The Times of India has an online page devoted to “spirituality.” If you turn to it, you’ll find your horoscope. Yes, newspapers still publish horoscopes regardless of the knowledge that the configuration of stars has changed over the past 3,000 years, so the signs of the Zodiac aren’t actually what they were. Nevertheless, let’s look the paper’s advice for Capricorn on October 31, 2018, when Mercury can be seen in transit across the sun: “Mercury, known to be the planet of technology, communication, and travel, turns retrograde in Sagittarius and scrambles signals with your closest people. The time is high to strengthen your privacy settings that may be sensitive data or your passwords.” Let’s break it down.
Mercury is the planet of technology communication? You think the ancients thought that? “Claudius, I’m having trouble with my ITablet (literally, a clay tablet). Could Mercury be in transit?” Or take the advice: “strengthen your privacy settings that may be sensitive data or your passwords.” Who would have thought of such actions without the writer’s astrological advice? “What, Mercury’s in transit? Why didn’t someone tell me? Sorry, I can’t stay for coffee; I’ve got passwords to change.” Or, take the advice to Pisces, “This Mercury transit will give you a reminder that it is important to slow down and do one thing at a time.” There goes my plan to multitask just when I put a stick of gum in my mouth.
Speaking of the stars, The Times also has an article entitled “Wanted: Volunteers to give birth in space.” Kees Mulder, the CEO of SpaceLife Origins says that to become a multiplanetary species “we…need to learn how to reproduce in space.” Wasn’t there a final scene in Moonraker showing that we already have a good idea what to do? The scene involved Roger Moore and Lois Chiles in America’s and Britain’s “first joint space venture” as Bond attempts “reentry” discreetly covered by a sheet?
We’ve really got this planet-star-universe thing in our heads. Now, there’s no denying that the rocketry and space explorations provide us with some hope of living in some utopian place as colorful as Pandora, the moon-world that provides the backdrop for Avatar. And surely, on that distant world, on the way to which we will learn how to “joint venture,” we’ll find unobtanium. Unobtanium? Is it unobtainable? You’re telling me we’ll go all the way to Alpha Centauri just to find something that we can’t obtain?
Well, maybe the unobtainable is the reason we can’t let go of horoscopes and fantasies about traveling to distant planets on the way to which we will join not just a Hugh Hefnerian “sky high club,” but a “light year high club.” And when we eventually reach Pandora, whose “jar” (not box) released the world’s evils, will we look back to see that from Alpha or Beta Centuari our own sun appears to be part of the constellation Cassiopeia?
We’re never going to hear the end of astrological advice, fictional futures, or utopian places and un-obtainable elements that lie beyond our reach. Do you really want to risk exposure to cosmic rays, suffer muscle atrophy and neuronal damage in an enlarged head, lose bone mass, suffer from Aspergillus fumigatus and pathogens that can survive in space, live in a confined space for very long time without a resupply of food and medicines, dwell in a community that might forget what deceased fellow travelers knew, or trust that your computer equipment and machinery can function under attacks by radiation, micrometeorites, and time? Then, again, maybe that last scene in Moonraker is what you envision. I’m guessing that half way (or less) to that distant world, the spaceship’s denizens will look back at a distant sun and this planet with the question “Could we have made that one Utopia?”
Of course, the answer is that we already live on Pandora, or at least on a planet on which we have had our share of Pandoras that have released what we imagine we can escape. This might not be Utopia, but whose fault is that?
Need a source of advice on which you can rely? Commonsense is often the best advisor.
Mercury is the planet of technology communication? You think the ancients thought that? “Claudius, I’m having trouble with my ITablet (literally, a clay tablet). Could Mercury be in transit?” Or take the advice: “strengthen your privacy settings that may be sensitive data or your passwords.” Who would have thought of such actions without the writer’s astrological advice? “What, Mercury’s in transit? Why didn’t someone tell me? Sorry, I can’t stay for coffee; I’ve got passwords to change.” Or, take the advice to Pisces, “This Mercury transit will give you a reminder that it is important to slow down and do one thing at a time.” There goes my plan to multitask just when I put a stick of gum in my mouth.
Speaking of the stars, The Times also has an article entitled “Wanted: Volunteers to give birth in space.” Kees Mulder, the CEO of SpaceLife Origins says that to become a multiplanetary species “we…need to learn how to reproduce in space.” Wasn’t there a final scene in Moonraker showing that we already have a good idea what to do? The scene involved Roger Moore and Lois Chiles in America’s and Britain’s “first joint space venture” as Bond attempts “reentry” discreetly covered by a sheet?
We’ve really got this planet-star-universe thing in our heads. Now, there’s no denying that the rocketry and space explorations provide us with some hope of living in some utopian place as colorful as Pandora, the moon-world that provides the backdrop for Avatar. And surely, on that distant world, on the way to which we will learn how to “joint venture,” we’ll find unobtanium. Unobtanium? Is it unobtainable? You’re telling me we’ll go all the way to Alpha Centauri just to find something that we can’t obtain?
Well, maybe the unobtainable is the reason we can’t let go of horoscopes and fantasies about traveling to distant planets on the way to which we will join not just a Hugh Hefnerian “sky high club,” but a “light year high club.” And when we eventually reach Pandora, whose “jar” (not box) released the world’s evils, will we look back to see that from Alpha or Beta Centuari our own sun appears to be part of the constellation Cassiopeia?
We’re never going to hear the end of astrological advice, fictional futures, or utopian places and un-obtainable elements that lie beyond our reach. Do you really want to risk exposure to cosmic rays, suffer muscle atrophy and neuronal damage in an enlarged head, lose bone mass, suffer from Aspergillus fumigatus and pathogens that can survive in space, live in a confined space for very long time without a resupply of food and medicines, dwell in a community that might forget what deceased fellow travelers knew, or trust that your computer equipment and machinery can function under attacks by radiation, micrometeorites, and time? Then, again, maybe that last scene in Moonraker is what you envision. I’m guessing that half way (or less) to that distant world, the spaceship’s denizens will look back at a distant sun and this planet with the question “Could we have made that one Utopia?”
Of course, the answer is that we already live on Pandora, or at least on a planet on which we have had our share of Pandoras that have released what we imagine we can escape. This might not be Utopia, but whose fault is that?
Need a source of advice on which you can rely? Commonsense is often the best advisor.
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