The other day a friend of mine posted an interesting item on his blog, Global Neighbourhoods (love that other side of the pond spelling) and asked on Twitter if anyone had read it. I saw the tweet because it was ported over to my Facebook news feed. I answered I hadn’t, but would shortly . . . which I did. Shel makes an interesting point that, regardless of how one may feel about Newt Gingrich – and we both agree we wouldn’t vote for him even if Hell froze over – his idea about establishing a colony on the Moon isn’t such a bad one. Consider that President Kennedy’s call to put a man on the Moon preceded an unprecedented growth in innovation through the technologies that needed to be developed in order to accomplish the feat required by the Apollo program.
Shel goes on to ask that we think about what such an endeavor might mean for us, regardless of the situation we are in right now. As he says:
“It seems to me, that what makes us unique from other animals is that our entire history is based on going beyond what we have done. Before we consider the benefits or catastrophes, we simply have to see if we can do it.
“Why should man walk on the moon? Because some day, we can build a colony on it? What will we do then? Look around and see what else we can do, where else we can go, we can learn more about the moon, and thus about the earth and our universe and how life got to here and anywhere else that it might exist.
“And yes the cost is huge at a time when people are losing their homes. But to me, the cost is an investment, one that will create a great many new jobs that may be more appealing than the manufacturing our current president seems to be focused upon.
“What we learn along the way will give the world new technology that is likely to pervade into computing, science, medicine, earth sciences, the classroom and places that we cannot yet imagine.”
I responded the next day in a comment. As of the date of this posting, it still says it’s waiting moderation but, hopefully, by the time most read this it will have been posted. Suffice it to say I agree with Shel’s assessment of the technologies it will create and that it is an investment. I also have another, long-standing reason I believe we should go back to the Moon and establish a permanent presence there, which I have set forth in my comment. I have also written about it several times in various posts on this blog. I encourage you to read Shel’s post. Tell him I sent you.
Photo Courtesy of Dallas1200am
February 6th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Spam tends to come in batches, often from the same server and very often at off times like Saturday at 4 am, Thanksgiving, etc.
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February 6th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Rick a good piece and I envy your headline. I have no idea why this got caugt in comment moderation. My settings are to allow anything that is not clearly spam. Could be that the length confused the filter. It’s posted now.
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February 6th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Thanks, Shel. It was Don’s comment that gave me the idea (for the title, that is). In case I didn’t say it elsewhere, I am learning how to be a good blogger from people like you, Euan Semple, and JP Rangaswami. Reading you guys is helping me open up to what’s possible and how to share what I have to offer without fear. I think I’m getting the hang of it. Thanks again.
PS – I’m thankful for Akismet. I assume you have the same spam killer. If not for it, I would have had to moderate thousands of spam comments just in the last year.
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February 6th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Yep, Akismet is stuendous… but it must be what filtered you 🙂
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February 6th, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Yeah. Oh well, we’ll give it a 9.9. Do you get absolutely inundated? I’ve had as many as 40 or so spam comments filtered in one day!!!!
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