Curiosity

Human spaceflight seems to have entered a lull at the moment, but recently NASA launched the Curiosity rover toward Mars. Just think of the academic and technical understanding it took to construct this large robot, hurl it beyond the tug of Earth's gravity, and then arrange -- from hundreds of millions of kilometers away -- its multi-staged landing onto another world. It is easy to look at the state of the world and bemoan human frailty, but the discoveries and power of science never fail to lift my spirits...and I know of no more dramatic example of either than the exploration of the Cosmos.  I wish the likes of Carl Sagan were here to witness Curiosity make landfall next year.

From Space.com:  10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do

Fire Aim Ready

Earlier in the week, I received a video entitled "Creation, the Universe, & the Evolution to a funky beat". The song is "Be Mine", and is by "Fire Aim Ready". The song describes the beginning of the universe (as far as we know it) and the evolution of life leading up to us. Strangely enough, this is a love song.



First verse:

14 billion years ago, time and space were born;
filled with homogeneous, nearly uniform
quark and lepton plasma that led to you and me
through the interplay of chance and necessity.
The plasma later cooled to make mostly hydrogen fueling fusion in the stars' generation one .

I looked the band up on MySpace and found a number of other songs, although sadly the rest are not songs about science. Another song, entitled "The Decline and Fall", offers political commentary about the United States through comparison to Rome.

"The Decline and Fall", last three verses:


All Iraq’s divided into three parts
Even Kurds are getting in our way
Barbarians are blowing up the legions
Seems that they’d prefer us not to stay
It’s carved there in plain Latin, the inscription on the wall:

“Welcome one and all to the decline and fall.”

Hadrian builds his fence along the border
While he fills the Army with the Picts;
It’s hard to tell Centurions from Vandals
The fall of Rome is not hard to predict
It’s carved there in plain Latin, the inscription on the wall:

“Welcome one and all to the decline and fall.”

Lead poisons our wine and makes us stupid
Gladiators keep us entertained
More votes cast for idols than for Caesar
The end of empire’s easily explained.
It’s carved there in plain Latin, the inscription on the wall:

“Welcome one and all to the decline and fall.”

And if your Latin's rusty, here's the writing on the wall:

“Welcome one and all to the decline and fall.”


If you would rather listen to songs about science and that sort, Prometheus Music produces music focusing on "the history and future of space exploration". Five songs are available for free on the website: I recommend "Suprise!", "Fire in the Sky", and "Others Standing By". "Fire in the Sky" is easily my favorite, and I suspect that I've shared it in the past here. If I have not, I'll remedy that now.