Rob Lifford

Well, it took a while, but I’m finally hip to a big Austin pastime: disc golf. It takes less time to play a round than real golf, it costs next to nothing, and it’s much easier to bring in a score that doesn’t make you absolutely furious. There are plenty of places to play around here, too. Any out of town buddies who make a visit to Austin: be warned, you will be forced to play.

Congratulations to my brother and sister-in-law, who had their second kid yesterday at 4:34 a.m. — a 6 lb. 10oz baby girl named Michelle Katherine! The wife and I are pleased as punch to be an aunt & uncle again.

Weather sucks today; can’t go play golf. Zed sent an mp3 of that Iowa concession speech yesterday. Figured I’d mess around with it.

I was just about to write that for millions of Americans, the title of this post no longer references a classic painting by Edvard Munch, but rather a bizarre and unsettling Howard Dean moment in the 2004 Democratic campaign. But it seems that Reuters already wrote that. And probably a few hundred others. I guess it’s no surprise that the media beat me to my don’t-I-think-I’m-clever comparison.

So, now I won’t write that at all. I’ll just link to a fascinating press release about that painting. Professors at Texas State have pieced together the probable inspiration for the painting’s unforgettable blood red sky: the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Cool.

Well, while the original topic is still in the vicinity of my mind, I’ll just say this: that scream is much, much weirder when you hear it on the radio than when you see him spit it out on TV. I damn near crashed the car listening to NPR on the drive home the other day. Next time your favorite news network shows it (but my, aren’t they showing it a lot?), try closing your eyes. See (hear) what I mean?

When the news broke recently that Pete Rose was fessing up, I was eager to defend him as someone with a serious problem who really couldn’t control himself. Then his former teammate Joe Morgan made some points that caused me to reconsider. The timing of Rose’s admission and book release — same week as the Baseball Hall of Fame voting — both detracted attention from this year’s deserving inductees and called attention to Rose’s desparation to get into Cooperstown himself (next year will be his last year of eligibility if baseball lifts his lifetime ban).

And then Ruben Bolling made the whole hubub so hysterically funny. Sorry, Charlie; it’s over.

Space exploration is so, so cool. How could anyone deny that? You’ve seen some of this month’s new photos from Mars, right? Simply amazing.

However, at this particular time in history, space exploration is… just… oh, you’re gonna hate me for saying this, but screw it… space exploration is simply wrong.

What this country needs right now is education, not hi-res photos of the red planet. Otherwise, in two generations we won’t even have anyone smart enough left to work at NASA… in fact, NASA already employs someone dumb enough to produce a home page with a slow-loading Flash intro and no “skip movie” link (on the date of this post and for a couple weeks prior, at least).

All kidding aside, how much has the Spirit mission cost American taxpayers… and how much direct benefit will it provide? Our (supposedly) fiscally conservative president has just announced that our country is stepping up its space program with a vengeance. Sure, it’s probably just election year trash talk anyway, stirring up the pride and wonder of the voters following the Mars coverage, but we really shouldn’t be hearing this at all.

I’m as proud of our space program as just about any American. We’ve led the way, and I believe we can continue to do so by putting all of NASA’s efforts — for about the next 30 years or so — into theoretical research and computer modeling & simulations only. The savings would be tremendous. Besides, as much as we’ve accomplished, it’s not like we’ve been perfect. The U.S. space program (admittedly, along with the former Soviet Union and plenty of private enterprise) has already polluted space enough to endanger all our future endeavors. Sharp foresight we humans have, huh?

It’s time to realize that we have no business going to infinity and beyond until we get the world right down here. Someday the things we learn in space will have monumental effects on humanity; I really believe that — but for now, the solutions we need to our problems are still inside us, not out there.