Tuesday, April 13, 2010

 

"We only want the Earth"

So, once again we get to elect our government, and once again it's hard to find much discussion of politics. I'm backing the Institute of Ideas' 21 pledges. If nothing else, it's a chance to raise some of the major issues that should be on the agenda - freedom, investing in our economic future, funding important things like education and the Arts without fettering them with other agendas like social inclusion.
It's been a busy few weeks, with the launch of the UK's answer to NASA, UKSA. Which is sadly setting its sights rather lower than NASA did when it was founded in 1958, but it's a start. Science Minister Lord Drayson did say he wanted us to have people on Mars within the century. Which makes him no JFK, but then again this ain't the sixties.
If you're wondering where the quote, "We Only Want The Earth", comes from, it's from a poem on this excellent website - Ferraris for All. Though of course my criticism of UKSA's programme is precisely that they DO only want the Earth - looking back at our home planet and worrying about its chnaging climate with a sense of guilt, instead of forging out into the cosmos to alter the atmospheres of other planets and make them fit for human life.
You can also read my reviews of two Janacek operas, written almost simultaneously but productions made twenty years apart.

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