I'm voting Neil deGrasse Tyson for president of Earth. Who's with me? (Via Gizmodo)
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52 comments
Howlingly,Screamingly,clear.Carl Sagan' "Cosmos"got me really into the space program.We need more people like this man!!
HERE HERE TO THAT VOTE And I want Michelle Thaller as VP {BTW I really suck at spelling names so I apologize for it}
Forty years ago, we went to the moon. Now we lack the capability, the money and the national will. The politicians have successfully bred a generation of people who have been taught to be incapable of seeing past their next meal. Our schools are indoctrination centers designed more to compensate for the shortcomings of the parents who will cheerfully vote for any infrastructure that relieves them of their responsibilities. We've become a nation of selfish, greedy Gollum, each with our own personal storehouse of issues and led by a carde of "leaders" who are as self-serving as we are directing the endless quid pro quo. That great circle jerk reached its pinnacle with our current President, Barack Obama, who thinks EVERY problem on earth can be solved just by taking money away from one small group of people and doling it out to a larger one. And if the plan doesn't work, well....obviously, WE DIDN'T SPEND ENOUGH. Every year of his presidency, he has spent in excess of three trillion dollars from a bank account that barely accumulates two trillion in a year of confiscatory taxation. We'll never get back into space until we once again become a prosperous nation and that won't happen until the majority of people in America stop thinking about their own "needs" and start thinking like citizens again. In other words, it'll NEVER happen.Here's how we produce more money for NASA: Stop spending it everywhere else. Winnow our spending down to those things that ONLY the Federal Government can do: National defense, international diplomacy, overseeing interstate commerce, maintaining the nation's infrastructure, coordinating law enforcement, protecting our natural resources and - to a very LIMITED extent - consumer protection. Everything else goes. Everything. Here's how to balance the budget:1. Shut down every American military base in every foreign country where we are not doing any actual fighting.2. Elimiate every last penny of foreign aid. Sorry, Africa, we're broke, too. Deal with it.3. Eliminate all oil subsidies, ethanol subsidies, and farm subsidies.4. Eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security. There is not one service provided by any of these agencies that isn't done better at the state or local level.5. Repeal Obamacare.6. Privitize the Post Office, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Transportation. 7. Provide tax breaks for every corporation and small company that creates full-time PERMANENT jobs. Conversely, institute confiscatory tax INCREASES on all companies that send jobs overseas. If they want the benefits of cheap foreign labor, they can pay through the nose for privilege.8. Stop committing American troops to foreign wars. If anybody looks at us cross-eyed, just nuke the fuck out of them. After we do this a few times, the need for it will drop drastically.9. Citizens should be entitled to no more than three years of welfare benefits in their lifetime. Anyone who has already exceeded that total should be kicked off of welfare and left to fend for themselves.10. Eliminate the minimum wage and set up work camps for the large number of former welfare recipients created by Point #9. Give them three hots and a cot while having them pick up trash and garbage, sweep streets, shovel snow in the winter and do all the menial work now done by union municipal workers who get paid $20 to $30 per hour. Make them work on weekends and give them two weekdays off to participate in remedial education and job training to get them out of the work camps. 11. Hold parents responsible for raising their kids, including sending them to school. If they don't fall in line, their kids will be taken from them and place in facilities where they can be hired off to all those companies who have been discouraged from hiring unskilled foreign labor by Point #7.12. Raise the retirement age to 75. Not in 20 years, but next year. Adjust Social Security and Medicare payments accordingly. 13. Stop electing lawyers, career politicians, and community organizers. These people aren't worth the oxygen they consume. All candidates for public office must have either a proven track record in private-sector job creation or a Ph.D in some useful branch of science (Medicine, engineering, etc).Open space exploration up to private enterprise, just as Western North America was in the 19th Century. Make it a true frontier and provide incentives to go there for anyone who doesn't like the way things are turning out down here.The first 20 years of this plan will be sheer hell, but once everyone starts getting used to it, it'll become "the way we do things" and the complaints will level off as the whiners and losers start getting weeded out by natural selection.
Dude, you'd make an excellent totalitarian overlord who would go crazy with paranoia over the years...
"Open space exploration up to private enterprise, just as Western North America was in the 19th Century"...
Yeah, I know about a 100 million natives not only from North America, but from any America, as well as Africa and the Pacific who don't think this was a good idea...
I think this is an extremely naive viewpoint he espouses about the relations of the space race and the economy, but I entirely agree that it's ridiculous how we have abandoned the exploration of space. It's probably the most important thing humanity can ever do towards the long-term survival of our species.
Another naive belief I think he holds is that the people who own most of the world have the best interests of the rest of us at heart.
I think a major, and logical step in that process IS a singular world government, getting rid of the archaic and ridiculous concepts of nationality. Total international cooperation for space exploration, completely outside of a profit-driven economy, is the only way to make it really possible. Say all the bad things you want about government, or crazy theories of evil world rulers, large governments are the only ones capable of doing projects of that enormity, and the larger they are the better they can do it - there's a reason the space race was between the world's two super powers, and other large, but not as large governments are only now getting involved.
Thanks for posting this vid, it was really cool. I love good discussions.
Damn. I really wanted to disagree with you. But you do raise the valid point that the only way we will achieve freedom from Earth is a word wide government. It just bothers me that such a government would have an easier chance of becoming totalitarian/dictatorship. Especially with the profit-driven economy as it currently stands.
I prefer hysterical rage filled rants, but you make some good points.Try to be more irrational in the future.Thank you.
I say use the Imperial March, it goes well with a guy who laughs while planets are "demoted"
Last April I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Tyson give a great talk in Seattle about skepticism and always asking the next question. My favorite moment was him discussing the Mayan calendar thing. Supposedly the earth, the sun, and the center of the galaxy will align on Dec 21, 2012. He says they will indeed align on that date, but you need to ask how often they align. It happens every Dec. 21.
I will never get tired of hearing Tyson speak. His sincerity and love for his field have moved me to manly tears many times.
The man killed a planet. He can rule this one if he'd like. Anyone had a sparkly high collared cape Mr. Tyson can borrow?
I have emailed this to my Congressman, my Senators, and to the White House. I would encourage all Topless Roboteers to do the same. These people are the caretakers of mankind's future, as frightening as that may be.
You know it sounds like if you got everyone in the country to donate 50 cents, it would STILL be a larger budget than what the government allots NASA...and that's something that anyone can spare at this point.....so why aren't we trying to start private donations drives to ensure NASA's survival?
I'm just going to point out that NASA's budget would be ample if it weren't for the paper pushers who consume 99% of that budget
I didn't suggest kickstarter simply because I'm not sure they could handle that level of money, plus there would be nothing to really "reward" higher donations, but that's the basic thought behind it...
i donno, i don't agree with his stance re: pluto. you can't just death-star an entire planet like that without the decency of actually blowing it up :(
Technically what the "scientific community" did was reclassify Pluto as a "Dwarf Planet" so it is still a planet. I'm a big supporter of the "does it have enough mass to force itself into a sphere" definition of planet and not big on the original definition "everything is a planet except the Earth" or the new one "does it clear its orbit of debris up to 90% of its mass within an arc of space of regular to star it orbits and is that orbit within the average inclination of the orbital plane as defined by the majority of orbiting objects in a given system... blah blah blah for forty fricking pages of committee spewed BS"
bah! i laugh at all attempts by humans to compartmentalize the universe. at the cosmic level earth is barely larger than pluto. and as far as sweeping the area clear of debris, heck, not even the sun was able to accomplish that (asteroid belt, and, well why not, the planets are a kind of debirs too from a certain point of view)
you live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that you should voyage far.
I sigh at attempts to belittle the attempts of humans to understand the Universe. I hope one day to survive the Total Perspective Vortex.
could not agree more rob the country would benfit if nothing else Neil was put in charge of Nasa.
Seriously, I want that man in a room with Obama for twenty minutes. We'd be on Mars in ten years if that happened. ... five if Gingrich takes his place. :P
Our situation is what happens when your leadership doesn't know "how" to lead let alone "where" to lead. We haven't had a president in decades with any ideas that weren't fed to them regurgitated from the gut of a political advisor/marketing trends analyst in the pay of a narrow minded special interest group.
Neil deGrasse Tyson was one of the few to point out that the definition of "planet" couldn't possibly cover Pluto and he largely gets the blame/credit for the first open discussions on the subject. I disagree with the outcome of those discussions, the definition of "planet" is now overly complex, however starting conversations is important. I will vote for any non-politician over any politician, but Earth doesn't need a president.
A politician differs from an office holder in that the Politician exists to get re-elected where the office holder is a steward of a postion. Politicians are useless, they aquire power and money, because it reinforces their insane view of themselves. Solving problems is a detriment to gaining more power and money when their power and money is based on the false promise that they'll solve problems with that power and money. What politicians really do is create problems that they then offer to solve if only you'll give up power and money and give it to them. I think future generations will look back and wonder why we put the most meglomaniacal pants crapping insane people in charge of everything.
I feel like Neil deGrasse Tyson is a force of nature himself, willing his entire lifeforce into advancing humanity into the best possible future, and I'm moved every time I hear or see this man's passion. It's men like him who make the future.
Tyson is a force for reason. He might, very politely mind you, take great exception at being called a force of nature.
