Reflections From a Murky Pond

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis will complete STS-135 and land for the final time, marking the end of NASA’s  30 year long Shuttle Program.

This the ending of a generation long era and is a bittersweet thing. Many people will miss both the Space Shuttle and America’s manned spaced program, which has probably ended as well.

Nostalgia aside, many people believe that we’ll miss America’s Space Program for a wide variety of tangible technological reasons, citing the plethora of technologies that they believe were either developed by NASA or at NASA’s request.

Perhaps happily, much of what they believe was done by or specifically for NASA wasn’t as the former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland and founder of Washington Office of the American Physical Society, Dr. Robert L. “Bob” Park has repeatedly stated.

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud: In 10 well-written essays suitable for a lay audience, Robert Park uses pathological science as a basis for far-reaching discussions on science, society, and the misinformation that reaches the public.

Dr. Park Touches upon everything from Deepak Chopra’s “quantum alternative to growing old,” and “free energy” machines, to the unwarranted hype surrounding the International Space Station.

Like some critics I disagree on some points with Dr. Park and think that he has underplayed the advances in science and technology came as derivatives of the Space Program. Voodoo Science is certainly worth reading however. It sets a framework from which the reader can move on to rationally approach scientific and technological advances as they truly are as opposed to how they are presented to the everyday layman.

Babes that hook up with gamers have issues that they have to deal with, mostly surrounding the problem of how much time and attention their boyfriends lavish on games instead of upon them.

Some of these young women go to interesting lengths to get the attention they crave…

You’d Better Choose These!

And no, boys. Turning around, seeing that, and chirping, “Pika Pika!” is not a good idea, tempting though it may be. 😉

Technology advances but people stay the same. Technological advances normally just change the delivery systems for things we already crave.

A New Improved Delivery System?

On the bright side, this could lead to a smoking hot future. 😛

An “iPad Killer” has finally been unveiled, though it’s not running Android, Windows, and isn’t even a competing tablet. It’s Pope Benedict XVI!

The iPad Killer – Pope Benedict XVI

Apple has easily survived the release of the information that its products are manufactured by Chinese slave labor worked and kept in horrific conditions. Likewise the electronics giant was not chided for its upwards of 60% profit margin on it popular portable products. These facts just don’t affect Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s image with the bulk of their customers.

On the other hand, the iPad being used by the Pope could quite likely hurt Steve Jobs and his company greatly. That is something that the average Apple customer – the Liberals, Hipsters, and Generation Y Slackers – really don’t want to be associated with. 😉

If this keeps up, Steve Jobs won’t be able to afford to buy any more Third World vital organs and will have to use the transplant waiting lists just like Joe and Jane Six-Pack.

This post is solely due to the emotions that my friend – you don’t really know me so you don’t understand the weight of that word upon my soul –  ichabod dredged up out of my memory by including a simple image in one of his articles.

I refer you, my valued reader, simply to this video – a rare glimpse of Canada’s Bluenose as she lived and loved upon the Widowmaker,

The Bluenose vs. Gertrude L. Thebaud

Years and years ago I stood the deck of the Bluenose II, which was a true replica of the original great lady of the Grand Banks. Standing there I wept. I wept with both the joy of her lines and life and with grief over Man’s casting her and her sisters aside along with the love of them in favor of the practicalities of modern maritime shipping.

I wept as I read and commented on ichabod’s article and I wept still as wrote this one.

I f you can’t understand why I weep without shame over the loss of these grand queens of the seas then the languages of our souls have too little in common with each others’ to ever truly understand each other.

I say that without reproach for I know that I’m a living, or plausible facsimile of living, atavism in this modern and needfully oh-so-practical world.

For those very few who will care, the Bluenose died in January of 1946 when she was gutted on a Haitian reef. With her died an era and large part, – in my estimation – of Man’s soul.