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Archive: September, 2009
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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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| Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 291 pp., $25, Sept. 9 |
As promised, I'm back today with a Get Lit Wednesday special: I've got a shiny-new copy of Michelle Huneven's Blame, a novel about a woman's recovery from alcoholism, to give away to a faithful summer reader.
Entertainment Weekly gave Blame an A- this week. Here's a snippet of the review:
Patsy McLemoore is a newly minted college professor in Southern California with long legs, a Colgate smile, and seemingly limitless academic promise. She's also a blackout alcoholic. When the 29-year-old wakes up from one obliterated evening in county jail, she is met with sickening news: She has killed a young mother and daughter with her car, a brutal, irreversible crime that she can only hazily recall.
What follows is a chronicle of her imprisonment, and subsequent lifelong search for atonement — until a lightning-bolt revelation forces her to reassess nearly everything that came before. It's a plot that, in the kind of foil-embossed paperbacks you pick up at the airport newsstand, could easily turn hamfisted or hokey. But the award-winning Michelle Huneven unfurls her tale with unflagging emotional nuance: Patsy emerges as smart, self-aware, and very much flawed, neither a monster nor a redeemed angel.
To win a copy, answer me this:
According to official Alcoholics Anonymous data, how many people are members of AA worldwide?
E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win.
[UPDATE, 1:20 p.m.]: Congratulations to Clog reader Jackie, who correctly responded that 2 million people around the world are members of Alcoholics Anonymous (in more than 180 countries, y'all).
Whoa, X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out this summer? It's May release date feels like ages ago considering all of the Star Trekking, Transforming and District 9ing that's gone on since. So now that the season's on the wind-down, let's not forget about the crap that we most certainly forgot. Hell, we even put the sucker on our cover chilling with M. Nuts, the Phanatic and Santigold and I still thought this movie came out last year.
Madam Tussaud's Hollywood decided to cast the Clawed One in wax (in order to preserve it's inherent mediocrity?) and are taking it out for a spin on a five-city tour. You can catch a glimpse of the Jackman-a-la-wax this Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. at FYE, 100 S. Broad St.
It's all in the name of promoting the DVD. Drew Lazor was lukewarm on the whole affair:
If you've got your priorities straight, your reasons for sucking down a big-budget Marvel flick should be identical to your reasons for sucking down a big fat burger — while both are questionably beneficial to your well-being, frivolous transgression is fun, whether you feel guilty about it or not. As expected, Gavin Hood's spin on The Clawed One's back story doesn't build empathy for Wolverine as much as it provides a platform for Hugh Jackman to go "RAAHHHH!" and be shirtless a lot. And that's fine. The director starts by establishing Wolfy (aka Logan) and bloodthirsty Sabretooth (a hulking Liev Schreiber) as siblings who never got along — things come to a head when they're part of the black-op Team X that provides the latter brother with plenty of chances to cut up the innocent. Skip to later, with Wolfy splitting logs in Canada with his girl (Lynn Collins); Sabretooth starts knocking members of the old squad off, luring Logan and his anger issues back into the mix. Special effects are suspect at points, and characters are shot out all sloppy and rapid-fire like spuds out of a potato gun (it's the first in what will be many single-hero X-Flicks, so you gotta get those fenceposts in the ground). But if you've got your priorities straight, you'll take will.i.am's goofy role as teleportin' cowpoke John Wraith as a sign not to think too hard about this.
[...] Go To Mars And Stay There?• Get Lit (All Summer Long): Win a copy of Michelle Huneven's Blame• Waxy Wolverine: How to make a mediocre movie seem more interesting• World Wildlife Fund's New 9/11 Ad: Moving or totally tasteless?• Dodgers, running [...]
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| adfreak.com |
| Coulda been worse? |
The text at top right reads: "The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it." (Click here for a larger version.)
David Gianatasio at adfreak.com says of this award-winning World Wildlife Fund ad: "Unfortunately, respect is the main thing lacking here. Exploiting one tragedy to try to prevent another is just stupid and self-defeating, and will always backfire."
I agree. But what are your thoughts? With the eighth anniversary of 9/11 only a week away, is it still too soon to reference the tragedy in order to get us behind a pretty unrelated cause? Or do we need this level of shock value in order to really think about big, important issues? Holler in the comments.
[UPDATE, Wednesday, 8 a.m.]: Thanks for the updates, commenters. Looks like the WWF had nothing to do with this poster, and condemns the Brazilian ad agency that used the organization's logo without their permission. Here's the statement:
"WWF strongly condemns this offensive and tasteless ad and did not authorize its production or publication. It is our understanding that it was a concept offered by an outside advertising agency in Brazil. The concept was summarily rejected by WWF and should never have seen the light of day. It is an unauthorized use of our logo and we are aggressively pursuing action to have it removed from websites where it is being currently featured. We strongly condemn the messages and the images portrayed in this ad. On behalf of WWF, here in the US and around the world, we can promise you this ad does not in any way reflect the thoughts and feelings of the people of our organization."
That's a powerful image, I like it.
Some 40 years after seeing an image of a tear rolling down the face of an old Native American, who'd been canoeing through a trash strewn lake, and I still feel the emotion. Might even be why I never litter. Now, that's powerful creative. This? This is amateurish.... and yes, extremely tasteless. Don Draper would have taken a huge hit of bourbon, and sent these hacks back to the drawing board.
Please update this post. This is an unauthorized ad and WWF has issued a statement condemning it: http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem13540.html
Hey Carolyn! How about a little correction here??? http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem13540.html Almost every media outlet has updated this story. The WWF did NOT authorize this ad. It was a rejected spec that the ad agency submitted to a contest WITHOUT WWF's knowledge. And before people dumbly follow up with, well, it won an award! It won a MERIT RECOGNITION. One of seven in that subcategory alone. There were several hundred awards given out. Of course WWF wouldn't have found out immediately. Sheesh. Social media FAILURE. Can you imagine how much money they've lost on this?
Horrible. Disgusting.
This ad is NOT horrible or disgusting! Yes, 9/11 was horrible and sad! but were the lives lost by the tsunami any less important? a loss of a life is a loss of a life and no matter how it was taken, its terrible and sad! People need to stop taking things so offensively. This ad is just trying to show people how many people were killed.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers, who could very well find themselves facing the Phillies again in the playoffs this season, made last-minute deals for Jim Thome and Jon Garland. The Dodgers last week saw their once-comfy lead in the NL West shrink to just 2 games. Though they've rebounded and now hold a relatively safe 5.5 game lead over the Giants and the Rockies (who are leading the chase for the NL Wildcard), the Dodgers are no doubt aware of the fact that Manny Ramirez, since he came back from his suspension for using performance enhancing drugs, is hitting a pedestrian .275/.376/.464 with just 6 HR and 20 RBI in 43 games.
It appears that Thome — who spent the entire season as the White Sox DH — will not unseat the Dodgers' current 1B, James Loney, and will rather step into what we'll call the Matt Stairs role. Thome has zero defensive value at this point in his career, so coming off the bench and swinging for the fences in a pinch hitting role seems about all he's cut out for in the National League. How Thome, a starter his entire career, adjusts to pinch hitting, will alone determine the prudence of this deal.
Garland comes over from division rival Arizona where he was decidedly mediocre, but the Dodgers are a team in desperate need of starting pitching, given that its two best pitchers, Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw, are both very young (24 and 21 respectively) and showing fatigue at their increased workloads, that fourth starter Hiroki Kuroda recently took a batted ball off his head, and that the team has recently turned to the dessicated remains of one-time Phillies cast-off Vicente Padilla for rotation help.
I can't imagine Garland being more than the fourth member of a playoff rotation (after the resurgent Randy Wolf, Billingsley and Kershaw), so ostensibly the Dodgers saw this as a need for fending off the hard-charging Giants and Rockies.
Getting the deal done before midnight last night means both players will be eligible for playoff rosters.
Does this make the Dodgers more formidable? Or does it just show that they're scared?
Well you make a great point. Scared? Or Formidable? Just know the DODGERS are still mad the PHILLIES BEAT THEM LAST YEAR. If they face again in the playoffs and the DODGERS HAVE HOMEFIELD; The Phillies might not repeat! The Line up is more mature and there is a reason they have the best record in the national league?
How many fans will be bringing knives to the stadium for a second year Bill?
The Dodgers are paper tigers and these trades are ridiculous. Thome will only help them as a DH should they get to the World Series, and that won't happen.
@bill "If they face again in the playoffs and the DODGERS HAVE HOMEFIELD; The Phillies might not repeat!" That's a pretty big if, Bill. The Phils and Cardinals are both just a game behind the Dodgers in the overall league standings. "The Line up is more mature and there is a reason they have the best record in the national league?" I'll pretend that the question mark at the end of your pronouncement was intentional and answer your question. Yes, there is a reason the Dodgers are just barely clinging to the best record in the NL: Manny Ramirez was using PEDs, which coincided with their great start, and following Manny's suspension, he and the Dodgers have been .500 team.
Cubs rule. And when they complete the season with a 33-game winning streak starting tonight, the Wild Card Cardinelles will face the Dodgers, thus ensuring that the Phils (who will sweep the Cubs, there I said it) will beat the Dodgers in the NLCS and the Yankees in the Series. Suck on Pujols' roid-riddled big toe, Delaney.
Shhhh. It's feeling a lot like 2006 with everyone focusing on the Dodgers and completely ignoring the quietly very, very good Cardinals.
@Jesse D: I have a problem with your analogy in that the 2006 Cardinals were most certainly not "very, very good." When you finish the regular season 5 games over .500 and wind up winning the World Series, that's called getting lucky. This year's Cardinals would eviscerate the 2006 installment, and in an ugly, bloody fashion.
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| Graywolf, 244 pp., $22, September |
I was too busy finishing The Kite Runner (finally) last week to give any books away, and that's just selfish. So watch the Clog tomorrow for an additional Get Lit trivia game (I'll be offering up a copy of Michelle Huneven's Blame).
In the meantime, there's this: Stephen Elliott's The Adderall Diaries: A memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder, which explores the author's drug dependency/writer's block/obsession with a real-life murder case. Yesterday, CP news intern Morgan Davis reviewed the book for our A&E blog, Critical Mass, and was none too pleased:
The premise of the book is exciting — a murder mystery as written through the memoir of an unrelated man. Elliott approaches the book with a clear idea of what he wants. Heâs going to examine Reiser and Sturgeon and break apart the red herrings in the case (like Sturgeonâs outlandish murder confession), all while examining his own troubled life and making comparisons between the two. But the result, much like Elliottâs life, is more jumbled mess than brilliant exposé.
Throughout the book, Elliott feels unfocused on anything besides how miserable his life is. The story begins with Elliottâs childhood, setting the stage for turmoil with a tale about his lying, seemingly psychotic father. From there, the author jumps from mini-story to mini-story, telling about his troubled youth, his drug addictions, his self-destructive love life and lack of inspiration to write, all while occasionally throwing in something about Reiserâs trial. By the time you actually get to the play-by-play description of the trial, you feel like Elliottâs dragged you on a bad acid trip while watching his home movies.
Burn! But I think you should decide for yourselves.
Here's your trivia question:
What Arizona Cardinal received a four-game suspension as the result of using Adderall to enhance his performance?
E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. And remember, there's always tomorrow.
[UPDATE, 1 p.m.]: Congratulations to Clog reader Liza C., who correctly answered that Ben Patrick is the Adderall-addled Cardinal.
The good people at Grid are throwing a bash this Thursday to celebrate the release of their September back-to-school issue.
Be there or be unsustainable.
September Issue Release Party
Please join us at our issue release party on Thursday, September 3rd, from 5 to 8pm, at the Abbaye, 637 N. 3rd St., Philadelphia. That's right, another great opportunity for you to hobnob with the whole GRID gang, and be the first on your block to see the new issue. There will be happy hour specials, including 1/2 priced appetizers and $2 off draft beer.
We're really excited for you to see our September Issue, which has a back-to-school theme. It's our biggest issue yet, and features stories on school cafeteria food and eco-fashion. More soon!
GRID Magazine
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