An Interesting Day

For some reason, it seems like we haven't had a chance to slow down lately. Between my company laying people off, Liz's boss' boss fucking with her life, the car wreck, food poisoning, the big TV, and everything else, it's like a never-ending barrage of input and I'm beginning to feel overstimulated.

Which is why I don't want to talk about my day at all.

I'd rather talk about President Bush's planned trips to Mars and the Moon. This is another time when I find myself agreeing with Bush. That's twice in two weeks. Like I said, something's wrong with this picture.

I'm surprised not by Bush's announcement, which makes sense: it means a lot of taxpayer money going to defense and aerospace contractors, and the space race was a great way to boost the economy back in the 50s and 60s. Its the perfect tax-and-spend Republican strategy: give money to gigantic corporations. Most of the liberal backlash to Bush's announcement has been very critical of this very fact. Why can't we use that money to feed our people? To educate our children? To cure cancer?

If we were simply flushing that money down the toilet, like we do in useless Middle Eastern wars for oil, I could see their point, but manned space travel has a technological side-effect as well. Who's to say that a cure for cancer won't be a byproduct of research on the lengthy effects of radiation on human beings during an 18-month journey to Mars? Who's to say that, should we find microbes on Mars, it won't inspire children to become astronauts themselves? The space race gave us a lot of things, from microwave ovens to velcro to teflon, and it could give us so much more. In a word, it's better than throwing that money at corporations because at least this gives something back rather than a state-possessed vacation home when another Enron occurs.

And besides, anything that gets us closer to living in Star Trek can't be a bad thing.