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The Daily Dose/July 23, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Don't Get Your Shorts In A Knot - Pics Will Return!
Notes from around your Human Experience...
Thought For The Day: Any society, if it is to flourish instead of merely survive, must strive to transcend its own limits. - Andrew Chaikin, A Man On The Moon.
MAIL CALL: We weren't bombarded, but we did get a couple of emails following our last column, which lamented the fact we have yet to put a man on Mars and more or less extolled the virtues of getting our tails back to the moon and onward to Mars. Some agreed, and some wondered if that money might not be better spent on making things better here on Earth.
The Peanut Gallery: We don't think so, and we really don't want to hear any whining about how money earmarked for space exploration could be better spent saving the poor from themselves. Since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in January of 1964, this country has spent trillions of dollars on getting everyone above the poverty line and it hasn't worked.
Get Your Writer's Shack Policy Right Here: And, for the most part, it hasn't been money well spent because all we've done is create a class of people who have become dependent on government handouts instead of citizens who grab the bull by the horns and make their time on this planet serve them, instead of merely serving time.
So There: And you know what else? For all those critics who decried our lunar voyages as whims and larks, we stopped going the moon in 1972 and there are still people without roofs over their heads and enough food to eat! There always have been, too. From time immemorial mankind has had to deal with the issue of those who either could not or would not provide for themselves.
Democracy's Dark Side: And it's always going to be that way, too, especially in a country like ours where the purpose of government is not to insure its citizen's financial security, but to insure they have the right to do with their lives as they see fit. What we get out of that life is, to a great extent, up to us, though we do concede some are born with absolutely no chance and others get hit by busses in the prime of their life. That's the way the world is built.
Numbers Game: The Apollo program cost roughly $25 billion, from the time President Kennedy casually mentioned the moon in a speech before a Joint Session of Congress in May, 1961, until the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flew in July, 1975. In today's dollars this is about $117 billion - more or less, because there are a variety of ways of computing time-period relative dollar values. The new moon program is estimated at just over $100 billion, less in relative dollars, than we spent the first time around.
Thought For The Minute: Earlier this year New York Governor David Paterson, while admitting he and his wife had once cheated on each other, said government is just a reflection of the people it represents, in which case it should be no surprise we haven't gone to Mars yet. A look at our personal spending shows a citizenry that really doesn't care about anything substantive.
A Long, Hard, Look: Honestly, though, is this going to be a worse expenditure of funds than what we currently blow our money on? We spend $5 billion a year on presents for our pets! We spend $15 billion a year on bottled water, a product we can get for virtually nothing from our kitchen sinks!
Dry, Technical Matter: This is moderately interesting because water from the kitchen sink is exactly what we are getting in a bottle of water. We are not making that up. Anywhere from a quarter to a full one-third of bottled water is taken directly from municipal water supplies, and provides yet another opportunity to whine about how this country continues to go straight to the nether regions in a hand basket.
The Smoking Lamp Is Lighted In All Authorized Spaces: Americans also spend $31 billion a year on tobacco products, which requires us to spend over a quarter of a trillion (T) dollars treating various tobacco-related illnesses.
While We're At It: Americans blow half a trillion (T) dollars on games of chance every year, not that we're complaining because we live in Nevada and this fact means we don't pay state income tax, which we enjoy not doing.
FunFact: NASA's budget for fiscal year 2009 is $17.6 billion.
Editor's Note: Throughout the 2008 baseball season, and in honor of the last Chicago Cubs World Series victory, On This Date is pleased to take a look back at the 1908 Cubs season.
NO GAME TODAY: Following a lousy 7-10-1 homestand, the Cubs spend July 23, 1908 traveling to Brooklyn to begin a mammoth 18-game road trip that will take them to every National League city except St. Louis and Cincinnati. After four against the Superbas, they go to Boston for five games, Philadelphia for four, New York for three and Pittsburgh for two. They do not return home until August 15, when they host the Phillies.
On The Scoreboard: Brooklyn beat the Pirates 4-2 in the only National League game. With the Pirate loss, the Cubs pick up a half game, moving to 2.5 games back, still in third place. The Giants are in second place, two games back.
Any Other On This Date Action? We Still Have Some Room: No, this was a really slow day throughout history. The ice cream cone may have been invented on this date, or it may not have been, but that's about it. With the current Apollo kick we are on you would think we could muster up something regarding Apollo 11, but even they had already lifted off from the moon and were uneventfully heading back to Earth on July 23, 1969.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The PGA Championship, being the championship of the Professional Golfers Association, does not invite amateurs, much less issue prizes to the one with the lowest score.
Today's Stumper: Which Apollo mission was the only manned, non-orbital lunar flight? - Answer next time!
Threats? Recipes? Trivia question answers? Email The Writer's Shack Here!
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