Apparently the San Diego 4th July fireworks display suffered a technical fault last night (either that, or the organisers were just in a hurry to get home), causing all of the fireworks to launch simultaneously and turning what should have been an eighteen-minute show into a frenetic 60-second wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am:
According to the local coast guard, the technical term is “premature ignition”.
Hmm.
Someone help me out, my sarcasm detector isn’t functioning properly today, and I am not sure whether or not this tweet from the person I helped get elected MP for my hometown is serious:
If this is a wry joke, very well done, sir.
If not…sigh.
Andy Murray continues to impress at this year’s Wimbledon tournament, prompting this riposte from The Daily Mash:
The increasingly efficient Scot has seen his comedic form dip as he continues to make the final stages of competitions without falling over anything or having bits of his body drop off and explode.
Murray said: “Hopefully I’ll get wrapped up in the net, flapping about like a big, sulky dolphin. Or maybe I’ll just deliver a forehand smash to my own testicles.
“If I reach the final people may start thinking of me as an actual tennis player.”
Says Andy’s coach:
“I want to turn Andy into a trophy-capturing automaton that gets to the Wimbledon final every year and goes two sets up before turning into a dyspraxic jumble of pale, hairy limbs.
“It’s going to be fucking hilarious.”
Jinx.
A happy 4th July to all of my American friends.
A wonderful, jazz-inflected version of the US National Anthem performed by Branford Marsalis – one of my favourite renderings.
The Telegraph reports today on a scientific and technological milestone about to be passed by the human race – Voyager 1, the NASA space probe launched in 1977, is due to become the first man-made object to leave our solar system, the Milky Way:
Scientists launched Voyager 1 in 1977 on what was meant to be a five-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn, however 30 years later the vessel has continued towards the boundary of our solar system 11 billion miles from Earth.
Once the spaceship crosses this border it will enter interstellar space – the void between our solar system and the rest of the universe – becoming the first man-made object to venture beyond our solar “bubble”.
In the newspaper’s own comments section, many readers have been responding with the sentiments either of nostalgia (look what we could do as a species when we put our mind to it in that era) or with happiness (how nice to see a positive story in these difficult times, etc.). One reader, identified only as Hardeep_Singh, summed it up best for me:
“Extraordinary a glimpse of when anything was possible compare that to today’s mindset, ‘fairness’, protest, ‘lessons must be learnt’, etc.”
I know that I am in a small and diminishing minority of those who believe that even in these recession-hit, austere times, we should continue to dream grand dreams, and implement the ambitious programmes to make them possible. But it is my view that our societies cannot be built of just hospitals and schools and roads and bridges and the utilitarian things that bind us to the present; there must be room also for the arts, for medical research, scientific exploits and human-inspired voyages that perhaps don’t have a pre-determined goal in sight (Voyager 1’s mission after Titan was made up on the fly, the craft was not expected to remain functional for so long) but which generate new knowledge and bring back riches for us all nonetheless. I hope that our leaders will remember this, and that it will not fall exclusively to China and the developing world to explore these new frontiers and pass these milestones.
On a much more lowly, terrestrial scale, this article also happens to represent a small milestone in itself – the 100th piece that I have uploaded to this blog. Many thanks to you all, frequent and occasional readers alike, for your time, your comments and your support.
And God speed Voyager 1 on its journey.
Semi-Partisan Politics 