We come in peace, love and flaming ineptitude
As Western string theorists too often wind up hogging all the fun, famed cosmologist and author (OK, pop-cultured simpletons, and inspiration for the paraplegic with the computer synth voice on "Family Guy") Stephen Hawking toured China last week, prognosticating a rather grim future for our collective kind:
Despite his administration's storied and stellar history of utterly ignoring scientists, given President Bush's talk about spending billions on a mission to Mars a while back and his still flaccid approval numbers, it's more than a little disturbing that one of the most respected minds on the planet is telling us we should seriously consider colonizing space so some representatives of our species can evacuate when we invariably destroy this sphere and bring about our own extinction.
Good thing we can still take comfort in the fact that Dubya, standup comic extraordinaire, would quite possibly be too busy cracking ill-advised jokes about Hawking's physical impairments to listen to his argument if made audience to it directly.
And at the moment, his leadership team is probably too giddy at the prospect of finally getting to use their precious missile defense system against North Korea to pay hypothetical interstellar refugees much more heed than they've paid the tangible ones right here on this orb.
For though getting a delightfully novel solution to the Guantanamo problem is always a possibility, we would probably just wind up spending billions on a luxury escape pod for a select group of neocons, evangelicals and cryogenically preserved Bush family members so the "dynasty" can spread its tentacles of visionary leadership out across the cosmos–plus just enough poor people and ethnic and religious minorities to keep them all well-fed and active.
But with any luck, we've still got a good century to figure it out–and if yet another Bush is in the White House at that point, perhaps we'll also have acquired the wisdom to just take the hint and fold already.
"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."As not to be a total realistic downer, "He added that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth."
Despite his administration's storied and stellar history of utterly ignoring scientists, given President Bush's talk about spending billions on a mission to Mars a while back and his still flaccid approval numbers, it's more than a little disturbing that one of the most respected minds on the planet is telling us we should seriously consider colonizing space so some representatives of our species can evacuate when we invariably destroy this sphere and bring about our own extinction.
Good thing we can still take comfort in the fact that Dubya, standup comic extraordinaire, would quite possibly be too busy cracking ill-advised jokes about Hawking's physical impairments to listen to his argument if made audience to it directly.
And at the moment, his leadership team is probably too giddy at the prospect of finally getting to use their precious missile defense system against North Korea to pay hypothetical interstellar refugees much more heed than they've paid the tangible ones right here on this orb.
For though getting a delightfully novel solution to the Guantanamo problem is always a possibility, we would probably just wind up spending billions on a luxury escape pod for a select group of neocons, evangelicals and cryogenically preserved Bush family members so the "dynasty" can spread its tentacles of visionary leadership out across the cosmos–plus just enough poor people and ethnic and religious minorities to keep them all well-fed and active.
But with any luck, we've still got a good century to figure it out–and if yet another Bush is in the White House at that point, perhaps we'll also have acquired the wisdom to just take the hint and fold already.
posted by Holly at 2:12 AM
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