A bummed-out week. Stoopid stuph -- a dentist drilling into my teeth, eternal phone calls with incompetent bureaucracies --
And then there has been the Relentless News from Around The World, so unusually ghastly that I couldn't bring myself to Copy & Paste it to Vleeptron. Even the calm, reassuring, sympathetic tones of the BBC and Public Broadcasting can't sweeten this week's news.
Earth (unlike Planet Vleeptron) is running a 9.6 on the Fluggerman Index of Shame, Disgust and Sordid this week.
The Zeta Beam is on the fritz again and I've been sleeping a lot. With the bedclothes pulled over my head and the phone ringer OFF.
A few moments ago, this Comment from Fantastic Doug (he left no link, but I'm not complaining).
The Amazing Mars Images also generated a PizzaQ Challenge, which nobody has yet taken a whack at. It's really an easy challenge, I think. It's the Martian equivalent of: Find the Black Sea, or the Cape of Good Hope, or Kansas City on a map of Earth. 8th Grade Geography.
Someday 8th grade kids will be expected to find 10 or 20 of the Biggest Features on the Moon and Mars, just the way they have to prove to teacher that they can tell the difference between South Dakota and North Dakota, and between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
So start now! Be the first kid on your block who can point to Victoria Crater!
Make Vleeptron Proud!
Like Fantastic Doug just made Vleeptron Happy! :-)
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2 Comments:
Fantastic Doug said...
I KNOW IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A MONTH SINCE YOU POSTED THE PICTURES OF VICTORIA CRATER ON MARS BUT I JUST SAW IT AND THINK IT IS AWESOME! NASA SHOULD PUT TOGETHER A DVD SHOWING THESE IMAGES WITH VOICE OVER COMMENTS. WHAT DO YOU THINK? HAVE A GREAT DAY!!
Fri Oct 27, 01:59:25 PM 2006
Bob Merkin said...
YO FANTASTIC DOUG! Now listen very carefully, Doug, and do everything I tell you to do, and we'll have you down off of CAPS LOCK in no time.
Hey, you just made Vleeptron's Day! I just never know what weird krap I post will end up pleasing somebody in Internet Kafe Sofia the way it pleased me. (Where the heck are you, Doug?)
Don't worry about the time lag. These images will NEVER get stale. They have an Amazement Shelf Life as long as human civilization -- and maybe longer, if we send them into Deep Space on one of those Voyager golden CDs.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, in the suburbs of Paris, in Australia, in the Solomon Islands ... human acts, words and images we can only pray will be forgotten as soon as possible. It's amazing these images of Mars were created by members of the same species.
If the Aliens heard only Mozart and Bach and saw only the achievements of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they'd hop in their saucers and break the speed limit of light to flock to our wonderful, interesting, peaceful Planet Earth for an Alien Picnic.
Imagine -- from low Mars orbit, our perfectly functioning robot looketh down and snaps a photo of another of our perfectly functioning robots as it looketh around and snaps full-color stereo closeups and panoramas.
A thousand years from now, what will humans remember about our era? See images above.
Fri Oct 27, 02:21:10 PM 2006
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