Saturday, July 29, 2006
Do you WANT your identity stolen?
I am speaking to any number of, well, assholes out there who mouth off at bank tellers when asked for their identification. I hear about it all the time, I've witnessed a few incidences, and I go out of my way then to cooperate with the tellers. My God, what is the matter with you people? First of all, the tellers ask for our ID for OUR protection! I'm sorry if you're deeply wounded to the core if a new teller who's never seen you before doesn't telepathically realize you've been going to that bank for years, but get over yourself. Suppose you drop a check somewhere, or the mailman puts one of those idiotic scam checks in the wrong mailbox and some unscrupulous person picks it up, or you have a cat who embezzles from you for cat toys -- it can happen -- and the bank accedes to popular demand and drops the requirement to ask for your ID...then anybody can cash your check, anybody can claim to be you and withdraw money from your account...I was apalled one time when I withdrew several thousand dollars to cash in for traveler's checks and no one asked for my identification. How did they know it was me? Anybody could have gone in and done that!
In the second place, those of you who huff and whine and mouth off, the tellers are -- try to understand this -- DOING THEIR JOB. You are not going to change bank policy by acting like a dork in public. How 'bout if I call you in your workplace and yell at you for refiling a directory as your boss ordered you to do?
Third...what exactly is the problem with showing some common courtesy in public? Aren't you embarrassed? And this doesn't extend to just bank tellers, but basically to everyone who works with the public. I see it everywhere. At a bookstore one time I was in line behind Psycho Bitch From Hell who held up the line for about ten minutes because she thought -- incorrectly -- that the book she was buying was on sale. But even if she was right, isn't there a more pleasant way of expressing yourself? Do you think being rude is somehow empowering? Does it make you feel good about yourself to ruin another person's day?
Yes, customer service is hard to come by. I'm going to tell a story about a Dairy Queen I used to go to and stopped patronizing because they hired a crew of idiots who act like immature goofs and can't get an order right to save their lives. My solution: I go to Cold Stone now. But prior to the hiring of that crew, there was a girl who waited on me each time I went there. She had the whole demeanor of someone who went through the motions of her job, she always looked tired, worn, beaten down. Oh, she was pleasant enough but not the chipper face of utter glee that I guess you're supposed to be. But she always did her job to my satisfaction. One day I was behind someone who was being unpleasant to her. I felt bad for her, so when my turn came, I gave her a smile and asked if she was having a bad day. She visibly lit up and unloaded her problems on me. I mean, it wasn't any kind of big emotional scene, but she was clearly grateful for the gesture. I found out then that the rude customer was the least of her problems; she had a migraine and her boss refused to let her go home. I gave her some useless, token advice on migraine relief. But ever since then, she has acted as though I'm an old friend every time she waits on me. I'm honored and pleased that she'd consider me a friend, but it does seem to be a shame that I'd get such gratitude for what I consider simply common courtesy. That's the most extreme case of something that happens all the time. I'll go out, a waiter or clerk or hostess will say, "Hello, how are you," to which I, without even considering it, reply, "Fine, how are you?" Unfailingly they answer with genuine gratitude, "Thank you for asking." Well, of course I asked! Simple courtesy! Do people understand courtesy?
And speaking of courtesy, put your damn shopping carts in the cart-return or take them back to the store, for God's sake! I'd like to track down the person who left their cart against my car at Sam's Club and have them pay to repair and refinish my car! Wouldn't it be great if we had a justice field like in that Red Dwarf episode, where everything you do to someone else is automatically inflicted on you?
Soapbox time over.
In the second place, those of you who huff and whine and mouth off, the tellers are -- try to understand this -- DOING THEIR JOB. You are not going to change bank policy by acting like a dork in public. How 'bout if I call you in your workplace and yell at you for refiling a directory as your boss ordered you to do?
Third...what exactly is the problem with showing some common courtesy in public? Aren't you embarrassed? And this doesn't extend to just bank tellers, but basically to everyone who works with the public. I see it everywhere. At a bookstore one time I was in line behind Psycho Bitch From Hell who held up the line for about ten minutes because she thought -- incorrectly -- that the book she was buying was on sale. But even if she was right, isn't there a more pleasant way of expressing yourself? Do you think being rude is somehow empowering? Does it make you feel good about yourself to ruin another person's day?
Yes, customer service is hard to come by. I'm going to tell a story about a Dairy Queen I used to go to and stopped patronizing because they hired a crew of idiots who act like immature goofs and can't get an order right to save their lives. My solution: I go to Cold Stone now. But prior to the hiring of that crew, there was a girl who waited on me each time I went there. She had the whole demeanor of someone who went through the motions of her job, she always looked tired, worn, beaten down. Oh, she was pleasant enough but not the chipper face of utter glee that I guess you're supposed to be. But she always did her job to my satisfaction. One day I was behind someone who was being unpleasant to her. I felt bad for her, so when my turn came, I gave her a smile and asked if she was having a bad day. She visibly lit up and unloaded her problems on me. I mean, it wasn't any kind of big emotional scene, but she was clearly grateful for the gesture. I found out then that the rude customer was the least of her problems; she had a migraine and her boss refused to let her go home. I gave her some useless, token advice on migraine relief. But ever since then, she has acted as though I'm an old friend every time she waits on me. I'm honored and pleased that she'd consider me a friend, but it does seem to be a shame that I'd get such gratitude for what I consider simply common courtesy. That's the most extreme case of something that happens all the time. I'll go out, a waiter or clerk or hostess will say, "Hello, how are you," to which I, without even considering it, reply, "Fine, how are you?" Unfailingly they answer with genuine gratitude, "Thank you for asking." Well, of course I asked! Simple courtesy! Do people understand courtesy?
And speaking of courtesy, put your damn shopping carts in the cart-return or take them back to the store, for God's sake! I'd like to track down the person who left their cart against my car at Sam's Club and have them pay to repair and refinish my car! Wouldn't it be great if we had a justice field like in that Red Dwarf episode, where everything you do to someone else is automatically inflicted on you?
Soapbox time over.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
A plea to M. Night Shyamalan
Today I saw M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, Lady in the Water, and on the distant off-chance that Mr. Shyamalan happens across this blog, I would like to appeal to you, sir, Keep It Up! I'm dismayed by the surprisingly large number of detractors who say you've lost your touch, that The Sixth Sense was your only good film, that you've come to depend too much on surprise endings -- to them I say CRAP! The Village is quite easily one of the smartest movies I've ever seen, and I found Lady in the Water to be profoundly moving and I can't wait to see it again. Sure, Signs and Unbreakable weren't quite my cup of tea, but I still appreciated the genuineness and the creative spirit behind them. And Mr. Shyamalan, that's what you have that almost no other filmmakers of today have: genuineness. Please don't let the critics and the naysayers beat you down. Keep making films that you believe in, because even if they're not the blockbuster megahits of today, they are the films that will be remembered. And they will find their own audience. Maybe not the popcorn-munching morons who feast themselves on adrenaline-driven drivel that the big studios shove down our throats every opening weekend, but instead you'll find -- if you haven't already -- a permanent following of quiet and thoughtful people who will see your films without knowing a thing about them, as indeed I did with Lady in the Water, simply because they know that you'll deliver. And yes, I went into The Village with certain expectations which were not fulfilled -- but I was able to shift gears and appreciate what you were doing, and I came out all the richer for it. You made me think. My wife and I talked about the movie for the rest of the day. I went into Lady in the Water expecting another The Village, and once again had to shift mental gears completely. Fine. It was an exhilarating movie.
So please, Mr. Shyamalan, stay the course. Even if no one knows it now, you will be remembered as one of the cinema greats. I'm already comparing you to Stanley Kubrick, I kid you not. Just remember Bob Balaban's delightful Critic From Hell and think of him every time someone says something negative about one of your movies.
So please, Mr. Shyamalan, stay the course. Even if no one knows it now, you will be remembered as one of the cinema greats. I'm already comparing you to Stanley Kubrick, I kid you not. Just remember Bob Balaban's delightful Critic From Hell and think of him every time someone says something negative about one of your movies.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Aliens!
How do we resolve the Fermi Paradox? There are more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. Seeing the persistence of life on our planet, it does seem ridiculous to think that life has not come to be anywhere else. We've found life in climates where it wouldn't seem possible for anything to survive. Volcanic pits, the frozen strata of Antarctica, the radioactive zones around nuclear test sites, and soil layers far beneath the point that all life was thought to cease. Cockraches are impervious to radiation (how? Aren't they made of DNA like the rest of us?), blacksmokers thrive in deadly poison, and I'm pretty sure I've read that bacteria on the lunar landers have survived on the Moon -- though I don't recall my source and that might have been in a science fiction novel, not something real.
So considering that life appears to be a natural process that occurs anywhere you have liquid water and a source -- any source -- of energy, it therefore seems a foregone conclusion that it must have evolved elsewhere; in fact, since water and energy are overpoweringly abundant commodities not just in the universe, but even in our solar system, life should be everywhere, all around us. I have little doubt we'll eventually find evidence of life on Mars, Europa, Callisto, and comets. So you'd think there'd be intelligence throughout the galaxy. If even one in a million planets with life on them evolved into intelligent life, there ought to still be plenty of intelligent civilizations out there.
So if that's the case...where are they? True, we've only been scanning the skies for alien radio signals for a very brief time, but even in that brief time we ought to have picked up something. No, they'd be unlikely to be answering our signals, since anything we transmit would only be fifty light years out by now, and therefore intersected a handful of the nearest stars, but we still should have detected signals sent out by civilizations long ago. We're a very young civilization; there should have been civilizations from two or three generations of stars back, in other words hundreds of billions of years old, plenty of time for their signals to have crossed the meager hundred thousand light year-diameter of our galaxy. So...where is everybody? It certainly is a puzzle.
Is it possible we really are alone? Think of it this way. Life on Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. Human civilization, intelligent Homo sapiens, has existed for roughly a hundred thousand years. As far as we've been able to prove, Homo sapiens is the first and only life form on Earth we would classify as unambiguously intelligent. And yes, the intelligence of other animals like dolphins is quite extraordinary, and there's fertile ground there for research and debate, but no dolphin ever built a radio transmitter or spaceship. So rigidly defining intelligence as the ability to not only think and learn, but also to apply and build tools, it would seem that intelligent life is much more rare than life alone. Intelligence does not seem to be, as a general rule, vital to a life form's survival. An animal is more likely to develop sharp claws, fast legs, powerful jaws, and various other simple means of survival than the devlopment of a large brain case and dextrous fingers. The human body and mind is the result of a very rare combination of unusual climatic circumstances. A large brain case and manual dexterity were already a primate characteristic when the jungles of Africa receded some five or ten million years ago. Primates such as Autralopithecus aforensis and africanus, stranded in deserts and caves, could either die out or develop their minds. Thankfully, with an already above average intelligence and opposable thumb, our remote ancestors began to think through problems and find solutions not dictated by instinct alone.
Of course, I'm grossly oversimplifying an incredibly long and complex process, so I don't want to get a lot of comments from pedantic anthropologists correcting my errors. My point is that it's much more difficult for animals to rise to what we'd consider an intelligent level than it is for the mixing of chemicals to produce bacteria, or even for single-celled life forms to make the monumental leap to multicellular forms. So even if the universe is teeming with life -- and indeed some astronomers are now convinced that Earth is in a unique position to do even that; the sun is unusually stable, we're in an area of the galaxy unusually low in radioactive levels, etc. -- how likely is it that intelligence would rise anywhere else?
But...on the other hand...the more we learn, the more we must shed our human vanity that we're just so much smarter than everyone else. Dogs, birds, monkeys, elephants, squid, dolphins, all consistently reveal themselves to be much more intelligent than we ever suspected. Nor are we the only animals with technology. Ants, bees, beavers, spiders, the world is replete with animals who contruct amazing artificial structures. Bats and whales even use sonar -- in fact if I'm not mistaken that's where we got the idea for sonar. How much of a push is really necessary for animals to start...thinking? I often think we've created a society in which intelligence is no longer necessary to survival and therefore we've stopped doing it. As a general rule it seems people are sliding backwards into a contented stupidity. Maybe somebody else on our planet will start doing the thinking and move in on our territory. Not that I'm lying awake at night worried about talking apes inheriting the Earth, but I wouldn't be at all surprised in a few hundred thousand years to find us schismed into H.G. Wells' Eloi and Morlocks. Maybe intelligence is self-destructive and the reason we've never encountered intelligent aliens is because they've all destroyed themselves before having the chance to signal anyone.
Another possibility is that we've already detected plenty of alien signals. After all, if it's an alien signal, we wouldn't know how to read it. The universe is brimming full of natural radio waves. The truth of the matter is we have no idea what we're looking for. We could have proof flowing through our radio telescope arrays every day and not even know it.
But I think Richard Feynman summed it up nicely: "Sometimes I think we're alone, sometimes I think we're not. Either way, it's staggering."
So considering that life appears to be a natural process that occurs anywhere you have liquid water and a source -- any source -- of energy, it therefore seems a foregone conclusion that it must have evolved elsewhere; in fact, since water and energy are overpoweringly abundant commodities not just in the universe, but even in our solar system, life should be everywhere, all around us. I have little doubt we'll eventually find evidence of life on Mars, Europa, Callisto, and comets. So you'd think there'd be intelligence throughout the galaxy. If even one in a million planets with life on them evolved into intelligent life, there ought to still be plenty of intelligent civilizations out there.
So if that's the case...where are they? True, we've only been scanning the skies for alien radio signals for a very brief time, but even in that brief time we ought to have picked up something. No, they'd be unlikely to be answering our signals, since anything we transmit would only be fifty light years out by now, and therefore intersected a handful of the nearest stars, but we still should have detected signals sent out by civilizations long ago. We're a very young civilization; there should have been civilizations from two or three generations of stars back, in other words hundreds of billions of years old, plenty of time for their signals to have crossed the meager hundred thousand light year-diameter of our galaxy. So...where is everybody? It certainly is a puzzle.
Is it possible we really are alone? Think of it this way. Life on Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. Human civilization, intelligent Homo sapiens, has existed for roughly a hundred thousand years. As far as we've been able to prove, Homo sapiens is the first and only life form on Earth we would classify as unambiguously intelligent. And yes, the intelligence of other animals like dolphins is quite extraordinary, and there's fertile ground there for research and debate, but no dolphin ever built a radio transmitter or spaceship. So rigidly defining intelligence as the ability to not only think and learn, but also to apply and build tools, it would seem that intelligent life is much more rare than life alone. Intelligence does not seem to be, as a general rule, vital to a life form's survival. An animal is more likely to develop sharp claws, fast legs, powerful jaws, and various other simple means of survival than the devlopment of a large brain case and dextrous fingers. The human body and mind is the result of a very rare combination of unusual climatic circumstances. A large brain case and manual dexterity were already a primate characteristic when the jungles of Africa receded some five or ten million years ago. Primates such as Autralopithecus aforensis and africanus, stranded in deserts and caves, could either die out or develop their minds. Thankfully, with an already above average intelligence and opposable thumb, our remote ancestors began to think through problems and find solutions not dictated by instinct alone.
Of course, I'm grossly oversimplifying an incredibly long and complex process, so I don't want to get a lot of comments from pedantic anthropologists correcting my errors. My point is that it's much more difficult for animals to rise to what we'd consider an intelligent level than it is for the mixing of chemicals to produce bacteria, or even for single-celled life forms to make the monumental leap to multicellular forms. So even if the universe is teeming with life -- and indeed some astronomers are now convinced that Earth is in a unique position to do even that; the sun is unusually stable, we're in an area of the galaxy unusually low in radioactive levels, etc. -- how likely is it that intelligence would rise anywhere else?
But...on the other hand...the more we learn, the more we must shed our human vanity that we're just so much smarter than everyone else. Dogs, birds, monkeys, elephants, squid, dolphins, all consistently reveal themselves to be much more intelligent than we ever suspected. Nor are we the only animals with technology. Ants, bees, beavers, spiders, the world is replete with animals who contruct amazing artificial structures. Bats and whales even use sonar -- in fact if I'm not mistaken that's where we got the idea for sonar. How much of a push is really necessary for animals to start...thinking? I often think we've created a society in which intelligence is no longer necessary to survival and therefore we've stopped doing it. As a general rule it seems people are sliding backwards into a contented stupidity. Maybe somebody else on our planet will start doing the thinking and move in on our territory. Not that I'm lying awake at night worried about talking apes inheriting the Earth, but I wouldn't be at all surprised in a few hundred thousand years to find us schismed into H.G. Wells' Eloi and Morlocks. Maybe intelligence is self-destructive and the reason we've never encountered intelligent aliens is because they've all destroyed themselves before having the chance to signal anyone.
Another possibility is that we've already detected plenty of alien signals. After all, if it's an alien signal, we wouldn't know how to read it. The universe is brimming full of natural radio waves. The truth of the matter is we have no idea what we're looking for. We could have proof flowing through our radio telescope arrays every day and not even know it.
But I think Richard Feynman summed it up nicely: "Sometimes I think we're alone, sometimes I think we're not. Either way, it's staggering."
Friday, July 21, 2006
The world is coming to an end.
I really didn't want to bring politics into this blog, but my God, I sure wouldn't want to be the next President of the United States. You know, when I used to work in an office (I work at home now) I always made it my policy to clean up my mess for the person who relieved me. But the Great Debacle of Bush just keeps getting worse and worse. I recently heard that the Taliban is once again in control of some cities in Afghanistan. Great Gods, Bushie, why is there still a Taliban AT ALL?!? Why did you rush us into a reckless war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence, bog us down in a new Vietnam, ignore our actual enemies who ATTACKED OUR HOMELAND, and now that North Korea has NUCLEAR SMEGGING WEAPONS and threatening to use them against us, you say, "Diplomacy takes taahm"? Politics is a short-sighted business, but when we're dealing with the very real threat of nuclear war, the short-sightedness of today becomes the thousand-year nightmare of tomorrow. How, oh, how is the next president going to even begin to work on this shambles? I'm reminded of the scene in Turner and Hooch, after Hooch has utterly destroyed the obessively tidy Tom Hanks' home, and he walks in to the tattered remnants of his life -- absent-mindedly he picks up a paper towel and begins to scrub what's left of the counter...
Not for the first or the last time, I am desperately hoping that Bush isn't as dumb as he looks, that as President he has access to information that I as a private citizen don't, that despite appearances he knows what he's doing...but since he's publicly waging a religious crusade against a certain faction of the American people, trying to ban important medical research that could revolutionize our lives forever, and actually wanted to give control of our ports to a Saudi Arabian company, I don't know...I just don't know. Well, at least he gave us the Do Not Call list, and I truly do thank him for that. And the Moon/Mars Initiative, that's a dream come true, though he never did clarify how we're going to pay for it.
This is, I hope, the last time I'll make an entry here of a political nature. I try to keep my mindset larger than the immediate and small-minded world of current events -- besides which political discussions get ugly fast. I might as well counterbalance by saying I'm quite dubious of Al Gore's abilities to lead the country. He would have been more on my wavelength, but just as adept as Bush at dividing us...and he's, well, a little screwy. I think John McCain would have been an excellent president...as would John Kerry.
But that's enough politics...I hope.
Not for the first or the last time, I am desperately hoping that Bush isn't as dumb as he looks, that as President he has access to information that I as a private citizen don't, that despite appearances he knows what he's doing...but since he's publicly waging a religious crusade against a certain faction of the American people, trying to ban important medical research that could revolutionize our lives forever, and actually wanted to give control of our ports to a Saudi Arabian company, I don't know...I just don't know. Well, at least he gave us the Do Not Call list, and I truly do thank him for that. And the Moon/Mars Initiative, that's a dream come true, though he never did clarify how we're going to pay for it.
This is, I hope, the last time I'll make an entry here of a political nature. I try to keep my mindset larger than the immediate and small-minded world of current events -- besides which political discussions get ugly fast. I might as well counterbalance by saying I'm quite dubious of Al Gore's abilities to lead the country. He would have been more on my wavelength, but just as adept as Bush at dividing us...and he's, well, a little screwy. I think John McCain would have been an excellent president...as would John Kerry.
But that's enough politics...I hope.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Let's share the planet, eh?
Yesterday I was taking a walk in the park. As I came around the bend in the path, I spotted three unpleasant-looking dudes in my back yard. Two of them appeared to be in their teens, one in his early twenties. They were dressed like some sort of motorcycle gang gone to hell, and the oldest of them was clearly the leader of the group in a disturbing way. I thought I had seem them in the park once before, but couldn't be sure it was the same group -- I was similarly struck by one of them clearly being the leader, and by the fact that it looked like he had picked up one of those little chameleon-like lizards we have all over the beaches area and slammed it full-force into the sidewalk. I was never sure that was what was going on, because soon they commenced hurling balls of dirt across the canal evidently with the aim of getting them into the pond on the other side.
Anyway, on this occasion -- if indeed it's the same group of idiots -- I have no doubt what they were doing. They were down in the canal where the ducks were swimming, and the oldest one swiped one of the ducklings up and ran off with it. The three of them, heedless of who was watching, then disappeared between my apartment building and the one next to me. By the time I got there, I looked between the buildings and they were gone.
These guys are clearly the scum of the earth and should be surgically removed from the gene pool as soon as possible, but they don't appear to actually be dangerous, at least not yet. Even the oldest of them is about my height and build, so I guess I could take him if I needed to, but since there were three of them I didn't dare challenge them. But man, does it infuriate me the way some people think living things are toys. It was clear that the ducks were upset about the experience, and I can only imagine what horrible death that duckling was in for. At times like this I wish I was Superman or something, that I had the power to inflict upon such people the cruelty they inflict upon those smaller than them. It's the old adage, why don't you pick on someone your own size? I only wish I'd had the guts to at least shout at them, what the hell do you think you're doing? After all, if they wanted to pick a fight, I guess the law would be on my side. Maybe. Or not. Well, what's one duck more or less? But it still boils my blood.
Anyway, on this occasion -- if indeed it's the same group of idiots -- I have no doubt what they were doing. They were down in the canal where the ducks were swimming, and the oldest one swiped one of the ducklings up and ran off with it. The three of them, heedless of who was watching, then disappeared between my apartment building and the one next to me. By the time I got there, I looked between the buildings and they were gone.
These guys are clearly the scum of the earth and should be surgically removed from the gene pool as soon as possible, but they don't appear to actually be dangerous, at least not yet. Even the oldest of them is about my height and build, so I guess I could take him if I needed to, but since there were three of them I didn't dare challenge them. But man, does it infuriate me the way some people think living things are toys. It was clear that the ducks were upset about the experience, and I can only imagine what horrible death that duckling was in for. At times like this I wish I was Superman or something, that I had the power to inflict upon such people the cruelty they inflict upon those smaller than them. It's the old adage, why don't you pick on someone your own size? I only wish I'd had the guts to at least shout at them, what the hell do you think you're doing? After all, if they wanted to pick a fight, I guess the law would be on my side. Maybe. Or not. Well, what's one duck more or less? But it still boils my blood.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Too bad people die.
One fellow I'd really like to meet is a much-maligned individual by the name of Joseph Bruce Ismay. But I will never meet him because he's dead. He was born, lived, and died in the early twentieth century. Indeed he was already fifty by 1912 and was about to retire. His fateful voyage aboard the luxury liner Titanic was supposed to be the crowning achievement of his career as president of the White Star Line, which he had inherited from his venerable -- though ruthless and unkind -- father, Thomas Henry Ismay. If there is anyone in this world who does not know what happened to the Titanic, the quick recap is late at night on April 14, 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in less than three hours. 1,517 people went down with the ship, 705 escaped in the pitiful complement of only twenty lifeboats. Bruce Ismay, in a moment of weakness, stepped into one of the last lifeboats and survived to face the recrimination of the world, as well as his own festering sense of guilt. He lived the remainder of his life as a recluse, and those who met him were forbidden by his wife to mention the Titanic.
I can understand the outrage of the world that Ismay survived. I imagine the masses of worried family members rushing to the White Star offices as incomplete and inaccurate preliminary lists of survivors trickled in, as the whole world was caught up in this awesome tragedy -- and then to find out that, excuse me, ISMAY saved his own skin? Frankly, though, I can't blame the man, even though I can't necessarily fault those who villified him. Yes, I probably would have been caught in the outrage myself had I been alive at the time. But I have repeatedly put myself in his position: imagine yourself standing on a deck of a sinking ship. You know the ship is about to sink, it's well down by the bow, the forecastle deck is already under water, and the ship might go under at any time. In front of you is the last lifeboat, it's half full, and it's beginning to lower away. Damn right I'd jump into the boat whether I'm the president of the company or a penniless Norwegian immigrant.
Some people get all the breaks in life. On the surface Ismay seems to have been one of them. But if you look a little deeper, he wasn't so fortunate. His father was cruel to him. One can only imagine his psychological scars from trying to live up to the image set for him before his birth. The Titanic was as much a business necessity as it was a symbol of Bruce Ismay's need to live up to and surpass his father. And then its loss was the final death knell of his inadequacy. In that context, I don't want to hate him. Pity is a shameful and insulting emotion, but I guess that's what I feel for Ismay. Even if forbidden to mention the Titanic, I'd want to meet him if only to congratulate him on his other accomplishments; the Olympic was quite a ship, and the White Star under his directorship built the biggest and loveliest ships that ever sailed. Today's cruise ships are bigger, but the opulence and elegance of the White Star and Cunard heyday is gone. And though this might not please Bruce considering the context, I think he is remembered today more than his father is.
I can understand the outrage of the world that Ismay survived. I imagine the masses of worried family members rushing to the White Star offices as incomplete and inaccurate preliminary lists of survivors trickled in, as the whole world was caught up in this awesome tragedy -- and then to find out that, excuse me, ISMAY saved his own skin? Frankly, though, I can't blame the man, even though I can't necessarily fault those who villified him. Yes, I probably would have been caught in the outrage myself had I been alive at the time. But I have repeatedly put myself in his position: imagine yourself standing on a deck of a sinking ship. You know the ship is about to sink, it's well down by the bow, the forecastle deck is already under water, and the ship might go under at any time. In front of you is the last lifeboat, it's half full, and it's beginning to lower away. Damn right I'd jump into the boat whether I'm the president of the company or a penniless Norwegian immigrant.
Some people get all the breaks in life. On the surface Ismay seems to have been one of them. But if you look a little deeper, he wasn't so fortunate. His father was cruel to him. One can only imagine his psychological scars from trying to live up to the image set for him before his birth. The Titanic was as much a business necessity as it was a symbol of Bruce Ismay's need to live up to and surpass his father. And then its loss was the final death knell of his inadequacy. In that context, I don't want to hate him. Pity is a shameful and insulting emotion, but I guess that's what I feel for Ismay. Even if forbidden to mention the Titanic, I'd want to meet him if only to congratulate him on his other accomplishments; the Olympic was quite a ship, and the White Star under his directorship built the biggest and loveliest ships that ever sailed. Today's cruise ships are bigger, but the opulence and elegance of the White Star and Cunard heyday is gone. And though this might not please Bruce considering the context, I think he is remembered today more than his father is.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Space Shuttle Discovery has a fuel leak!
Good luck to Space Shuttle Discovery. A fuel leak has been discovered; NASA engineers seem confident that it's nothing to worry about, but after the Columbia disaster I'm a bit jittery about shuttle problems, especially since the shuttles were grounded a few years ago due to fuel line problems and the foam problem STILL isn't fixed. But there's a shuttle in space, which is a more hopeful state of affairs than we've had in a while, and so far the mission seems to be a resounding success. With any luck NASA has things back together again. Even with increasing private interest in space flight, I'd like to see NASA fix its problems, because I think it will be a while before private industry is capable of long-term missions like returning to the Moon or going to Mars. And even when it is feasible, I doubt private industry will be performing science missions for a while; space tourism seems to be the big thing. Not that that's really a bad thing, I'd like to see space tourism take off, and in fact I'd very much like to take a trip myself. Inevitably most transportation, even from one place on Earth to another, will involve short space flights. But so far NASA is still the most successful space organization in the world, and is still primarily devoted to scientific missions. At this stage of development, I consider scientific exploration of Mars, asteroids, and the moons of Jupiter more important to human survival than turning those places into vacation spots.
In a slightly different vein, Leonardo Da Vinci drew spacecraft long before rocketry. Robert Goddard proved rockets could escape Earth's gravity and make space flight possible. We always remember the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the astronaut pioneers -- as well we should; few of us could match their courage, stamina, and dedication to walk on an alien world. But I'd just like to take a moment to remember the man who made it happen: Lyndon Baines Johnson. The dreams of Da Vinci, Verne, and Wells were just that, dreams. Goddard proved space flight COULD be done -- but it took someone making the firm decision to go ahead and try it in order for the dream to become reality. It was Lyndon Johnson who pressed for a national space agency and set us on the path to the Moon, and whose legacy today is the national Moon/Mars initiative. Today most space advocates press for privatization of space efforts, certainly a justifiable position given the current state of NASA and the success of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, but would any of these things have been done were it not for Johnson's committment to going ahead with it? Sure, Johnson's political motivations were comparitively short-sighted and maybe even illogical, but the fact is he did it, whatever the political forces that motivated him. My hat is off to Goddard, Werner Von Braun, Chris Kraft, the Mercury astronauts and all the astronauts who followed, but since Johnson is so rarely remembered as the man who started it all, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge him.
In a slightly different vein, Leonardo Da Vinci drew spacecraft long before rocketry. Robert Goddard proved rockets could escape Earth's gravity and make space flight possible. We always remember the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the astronaut pioneers -- as well we should; few of us could match their courage, stamina, and dedication to walk on an alien world. But I'd just like to take a moment to remember the man who made it happen: Lyndon Baines Johnson. The dreams of Da Vinci, Verne, and Wells were just that, dreams. Goddard proved space flight COULD be done -- but it took someone making the firm decision to go ahead and try it in order for the dream to become reality. It was Lyndon Johnson who pressed for a national space agency and set us on the path to the Moon, and whose legacy today is the national Moon/Mars initiative. Today most space advocates press for privatization of space efforts, certainly a justifiable position given the current state of NASA and the success of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, but would any of these things have been done were it not for Johnson's committment to going ahead with it? Sure, Johnson's political motivations were comparitively short-sighted and maybe even illogical, but the fact is he did it, whatever the political forces that motivated him. My hat is off to Goddard, Werner Von Braun, Chris Kraft, the Mercury astronauts and all the astronauts who followed, but since Johnson is so rarely remembered as the man who started it all, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge him.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Book the First
My name is Collin R. Skocik. That's Skocik. Sko-Sick. It's not really that hard, though no one seems able to pronounce it. I am Nobody from Nowhere and I've done Nothing -- but then that seems to be a formula for success these days. Look at our cultural icons -- Dave Lister, Dante Hicks, Ray Romano, I mean, everybody loves Raymond, right? Nevertheless I hope to be Somebody someday. I haven't given up my dream of being a writer. Okay, maybe I won't be the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived; it's hard to imagine Nobody from Nowhere living up to H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Stephen Baxter. But if I could just be another Alan Dean Foster -- no offense, Alan -- I'll be happy. And maybe the first step to being discovered is to start one of these narcissistic online diaries. Maybe someone out there will read it and be impressed with my writing skill or my wit or maybe just feel sorry for me and give me a break. But it is my firm believe that the Internet is the future, and while right now it's still seen as the sorry realm for losers who won't get out of their parents' basements, in time it will be the primary medium of all communication, if it isn't already. Public access is easy, acceptance takes time. When the first novels were published, they were derided as unimaginative, irrelevent, and inferior to poetry. Movies were, and sometimes are, regarded as inferior, though no one can deny their immense impact on modern culture. The Internet will be the next major medium, and will perhaps evolve into far more than even a place to communicate and store information. More on that in the future.
