The Random Thread (My 5985)

I never worry about the destination when I'm going on holiday. My dad is Iranian and my mum is Irish, so I spend most of the time in customs.

 

[after OJ suggested he might be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter]
I'm not sure if OJ Simpson is even a person anymore. Every time he's in the news he sounds like some sort of evil mythological being. If you asked a group of children if they knew who OJ Simpson was they'd probably tell you he was just a story their parents made up to scare them into behaving. Like the bogeyman, only less believable.

 

-I called in sick.
-To who? You're the boss.
-I know, it was a weird conversation.

 

This conversation allegedly took place between a US Navy ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995.

Americans: Please divert you course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS MISSOURI, WE ARE A WARSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

TIDE

I want to walk in the world for a while,
Feel the wind on my face,
Whipping through my short cut hair.

There was this beach, once.
Calm, connected, relaxed about my place in this Verse.
I miss that beach.

Peaceful squares in the middle of this city,
An oasis in the midst of the ordered chaos of a modern urban existence,
A respite only.
Tunes turned up,
Drowning out the cacophony.
But not completely.

I hate this city.
I love this city.
Near equal measures,
At times.

Love,
Hate,
Such a deceptively thin line.
Appeals to the schizo at heart.

 

People are always saying why do we need a space program, why spend all that money with no appreciable return when it could be better spent on the problems we have on Earth. And there are so many problems that the billions of dollars a year spent by all the countries involved in any space program could help to alleviate and even solve.

But, it isn't the human way. And this isn't a social or societal point i'm making. The drive which makes us human is not something we can change, without damaging or altering beyond recognition what it is to be human. Carnivorous, sexual, capable of the basest and evil of all things whilst also being able to carry off the greatest acts of kindness, love and sacrifice. That is what it means to be human. The quintissential definition of ying and yang, dark and light, is a human being. Which is the point.

But getting back to the actual point, the space program. There is a short answer, and a long answer. The short answer is that it's next. The long answer explains the cryptic.

Ignoring the still ongoing, and for me, pointless, debate between creationism and evolution, modern man evolved from Cro-Magnon. But what took us on a journey through Homo Erectus to today's Homo Sapiens? Arthur C. Clarke would have you believe it was the development of weapons and killing your neighbour and rival for something you want. And who's to say he's wrong?

We once lived in caves, but something drove our distant ancestors over the hill. That something was the need to see what was there. In every beginning, it's about finding things for ourselves, be it land, water, food, other people or other life, or even technology. But that is superseded by the need to see what's there, to simply know. It's what drives us over the hill, out of the valley, over the next hill, and the next, over the mountains. A river is there to be crossed, a sea there to be sailed, an ocean to be conquered. And when the whole of the Earth has been walked upon or seen, we take to the air.

And when we have knocked that off, we seek what is above the air. Then comes the nearest object in this massive space, that which has always been there. For millions of years, we pondered the rock that floated around our planet, influencing the seas and oceans, and not a few humans below it. And so we reached for it and Man walked on the Moon. And then we lost interest.

Imagine that from the perspective of Shakespeare or Shelley. We finally reach the long thirsted after target of centuries of wistfulness, and then we lose interest. We could snidely claim it was the Americans that lost interest, but it was perhaps more marked in their actions than everyone elses, and everything done by everyone in those days was coloured by the Cold War.

But throughout Sputnik, Mercury, Apollo and the Moon, through the Shuttle missions and the Mir space station, one thing has remained the constant target : Mars. The Red Planet, the only other planet in our solar system capable of sustaining human life in just a few centuries of hard terraforming. Oh, we send probes to the asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and ever outward, but they come later in the list. First Mars. Because it's next.

If we stop working our way through the never ending list, then we stop being human. Medicine, electricity, automation, music, everything around you at this moment, would not be there if we did not utilise that drive that makes our journey ever outwards possible.

What's next?

We owe it to humanity to go. We owe it to humanity to explore space, mine space, colonise space, or it's all been for nothing. For those that looked at the sky, that looked at the mountains, that looked across the oceans, the seas and the rivers, the hills.

This solar system has been waiting for 30,000 years for humans to get it together and get off their backsides and into the game.

Because if we ever stop taking the next step, we may as well have stayed in the cave.

 

Because we were in the cave and we came out and found fire. And we went over the hill, then the next and the next till we found a river. We crossed that river and we found more land and hills, hills and land and rivers and then mountains. We went all the way around them at first, but then we crossed over them, and we came to the seas and the oceans. And then we conquered those, finding more land, hills, rivers, mountains, ice, desert, snow, sand, wind, rain, until we had gone all the way around the world, top to bottom, left to right.

And when we looked into the skies and saw the birds, we were jealous. So we mimicked them and we criss-crossed our globe, faster and faster, higher and higher until we could see the stars and the moon, oh so bright. So we set about to go there, and go we did.

And then we got bored of it, as only `civilised` humans could, but it’s still next.

We have to go back, and stay. Build habitats in orbit, on the Moon and then Mars. And then Venus and the asteroid belt, then Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, every corner of our Solar System to the dark edge beyond Pluto. And then we will take that long leap into the black to Alpha Centauri.

We do these things because they are next, and that is a basic function of humanity; to move forward.

If we don’t do this, if we don’t take the next step - then we might as well have stayed in the cave.

 

I may be crazy but it keeps me from going insane.

 

The world is an expensive place but at least you get a free trip around the sun.

 

Nobody's more humble than me. NOBODY!

 

Islam - The world's largest religion (and if it isn't ... they'll just keep blowing up infidels till it is).

 

Muslims teach that Allah is like an overblown tee-total RSM with absolutely no sense of humour who doesn't eat bacon. They may have a point.

 

Oh, how I prayed. Which is an achievement all of it’s own for an atheist.

 

Eighty thousand-foot rocket plumes tend to get noticed by all sorts of people.

 

What is life and where can I download it?

 

English heroes, like James Bond, are suave, not cool. And if you think to be cool is better than to be suave, then you must be an American.

 

A woman brings eight-year-old Johnny home and tells his mother that he was caught playing doctors and nurses with Mary, her eight-year-old daughter.

Johnny's mother says, "Let's not be too harsh on them.... they are bound to be curious about sex at that age."

"Curious about sex?" replies Mary's mother. "He's taken her fucking appendix out!"

 

I went to an 80s themed party last night. It started off great but by the end we'd all caught AIDS and lost our jobs.

 

What came first? The chicken or the French?

 

I gave my wife a puzzled look earlier......cut her into 200 tiny pieces.