Ship Who into What?

Inspired by TPB esquire’s “Photo Envy”, I’m going to start some sort of photo series, this week, on my blog entitled “Amsterdam Summer Signs” where I can present different scenes I see during my day that scream summer. I thought of this as I was riding up the Marnixstraat today and there’s a woman on skates pushing a stroller faster than most bikes. To me, this is one of those signs… summertime. Of course there are others, insane amounts of joggers in Vondelpark for example. I notice this alot lately, and I’ve developed a new method of symbolic communication. You jog slightly next to one person as an almost even pace.. eventually they become like your pace car.. as you do for them. Without words, I had a running partner yesterday. Either that or the guy thought I was cute enough to run with. Next time I’ll see about getting a running-mate of the female persuasion.

I wanted to discuss the successful private space journey. As you should by now, it worked, and ultimately this company intends to send tourists into space. (obviously extremely wealthy ones) While I love space research and advances in that area, I get frustrated with these developments. While NASA gets virtually neglected by the government in the area of non-military space research, and has now haulted all human space flights, the already slow process of space exploration has seemingly haulted. That is, if it weren’t for the Russian, European, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian and Indian space programs which continue to move forward. (though only Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia work in cooperation with the US) But instead of encouraging private firms to persue research with the aim of learning more about the universe and space travel, these guys want to fly rich people into space. Space tourism…. the predecessor to space fast-food and space hotels I guess. It is not that I’m completely against it, I just wish if they must do private space work, make it beneficial for science and humankind.. instead of.. well.. tourists. At the very least their new spaceshuttle might help towards that goal.

I’m very pleased to announce, and I hope she doesn’t mind me doing so, BlondeButBright, my dear friend and UvA-ASCoR PhD student’s weblog. It’s sure to become one of my favorites, I’m adding it to the unfed pile now, and I encourage people to check it out in the coming days. Welcome to this kooky blog world!

Today’s Music: Rickie Lee Jones – The Evening of my day (get this now!)