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Katie and I were shopping at Whole Foods yesterday, and I saw a box labeled “Nature’s Burger.” It was a mix for making a vegetarian burger patty.

One of the strangest things I’ve seen in vegetarian/vegan products is the suggestion that somehow meat and dairy products are unnatural, but that processing the hell out of a few dozen vegetable distillates into something that vaguely approximates the experience of ground beef is “natural.”

I mean, I’ve seen slogans like “Nature’s alternative to cheese.” Do they find this mysterious vegetable-based mass lying around somewhere? No? It requires industrial processing? Well it’s not natural, then, is it?

In a similar vein, the abbreviation of organically-grown-and-processed to simply “organic” can make for some rather amusing phrasing. The coffee grinder had a sign explaining that it was used for both organic and conventional coffee beans, and if you wanted to ensure that your coffee “remained organic,” you should grind them at home. And yes, I knew what they meant, but I couldn’t help thinking, “What, they’re suddenly going to become silicon-based?”

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Cover: Flash #165Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the Silver Age Flash series, cataloging character appearances. I’m almost done – only 25 issues left – but it reminded me of something:

Why is it that super-hero weddings are almost always interrupted by super-villains – even when the hero’s identity is secret?

Is it just that readers expect a story with some sort of fight in it, and if it’s just a wedding they’ll be disappointed?

Consider these examples:

  • Flash II (Barry Allen) and Iris West: the wedding is interrupted when Professor Zoom disguises himself as the groom, and the Flash has to get rid of him and then make it to the wedding himself.
  • Flash II (Barry Allen) and Fiona Webb (after Iris’ death): Zoom returns, Flash spends the whole day chasing him around the globe, and eventually Fiona gives up and runs out of the chapel, just in time for Zoom to try to kill her. (Flash stops him with a last-second choke-hold which breaks his neck, leading to a manslaughter trial, the disappearance of Barry Allen, and finally the cancellation of the series.)
  • Flash III (Wally West) and Linda Park: at the moment the rings are exchanged, Abra Kadabra kidnaps Linda, sends everyone home, and casts a massive forget spell, erasing all memory and records of her back to the point she met Wally. Eventually she escapes, Kadabra is tricked into reversing the spell, and they hold a new wedding – 18 issues later.

And it’s not just the main characters who get this treatment: Continue reading →

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Well, the critics have started coming out, claiming that manned space flight isn’t worth the risk and space exploration (at least with human crews) should be written off as a bad idea.

How can you look up at the night sky and not think it’s worth it?

Or is it because so many of us live in cities where you can’t see the stars for the lights and smog?

Are we so afraid to dream?

Are we so afraid to fly?

I’m reminded of a slogan I’ve seen at science-fiction conventions:

The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars.

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It’s taken me two days to collect my thoughts enough to write about this. The loss of the orbiter and its crew hit me as a complete shock on Saturday, and I immediately started checking CNN and press releases. On the web. Not on TV. I remembered watching the Challenger footage over and over, and I remembered watching the World Trade Center footage over and over, but I couldn’t bring myself to look this time.

Barely a week ago I had been looking at mission photographs on NASA’s website. I knew the faces of the crewmembers. I had been looking for a photograph they had taken of a rare atmospheric phenomenon which was described in a newspaper article, but which hadn’t been included with the article. I never found it, and figured it would be posted later. Now I wonder if it was actually transmitted.

In the summer of 1992 my family went to Florida. We spent several days at Disney World and several days at Cape Canaveral. Two things that struck me the most were how much the old Mission Control looked like classic Star Trek, and the Astronaut Memorial. On Saturday I pulled out my photo album from that trip, and wondered where the next 7 names would be added.

Once the shock started to wear off, I started wondering about the future of space flight. And that’s when the fear and anger set in. Fear that we might abandon space flight entirely. Anger at a public that no longer cared, at a government that steadily cut support for space exploration.

The shuttle is our only ticket into space right now. The fleet was intended to last a decade or so, but all of the proposed replacements have been shut down as too costly. Can you imagine what would happen if all commercial airplanes were the same model, and an accident could ground the entire fleet for up to two years?

We’re like sailors who only know how to make one kind of boat, and after a few trips to a far-off island have decided not to stray far from shore. We haven’t been to the moon in 30 years. Think about it: 30 years. I’m nearly 27 and no one has set foot on the moon since before I was born.

The one bright spot in all this is that there is talk of renewing our commitment to space. And with that news I’m encouraged to hope that the problem that caused the disaster may be found and resolved in months, not years, that the space station crew may be able to remain on board with new supplies, or at least come home in a more comfortable ship than a Soyuz capsule. This hope may turn out to be in vain, perhaps even on both counts, but I prefer it to the fear.

The Columbia crew has one over on the Challenger crew: they made it into space. Heck, they have two: they completed their mission. I don’t know how much of their data was transmitted back and how much was going to be collected in person. But if I had to choose between dying just before getting into space or just after spending two weeks up there, I know I’d choose the latter.