Well now they've gone too far.

Damn aliens - I don't even drink coffee, and I think this is over the line.

- Sid

But did they find Nigel the Cat's Facebook page?

What was the name of your friend again, the one you met at Ryerson, the guy in front of the big tire?

- Brenda Allen, BCMEA

 I've just come back from a job interview, and to my surprise (and initial horror) I discovered that at least one of the three interviewers had read a goodly portion of this blog, and asked me questions about some of the postings. 

Now, to be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought to the fact that this blog is a public document.  About a year or so in, I put it under my full name because I wanted to point a prospective employer at it for writing samples (and didn't get the job, either because of or in spite of the blog) and never bothered to delete my last name.  I've actually derived a certain satisfaction from finding the blog when I google my name, but it's never occurred to me that someone else might do a search for my name and end up here.

Having recovered from the experience, I think that I'm going to leave my full name on the site regardless.  I can think of worse introductions to my personal life, and I take pride in some of the postings that I've done, there are three or four of them that are not bad at all. 

The final joke, as I save this as a draft, is that because I obviously need to treat the blog as being accessible to everyone, this posting will never see the light of day unless I get the job.  Terrible thing if my current manager stumbled across this and read that I'd been at a job interview.

- Sid

P.S. Are we all doing the math on this?

This Sleeping Satellite.

 

Did we fly to the moon too soon?

Did we squander the chance?
In the rush of the race
the reason we chase is lost in romance
and still we try
to justify the waste
for a taste of Man's greatest adventure.
Tasmin Archer, Sleeping Satellite

I found myself feeling a slightly bitter sense of irony while watching this evening's rerun of the Mythbusters Moon Hoax episode, given the changes to NASA's direction under Obama's new budget. "Hey, look, we really did go to the Moon before!" has become "Hey look, we really can't afford to go back!"

Now, this is not an entirely fair analysis of the new budget, and there are parts of it that make a lot of sense.  I've previously commented on the shortcomings of NASA's plans for future trips to the Moon and Mars, and the new plan does address some of those issues.*

The cumbersome "Apollo on steroids" Constellation program would be scrapped, essentially throwing away four years of work and nine billion dollars and leading to an indefinite delay in further plans to travel to the Moon or Mars, but perhaps allowing for a new direction in how the future of space exploration will develop.  The proposed new focus would be on funding for private sector development, and a shift toward more international collaboration on future exploration programs.  A portion of the budget would be aimed at developing new technologies to support that future exploration, although exactly when future missions would actually take place is still up in the air, so to speak.

This could either mark the beginning of a rational move toward the sort of global involvement in space exploration which has long been a staple of science fiction, or the beginning of the end as the private sector turns its back on extraterrestrial development for opportunities closer to home and the rest of the world turns it back on joint missions due to political conflicts.

Either way, I feel a bit like a child who has been told that there's no trip to Disneyland this year, what with Dad's recent unemployment and all - the family is just going to work on things around the house, and maybe when I'm a teenager we'll go to Europe with the neighbours. 

Is this sensible? Oh, quite probably it is. But would we remember how great it was the year we didn't go to Disneyland?  And will future generations look back with awe and respect at the year when we decided not to go to the Moon by 2020?

- Sid

* Although probably not because of my blog posting from 2007.