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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?"
Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important
Because Mars IS more interesting than some boneheads chasing each other around a dirt track. Humanity needs to move on.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
The Olympics are self-important beyond their entertainment (or any other) value. Not interested.
I'm pretty sure I can follow both. And be interested in both.
Join me in celebrating the wonders of our world.
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.
I'll care when the Olympics are ON Mars.
It's all part of the Space Nutter religion. Complete disdain for normal human activity, but somehow caring about the entire species getting off this rock. Presumably, the "species" is limited to the Cheetos-dust-covered, basement-dwelling morbidly obese translucently pale worshipers of 1960s Space Age propaganda.
Still pissed that your parents wouldn't send you to space camp?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
No, no - the Australian term is "budgie smugglers".
It's exciting to see the fastest person alive.
I've seen him. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe enjoying a pint, when I saw someone with a wallet in his hand running, oh, about twice the speed of Ben Johnson, leaving a pair of pursuing cops in the dust. They wouldn't have caught him on motorbikes.
No, wait, fast as he was, he's not the fastest person alive. That would be the trio of Stafford, Young and Ceman. It's amazing that these ~80 year olds hold the record.
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.