"We have all these jokers running for President and the biggest news story any given day is whose ass looked better in a bikini. Then we have these heroes spend months in space for the greater good and hurtle back to Earth in a tin can and no one gives a shit. We don't need to make America great again. We need to make being intelligent great again."
- Geri
Solution:
ReplyDeleteDress the candidates in Bikinis, send them into space, and whomever's policies (or ass) is worst can be voted off to return to earth sans capsule. Viewers must correctly answer 3 out of 5 multiple choice questions on basic history, science, and geography in order to vote, each vote costs $1, and all proceeds are earmarked for improving the educational system.
A. F'ing. Men.
ReplyDeleteMy axe grind for today is that poor Scott Kelly gets welcomed back to Houston by JILL BIDEN. Who may well be the most intelligent person among White House-affiliated persons at the moment, but still. "Scott Kelly! You just spent a year in space as a human guinea pig! Your official government welcome comes from...the Vice President's wife."
ReplyDeleteA bit lackluster, if you ask me.
Yes. That.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Dr. Grumpy. Reality shows cater to the lowest denominator among the viewers and memes serve as discussion, while thoughtful and logical arguments backed up with facts get dismissed with (bad) insults by those who do not wish to get out of their boxes and look beyond their tunnels.
ReplyDeleteEducation, knowledge, information: These are power. These are strength. These are building blocks for the future. And they are so often dismissed.
Thank you Geri!
ReplyDeleteIn the 1970's Doonesbury made fun of that exact situation. The astronauts had arrived at Skylab, and gotten it up and running, so the president was going to call and congratualte them. But then he had a meeting, and the VP was busy... and so they were called by the Lt. Gov. of Iowa.
One of the astronauts commented "I bet we don't get a parade, either."
I actually remember this cartoon. It was my intro to Doonesbury.
DeleteScott Kelly didn't win any primaries.
ReplyDeleteI see your point, but the fault lies with the media. Europe is imploding---look for the videos--- but do you hear of it ? It is the media.
@Deborah Brett
ReplyDeleteLikeLikeLikeLikeLIKE!!!
I worry that it is "just me" when I read and think of things like this post. Am I turning into a crabby old lady, prone to outbursts of "Why, back in MY day..." but I don't think so. Something is definitely wrong and I have to agree that it is media focus.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's the media. They're a consumer product. If people didn't watch shitty reality TV or crappy talk shows, no one would buy ads during them, and the media wouldn't make money.
ReplyDeleteThe media, like any business, will do whatever it takes to make money and stay in business. Ratings and ad sales are driven by consumer demand. Nobody wants to watch stories about this, or economic crisis overseas, so it doesn't sell ads. People vote for what kinds of news they want to read with their remote control and mouse button, and the stories the bring in ad revenue are what drives the market. Even if they're worthless fluff.
Amen!!!
ReplyDeleteCan I vote for Geri?
ReplyDeleteSpend time around smarter people. Use news sources that let you filter your content.
ReplyDeleteI hear a lot about space-related stuff due to my handful of friends who work in the space industry.
I hear a lot about the government efforts to squish our privacy online due to a member of a group of friends who is not only active in these efforts but is well known and qualified enough to testify before Congress.
I don't follow news sources that tell me what Justine Boober or the latest Cardassian is up to. I do follow the political candidates but also the stuff that looks at the validity of what they're spouting.
Maybe I'm a jerk. Maybe I'm a special snowflake. Maybe I'm both.
But the nice thing about our modern society is that your news information isn't restricted to a handful of TV stations and radio stations, and your local newspaper. You can use aggregators to pick and choose what you see from where. You can 'read' news published around the world. And you should. It'd do you good to read about how other countries view yours.
While I don't disagree with this (and indeed it is how I live my life, mostly) it ends up being preaching to the choir. And we can't afford to preach only to the choir when it comes to things like science.
DeleteI am, actually, a science journalist. And I think that the boom in media outlets is part of the problem. Yes, you can read Space.com and get all the news you want about space exploration. But most people don't do that. If we can all filter our news to ONLY what we want to see, we end up missing out, both on content and on the shared societal experience of everyone knowing about the same things. And if science coverage, especially, gets shunted off to specialty outlets, a lot of people will never read anything about research or exploration or breakthroughs. Like it or not, placement on the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post or in the first third of a network news broadcast gives a story weight.
We never would have made it to the moon in 1969 if only a small, "smart" subset of people was paying attention to and caring about space exploration. I don't see much room for elitism when it comes to getting information to people; that shortchanges all of us.
Absolutely agree.
DeleteFrom your lips or keyboard to God's ear. Please.
ReplyDeleteAnd Moose, there are two special snowflakes.
I agree with this so much. How are people supposed to pick a presidential candidate based on who can create the best insults? I feel like the office deserves more respect than these candidates are giving it.
ReplyDeleteIt's because the International Space Station has unisex toilets.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant!
DeleteUnfortunately, one of our leading candidates in the primaries has been a mascot for his personal brand for decades.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't know how to be anything but a caricature of a person.
Unfortunately, we need a President, not a mascot. But people see to want to vote for the mascot. I don't get it.
I was reminiscing in a letter to my son about the day when 'one small step' was made. I was eleven at the time, and didn't know much about it and really wasn't too excited, but I remember we were visiting our grandparents and other relatives at the time in a place that I wasn't very familiar and I recall walking in the woods and picking up pieces of mica (Black Hills, SD) and all the folks wanted to get home to watch the television, and I was thinking about these wonderful little rock-like flakes and wondering if the moon was as interesting as the woods I was traipsing around, and where was the moon at that time of the day that we could hear the astronauts. I am still not as 'crazy' about the journeys to outer space as I am amazed about it all.
ReplyDelete"these heroes spend months in space for the greater good "
ReplyDeleteWell maybe, but they really do it because they damn well love it.
@Packer - You can blame the media if you want to, but there is a chicken and egg relationship between the mass media and the masses. The masses like transsexual fathers of bikini clad celebrities who are celebrities because they are celebrities.
ReplyDeleteInformation is nutrition for the mind. The media feeds us fast food - because WE LIKE IT! And it's a downward spiral. We need to take the effort to feed our minds with the best nutrition possible, and it takes work.
ReplyDeleteThere was a really good PBS special on Scott Kelly's life on the day he came back. I'm sure everyone was talking about the Oscar's or if Trump was going to mention his penis size in the next "debate".
ReplyDeleteVote for Geri!
ReplyDeleteThe "office "lost all respect when Obama was elected. Trump is following his lead in saying nothing. And what greater good was accomplished by a year long time spent In space? US citizens moan about everything, but nothing is ever corrected. Our hungry are not fed, our homeless are not housed, our mentally ill are not helped, but the elitists (many who post here) gripe about gun control, and rights for the 20 new classifications of persons, and think they are doing a good thing. Every so often I come to this site to see what the liberals say (except for Moose) and I am never disappointed in the patter I read. You people never cease to amaze me!
ReplyDeleteOh Moose, if you can point me to a media outlet that lets me know what the latest Cardassian is up to, please do!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Someone Who Misses Deep Space Nine
For anonymous Mar 5 3:53 am: http://i.imgur.com/cwTpLFd.jpg
ReplyDeleteFor anonymous Mar 5 2:50 am, who apparently doesn't like me: Every new president, there's a pile of people insisting that THIS is the worst president and We're All Gonna Die.
Anyone who thinks the space program is a waste of money because people are hungry and homeless and the health care system blows isn't paying attention to all the good things that have come out of the space program in the past 50+ years. Things we take for granted today, from better highway safety to MRIs to solar panels, all came about thanks to the US space programs.
I say this as someone who has been below poverty level, has been hungry, has almost been homeless (I've had to "couch surf," which before the Hipsters took it over, meant crashing on friends' couches because you had no fixed home), and has also turned around to fight to fix these wrongs:
Don't dismiss the advances of one area because they're not fixing another.
Anonymous at 2:50 AM is entitled to his/her opinion. (Thanks to the blog host Dr. G for graciously publishing it.) An opinion. Not fact. (In case anyone was wondering ... .)
ReplyDeleteWe really care.
ReplyDeleteAnon at 2:50
ReplyDelete"And what greater good was accomplished by a year long time spent In space?"
Maybe nothing; but, also maybe something. I was amazed at one interview by spent-a-year-space Kelly in which he mentioned that he now often felt like his skin was "burning" where it now had pressure applied or simply from his clothes rubbing in a way they didn't while in space.
While they are all talking about how this information would be useful for a future trip to Mars; maybe, it could also be useful for finding treatments for chronic pain patients here on Earth.
Or, maybe, as you point out, nothing "greater" was gained.
However, it is a guarantee that nothing would be gained by doing nothing.
Our human ancestors could very well have gained nothing by just staying in their original home of Africa's Rift Valley with the attitude "oh, there is nothing to be gained by going over that hill. Let's just stay here." Personally, I'm glad they did venture over that hill.
No, Moose, I do like you and also respect you. That was the point of the parenthesis.
ReplyDeleteI hope they can look a little more at exercise and its interaction with osteoporosis. Many years ago, they looked at rebounding and reported that it helped. No truly scientific studies about it since.
ReplyDeleteI segregate about the news. For instance, I really don't care about space exploration in my daily life. (I'm tempted to bring up that I'm still bitter about Pluto, but that SHOULD be water under the bridge by now. But it isn't, not really.)
Some of us do give a shit.
ReplyDeleteJust wondering why American astronauts have to return in a Russian Soyouz space capsule. Does it have anything to do with NASA spending millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in zero G? The Russians just used pencils.
ReplyDelete