Good Day for Whales, File-sharing and Space Exploration!
Yes, I know what happened yesterday, but today is a new day and the first things I saw on-line after waking up certainly make it look like a really good one. Of course, each of the things that make it a good day so far can still turn out bad and there’s plenty of time for other events, most of them probably very unpleasant, to take place, which is why I’m trying to write this early, before any of that will have a chance to happen. Good things don’t usually last in this world, after all…
You know it’s a great day for activism when you’re greeted by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society announcing that they have found the Nisshin Maru and now plan to “chase them through the frozen gates of hell if need be“. Unfortunately, a whale was just being butchered on the deck at the time, but they will certainly do their best from now on, no matter what the Japanese whalers will try or throw at them.
What will happen next is still uncertain, seeing as the ship that found the Nisshin Maru was the Steve Irwin, which is neither as fast as the Gojira nor as sturdy as the Bob Barker. In fact, the Gojira is currently more or less limping back to Australia for repairs after engine problems were recently discovered and, according to that article, the Bob Barker was close to a day away from the Steve Irwin at the time of first contact. But the Nisshin Maru is noticeably slower than any of the other ships involved, so the Steve Irwin should be able to keep tailing it long enough for the Bob Barker to catch up. Then we can only hope that they’ll manage to prevent any further killings, or at least save the lives of far more whales than during any of the previous seasons.
The next encouraging piece of news is linked to my last post: Law firm ACS: Law has decided to stop chasing illegal file-sharers, citing the “immense hassle” caused by a mix of hacktivism and more direct terrorist threats. Which may of course just be an excuse or, even more likely, a rather desperate attempt to gain public support by painting the file-sharers and their supporters in a vile light, especially since pretty much everything about the case was dubious to begin with, but this is good news nevertheless. And it also supports the notion that such tactics are effective in this battle, or in any others for that matter.
As the ruling is expected soon, it may all still go wrong, so we have to wait and see. And even if this case will go well, it’s unknown what, if any, effects it’ll have on the laws that keep being passed against “piracy” in more and more countries recently. But it’s a good sign that we’re still strong in this battle and can still push them back, no matter what they throw at us. It proves that piling up the pressure is effective, even if, or perhaps especially if, the tactics used are harsh and also quite illegal.
Last but definitely not least, today marks seven years since Opportunity landed on Mars, during which time it functioned without interruption and sent back a huge amount of data. (That article gives the date as January 24 due to time zone differences.) Admittedly, Spirit has been there three weeks longer, but she’s been silent for the past ten months and, though attempts to restore contact will continue at least until March, initial estimates said she should have woken up from hibernation in late October or November if everything was still operational, the continued silence making it more and more likely that she didn’t survive the Martian winter.
Granted that this event is very different from the previous two, as it has nothing to do with activism and in fact doesn’t even imply that anything actually took place today, not to mention that it doesn’t even happen on Earth, but it’s also very important and a very encouraging piece of news. Just knowing that humans were capable of creating a little rover that could keep obtaining data while traveling around another planet, powered entirely by solar panels, for seven whole years without anyone being around to do any maintenance work is utterly amazing! And when you add the fact that her sister also functioned for at least six years and two and a half months, though the original mission was only intended to last for three months… It sure seems that we can do a lot, if we truly want to.
Unfortunately, the future of space exploration doesn’t look particularly good, as this sector has been hit by the current financial crisis about as much as anything else dealing with science, research and development. After all, gaining such knowledge usually doesn’t pay right away, and right now everybody’s just looking for the quickest and safest way to make more money, only thinking of today and of themselves at the expense of tomorrow and the world. Not that this manner of thinking is in any way unusual, in fact it’s the norm for the vast majority of humans, but the current situation makes it that much more obvious and that much more damaging… Which is just why we need to be reminded of such accomplishments even more.
There were probably some other good news today, perhaps even on topics that I’d be interested in, but I’m sure there were lots of bad news as well. So I chose to only focus on these three, because they were the first things that caught my eye after I woke up today. Quite frankly, reading these things made me genuinely happy, at least for a while, and anyone reading this should know how difficult that is. It didn’t last, not even long enough for me to write this post while in such a mood, as other things conspired to return me to a more regular bad mood, but it was nice enough while it lasted… Such news, rare as they are, are proof that there may somehow still be some hope left for us.
