15 February 2019 is Galileo’s Birthday, which may not be an
official holiday anywhere, but is an event I personally have observed since at
least 1962. It is also Lupercalia
and Susan B. Anthony Day (in California,
New York, Florida, and Wisconsin). It may also be Liberation Day in Afghanistan, commemorating the withdrawal of
Soviet troops from that country in 1989. On this date in 1933 Giuseppe Zangara
murdered Franklin D. Roosevelt, US President-elect, thus setting off a chain of
events leading to Allied defeat in World War II, according to Philip K. Dick’s
alternate history in The Man in the High
Castle.
In the news we read that the Mars Rover Opportunity has been
officially declared dead, its mission terminated. Its last words are reported
as being “It’s getting dark. My batteries are low.” Strictly speaking, of
course, it didn’t say anything, any more than it sent pictures to Earth; what
it did was transmit data including information about its immediate environment
that showed it was getting dark and running out of energy. I saw somewhere
somebody quarreling with this rendition of its last transmission, saying that
it attributed emotions (fear? sadness?) to an object. I don’t know about that.
The flat statements seem pretty emotionless to me. There is fear and sadness no
doubt at the end of Opportunity’s mission—but those emotions belong to us, who
have enjoyed the information it has sent us over the last fifteen years—not to
the inactive mechanism.
In other news the new impotence of the US on the international
stage was
highlighted cruelly in the debacle that was Trump’s Warsaw summit. It
was intended to solidify the forces opposed to Iran’s rôle in the Middle East,
but instead only underscored America’s isolation and weakness in the region.
In fake news media outlets are apparently
reporting that an
attack on Jussie Smollett by racist and/or homophobic assailants is a hoax—this
despite an ongoing investigation by the Chicago police. Smollett did note one
correction to some media accounts—his assailants were not (he says) wearing
maga hats. “I didn’t need to add anything like that,” he was
quoted as saying.
“I don’t need some MAGA hat as the cherry on top of some racist sundae.” Both
the Chicago police and Fox Entertainment dispute aspects of the hoax claims.
ABC 7 in Chicago
stands by its reporting, claiming (without any substantiation)
that the actor was about to be written out of
Empire (denied by the network) and staged the attack for publicity
(possible, but unsubstantiated).
And finally the sporting-goods store owner who refused to
carry Nike products to show his solidarity (I assume) with the racist police
who kill unarmed black men has
gone out of business. Good riddance, I say.
