What Would Matt Do

Dear Mr. President,

I’m going to ask you to do something now. Listen. Not because I’m smarter than anyone else or because I’m more important. But because I’m not those things. I’m just a guy. Who thinks you might want be a better president than you have been so far. I’m sharing because as song goes, this land is your land, this land is my land.

First, please take over the BP operation right now. I don’t mean stop BP and bring in your own people, I mean use your executive power and take over the corporation, at least temporarily. Use the fact they are criminals and have committed crimes here and now. Or however you need to phrase it. If you can do it with banks, you can do it with oil companies. Use their resources properly, aimed to stem the damage and clean it honestly, not white wash it with chemicals that may be worse than the original spill. Make them start giving you the truth. Then form a council. Invite not CEOs of oil companies, but the most experienced engineers in the field, experts of oil rigs and plugging of leaks underwater, long time navy guys who know about deep pressure, environmentalists who’ve worked with oil spills before, and more. Don’t just talk to other countries, ask them to send their topmost experts. Then have them come up with solutions. All you have to do is ask, people will come help, again, at least temporarily. And the longer you wait, the more BP destroys livelihoods, environments and people.

Second, please start being serious about fixing our oil/coal addiction. I know big corporations with lots of money and power are aligned against that idea AND have funded your presidency. So what. Fight the power. There are many ways to approach this. I’m not an expert in these things. But you know what? Some people are. There are scientists that have great ideas to completely change the way our country runs and the energy it uses. Maybe you could form a council here too. A longer term bigger thing. A scientific council established for the betterment of the country. Hire them. Hire the best people in academics and in the industry. Pay them richly. You could hire then guys, pay them a couple of million each and it would cost less to have them for your whole presidency than it would to build one fighter plane. While you’re forming dream teams, the Ring of Fire guys would be great.

Third, and this ties into the above one, please employ the country. Yeah, politicians will complain. So what? If you use the council created above and get a plan to overall the entire energy grid and power our country off say the deserts in the south because the grid can now transfer energy anywhere…guess who can build that? Our people. You can train them, you can employ them, you can enable them. Not give a handout, put them to work for the betterment of all. People will come in droves. You will educate them in a field and empower them to provide for themselves. And they will love you for it. You’ll be fixing the country and helping the people. That’s just one way. There are so many different ways you could take the 10% of population of who a large amount actually want work and put them to working to change how our country works. With a real energy grid (not a magical one, other countries have done this), we could be off oil and coal and nuclear in 20 years maybe.

That’s not all, but that’s a start. Start thinking of the people. If you start acting from that place, from the place of what’s the best thing for the people, not for the other politicians or for just your voter base or for anything but the people, you’ll start making decisions that will make us love you…instead of just being happy your not as bad as the last guy. In less that’s all your looking to be, not as bad.

I hope this finds you and yours well, and I truly hope you listened. I voted for you. I didn’t believe your words, but I knew you’d be better than the alternatives. But a part of me was really hoping you were the man you gave speeches like. You can still be that man.

Thank you,

Matt

The big orb in the sky you sometimes see at night? It has mother fucking water on it. That’s full of awesome. So now both Mars and the Moon have water on them, when both were thought to be barren rocks.

That’s pretty cool shit. Though why are we just finding out about this now? Why after we’ve visited the moon, done numerous scans, had unmanned and manned machinery on the moon are we just now finding this out? Because funding is low. Because we don’t take space exploration seriously. Because we, as a people, don’t look at space as anything more than a cute oddity. At least most of us.

Well fuck that. Really.

I don’t want to get off on a rant here (I still love you, Dennis), but damn me if we aren’t going about this all wrong. Here’s what we need to be doing. We need to have an already established base on the Moon with people living there, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Spending their hours studying all kinds of things we don’t know about the Moon. Lets get people there, lets figure out what the problems are with living there, lets figure out how self sufficient we can make a colony on the Moon. Then lets start on figuring out how to colonize other planets.

Why isn’t the US funding space exploration something fierce? Why aren’t we already talking about creating better travel between the Moon and Earth. If we had people there, it would become a bigger priority. Why aren’t we already figuring out how to live on Mars? Why aren’t we spending more thought, research time and effort into real space travel? It needs to be a priority, a big one. Not just because it may provide a future where the Earth becomes unlivable, or because it may provide a way for our race to skip perishing (a long shot, but maybe), but because of what we can learn about our own planet and our own solar system by exploring it and figuring it out. There are 7 (stupid Pluto classification) other planets out there we know very little about. Lets start with the Moon, lets figure out what we can there, lets figure how how to live in harsh environments, how to handle solar interference/rays/etc in a low atmosphere, what kind of technology we can use to colonize and maybe gather natural resources from the Moon.

Why does no one else consider this a priority? Yeah, there are a lot of problems here that need to be solved. But let us not forget that we aren’t alone, even if that just means we aren’t alone in terms of other planets and solar systems and galaxies out there, alien life forms aside. We need to get out and figure those things out, unlock their secrets, to better understand and expand our race. If we don’t, we drastically limiting ourselves. Maybe dooming ourselves.

What Would Matt Do: I’d make getting a Moon base a priority as of yesterday and already be aiming towards Mars. With real funding.

The fact that some scientists think we’re extremely close to finding life on other planets excites me to no end.

The Hubble Space Telescope made a remarkable discovery on a Jupiter-sized planet from another solar system that finally gives a glimpse of hope that life is possible outside of our own planet. Scientists reported that the Hubble telescope discovered for the first time ever an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a planet found at 63 light-years in the constellation Vulpecula, called HD 189733b.

“This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterizing prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist,” said Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Swain, who is the lead author of the paper that is set to appear in the March 20 issue of the journal Nature also reconfirming that in 2007 NASA’s Spitzer Space telescope uncovered traces of water molecules in the same planet’s atmosphere.

Sure, they haven’t discovered life yet, but finding the building blocks, even on a barren planet, is exciting. I’m playing through Mass Effect right now, which is literally my dream world (or really, Niven’s world). We’d discover alien technology, figure it out, discover the universe is alive with other species and technology and it’s the wild west out there. That’s always been a fantasy of mine. I’m a huge sci fi geek. And loving it.

So this kind of thing excites me. Even if we don’t discover anything more than life exists on other planets (just on the molecular level, not other species and so on), I’ll be able to die a happy man.

What Would Matt Do: Try not to pee in my space ship underwear, that’s what I’d do. And don’t even get me started on what happens with our society if we manage to discover another species either more or less advanced than us. Those would be interesting times. Also, I’d like a moon pony.

Ever hear those words growing up? I did, a lot. It was one of our favorite sayings growing up. The ultimate in irony as it were.

And this reminds me of it:

Wow. Just when you think Republicans can’t get any crazier, we find out that the powerful chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, Warren Chisum, doesn’t even believe that the earth revolves around the sun.

Sure, that’s not the absolute craziest thing you can believe (thought it must be close), but the reasoning behind it, the Bible says otherwise, is so funny I can barely contain myself. Think what you will of the Bible, be it the gospel to you, or a book of lessons, or just junk, do me a favor…don’t try to use it prove that science is lying to you. It just makes me giggle.

From the site Mr. Chisum was pushing:

The solar eclipse tableau involving the sun, moon, and earth reveals a truly amazing fact about the universal acceptance of the Copernican Heliocentric Model of a rotating earth orbiting a stationary sun. That amazing fact is this: The Eclipse Tableau exposes as no other illustration does the bald truth that the Helio Model is built purely on assumptions that deny all observational and experimental evidence.

Notice these seven assumptions which are indispensable to the Helio Model in general and are so apparent in the Solar Eclipse Phenomena.

1) It must be assumed that the Sun is stationary in the “solar” system relevant to the Earth (and to the Moon) and that it has never traveled East to West daily across the sky as observed by everyone on Earth throughout all history.

That’s just the first “assumption” that science makes that any fool can observe must be false by watching the sky. Just like at night when you’re driving and you see the moon moving behind the trees…it really is following you.

What Would Matt Do: I can’t but wonder what the fuck is wrong with Texans. Presumably this guy got voted into office, right?

How could you NOT want your very own supersuit. I mean come on, I'm now this much closer to being Batman. And that can't be wrong.

 Already, he says, the suit has stood up to bullets from high-powered weapons, including an elephant gun. The suit was empty during the ballistics tests, but he's more than ready to put it on and face live fire.

Once he established that he could see just fine in his helmet and that the guns attached to his magnetic holsters were just props, Hurtubise was free to continue his trip.

The whole suit — which draws design inspiration from Star Wars, RoboCop, Batman and video games — is made from high-impact plastic lined with ceramic bullet protection over ballistic foam.

Its many features include compartments for emergency morphine and salt, a knife and emergency light. Built into the forearms are a small recording device, a pepper-spray gun and a detachable transponder that can be swallowed in case of trouble.

What Would Matt Do: Buy six of them and lots of pistol ammo. Paintball is for pussies!