looking.
The flip side of the debate is that as the world becomes
both more
mundane and pressured every day, it is all the more
important that we
literally have something to look up to. The space program
has become
so bureaucratic and corporate, its often hard to think
of it as the
heroic thing it is, as a human venture. The risk of
life seems hard to
justify when robots, even the few that have been lost,
can be employed
readily enough. I try to keep a rational foot in the
camps of both
views, because both matter.
Heroism has shrunk to a small term all too often applied
to sports
figures. I wonder if an astronaut is more of a hero
than a person who
sacrifices their days, working at a dull job for the
betterment of a
child. Perhaps that brings me to my motivation for writing;
the
breaking of that ultimate convenant with a child, which
requires that
you be both alive and present for their sake.
6 of the 7 dead astronauts were married. 5 had children.
That's hard
to interpret when stacked against the vehicle of their
loss. The
Columbia, like all of the shuttles, has, or had, a pure
carbon nose,
so as to withstand up to 3000 degrees upon reentry.
Let's not get into
flying something whose structural integrity relies on
a huge number of
ceramic or carbon filament tiles, glued to the underside
as its means
of resisting the only slightly lesser heat not deflected
by the nose
and angle of reentry, no matter how precisely they are
created, nor
how amazing the adhesive used to affix them to the fuselage.
If you
are single and want to throw those dice for the sake
of an aerospace
career, okay, that's your call. Still, it gives me pause.
Dennis Miller once said that he respected astronauts
enormously,
because to sit on top of giant tanks of liquid hydrogen
& oxygen,
light the fuse and let them shoot your ass up to where
there's NO AIR,
you had to have more balls than a 24-hour Tokyo driving
range. Clever,
but also sobering.
I respect their intelligence and courage, too. But
just as with
mission specialist Ron McNair of the Challenger, whose
death left a
small son and daughter behind, with only have pictures
by which to
remember him, I have to wonder how people so theoretically
sharp and
dedicated can run that level of risk when their spouses
and children
may have to trade that mission of a week or so for a
lifetime of
coping with an unfillable gap. Would Reggie McNair,
now 21, rather
have those pictures or his father standing there as
he graduates
college, or gets married? Ask his widow Cheryl what
she thinks.
Of what use is a fuel cell to a child deprived of a
parent? How that
can stack up against growing zero-g soybeans, doing
exotic mapping and
performing electrophoresis experiments in a bid to generate
fancier
medicines is beyond me. Call me sentimental, but dead
is dead. Science
may not remove the terror of the gods, but how it can
remove your
foresight, relative to your love for your family, I
don't need to
know.
--
HellPope Huey® hellpopehuey@subgenius©.com
Hunt a little, peck a little, cheap cheap chips
"When we die, we all sound the same."
- "The Dead Zone"
"Remember, there might be some momentary discomfort."
- "Batman Beyond"
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=572&ncid=811&e=8&u=/nm/20030130/lf_nm/arts_quilts_dc
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "nu-monet v5.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>
HellPopeHuey wrote:
>
> ...As I write, I have been enjoying a new program
> on NBC, called "Mister Sterling," which
is an
> improbable tale of a rather clueless junior senator...
What very few Americans realize is that our most
powerful elected officials have two faces; a public
face with all the sillyness and confusion we have
come to expect from them on television; but also a
private face difficult to describe. Unknown to the
public view.
Cold, calculating, businesslike, Byzantine, ordered,
and conspiratorial come to mind for adjectives to
describe this second face. And these seemingly awful,
negative things are their *reality*, *and*, I will add,
they do them FOR US. They are *our* villains.
Because, for all the niceties and soft words and silken
propositions they may present to the public, they are,
in truth, the bare knuckled warriors, the vicious,
uncompromising brutes, at times monstrous demons who
are tasked with not just the continuation of that which
is good in our nation, but the furtherance of that good,
NO MATTER WHO GETS IN THE WAY.
Democracy and liberalism are not niceties, they are
bloodied bayonets, and often on the march to wherever
our leaders see their application. At one time we openly
conspired to export democracy, forcing it on peoples
who
had neither the history nor desire for it. Now we force
it through subtlety and incremental change. But our
philosophy is the same--it is irresistable, the world
may
not turn away from it--and our leaders will enforce
that
dictum.
So let Hollywood show them as fools, as fops. The public
actions of many are foolish and deserving of criticism
and
condemnation. But as a group, as a whole, remember
that
they are a mini-Leviathan, the head of the beast the
likes
of which the world has never seen.
And though, fortunately, the Frankenstein Monster does
not
easily reach a decision--it was planned that way--once
it
has done so its will is staggering.
--
Anyone with a gun pointed
at you is the government.
--nu-monet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: iDRMRSR <idrmrsr@subgenius.com>
>>the vicious,
uncompromising brutes, at times monstrous demons who
are tasked with not just the continuation of that which
is good in our nation, but the furtherance of that good,
NO MATTER WHO GETS IN THE WAY.<<
I see it's TAX TIME at the Nu Monet household again...
[*]
-----
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: slaac@yahoo.com (Rev. Lemuel Atom)
I still don't see what all the hoo-ha is about.
Hell, when I was a kid, space shuttles exploded alla
time. Ya couldn't
hardly go outside without havin' shuttle debris and
astronaut parts
rainin' down on ya. Pretty much hadda carry an asbestos
umbrella
everywhere ya went.
Yep.
RLA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>
"Rev. Lemuel Atom" wrote:
>
> I still don't see what all the hoo-ha is about.
>
> Hell, when I was a kid, space shuttles exploded
alla time. Ya couldn't
> hardly go outside without havin' shuttle debris
and astronaut parts
> rainin' down on ya. Pretty much hadda carry an
asbestos umbrella
> everywhere ya went.
>
> Yep.
>
> RLA
Yeah I know. More people die in one minute from just
being stupid
than got burned up in space shuttles ever. Now I know
I can get that
last string of christmas lights off the rain gutter
outside my window
if I stand on this chair with the wheels on the bottom.
Hang on just
a sec...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "nu-monet v5.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>
iDRMRSR wrote:
>
> I see it's TAX TIME at the Nu Monet household again...
>
You bet your sweet bippie.
And those handcuffs are starting to chafe.
--
"HERE LIES NU-MONET.
GOT TRIPLE HIS MONEY BACK."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
In article <3E3E1DCB.766A7E6F@yahooX.com>, nenslo
<nenslo@yahooX.com>
wrote:
> Yeah I know. More people die in one minute from
just being stupid
> than got burned up in space shuttles ever. Now
I know I can get that
> last string of christmas lights off the rain gutter
outside my window
> if I stand on this chair with the wheels on the
bottom. Hang on just
> a sec...
I don't care how many babies of how many noble astronauts
have to grow
up Dadless, I want my fucking air cars, jet packs, Lunar
Hilton
Retirement Village, robots, Tang and velcro. Oh, we
already got the
Tang and velcro? Well good. I still want the other futurismo
shit I was
promised by Man's Mighty Brain.
EARTH -- WE MUST GET OFF.
GROW YOUR OWN SHIP.
"The nation that controls magnetism controls the
Universe." -- Dick
Tracy (or something like that.)
Thank evolution, there will always be people whose idea
of a KICK is to
ride that giant experimental flame ball to a place where
there is no
air and only horrible radiation, and then WORK there.
As long as they
are willing to take that ride, I don't mind helping
very very slightly
to pay for it. (They're going to take the money anyway,
so that's a
pretty vain sentiment really.) I think space, robots
and the future are
TOTALLY COOL -- easy for me to say, since I probably
won't be there,
unless the real 1998 arrives in the next very few decades.
I think they might have been bullshitting about that
hypercurve on the
graph of man's geometrically increasing accumulated
learning and
knowledge, though. We were supposed to be ALMOST to
where it's going
straight up, but I suspect we're still grunting back
where it's just
barely started to rise incrementally. We can only hope
it isn't
starting a sharp downward plummet, or about to get chopped
off
entirely. I always really liked the way that ideal curve
looked.
--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath
of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin,
TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The
Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: prostata@bronze.coil.com (The Stinking Bishop
Prostata Cantata MP)
>
>I think they might have been bullshitting about
that hypercurve on the
>graph of man's geometrically increasing accumulated
learning and
>knowledge, though. We were supposed to be ALMOST
to where it's going
>straight up, but I suspect we're still grunting
back where it's just
>barely started to rise incrementally. We can only
hope it isn't
>starting a sharp downward plummet, or about to get
chopped off
>entirely. I always really liked the way that ideal
curve looked.
But, any graph can be made to describe any angle you
want simply
by changing the scale on which it is drawn. So, really,
depending on how
the graph is drawn, we will *never* be past the part
where it can be shown
to be only rising slightly. But on another scale,
it will always be seen
as amazing rates of advancement, a near vertical curve.
-p
--
ItisbycaffinealonethatIsetmymindinmotion.
Thebeansbecomegrounds
thegroundsbecomeespresso
theespressoiscaffine
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
In article <v53m1b.mc.ln@news.concourse.com>,
The Stinking Bishop
Prostata Cantata MP <prostata@bronze.coil.com>
wrote:
>
> But, any graph can be made to describe any angle
you want simply
> by changing the scale on which it is drawn. So,
really, depending on how
> the graph is drawn, we will *never* be past the
part where it can be shown
> to be only rising slightly. But on another scale,
it will always be seen
> as amazing rates of advancement, a near vertical
curve.
>
Spoilsport.
--
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