In the questions entry, Ross jokingly asked for me to summarize the period in which i was gone. I actually think that everything about humanity can be summed up in the first event that i heard about upon returning.
On July 4th, a NASA projectile successfully intersected with a comet – a “smashing” success. A Russian astrologer became hysterical.
Can’t you just see it? A bunch of NASA boys sitting around stoned off the gourd imagining what they could do for fun. “Dude, i know! Let’s shoot the moon.” “No, dude. That’s too easy. We need to shoot something moving.” “Dude! I know dude! A comet! Let’s shoot a comet!” “Dude!!!”
The result? Probes and projectiles engaged in “deep impact” conveniently placed in the newspaper next to the latest news on “deep throat.” And really, probe or no probe, it’s basically an aiming mission, the million dollar version of the bulls-eye target practice in boys’ bathrooms. As my friend at NASA pointed out, the impact is equivalent to throwing a penny at a 16-wheeler. And can’t you just see the NASA dudes’ faces when a Russian woman started screaming about the deformation of her horoscope? “But can’t you seeeeeee? Nature is defenseless against your masculine ejaculations!”
Some things never change but they do continue to amuse.
Are you familiar with Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals”? It was in Signs a few years back. It’s basically a linguistic analysis of this kind of speech. It’s very, very funny. Very, very phallic.
Here’s something that may be of interest: http://www.livejournal.com/users/crisper/49322.html
You completely made my day
at the very least, suing NASA for disruption of cosmic forces takes a bit of imagination 😉 hehehhe “dude!”
Psh. Chicks.
As the resident astronomer at SIMS, I should point out that 4-5 of the science team on this mission were women (sans penises). Also, it really was quite a bit more than an aiming mission (although that was a big challenge)… we don’t often get to see the gunk from which our solar system was formed. By blasting a chunk out of the comet, we hope to see some of this stuff relatively untouched.
Of course, the prize for funniest deep impact entry that I’ve seen so far goes to Alex Halavais: http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=1181
deep impact seemed like a super cool thing to me… how exciting to lern about the composition of a comet!!
Is aiming to hit a comet with a space probe anything like aiming to hit a ballistic missile with another missile?