Space Bros
As these words are written, Amazon Founder and tight-shirt-titan Jeff Bezos is preparing for the launch of his sixty-foot Blue Origin rocket, a short, sub-orbital flight in which he, his brother, a wealthy teenager, and a truly deserving octogenarian will partake. This follows close on the heels of fellow billionaire Richard Branson’s recent flight in his Virgin Galactic spaceplane. The most successful Space Bro of all—Elon Musk—whose SpaceX company works closely with global government-based space agencies (including NASA)—has had to content himself with buying a ticket on a Virgin Galactic flight.
There has been (naturally) a great deal of kvetching about these three super-rich bros doing what super-rich bros do. Vanity is of course, the primary charge, with wasteful spending and insufficient attention to the calamities faced by earth-bound plebeians among the bill of indictments.
Falderal. What these men and their billions are doing is beneficial to human civilization on its face, adding a layer of private industry to the space game, not just as a supplier or systems engineering house, but as a partner, or even a competitor. For instance, SpaceX has already helped dramatically lower the cost per pound of putting things in space. Fifty years from now, when a flight from New York to Singapore takes under an hour, we’ll have people like Richard Branson to thank.
We in America like to call baseball our national pastime. It isn’t. Wealth envy is.
On Vaccine “Hesitancy”
We depart from our regularly programmed upbeat discussion of billionaires in space to remind readers that we are surrounded by idiots whose bad decision-making points ever more convincingly to the wisdom of Charles Darwin. Recently the Director of the Centers for Disease Control rightly made the distinction that the ongoing COVID pandemic was a “..pandemic of the unvaccinated” which is quite right. One’s chances of dying from COVID while vaccinated are infinitesimally small. One’s chance of being hospitalized is very small. One’s chance of even contracting the disease is dwarfed by the likelihood that it will provide protection.
There are a number of groups of Americans who are particularly resistant to the common sense of immunization, and there is a great deal of misinformation as to the comparative proportion of these groups who are vaccine refusers. But there is only one group who has been fed a daily, unremitting load of vaccine hostility on its media source of choice, and that is the mouth-breathing Trumpenproletariat. It appears that even this benighted demographic has been abandoned by some of its anti-vax heroes, as the tweet below shows.
And while I am not ready to advocate for the muscular response of the French government to ongoing vaccine ignorance, the immediate bump in the number of those seeking the vaccine after its exclusionary policies went into effect is noteworthy.
We are an unserious nation full of selfish, petulant children.
A New Freezer
As our opening paragraphs dealt with envy, the theme continues here with something readers may find impossible not to covet, and that is my new, 5.0 cubic foot capacity freezer.
That’s right, this little beauty now sits silently close-by me in the ManCave garage office, preserving the tasty sacrifices of God’s creatures who have given their lives for my sustenance. Rib-eyes, racks of lamb, pork chops, salmon, bacon, and chicken thighs rest comfortably there before taking the next part of the journey in the food-chain-of-life. The purchase was necessitated by the last and final failure of an old (22 years) side by side refrigerator freezer that had supplemented our kitchen since the renovation ten years ago. Since then, I’d been sharing the freezer portion of our kitchen refrigerator/freezer with the savages with whom I cohabitate, several of whom do not recognize the divine purpose of the freezer (the preservation of tasty animals), and instead waste its wonders with various plant-based space-hoggers. I mean, what grown-up person consumes “smoothies”? Hell, I’m not sure I even know what one is.
Several rounds of guests this summer convinced even she-who-must-be-obeyed that we needed additional capacity, and last week she came out to my office to tell me the decision had been made and that our local Lowes had several different sizes available and de-boxed for our viewing pleasure.
I went online to preview these technological wonders of the Orient (can I say that anymore?), and espied three humble models of 5.0, 7.0, and 8.7 cubic feet of pleasure storage. Not possessing a mathematical mind or one that is particularly geared to spatial matters, I seized upon the grandeur of the 8.7 cubic foot model, grabbed my trusty tape measure, and confirmed that there were several places here in my office (we’re considering a proper “garage renovation”, and if that ever happens, the freezer will move there) that could accommodate it. So off to Lowes we went.
Upon encountering the three floor models, I took a quick look at the smallest of the three by opening its (smoothly operating, top-loading) door, and I was not ready for the instantaneous joy that leapt into my heart. In a moment of rare insight, I realized that this little gift from God had only to store the blessings of land/air/and sea sufficient for the needs of two people, as the Kittens (22 and 20) are both convinced that their vegan lifestyles are the key to the good life, and besides, they go to college and/or are working out of state this summer, and they have the freezer space in the kitchen … and so on. At that moment, the 5.0 cubic foot model was sold, and I placed a boxed version on my cart and continued to follow the Lady of the Manor through the maze of mystery that is Lowes (she being an expert in its layout and treasures).
Every now and then I will walk by and just open the top and look down into the bounty. The beautiful Graul’s “cowboy steaks”. The BJ’s racks of lamb. Chicken thighs out the wazoo. Has any man ever been so favored?