Skip to main content

Viva NASA!

Eyewear wishes NASA a very happy 50th birthday today, tomorrow (its precise anniversary), and in the future. The space agency has, famously, put men on the moon, and used a Canada arm to good effect. Hopefully, it will redouble its efforts, in years to come, to get men and women onto Mars. Terraforming the Red Planet needs to be one of the later 21st century's goals. Meanwhile, the unmanned probes go on, allowing us to extend, literally, human knowledge. While I have never been an Asimov-addict, or a slide-rule afficionado, I do believe that hard science, heavy lifting, and all systems go can inspire. Houston has sometimes been the Cape of Good Hope. Talk about retro: Obama as Kennedy, NASA back in the news (in a good way). Is it time to release the clones of Elvis from captivity?

Comments

Anonymous said…
There's a very interesting interview with Apollo astronaut and scientist who went to the moon -- Dr Edgar Mitchel - from 23 July on Kerrang Radio and available on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNdxdveK7c

he claims he was *involved in this work* and knows the real inside story, that *we have been visited* and the Roswell was real and there are a number of *contacts* ongoing which the governments involved have been covering up for the last sixty yrs.

Over the next four yrs the UK are releasing all its UFO files and various other governments including Belgium, France, Mexico and Brazil have been doing so.

the interviewer, a young radio jock who says *this is easily one of the most incredible conversations of my life* -- asks if the intent of these non-earth citizens is malevolent and Mitchel says, well if that was the case we would know about it now, being as they are so advanced.

NASA's response to the interview is here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSOSLC-U5cU&feature=related

the Kerrangg jock rang NASA on the air and it is all very ...

Smovid Mates

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...