Re: Bruce Perens talks to BBC
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 00:46:13 -0500, Antonio Rodriguez wrote:
>
> Thank you Collin. Beautiful reading. Scary. To think that so many of the
> statements made in science fiction have come through, to know how dark
> life can be made to be on the surface of this ball, or on the surface of
> the other near hovering balls. Already some are talking about colonizing
> Mars. The resources to be spent in making a basically dead ball habitable
> are much larger than the resources needed to fix the problems of this
> already habitable ball. They know it. They know how to weigh their
> purses.
> Thus, they are not interested in doing it for the good of humanity, but for
> the purpose of acquiring another post to control. Buzzards well know
> that from the heights is easier to attack and capture.
Humans are built to satisfy innate curiosity, which gives rise to the
desire to find out how things work and build new things, especially if it
seems difficult, or, even better, impossible.
Of course, the miserable state of many of our fellow earthlings is
deplorable, no one can argue against that, but it is important to follow
more than one thread.
What if Sir Isaac Newton had devoted his life to feeding the poor, and
there was no Principia Mathematica, for instance?
Oh, and NASA operates within a democracy, and is funded by, a democratic
government. In a democracy, it's not "they". It's "we". And I have
difficulty picturing the good voting citizens of the USA as "buzzards".
Not to mention the fact that the US is following more than one thread by
being by far the largest donor of aid to poorer nations, and, together
with the UK, is in the forefront of the battle to gain others the right to
live in peace and freedom. I have recently found it interesting that
those who decry human rights abuses are also frequently those who are
critical of US/UK efforts to remove the perpetrators of those dreadful
abuses. On the other hand, there are not a lot of Iraqis praying for the
return of Saddam, nor are there many Afghanis eagerly awaiting the
resurgence of the Taliban; but there are large numbers in both nations
grateful for the efforts of their liberators.
--
....................paul
It is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big
enough hammer.
-- Sun System & Network Admin manual
Reply to: