cutting the other edge
Archive for February, 2010
They go marchin’ in!
Feb 8th
When I say I’ve been waiting a long time for this, I mean decades.
I had the good fortune to not only back the FSU Seminoles during the ’90s, but also go to school there. Their recent run of subpar seasons wasn’t my first experience with love for the underdog, though. My loyalty to the New Orleans Saints was solidified during my high school years in Northwest Florida, whose Mardi Gras makes up in outrageousness what it lacks in size.
I came close to having my heart broken twice in 2007, and by far the more notable of the occasions was the Saints’ loss to the Chicago Bears on January 21. But hey, you know? When you love the underdog, the heartbreak is part of the experience. I was almost afraid to look, when they won 13 games in a row this season. When they went to the playoffs, I braced myself for another near miss. But the Vikings went down easier than the Bears. And my-freaking-God, there the Saints went to the Superbowl.
It’s funny, what we tell ourselves when we want something really bad. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll love them anyway.” And then: that freaking interception! Watching Tracy Porter run 74 yards was like peering into another dimension, one in which the Saints were the exact opposite kind of team they’d been my entire life. But you know what? This new dimension’s just fine! WHO DAT, BITCHES? I TOLD YOU THEY’D WIN IT! GEAUX SAINTS!
T-minus Five More Launches: STS-130 Endeavour (4:39a.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010)
Feb 6th
NASA prepares to launch Endeavour tomorrow, in what should be its second-to-last flight.
I’m alternately relieved and appalled at the planned 2010 decommissionings of all 3 of the Shuttles—relieved, as they’ve been in service 18-26 years, and I’ve no wish to watch my third Shuttle disaster; appalled, because as of Discovery’s final flight in September, for the first time in my life, the United States will be grounded from space.
Sure, we could hitch rides with other countries. But what a comedown for the country that first put a human being on the moon.
I don’t know what will come of our space program—people much smarter than me, working for NASA, probably wonder the same thing right now. It’s one of the few things in which I totally disagree with President Obama. The space race and its magnificent fruits were what inspired generations of children to take science seriously. How will we motivate students to refocus on science now, if one of its greatest achievements can be so visibly abandoned?