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?
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....
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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