You mean apart from the fact that I just finished watching "The Two Cathedrals" again today?
Well, there's also this Guardian article that got me trawling the web for two moments in the West Wing:
The first is Bartlett's introduction (well, dictated by Sam Seaborn for the teleprompter) to some kind of special conference class for school kids to learn about an unmanned craft that was landing on Mars.
"Eleven months ago, a 1200-pound spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Eighteen hours ago, it landed on the planet Mars. You, me, and sixty thousand of your fellow students across the country, along with astroscientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California, NASA Houston, and right here at the White House, are going to be the first to see what it sees, and to chart the extraordinary voyage of an unmanned ship called Galileo V."
Galileo, The West Wing (S2, Ep9)
There's also this other conversation between Josh and Donna from The Warfare of Genghis Khan, (S4, Ep13)
Josh Lyman: That's perfect. Sit down. Sit. I need to play out an argument. Everyone hates us.
Donna Moss: Inspiring start. Josh Lyman: We're the most dominant nation on earth. But too often the face of our economic superiority is a corporate imperialism, our technological dominance shown by Smart bombs and Predator drones. We could do something else. Something generous and uplifting for all humankind. We could send the first representatives from Earth, to walk on another planet. We could land people on Mars. Needs work.
Donna Moss: Needs something.
Josh Lyman: Yeah, that inspiration thing.
Josh Lyman: Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extra-terrestrials, is carrying photos of life on Earth, greetings in 55 languages and a collection of music from Gregorian chants to Chuck Berry. Including "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" by '20s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him when he was seven by throwing lye in is his eyes after his father had beat her for being with another man. He died, penniless, of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down. But his music just left the solar system.
Donna Moss: Okay, that got me.
I only have some idea what particle acceleration or collision is about. But the thought of humanity standing on the treshold of possibilities, of new discoveries about our universe... this excites me. It's a moment of sublimity.
Of course, I am entirely aware that when it's switched on, it may turn out it throws light on nothing new, and what a massively costly exercise in futility that would be.
Yet, I buy Josh's argument that hope inspiration is worth investing in. And as with any enterprise, not all such investment yields results. Nonetheless, every failure teaches us something we should avoid doing, or something we should try to do better the next time round. I'm not certain in life it's ever worth adopting the attitude that anything can be an unqualified failure.
Follow Up (8/9/08): A BBC report triggered by concern that switching the Large Hadron Collider on will spell the end of the world.
2 comments:
Yeah, I love that Galileo bit. I've blogged it before too, because at the end of it, Bartlet says of Sam's extemporaneous shpiel, "He said it right."
I love "Two Cathedrals" best. But watching season 7 (again) now is just plain fun in light of real-world events.
Hey, hey, thanks for dropping by. Looks like we didn't manage to catch up this September break. Perhaps when you're back from your trip? Which I suppose works out well also since we can also talk about that.
Say, I think I'm quite out of touch with writing... I need to go find my mojo again...
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