RANT: MARSMARSMARS!

 

        Mars. Miles and miles...and miles. Of Mars.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I’m bored to tears with all those photos and vids sent back from Mars these days. It took about five minutes looking at that cold, dry, desolate landscape millions of miles away to get me out into the garden, hoeing. Talk about a gulag!  (A gulag would be a paradise compared to that hellscape.) And not a Martian in sight. Don’t get me wrong, the technology doing all this is incredible: Rockets to the moon! Robots on Mars! Touchdowns on asteroids! Amazing!

Just think of the stories they'll tell a thousand years from now about spaceships that once travelled to other worlds! Imagine! Children will sit, mouths-agape while old ones roll their eyes and cluck their tongues, and parents cover smiles behind their hands as they watch the Teller weave his tales of magic before those assembled. Cries of disbelief will fill the air and soon mix with shrieks and squeals of delicious horror as the minstrel sings and dances and stomps his way across the floor, crafting giant metal tubes and sonic booms, and satellites with his dervish dancing and his wild, wild words. How wonderful! And as ghosts of Mars and dead astronauts fill the children’s dreams later that night, elders will gather around the fire afterwards to ponder and mull, to roll bones and chant, and to ward against night’s returning demons….       

 

Look Fat, here's the deal: There is more life in one small backyard here on Earth than there is on the entire surface of that sad, dead planet. Oh, I know, it must be fascinating for scientists, particularly geologists, to gaze at every nook and cranny, crack and crevice that Perseverance’s cameras can scan as it trundles its way through all the Martian rocks and rubble. They have their own particular interest, of course, and that’s okay. We might learn something about ourselves as we try to understand how Mars evolved or where all its water went, for example. Was there ever life on the planet? Is there life there, today—even a few microbes’ worth? It would be good just to know. 

 

“…and a piece of fucked lettuce!” someone said to me one afternoon as I hitched a ride through southern California, years ago. He was complaining about toppings on a hamburger he’d bought at a roadside diner earlier. Besides the usual condiments, it contained a slice of tomato atop a rather disappointing piece of Romaine. The lettuce was probably picked by migrant workers in the next valley over, but had sat around just a tad too long in the restaurant's kitchen. Tough break. But honestly, that’s all I'd want to see on Mars: just one piece of fucked lettuce!

 

'Nuff said, Jake.

 

 

 

An interesting podcast is a recent one by James Howard Kunstler on the beef industry in the United States from the perspective of a young cattle rancher practicing "regenerative agriculture". Helpful and hopeful. 

And something completely different, a short video on how a Mars colony could (not) start and flourish (i.e. everyone dies horrible deaths on a distant world.) "The First 10,000 Days on Mars." (Basically an Elon Musk tongue-bath and product placement advert. Teslas on Mars! Fucking shoot me!)