Tag: Planet

Twice the romance

For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable).

Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm

Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance.

As evolving species, we will adapt, both to adversity and austerity. Just eating in.

You might resent the new acronym (PIIGs), but wait until you have to go without pork (like in China in the time of inflation).

The Chinese are stepping up to the plate by offering to stabilize the Euro zone currency. with condition.

They failed to mention the arm shipments to Libya during Gaddafi‘s time (perhaps, already a market-economy exchange on that deal).

With every earth-altering discovery like that planet with two suns, we need to re-examine our assumptions.

What if we can also discover alternate energy out there? What if we can alter our attitude toward consumption and community?

Why would the damn vehicle always have to seat 4 people in “bowling alone” era (how about sidecar motorcycles; after all, Henry Ford was just tying two motorbikes together to make his first 4-wheeler, all in black, of course). As of this edit, Toyota concept EV is doing just that: three-seater enclosed vehicle.

What defines “hip” and romance (Gaga , the mermaid on wheels, w/ a “bad romance”).

What if we were given another shot at life, with our current macro-economic vantage point? (the rogue trader is doing it again, this time in the tune of 2 Billion).

Planet Bollywood.

Las Vegas in Macau.

Ford auto assembly plants mushrooming along China’s Eastern coasts.

We only transplant and replicate what works.

A tweaking here, a tweaking there. Not an overhaul. Not a paradigm shift.

Until, it’s in our face, at planetary level.

Two suns.

A discovery that should silence both Galileo and Copernicus .

Before we know it, we will adapt and take the two sunsets for granted. We will long for thrice the romance, two off-line, and one line.

Enlightenment turns entitlement again.

Turn off the telescope and turn on the microscope to look inside. We will find the thing called desire. And it’s unquenchable, and our last frontier to be conquered.

The happiest moment might not be a  Hollywood sunset. The happiest moment lies in our selective memory, wired in our deepest part of the brain. There, you will find twice the romance. More than provided by the two-sun planet’s. It’s a remarkable discovery nevertheless. Go NASA!

Mars or marble

Have you submitted your name to be shuttled up to Mars?  Space and sea travel or your names on Mars and not marble. This is to show our preference for progress over permanence  – technology over religion.

While it’s good to sit on one of the benches with our parent’s names “in memory of…”, it’s better still for our grandchildren to travel in space to look for ours on Mars.

I found my parent’s graves without a hitch. Right here on spaceship Earth.

In the Far East, people want to travel back to where their ancestors were buried (as of this edit, I have just stepped on a bunch of fake dollars, burnt during an early morning funeral).

Thus, “the Last Train Home” documentary about Chinese factory laborers trying to get home for New Year via train, plane or automobile (their version of White Christmas).

Modernity forces huge displacement. South-South movement will be next, not Earth to Outer space (Indian mobile phone companies are buying up Middle Eastern phone companies to cater to fast growing African markets, while Vietel engineers are rebuilding Haitian and Myanmar telecom infrastructure).

When you are uprooted, your sense of identity suffers. One used to be known by his/her relationship in a communal network. Now, with new “ID“, he/she is known by an employee number. Welcome to KFC, how may I take your order.

With industrialization comes frustration (discontent): who is going to move in those Shanghai towers , and who will have to relocate to make room for the 5th-ring highway?

Uprooted dreamers.

No place to go back to. No bragging rights for aging parents e.g. “my son went to the city and came back a millionaire”.  Bentley in Russia, Ford in China. Wealth shift. G-20+ (make sure Brazil is included, since they know how to party).

For years, we saw a steady rise of “emerging countries”, but we still resort to yesterday’s play book. (Remember the Yugo joke?).

The poor was materially poor, but not in spirit or intelligence. From a near-zero base, the only way for emerging countries to go is to “emerge” i.e. create better-paying jobs, while union and progress in the West , once a blessing, now a hindrance in this post-Recession recovery.

Darwin was right: survival favors the most adaptive. Instead of fighting for a seat on “the Last Train”, those smart entrepreneurs already built alternate-energy bullet trains. It’s not your names on Mars, it’s the challenge to think beyond the marble which for centuries was the last stop for even the most famous of names. A Roman Emperor once hired an assistant, whose main job is to remind him every so often that: “Your Majesty, you will die soon”.  Memento mori.