I Thought By Now...

The oldest religious practice to date has been found- worshiping pythons in Africa 70,000 years ago. Some of the genetic code has been discovered for male pregnancy in seahorses. It sucked to be a Neanderthal, health-wise. Birds are starting to go through some genetic drift as their songs fit to accommodate the deeper noise of city life. And NASA reveals their plans to put a base on the moon by 2024.

This last one briefly caught my eye. A guy on PBS was talking about this tonight- how there might be water there, on the sunny side of the moon there's lots of sun for nearly constant solar power, it's safer than space, it's a great training field for Mars...Sounds like a good idea. I hope they do it. But I thought they were going to do this in 1985.

It just seems like everything's slowed down. Don't you remember how there was supposed to all of this amazing scientific advancement by now, that we lived with day by day? Remember in the 60's, with the kitchen of the future- that was supposed to be here by the late 70's. We're still waiting. Oh, we can do most of it. But either it's not economical, or for reasons similar to the Tuckermobile and the EV1, it's blocked by the Powers That Be.

What was it that got us to the moon? Simply, fear. Sputnik was up there, smiling down on all of us, proof that the Communists were actually better than us. Then they sent a guy into space first, and then the first woman. (And to our eternal shame, it took us 20 years to duplicate this feat.) In fact, arguably, they were doing better than us across the board, until they also had to fight proxy wars with us continuously, and discovered they couldn't do all that and feed their people too. Might even be an argument that Communism is more successful than Capitalism as long as the world is at peace. But that of course is heresy.

Sputnik was a wake-up call. We suddenly realized the Soviets were beating us, and were doing better in us than science. This impelled us to get off our butts and start working, and learning. The Space Race was a large contributor to finally repealing the old laws going back to the Scopes Monkey Trial which mandated teaching Literal Creationism, and the beginnings of universal evolution teaching in schools throughout America. We finally realized we needed to learn science, not because it was interesting or a high pursuit, but because we could not be beaten by those who didn't know how to value materialism, capitalism, and economic growth.

But now, we just don't have that motivation. China is perhaps the biggest commercial force on the planet, or soon will be, and they've got nuclear weapons. But they only recently sent someone into space for the first time. When we aren't in a race with someone, we just don't care enough about the science.

Now, the amazing new developments are all small, in a computer, or a cell phone. Actually, they're even less noticeable- they're in the ether of the web, somewhere in between computers. We don't see the big changes. Cars are stuck without major structural changes for some 60 years now. The Big Three figured out they could change the pretty fins and colour and get enough people to keep buying new ones. Kitchen machines are not that different in basic structure from the way they were 30 years ago. Oh, there are changes, but it seems so slow. Perhaps it's that the imagination of science fiction can progress more quickly than anything real. But it also seems that we are less inspired to progress. When was the last major invention that was widespread? I don't mean a new computer program, as important and valuable as those are. But an actual three-dimensional invention, that a guy can tinker with in his back garage, fulfilling the American dream? It seems that now you need a few advanced degrees or hours in front learning Colbol to do anything significant. At least since Velcro.

Daniel Amos was one of those rare bands that did quite well in music, climbing with country music to the top of the Christian charts, but quit, realizing that they weren't being authentic for them. They changed over to New Wave, producing numerous albums after that, and never again doing well in the music charts. The sound remained steady, despite numerous name changes as well, including Daniel Amos Band and Swirling Eddies. You could count on them for good sound and biting, deep lyrics, always requiring the listener to think.

They had one song on the album "Vox Humana" called "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs?". Prophetic as always, Daniel Amos summed up the situation well.

"I thought by now we'd walk the moon
And ride a car without no tires
And have a robot run the vacuum
And date a girl made out of wires.
No things don't change that much, do they?
We are still out of touch,
by now we should discover,
just how to love each other...
I thought by now we'd live in space,
And eat a pill instead of dinner,
And wear a gas mask on our face,
a President of female gender..."

I look forward to our base on the moon. But unless the Chinese get in on the act, or someone else like the Saudis, I don't see the U.S. being inspired enough to actually do it, even by 2024.