Why You Should Be More Interested In Mars Than the Olympics

New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler: "Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"

Comments

Yea but

[Osgeld]

Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important

Re:Yea but

[girlintraining]

Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important

It's not more important. The Olympics is science, in the sense that we get together periodically to empirically test our understanding of the limits of the (unaltered) human body. The results have practical application. For example: A convict escaped 96 minutes ago from an overturned van. Uninjured, what is the maximum distance he could have travelled? That's science; although someone who double majored in physics is right now spitting at his computer and yelling something about it being as scientific as an etch-a-sketch is to art, but there it is.

Secondly, it's a meaningless comparison: Space exploration tests a very different human quality than the Olympics does. The Olympics tests human physical attributes. Outer space tests human intellectual attributes. In a sense, NASA is our entry into the intellectual Olympics.

But let's be honest: Most of the time, watching science is very boring. It's not a spectator sport -- it's something you do. MythBusters is one of the few examples of where science can be portrayed in a format that is entertaining. Most of the time, it's arduous, painfully slow, occasionally expensive, and often humbling. As well, people don't get excited when the game is over and the announcer says "I don't know." People get very angry when their spectator sport doesn't have a definite outcome. Scientists, on the other hand, get excited by "I don't know." In fact, it's one of the only professions where "I don't know" gets you the respect and admiration of your peers... assuming they have to admit the same.

And you know what, watching bouncing, sweaty boobies, or a beautifully sculped man moving about is okay too. It'd be like me asking you to stop watching Heroes and watch Battlestar Galactica instead. You don't want BSG, you want fucking Heroes. So okay, watch your Heroes, and I'll watch my BSG, and let us both be happy, instead of arguing over which is better.

Re:Mars

[Dan541]

Because Mars IS more interesting than some boneheads chasing each other around a dirt track. Humanity needs to move on.

Also because

[Kohath]

The Olympics are self-important beyond their entertainment (or any other) value. Not interested.

Re:Also because

[mfwitten]

A quick googling shows that about 10960 athletes from 204 countries have come together in competition within one city. If you can't find the value in that, then I feel sorry for you.

Re:Also because

[viperidaenz]

a billion people from all over the world have all come together to join Facebook. I still find no value in it though.

Re:Also because

[Kohath]

Business is peaceful. People from any different countries come together for business every day. Only they do it without the self-important hype.

Not exclusive...

[sackbut]

I'm pretty sure I can follow both. And be interested in both.

Re:Not exclusive...

[girlintraining]

Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving

No. They're both about human achievement. I can't think of anything in modern history that was solely the work of a single person. Even these athletes, as impressive as their performances are, depend on large numbers of people to realize their potential. In this, our race around a rubberized track, and our reach for the stars stem from a universal truth: All human achievement comes from cooperation. We can achieve almost nothing, even our own survival, alone. But together, there is almost no limit to our potential, individually and collectively. This is the message of science, the message we brought with us to the moon, the message left on archaic recordings in the ships we've sent beyond the reach of our own sun.

In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.

Your time would be better spent thinking less about yourself. Our greatest failing as a people is in the value we place on individuality, to the point where many now compete for limited resources while few live in superfluous abundance. In so doing, our collective and individual potentials both are limited to far less than what we're capable of. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you (and everyone who reads this) needs to spend less time fighting each other, trying to prove themselves right, arguing, and to begin to work together. This requires that we sacrifice our individuality in order to become part of something far greater than ourselves. Of all the subcultures in western society, the scientists and engineers understand and practice this best. Learn from their example.

I'm capable of being interested in both.

[mfwitten]

Join me in celebrating the wonders of our world.

People should

[Anonymous Coward]

People should like what I like not what they like. Only my opinion matters and if you have any interests I don't have then you are wrong and should change that.

How much of an asshole do you have to be to hold an opinion like this? Some people enjoy sports and some people like polishing rocks. The world is a diverse collection of people and just because you might not care for the Olympics doesn't mean its wrong for any one else to do so.

Re:People should

[John Hasler]

Publicly funded sports y and facilities can be a spur for economic growth...

Nonsense. Commercial sports activitities such as the olympics are entertainment. They are fine for those who choose to expend their own resources on them but funding them with tax money forces people who get no value from them to pay for them and diverts resources away from productive uses. They no more "spur economic growth" than would hiring people to go around smashing windows in order to "create jobs" for glaziers.

Olympics can teach too

[EmperorOfCanada]

The Olympics can teach us all kinds things about government corruption and inefficiencies. How the IOC is allowed to change the laws of a country ranging from IP to road laws. How the IOC gets a country verging on bankruptcy to spend around 20 billion dollars so that the 1%, the VIPs, and a token handful of us rif-raf can feel important. One the best examples of this is how the VIPs got so many tickets that the stands are half empty for venues that are "Sold out". Another is that the city with some of the worst traffic in the western world created lanes just like they had in Soviet Russia that were limited to well connected people.

All this to watch various countries send their OCD athletes who have nearly destroyed themselves try for a medal.

Bread and circuses.

The only silver lining is that the company that was an inch away from privatizing the police in Britain has humiliated itself to a point where this won't happen. Another study in where a company that can't find its ass with its hands was able to schmooze its way into the corridors of power and milk this single schmoozing skill for billions.

If the money and effort (considering what that many athletes working out for that many hours must also be worth) put into the Olympics were instead were to have been put into science and space exploration we wouldn't be watching a car sized robot touch down on Mars but would be watching the amateur Olympic team representing Mars participate in a scaled down Solar Olympics.

The analogy seems problematic somehow

[93 Escort Wagon]

So, if the golf analogy is correct - the rover was launched from earth and, after that, has not made use of any sort of propulsion technology for steering, course correction, or braking? That IS pretty impressive...

I'm a pretty pathetic golfer, but I bet my scores would improve dramatically if I had a team of people steering the ball after I hit it. Getting it to New Zealand might still be a bit of a reach, though.

(The rover is darn cool, seriously. I'm more interested in it than in most of the Olympic events.)

Re:Mars

[DragonTHC]

I see your point, but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness.

It's exciting to see the fastest person alive.

Re:Ah, well no....

[Anrego]

Diplomacy and international politics are also both important for our continued survival. For that matter so is the global economy.

All the science in the world isn't going to help us if we blow ourselves up, or our system of managing resources and man power falls apart. You ask someone who works in either of these areas.. I mean who is really involved.. and they will pretty much parrot _exactly_ what you said, with appropriate fields replaced.

Everyone wants to put their area of interest in a special category. Everyone can make a case that the thing _they_ care about is really the most critical and anyone who doesn't get that just doesn't understand reality.

Not fully correct

[aepervius]

For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore. What we test nowadays, are two factors : how far can we push materials to get an advantage, and, to a thankfully lesser extent, how far can we push human modification/doping and get away with it without getting caught.

Re:Mars

[fiannaFailMan]

1 - Organized sport has largely supplanted war as a means of getting one over one one's rivals. Imperial pissing contests now involve athletic achievement, not who can build the biggest battleship with the biggest phallic symbol guns. I think humanity has moved on quite a bit in many ways, and organized sport is one tool that has helped.

2 - The opening ceremony of the Olympics gave pride of place to honouring two engineers who changed the world: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Tim Berners Lee. (If I were directing I would have tried to add Frank Whittle in there, but I'm not griping, I thought it was a powerful show and I found it very moving. Probably helped that I watched the BBC's coverage, anyone who watched it on NBC seemed to complain about it.)

Yes the Curiosity mission is exciting and I'll be following it with great interest. But I'll also be watching sports. Hell I'm even going to watch tomorrow's Formula 1 Grand Prix. It is possible to do two things at once, especially when there's about 7 billion of us.

Re:Mars

[Aryden]

The olympics have been around since the 8th century B.C. Exactly how many wars do you really think they have stopped? Probably none at all.

Depends on what is easy

[Snaller]

"Go back a few centuries and fat chicks were teh hotness."

It usually depends on what is "easy" - when food was expensive and harder to get, being fat meant you were rich and special. Today the cheapest food is the most unhealthy crap that makes you fat.

Just like once most people were outside working in the fields etc, and they all got suntanned - so the in thing was to be as pale as possible. That showed you were rich and powerful, because you could stay inside and didn't have to work.
Today most people have to work inside, in their small offices and thus are very pale. So being tanned means you have time to be outside.

History shows how odd these humans are