A Message from The Twilight Zone: People Are Alike All Over

I've recently been watching episodes of the old Twlight Zone series which first aired in 1959 and ran for many seasons. Last night I saw an episode that brought to mind a real life incident from a century ago. But first, the fictional tale from the Twlight Zone: "People Are Alike All Over." 

In this story two astronauts, Sam Conrad and Warren Marcusson, embark on a mission to Mars. When they crash land on the planet, Marcusson dies, but before he passes away he reassures Conrad that people are alike everywhere, implying they will find kindness and hospitality on Mars.

When their spaceship crash lands, Conrad is alone, a stranger in a strange land. When the Martians open the spacecraft door, however, they are very human looking, and quite friendly. They provide him with a luxurious home that is surprisingly similar to those on Earth. Briefly all seems well, but then Conrad discovers that his new home is actually a cage in a Martian zoo, and he is the exhibit. He opens the drapes and sees a crowd standing there enjoying this new specimen for display. The sign in front of his barred window reads Earthling in His Natural Habitat.

What's ironic is that this really is the way  people are here on earth. The incident I noted in paragraph one is the story of Ota Benga, which I wrote about in February 2019. Ota Benga was a pygmy from the African bush country who had been brought to North America as a sideshow. He was taken first to St. Louis to be displayed in the 1904 World's Fair there, and then to the Bronx Zoo in 1906. Ota Benga was an immediate sensation. His home was in the monkey house. 

It's a true story which you can read more about here: 

Ota Benga Story Challenges Our Illusions About How Enlightened We Are 

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EdNote: It's amusing how space travel was portrayed on TV in the late 1950s. Whether it be Mars or the surface of an asteroid, our space adventurers always seemed to have air to breathe. 

Three Thoughts In Response to Mary Roach's Packing For Mars

The full title of this book is Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. I listened to the audio version of the book while commuting this past eight or ten days. I picked up the book because the topic of a manned mission to Mars has gained a lot of interest in recent years, inspired in part by Buzz Aldrin's passion along these lines and Elon Musk's enthusiasm for this project. Films like The Martian have not diminished the dream either.

But having read more than a few books about the astronaut program over the years, I've repeatedly wondered who in their right mind would want to undertake such a trip? Mary Roach's painstakingly researched collage of details regarding all that is involved with regard to eating, peeing, pooping, bathing and sleeping only serve to affirm what I've intuited all along. It just feels like a most horrid adventure from the outset.

The aim of today's blog post is to share three conclusions I've deduced from reading this book.

First, is Mary Roach's aim in writing Packing For Mars to inform us of the challenges or to dissuade us from actually imagining this is a worthwhile undertaking?

Second, did David Foster Wallace create a new mania for footnotes?
This past month I read Tom Wolfe's The Kingdom of Speech and I couldn't help but notice the preponderance of footnotes in the text. I had never noticed this in Wolfe's work before, having read The Painted Word, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff as well as Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.  Ms. Roach has an absolute ball with her footnotes, and it makes me wonder if David Foster Wallace really did pull a Hemingway on modern lit. That is, he's certainly appeared to have left some fingerprints. Check out his essay on cruise ships, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. More than 130 footnotes in a single essay. It's a stylistic coup.

Third, I couldn't help but wonder, is our discomfort in talking or joking about body functions a particularly American thing. I've read and heard that more primitive cultures have no qualms about making jokes about passing gas and other topics that tend to make us squeamish. Mary Roach holds nothing back. When you look at the subject matter of her other books, you might conclude she's building a reputation on this "insolence."

The Amazon.com book description reads as follows:
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk?

Many of the reviews are five stars, but this one by Rex Xala seemed to more accurately coincide with my personal feelings about this exploration:

Combine equal parts of Sylvia Branzei's 'Grossology' and the Bathroom Readers' Institute's 'Uncle John's Bathroom Reader' series, make mention of something coming out of (or going into) the anus in nearly every chapter, add a thin pretext of future Mars expeditions, then glaze it over with stories of Astro-chimp masturbation and prehensile dolphin penises - Voila! - You now have an idea of what to expect from Mary Roach's 'Packing for Mars.' (Be sure to wash it all down with a nice chilled glass of charcoal filtered urine - Ms. Roach describes this beverage as "sweet...restorative and surprisingly drinkable" - Yum).

Xala does soften his edge with this follow up statement:

Do you believe we will one day be colonizing Mars?

Okay...perhaps the aforementioned description of 'Packing for Mars' is hyperbolic and a little bit unfair. To her credit, Ms. Roach seems to have put forth painstaking efforts in her research (she also includes long, ancillary foot notes on almost every page of her book). Moreover, through her emails and interviews with cosmonauts, astronauts, NASA personnel, etc., she manages to coax some rather candid information about seldom discussed issues/problems associated with space travel (e.g., personal hygiene, lavatory practices, sexual activity, etc.) Parts of this book were truly insightful, and from that perspective, I say "kudos" to Ms. Roach for her efforts.

This latter paragraph does a good job of indicating how anal Ms. Roach can be about her devotion to detail. If you are a writer, you will readily grasp that she has done an immense amount of research here. She clearly found ways to gain access to things most people would never have attempted to find, such as logs of all the astronauts conversations. She didn't stop there. Her sleuthing through cosmonaut history proved equally enlightening. Why did NASA first send monkeys into space whereas the Russians sent dogs? Ms. Roach answers this question and many others that you may have never thought to ask.

At the end of the day I appreciated the information packed into this well-researched volume. In the event that my friends or children of friends become mesmerized with the notion of planting their feet on Mars one day, I will feed them this dose of reality. At least they will know what they're getting into. It won't be pretty, though it will undoubtedly be historic.

Meantime, life goes on.... 

Close Encounter of the Mars Kind

They used to call it the angry red planet. Because of its proximity, fourth planet from the sun and first beyond our own, astronomers have given it a lot of attention over the years. Named after the Roman god of war, its ruddy color is due to the iron oxide content of its surface, much like Sedona in the Southwest, or portions of the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota.

Tonight, and for the next few nights, Mars will be very near to the earth, relatively speaking... a mere 60 million miles away. For amateur astronomers, it won't get any better than this for more than five years. Unfortunately, the forecast tonight in my neck of the woods is below zero, not the most thrilling for setting up a telescope and standing outside. (Six below right this sec and feels like -22.) But the sky is clear and Mars will be on display at its brilliant best if you know where to look. The only things brighter from our vantage point are Venus, the Moon and the Sun... and Jupiter most of the time.

Did you know that there are currently three spacecraft from earth orbiting Mars? And on the surface of Mars are two active mechanical rovers, along with the litter of other failed landing craft.

Many websites have info on this week's event. Wired.com has a good collection of links, too, not only to Mars photos, but to other collections of images by astrophotographers. And for rank beginners this site will help you locate our red buddy with it polar ice caps, craters, valleys and deserts.

For more info on our near-Mars experience, start here.

For something a little different, a lesson for Earthlings, read Peter Opack's lament, The Empty Skies of Mars.

Buzz Aldrin: He’s Still Out There

One of the most powerful autobiographies I read two decades ago was Buzz Aldrin's Return To Earth (1973). Aldrin, the second human to put foot on the moon, candidly talks about the dream, the fulfillment of that dream, the pressures he was under at the time, and his regrets, because here he was, standing on the moon, but with eight hours of tests to conduct in four hours he couldn't just take a deep breath and take it in. A man is not a machine or a robot, but has a soul and heart, and fifteen seconds to stand in awe was not enough.

The pressures didn't let up after the return. These guys, Armstrong and Aldrin, and several others that followed in their footsteps, were paraded around the globe as international heroes, an "in your face" statement that we had achieved the impossible and we had done it first. This was Cold War posturing, and like good little foot soldiers Aldrin & company were expected to play the game. The strain of maintaining a happy face while feeling alienated and inwardly confused proved too much for Aldrin, and a nervous breakdown swept him out of the limelight.

The book is candid, and illuminating because of its candor. One of Aldrin's regrets was that he kept his mouth shut while NASA was making certain bad decisions. As result Aldrin, at age 80, has determined to be more vocal about the direction NASA is going as it pursues a second lunar space race.

The August issue of Popular Mechanics carries a feature story by Buzz Aldrin called "A Bolder Mission." Aldrin states emphatically that the current plan is too timid. Our sights need to be set on Mars.

I know many people who question the space program's viability altogether. Other than prestige, warm fuzzies and a few moon rocks, what do we get? Supporters will point to all the technology advances that emerged from the initial space race.

But Aldrin, who even invented a concept called the Mars Cycler that will get us to Mars more efficiently, is adamant that NASA must reconsider its trajectory over the next 25 years. In a CNN piece he states, "What we truly need is not more Cold War-style competition but a destination in space that offers great rewards for the risks to achieve it. I believe that destination must be homesteading Mars, the first human colony on another world.

"By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface."

It's obvious that for many, this is their life passion. This makes them very persuasive. But is this where our tax dollars should go? Actually, Aldrin even has an answer for that. If lunar exploration fails to pay for itself with what it discovers there, then it should be scrapped.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Mistake Proofing

Mistake proofing, or making things “idiot proof” as some engineers crudely call it, is a process in which a factor is designed in so as to prevent mistakes from occurring. Here are some examples from daily life that you may have encountered from time to time.

Filing cabinets can fall on you due to the altered center of gravity if you opened all the drawers at once. So they are designed in a way that makes it possible to open only one drawer at a time. This occasionally gets frustrating, but is actually a safety feature.

The old 3.5 inch floppy discs had a beveled corner which had to be on the right as you stuck the disc into the slot of your computer. This kept people from putting discs in upside down.

The safety bar on my push lawn mower is there so that I can’t stick my hand into the blades while the motor is running. The motor cuts off when I let go of the handle.

Circuit breakers keep you from putting too many electric devices into an outlet that would draw so much current it melts the wires and causes a fire. This is a wonderful safety feature which we take for granted.

The little hole near the top front of a sink is a mistake proofing device that keeps you from flooding the house by accidentally leaving the water running with the trap closed.

OK, now that we know what it is to make something mistake proof, what can we do to mistake proof the rest of our lives? How can we have mistake proof relationships? Is there some way to mistake proof our marriages? Ever notice how some men and women always get involved with the wrong kinds of people? How do they do that? Is there a safety feature that can be injected into social relationships that keeps such bad pairings from occurring? Can we mistake proof our social encounters so as to avoid wrecking a good time we've had together?

Wouldn't it be great if we could mistake proof our tongues so we never said things that hurt people or caused misunderstandings?

How can we mistake proof our hiring processes in business, so as to always get the right person for the job?

And what were hanging chads all about in Florida? Was there not enough thought given to making those election ballot machines mistake proof? If voters screwed up somehow, the blame must be laid at the feet of those who created the voting machines.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could mistake proof our elections so we don’t ever elect the wrong people?

I’ve read that there are quite a few instances in which the wrong person has been put in prison for a crime he or she did not commit. And sometimes, as it would appear happened in the O.J. case, the guilty party gets away with murder. How can we mistake proof our justice system?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Another Inconvenient Truth

The global warming crowd has two items on its agenda. The first is to convince us that global warming is a given. The second is to convince us that this global warming is caused by man made behaviors that produce greenhouse gases.

The problem is that the facts do not line up with the realities. And here is the real Inconvenient Truth: How do SUV emissions explain why the polar ice caps are melting on Mars? I want to know.

Al Gore has stated that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The What Would Jesus Drive PR campaign five years ago was built around the same premise. Ice caps melt, poor people in coastal regions will die. Proof that Americans driving SUVs are self-centered, self-serving bums.

Last week I learned that Wikipedia has active thought police who make sure that only the Global Warming message gets posted on Wikipedia. Opponents are shut down through vigilant PC editors who make sure "the people" speak with one voice.

There are no smokestack industries on Mars. No SUVs or pickup trucks. So why do Martian ice caps melt? Maybe it's solar flares. There are scientists pointing this out. But there is a little too much noise to hear.

Here's something I wrote five years ago addressing this from a different angle. It may be even more relevant today. The "What Would Jesus Drive?" Doomsayers