Friday, May 22, 2009
Amazing Pictures
Here's a link to a series of pictures from the most recent US space mission to repair the Hubble telescope. In looking at these pictures, I am amazed to realize that I have lost so much of the childhood wonder I felt for space and how humans explore it. I don't consider it a big deal to have lost the amazement; when you think about all the shit one has to deal with in one's personal life starting with college and moving on into the Real World, it takes far more of a conscious, deliberate effort to stay amazed than it does just to shrug it off, crack another beer, and turn on the television or computer.
But these pictures are... something about them, or maybe it's a combination of these pictures and my mood, something is taking me back to what I felt as a child which is amazement at what machines humans have developed for exploration and how vast space and the universe around us is. When you look at these pictures and you look at something as relatively mundane as the launching pads for the shuttle, it's easy to dismiss them as something that you've seen a thousand times whether it was those actual objects or ones like them. It's hard to get excited about a big chunk of metal when the Republicans are saying something crazy about Obama or some evil paparazzi has taken an upskirt photo of some starlet climbing out of a car (and hey, even though the photographer was wrong for taking the picture and the website was wrong for posting it, there's nothing wrong with me looking because hey, it's not like I approve or anything and yeah, I know that I'm generating page views which is just going to encourage things like this to happen again but believe me, I'm not doing anything wrong it's everyone else's fault).
You look at this big chunk of metal and you don't think about all the manhours (and womanhours) and billions of dollars that have been poured into designing and building this thing, this thing which looks just like some generic piece of human industrial folly with lots of piping, and you don't think about how incredible it is that this one thing has cost more money and time and engineering genius than could've been generated on a whole continent over a period of centuries in times past, and you don't think about how this is representative of man's redifining that thing which defines all humans which is the Earth, that all humans and all animals are of the Earth but now we're building machines to take us beyond all of that, machines that could redefine our existence.
You look and you don't see. You look and you don't feel. You are numbed to so many of the things that make life so interesting and so amazing. Then while you're taking your lunch break you click on a link that takes you to pictures that make you feel like a wondering child again and you want to cry at your desk because life is so beautiful and so amazing and it's so hard to remember any of this with all the bullshit and poverty and lying politicians and manipulative media companies that define the world as we know it.
So you look and you wonder and you feel amazement and joy. Then you consume some more caffeine, take a piss, and get back to work.
But these pictures are... something about them, or maybe it's a combination of these pictures and my mood, something is taking me back to what I felt as a child which is amazement at what machines humans have developed for exploration and how vast space and the universe around us is. When you look at these pictures and you look at something as relatively mundane as the launching pads for the shuttle, it's easy to dismiss them as something that you've seen a thousand times whether it was those actual objects or ones like them. It's hard to get excited about a big chunk of metal when the Republicans are saying something crazy about Obama or some evil paparazzi has taken an upskirt photo of some starlet climbing out of a car (and hey, even though the photographer was wrong for taking the picture and the website was wrong for posting it, there's nothing wrong with me looking because hey, it's not like I approve or anything and yeah, I know that I'm generating page views which is just going to encourage things like this to happen again but believe me, I'm not doing anything wrong it's everyone else's fault).
You look at this big chunk of metal and you don't think about all the manhours (and womanhours) and billions of dollars that have been poured into designing and building this thing, this thing which looks just like some generic piece of human industrial folly with lots of piping, and you don't think about how incredible it is that this one thing has cost more money and time and engineering genius than could've been generated on a whole continent over a period of centuries in times past, and you don't think about how this is representative of man's redifining that thing which defines all humans which is the Earth, that all humans and all animals are of the Earth but now we're building machines to take us beyond all of that, machines that could redefine our existence.
You look and you don't see. You look and you don't feel. You are numbed to so many of the things that make life so interesting and so amazing. Then while you're taking your lunch break you click on a link that takes you to pictures that make you feel like a wondering child again and you want to cry at your desk because life is so beautiful and so amazing and it's so hard to remember any of this with all the bullshit and poverty and lying politicians and manipulative media companies that define the world as we know it.
So you look and you wonder and you feel amazement and joy. Then you consume some more caffeine, take a piss, and get back to work.
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