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CP Abroad
Good readers of the Clogosphere,
Little story about the best-laid plans and whatnot.
I'll be out of the office next week on a sorely needed respite from the snow and drudgery that's become this Philadelphia winter. The girlfriend and I had been hoping to skip the country for a long getaway for, oh, a year or so now. We'd thought about New Zealand ⦠and Spain ⦠and Peru. All of which were enticing but, to varying degrees, beyond our budgets. So, on January 9, 2010, booked a week-long trip to ⦠The Dominican Republic. Of course, three days later, a massive earthquake struck the DR's Hispaniola neighbors Haiti, causing one of the great disasters of our time.
We were, of course, concerned about how to proceed. Would it be safe to go? Would we be able to help or volunteer? Should we cancel our plans?
What we found out was that life was continuing pretty much as usual in the largely un-affected DR and, despite our best efforts, no organization wanted volunteers of the "less-than-10-years-of-disaster-relief-experience" variety, let alone of the "no-disaster-relief-experience-at-all" variety.
So we're going on vacation. To the Dominican Republic. (We'll be sure to buckle our seatbelts.) At a time that could be conservatively considered "tenuous."
Not sure how much we'll be able to report from the trip (you can follow along on Twitter, provided my Android gets any data service), though you can expect a full account upon our return.
And if anyone's got any recommendations in the DR â we'll be splitting our time between Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial and the Samaná peninsula town of Las Terrenas â please post them here, or Tweet 'em to @beegee73.
And if you haven't yet given any money to Haiti relief, or if you haven't since the quake but were wondering if you should, please consider donating. I suggest Doctors Without Borders, but there are plenty of other worthwhile causes out there as well.
i pretty much did your trip this past july. we took a guagua back and forth which was both exciting and terrifying. at one point, i really thought we were going to have the push the bus up the mountain. getting to las terrenas was fine, but they charged us extra on the way back because we were two white girls. don't be afraid of the montoconchos in las terrenas, they're the only way to get around. and the el limon waterfall was pretty cool, plus santi's crew makes a good lunch: http://www.samana.net/santi-berca.html
CP editorial interns always go on to do great things, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy Viola is the first to land on foreign TV. Temple student Jimmy, currently studying abroad in the Land of the Rising Sun, did some good work for CP last year. Here he is on a Tokyo MX network program, pitching himself as a potential beau to the ladies of Japan. ("Super gaijin" basically translates to "ridiculous foreigner.")
Is that Jeremy Sisto in the beginning?
Jimmy's blogging about his trip here.
[...] meant to “"expose the ridiculous spectacle the Japanese Media is.â The Philly City Paper has a story up about his TV [...]
And I'm still here. Goddamn. I look *great* in giant red eye-things.
Just ran across this on a Japanese blog. "Super gaijin" is not translated as "ridiculous foreigner." Super gajin translates as super gaijin.
Friend of the Clog/CP contributor Jesse Delaney sends this photo from Santiago, Chile:
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| Photo | Jesse Delaney |
| "Philadelphia should have these." |
Would love to see a red bicycle icon for the redlights here. Would that actually begin to change behaviors, such as the sorry-but-it's-illegal rolling stop?
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| Remember how Space Cowboys ended? Like that. RIP, Hawk Hawkins. |
There was an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times a few days ago by Lawrence M. Krauss arguing for a one-way mission to Mars. Apparently bringing astronauts back right from the Red Planet now looks cost-prohibitive. Lugging enough fuel and dealing with solar radiation would, he argues, require a vessel too monstrous and expensive to build.
If it sounds unrealistic to suggest that astronauts would be willing to leave home never to return alive, then consider the results of several informal surveys I and several colleagues have conducted recently. One of my peers in Arizona recently accompanied a group of scientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a geological field trip. During the day, he asked how many would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space. Every member of the group raised his hand. The lure of space travel remains intoxicating for a generation brought up on "Star Trekâ and "Star Wars.â
We might want to restrict the voyage to older astronauts, whose longevity is limited in any case. Here again, I have found a significant fraction of scientists older than 65 who would be willing to live out their remaining years on the red planet or elsewhere. With older scientists, there would be additional health complications, to be sure, but the necessary medical personnel and equipment would still probably be cheaper than designing a return mission.
Better to send some elderly astronauts/scientists to Mars to spend their last remaining years there doing research and waiting for food drops from unmanned drones. Kraus doesn't mention going bonkers, which is what I would do pretty much straightaway. So that's my question to you, Clog readers: Would you, could you, go to Mars and never leave?
My immediate reaction is to say "Absolutely!", but its hard to know, I guess. What if you got sick, or like you mentioned, went insane? And desperately wanted to return home. It reminds me of a line from Will Oldham's character, Kurt, in Old Joy "I never get myself into something I can't easily get out of." Of course, I'm probably being dramatic and imagining it too much like a horror/sci-fi film. In reality, it would probably be like the rest of my life, really boring and banal. A Starbucks on Mars is still a Starbucks.
This is something I would love to be a part of after I have a couple of children to keep my family going of cause. I would love to go to Mars and never return because it is a big step for a species to colanise an alien world. And it's these baby steps which we have to take before we can run which will prove so vital to the success of doing this. Also I strongly believe for a successful colanisation of a planet you need to have some sort of sacrifice. And I believe anyone who doesn't believe it's an honour to die for ones species for the greater good needs to think again. I mean it's like dying for one's country I mean no-one makes those soldiers go out and risk there lives in hostile environments if it wouldn't help strive for the greater good. If anyone is reading this and is thinking I am deluded to want to die possibly all on my own then they need to think what am I doing to help my race advance and move forward before we over populate this world and destroy this wonderful gift we call home. I would love to see what options could come up if someone reads this as my other alternative for a job is a teacher and I would this exciting and thrilling job more!
Yeah, no, Jonty... That's exactly what I was thinking too. Totally.
I would hitch a ride back with the aliens...then have them eat everybody. Except for the sexy ladies, of course.
in the case of insanity if would only occur if you were the only one there. remember the phrase. the more the merrier. I would go but at about 65 or 70. in a heartbeat. isn't that why people take vacations and go to parks and play to have new experiences.
Its important for us to colonize another planet, specifically to solitify the security of the human race. With nuclear/biochemical warfare, disease, global warming, and the possibility of an asteroid collision, we MUST expand into our universe. In either scenario of the human race being alone in the universe OR one of many, we are currently confined to our prescious planet. We're susceptible to all of the disasterous possbilities stated above, and if something were to happen, it would be the end of everything we've worked this hard to achieve. Thousands of years of history, innovation, and progress: down the tubes. Expansion into the universe is inevitable. Even if these disaster scenarios can be averted, overpopulation will eventually overflow Earth's carrying capacity and possibly ue up all of our resources. We will be forced upward and outward. It may sound like science fiction, but most tecnological advancements start out that way. Mark my words, in 300 years, people will be looking out into the night sky, only to see a pale blue dot, millions of miles away...and they'll think about what it must've been like to live on the one true planet we can call home.
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