If You Believe, They Put a Man on the Moon

If You Believe, They Put a Man on the Moon

"They can put a man on the moon..." A generation ago that was a popular sentiment followed by a big "but", as in; "They can put a man on the moon but they can't figure out how to make a pickle jar that's easy to open."

It is called juxtaposition - putting two disparate things, in this case a glorious former and a lamentable latter together to highlight the futility of one in the face of the other. I find that I have said this very phrase to myself a few time in the past and thought sharing a couple instances would be great fun. For me. You do not enter into this equation.

"They can put a man on the moon, but they can't design a urinal that doesn't splash pee back on my calves." Someone obviously heard me since the newest urinals have defeated the splash back problem by giving men something to aim at.

I first saw this technology as a bleary traveler in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport where I strangely knew just what to do without prompting or instruction when I saw the little bumble bee painted in the bowl of the urinal. I just unzipped and aimed at it.

This proves a couple points. Number one, simple fixes are often the best ones. Number two, give a man any excuse to use his penis in a new and exciting way and he will generally jump at the chance. Number three, no matter how bad your job is, at least you don't have to be that little bee.

"They can put man on the moon, but I still can't get all the toothpaste out of the tube." I am kept up at night thinking about the unrealized potential of all the unused toothpaste. Don't even get me started on the Reddy Whip that I know it still in the can long after the propellant has all been snorted, I mean escaped. Same goes for shaving cream and any other product that gets dispensed.

Why haven't we come up with a better way? Or, more accurately, why am I the only one who sees this as a problem? Perhaps I am over thinking it a touch. Maybe there is such a thing as "good enough."

The Need To Upgrade

I love the concept of the upgrade. Mostly, upgrades are exactly that. A grade up on what came before. My wife it not fond of the upgrade. Prior to even hearing about it or knowing about, she forms a presupposition that the upgrade has been developed by a maniacal cadre of master criminals and evil doers with the sole intention of making her life more difficult.

She hates it when Firefox updates without her express consent, which it does by the way when it realizes she will always say no when asked. The rest of the world is on version 20.26.Beta and she is on version 4.

Next thing you know, she gets upgraded unknowingly and one or two things are different and apoplexy ensues.

I held off getting her a new cell phone for as long as I could, because while she hated the old phone, I knew she would expect the new phone to be identical in every way. Now she hates the new phone.

My exhortations to "read the manual" have been met with "They don't come with manuals anymore, it's all on line." The fire in her belly is evident enough after this exchange that I don't dare suggest she goes on line to read the manual. I've seen what that bumble bee has to go through and I am smart enough (usually) to avoid it.

I was really concerned when she got the new car. So similar and yet so different it is to her old car that I thought perhaps it would be a rough transition. Last week, though, she gushed to me over the phone "I love my new car."

Beautiful words indeed.

I don't really have a point or a philosophical connection to make, here. I could try to tie it in to the discussions Em and I have had all week vis a vis church governance and differences of opinion that are fostered by and fester in the gaps between age, education, proximity to urban culture and good old fashioned prejudices. But that seems like a pretty long leap and while I know you all to be very permissive of my questionable flights of literary fantasy I think it is simple a bridge too far.

And So, Where Does This Leave Me?

If you were looking for answers, you came to the wrong place. It seems to me that lately our upgrades have a tendency to be downgrades.We once used Rockets to go into space. Then we developed and used to great effect the Space Shuttle-which we will now abandon without anything in its place. So, America is now relying on Russia, China and Japan to launch us and our stuff into orbit. I think this is a shame. Really I think it's criminal.

Staying on the aerospace theme, we now have the Airbus A380 in which you and about 649 of your closest friends can hurtle off to some ersatz plastic version of a vacation. The downside of course is that the first 3 days are spent waiting in line to deplane and the next three are spent waiting in line to get back on. That's O.K., because all you were going to do is see if Applebees in Hawaii is the same as it is back home. This is not the upgrade to the Concorde that I would have expected. Who wants to sit in a plush chair and be wafted at twice the speed of sound to some exclusive and wonderful place and be made to feel like the king of the world?

In fact, aeronautics in general is an industry in which I believe we have actually ceded capability to economy and that is almost never O.K. What if some major new medical breakthrough was found that cured some form of genetic disease, or cancer? Sure, it would be expensive, but it would be worth it. Once we had that ability, it would be criminal and maybe immoral to back off of it and go the other way because of expense.

When you look at timelines of inventions by year or decade, the leaps are supposed to make you go wow! Wow! WOW! not wow, neato and uh, I guess.

After all, the phrase "they can put a man on the moon", which I assume came about sometime in 1969 concurrent with its eponymous event, is itself not the truism is used to be. I wonder if we could put a man on the moon today. And I wonder why we don't.