I learned something while stuck in my way-too-small airline seats today. I learned that machines have actually landed and returned pictures from Venus. Maybe everyone else is aware of this (it isn’t exactly a recent thing), but not me. The image below was taken by one of the 16 Soviet Venera Missions, which occurred between 1961 and 1983. It is from Venera 13, more precisely, taken in 1982.
The space craft survived for a little over 2 hours after landing, at a temperature of 457 Celcius and pressure of 84 atm. It’s amazing to me the number and magnitude of the unmanned space missions that people pull off. I mean, the control to put something so far away onto such a small target, land it safely in such a hostile environment, and still be able to communicate with these things from earth!
In four hours I am once again jetting across the country. This time though, it is different. This time, I find something more permanent. After this, one long drive in a rental truck and I’ll be flying the opposite trip.
I am very excited to be moving. I’ve been looking forward to it for quite some time, and now that it is impending I just want to pack up and drive tomorrow. I think my mind is already gone, and it is becoming very difficult to focus on finishing the things I need to finish here. I’m not really feeling much love for Richmond right now. And I’m ready to be done with VCU. Don’t get me wrong, VCU has been great. But it feels like it is all I can remember, and I’m ready to move on. Problem is, I need to finish a thesis and defend it, so I can move on with a Master’s degree. Me and Richmond aren’t through yet, I guess.
These 6:00AM flights…I don’t like them. I never sleep before them. I’ve been packing, and printing directions, and searching for craigslist listings, and writing down phone numbers, and now there is just no point in going to bed. It’s going to make for a long day tomorrow though.
I never liked looking for housing in the past. I always felt like I had to prove myself worthy to the all powerful realtors (who, at least in my experience, have zero trust and zero respect for college students). I’m the one about to shell out a bunch of money every month, shouldn’t they be earning my business? Better yet, you get to pay application fees in exchange them them judging you fit or unfit. But, they never seem to have a problem renting, and once they have you in a lease they don’t care much how you feel about it. In my experience, rental property companies don’t worry too much about customer service. Of course, in Richmond at least, if you are a student, you are unfit. You must have a co-signer. I feel much better about this now though, having a real job and real salary. Who knows, maybe it will be much better. It certainly can’t be any worse than the Coliseum Lofts or Dickson and Associates (A.K.A. Redneck Realty) experiences were.
“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.” -Washington Irving “Tales of a Traveler”
“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” -G.C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
I watched a movie called “Idiocracy” last night, and despite some nagging details about the plausibility that I had to overlook, it was a funny movie rife with social commentary. The premise of the move is that a completely average, rather unmotivated army librarian (Luke Wilson) and a Prostitute looking to get out of some problems with the police (Maya Rudolph) volunteer for a top secret army cryogenics experiment and are to be the first people frozen for a year. Unfortunately, some scandals arise with those responsible for the experiment, the base is closed and destroyed, and both characters are left frozen in their coffin-like cases until they are accidentally re-awakened 500 years later in 2505. Unfortunately, while they were frozen the human population has steadily become more and more stupid. The President of the U.S. (which as far as the movie is concerned is the whole world) is a Professional wrestling champion and porn star, water has been completely replaced with a sports drink (except in toilets), and Carl’s Jr somehow seems to feed everybody through automated vending machines.
Luke Wilson takes a mandatory IQ test when he is arrested for not have a UPC code tattooed on his arm, and when found to be the smartest man on earth, is taken to the white house and made secretary of the interior. The president promises the public he will fix all of the country’s problems, such as food shortages and crippled economy…or else he is going back to jail! Eventually he does get crops to grow again, after he realizes they are watering them with a sports drink and convinces them they should try water (“From the TOILET?!” is the unbelieving response).
You can’t take the details too seriously, or you’d find yourself wondering how this society of helplessly incompetent people are surviving at all in such large numbers. There are an awful lot of electronics around making life possible, and one has to asks who is building and repairing the carl’s vending machines, automated hospital equipment, vehicles (which btw, the police can remotely disable), or for that matter, what are they EATING? But…that’s the movies, isn’t it?
The introduction to the movie shows a brief picture of how humanity got to where it was in 2505, by contrasting two couples. I found it on youtube:
I have recently thought a bit about how human society fits into natural selection. At first glance at least, it seems that a lot of the things generally considered to be “good traits” are not really biologically advantageous. E.g., they aren’t causing any increase in reproduction.
It seems that those least capable of raising children, on average, have more children. One study I read* shows a consistent negative correlation (in the -0.15 range) for individuals (in the U.S.) born from 1880 to 1969 between scores on a vocabulary test and fertility rates. Apparently, the vocab test scores have a 0.75 correlation to IQ scores based on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Of course, this is just a vocabulary test, and is certainly not the whole picture. But just looking around, it isn’t hard to see the trend. Does our society value the wrong things?
I think this can be seen in other cultural places. Take advertisement: How many commercials out there completely and blatantly disregard logic and science altogether to convince you to buy their products? I just read one recent example of this. It is all about being flashy, simple, and easy to digest. Nobody wants to try and handle the complexity of reality! Yes, these are just commercials. But what else in our society contributes to the same lack of logical reasoning? News media comes right to mind. The amazingly low rate of American graduate students, especially in engineering and the sciences, is perhaps another example. Perhaps we are ingraining into our children (In a general sense of course, not MY children) a lack of appreciation for all things intellectual. Religion comes to mind here, but I will save that for later. I will say that indoctrinating children to consider blind faith regardless of evidence (or in spite of!) to be a noble value is NOT a good thing.
