Elon Musk’s SpaceX is finally in the space tourism business. Thankfully, he hasn’t bothered yet to follow the examples of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and have himself shot into space along with his tourists. That shows a lot of restraint in the egomaniac department. I don’t know how he does it. If I had the toys he has, I wouldn’t be able to resist.
The crew of the three-day tourist trip consists of people who surely couldn’t pilot the ship if they had to, although there’s a geologist among them who has been assigned the role of pilot. Apparently, the capsule has an artificial-intelligence mind of its own and will come down where and when it wants.
SpaceX is planning another tourist trip later to send more amateur space travelers to the International Space Station, where they have no business being. Then, a SpaceX rocket will launch Tom Cruise to the ISS, so he can act in a movie to be set on the station. It’s an inversion of the fake-Hollywood-moon-landing conspiracy theory. The moon landings were in fact real, and Hollywood hated that it couldn’t get in on the action. Now, thanks to space tourism, actors and camera crews can go into space. They just have to buy tickets like everybody else.
Speaking of things that can be done now and couldn’t be done in the past: A company is working on genetically modifying elephants to create elephant/woolly mammoth hybrids. They think they can implant an elephant surrogate mom with a genetically modified zygote within six years, and after a two-year gestation, she’ll have a hairy baby. The name of this company is Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences. I did not make that up. I would have called it the Colossal Nerve Laboratories & Storm Door Company.
The idea of bringing back cold-resistant, Arctic-circle-residing elephant species just as the Arctic is melting away strikes me as rather twisted. And I’m not usually the one calling other people out for having twisted senses of humor.
I guess it will work like this: They’ll get a line of smaller woolly mammoths going, with plenty of breeding pairs, and then they’ll keep going, tweaking their genes in subsequent generations to get the girth and tusks just right. That should keep them busy and out of trouble for three or four decades.
Scientists not involved in the project are already thinking of other cool creations, like lines of customized faux dodos and saber-toothed tigers. They wouldn’t dare try to recreate Neanderthals. That would really cross a line.
There are some kinks that need to be worked out. Where in the world do you put a woolly mammoth or a saber-toothed tiger? Will the time come when they can be rented out to Hollywood as living props for movies? Will Tom Cruise ever be filmed riding a woolly mammoth into battle with Pleistocene apes? Or is he going to be too old for that by the time the mammoths are ready?
In another vein altogether, I recently was worrying about having to prove I’ve had the COVID-19 vaccinations in order to be able to go to restaurants and events. King County is going to require proof of vaccinations at such places starting Oct. 25. I couldn’t picture carrying the vaccine card around because it wouldn’t fit in my wallet. I learned I could show images of the front and back of the card on my cell phone. That would be better.
But then I found a website where I can access my Washington Department of Health immunization records going back more than 10 years. Just to let you know, it’s at https://myirmobile.com.
If you’re like me, when you are trying to register at that site, you will scream into your electronic device for several minutes because the registration process is so weird. But I’m sure you’ll get it to work for you eventually, especially if you were born recently and got a cell phone for your first birthday.
My problem is I’m too old to be signing into novel websites. Literally. One of the things I had to do was enter my birthdate. The website wouldn’t let me type it in. There was a pop-up calendar. I had to scroll back past more than 800 months.
Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].
Read more of the Sept. 22-28, 2021 issue.