In case you missed it, concerning last week's ominous photo of a bleak landscape, kit said:Welcome to beautiful Kazakhstan, gateway to the stars! The picture was taken near Site 110 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. You're right, the scene is a relic of the Cold War. Baikonur was originally constructed as an ICBM base. Today, it's the hub of the Russian manned space program, and is responsible for supplying crews and cargo for the International Space Station.
That decaying structure is building MZK, a fueling complex for the abandoned Buran space shuttle program. You can see part of the launch gantry on the far left of the big photo.
The spacecraft being rolled past MZK is a Soyuz launch vehicle. I'm not sure if it's one of the manned Soyuz-TM rockets or a Progress supply vehicle. It's not a missile, though.
What a stark place, beautiful in a very "sabi" way. I found a Quicktime VR movie that lets you zoom and pan around close to where your picture was taken: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_r7_360.mov
Save the file to your local machine so you can view it fullscreen. The resolution is good. If you look hard enough, you will be able to positively identify building MZK.
Strangely -- perhaps even appropriately -- it was from this otherworldly site that humankind took its first baby steps into the cosmos.
In an open letter to George Bush, Sean Penn said:
Many of your actions to date and those proposed seem to violate every defining principal of this country over which you preside: intolerance of debate. . . marginalization of your critics, the promoting of fear through unsubstantiated rhetoric, manipulation of a quick comfort media, and the position of your administration's deconstruction of civil liberties all contradict the very core of the patriotism you claim.
Concerning my on-line debate with K concerning the science of climate change, Zen Master Dogen said:
Even if you are speaking rationally and another person says something unreasonable, it is wrong to defeat him by arguing logically. On the other hand, it is not good to give up hastily saying that you are wrong, even though you think that your opinion is reasonable.
Neither defeat him, nor withdraw saying you are wrong. It is best to just leave the matter alone and stop arguing. If you act as if you have not heard and forget about the matter, he will forget too and will not get angry. This is a very important thing to bear in mind.
2 comments:
interesting to read this advice from Dogen. Yesterday I made one comment on block head's blog and had entered another, studded with links to charts and articles on realclimate.org and suddenly had cold feet, like I'd caught myself picking on an idiot.
I didn't submit the comment.
"idiot" - the resort to name calling is a common one among you folks.
Shokai - dogen's advice is sound if you want to get along. It doesn't really apply if the aim is to get at the truth.
Post a Comment