Zeitgeist Zephyr

Despite the absolute hilarity and outrageousness of John McCain’s recent ads against Obama, a serious consequence of these ads has arisen.  Obama’s lead in the polls is rapidly closing, indicating how truly brainwashed the general American public has become as a result of negative TV ads.  (That’s not just my opinion, what else has happened in the last week that could lead to a drop in the polls?) The harsh reality of negative campaigning is that if an accusation is made a certain number of times, whether it’s true, false or an opinion, it’ll become a fact and even believable.   

Watching TV doesn’t allow a person to fully process the information they are taking in.  That’s why it is relatively easy for Hollywood to accomplish the primary goal of making a good movie: making it believable.  As long as you can keep the attention of the audience, they’ll watch it and follow the story line and believe it as though it’s actually happening.  The same thing goes with campaign ads and even the 24 hour news networks to an extent. If you want to know the candidate, read up on them.  

If you don’t want to take the time to read their websites and all of their positions, at least open a newspaper or read an article online once and awhile.  By reading, you’ll be able to process the information better form your own opinion on an issue, rather than being spoon fed “spin” from the opposing candidate.    

I just hope that even though Obama is now 5 points behind McCain that he continues to run an honest campaign without the smear and spin ads that John McCain has been perpetuating.  The sweetest wins and the best losses are those which are the culmination of job done honestly. 

Link to the Barack Obama site Fight the Smears

I would include a link to a page fighting smears against McCain, but I could find no such page.  If you find a page, tell me! 

Since 1976, the only man made objects to explore Mars have been robots.  These robots have each been unique and have provided a wealth of new knowledge about Mars that we had not known previously.  Like any good “science experiment” (let’s face it, that’s what most of NASA’s spacecraft are anyway), they also usually bring up more questions than answers.

As an advocate of space exploration, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a human presence in any exploration situation.  Sure, it doesn’t take a constant human presence to monitor cameras in orbit around a planet (even our own), but when it comes to surface exploration, you get more ‘bang for your buck’ if you have a human instead of a robot doing all of the work.

A perfect example is the Mars Phoenix lander.  Like other Mars missions before it, it has a lot of key elements that would be present in a human explorer.  It has several sets of eyes to explore the surrounding terrain and to study different points of interest.  It also has a robotic arm, that allows it to touch the Martian surface and sample the area immediately around its landing site.  All of these, when talked about in layman’s terms, are “human” elements of the robot.

But despite our best efforts to emulate ourselves in robots, the fact is that at this point in time, technologically speaking, the perfect machine is still man himself.  Sure, we could wait fifty to a hundred years before robotics and artificial intelligence catch up to something approaching the abilities of a six-year-old human, but do we really want to wait that long to get key answers to questions that remain about Mars?

Phoenix recently conducted several tests searching for the building blocks of life.  Key chemical signatures in the Martian regolith that might have some similarities to the soil here on Earth (which obviously supports life.)  However new tests have revealed that, despite some chemicals being present that might be friendly to life, an oxidizing chemical, perchlorate, may have been found that is extremely harmful to life.  Here’s where it gets good:  it may simply be contamination from the lander, brought from Earth.

Of course, this being the basis of my argument, it has some initial flaws.  Deep cleaning a robot is easier than making sure that germy humans don’t carry something to Mars.  But there’s another thing that humans can do that Phoenix can’t: if we’re getting some anomalous results from one sample, move 20, 50, 100 feet away and get another sample.  Phoenix can’t do that and even the robust Mars Rovers that are still going after 4 years can’t do that with ease. 

My point?  Despite being cost prohibitive for one single nation to carry the burden of a manned Mars mission, the scientific results that can be gained from just one mission could easily exceed hundreds of smaller robotic missions.  The fact of the matter is that we can think and react faster than robots and we can just do more than robots can.  Results might not be immediate, but having a man on the ground to give and recieve instant feedback on what rock to pick up and why is a better use of money than limiting our search for life to a 20 square foot area of Mars every time we send up an immobile lander that may have God knows how many problems.

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Image credit: http://www.marsonearth.org/images/2001/080801/P8080014-HumanOnMars.JPG

I love America.  Where else in the world can so many people have so many differing ideas, and yet at the same time live in harmony?  It’s a beautiful thing and it’s what makes our democracy great.  As much as I respect the opinions of others, I do get agitated from time to time when people start talking and have no idea what they’re talking about.  What’s worse is these people gain followers.  The mindless following the clueless.  One of the quirks of democracy.

I’m a bit of Facebook addict, meaning I have a profile and visit it a few times each day.  Facebook has really entered center stage when it comes to people spreading ideas ranging from the philanthropic to the insane.  Groups pop up and can grow to mind boggling sizes nearly overnight if the right message is conveyed and the right connections established.  It is no longer uncommon to see groups that have hundreds of thousands of members and some groups have reached out to nearly 1 million or even 2 million of Facebook’s estimated 80 million users. 

Unfortunately, you get groups that pop up with people perpetuating false ideas and they invariably grow, with hundreds of thousands of people buying in to the bull.  One such group that I recently encountered was spreading all of the common place rumors about Barack Obama.  I won’t include any excerpts, but its essentially along the lines of him being a Communist Muslim who wants to tax the rich and give to the poor and that giving speeches in Europe somehow makes him un-American.  Of course said in a way that anything good coming from his direction is a bad thing (including giving to the poor.)

I normally try to steer clear of this kind of bull (which is what it amounts to.)  Not only is it usually false, it can also be contradictory to what the person even believes.  For instance, the person who made this group makes several references to Obama’s name sounding like ”Osama” and that he must be a Muslim because of that, but then in the exact same paragraph says he doesn’t have anything against his name or religion. 

I guess everyone is entitled to their own view of the world, but it unfortunately comes at the expense of the mental health of those who try to digest it.  If I hear it on the radio, I want to cut off my ears, if I see it on the Internet or TV, I want to gouge out my eyes with a blunt object.  It’s no wonder that America is so sought after for its freedom of ideas, and yet despised for the same reason.  

In short, people have too much power to be clueless and control the mindless, and what makes this all so funny in the end, is that I’m as guilty as anyone!