Mauna Kea, the Sacred

[David M]

quote:

---

Originally posted by PaulW

I'd have more respect for the anti-science lobby if they didn't spread their message through the internet!

---

And the anti-military element might do well to remember Al Gore did NOT create the internet, but DARPA did.

David

Ninole Resident

[Kelena]

And the pro-military element might do well to remember that Al Gore served honorably and later supported technological advances, unlike, say, former Vice President Dan Quayle who avoided service in Vietnam and who, I can personally attest, wanted to dismantle NASA in favor of outsourcing the job to faux libertarian Texans who wanted to play with rockets on the back forty with government money.

I am with Al in thinking that grand scientific endeavors, such as the TMT on Mauna Kea, deserve governmental support. The University of Hilo needs to provide training for young astronomers, so that they can have a shot at working at the observatories. Really -- is nothing sacred?

[TomK]

Kelena:

quote:

---

The University of Hilo needs to provide training for young astronomers, so that they can have a shot at working at the observatories.

---

There's been some debate (not here) about the observatories on Mauna Kea not paying rent. In fact rent is paid by giving UH 15% of available observing time at the telescopes. Given the budgets involved here that's equivalent to a few million dollars each year and much of that time gets used to, guess what, train UH graduate students at the observatories! It also gives astronomers at UH relatively easy access to some of the most powerful telescopes on the planet and in turn their research gets passed down to both the astronomy and physics students - and of course the public (e.g., via 'Imiloa)

I absolutely agree with your statement but it is already happening. I suspect the TMT will only enhance this process plus hopefully provide positions for some of the locally trained astronomers (something that is tough to do right now given all the cutbacks).

Tom


http://apacificview.blogspot.com/

[dmbwest]

Can't wait for it ... Cool stuff Tom.

An interesting write up on the early design of these IMO.

http://keckobservatory.org/cosmicmatters..._the_odds/

aloha,
pog

[punaticbychoice]

Kalena@ 9:25AM, 2/24; greg@ 12:05, 2/24
Very good points and arguments. Good logic, good history.
Thank you for excellent contributions to this discussion.

[punaticbychoice]

TomK:
Not slighting you either.
Appreciate your observations (pun?) too.
Thanks for injecting some additional facts into this discussion.

[anthonyf]

I have been pondering this thread, mostly because I am new here but secondly there is a blindness to where humans are in the world right now.

The monetary systems of the world are collapsing and the oil we use to feed ourselves has hit its peak. Do you understand that? The next ten years will be nothing like the last ten. I think sometimes we look to the stars and the future because we are ignoring the present. That is the hope junk that all the politicians sell you. We have been dreaming that technology will make our lives better but with close examination we find technology has only made itself better.

The mountain is not sacred to our society, maybe to some individuals with romantic notions, but not to society. Sacredness itself is a childish. It is either all sacred or you are living in the delusion of knowledge. I call you all the Apple Eaters.

Whether or not the telescope will be used for war is a silly question. Of course it will. All our knowledge is used for war. Our society is war. There is nothing wrong with war, just wrong causes for war. It is knowledge that creates war and separation. That was the peace in the garden of eden. No, I am not a religious man, it is another childish notion, but the early christians knew what they spoke of. We forgot. Too many apples.

I have been finding during my breif time here so far is that people in Puna are extremely individualistic. That suprised me and is making me rethink my residing here.

And to those who say I use knowledge so I am a hypocryte; I am a wrench in the machine.

[Kelena]

I do love apples, and I would never accuse you of overusing the knowledge that you have, anthonyf. And you call that a wrench? : )

Anyway, the Thirty Meter Telescope is a wonderful colloboration between two incredible places: California and Canada, with participation from India and China as well. The design is gorgeous and it will be the most powerful optical telescope on earth. Seeing far is good and I think it is safe to say that anyone who is lucky enough to peer through it (and I believe that will be all of us through various methods) will have a new sense of the sacred. The quest for knowledge is sacred to me. No one ignores the present and its harsh realities by learning to play Clair de Lune, or by looking through the world's most advanced telescope to see the light from moons beyond our galaxy. Instead, by reaching higher we elevate ourselves, and pull away from the brutishness of which we are capable.

Imagine a 14 year old math wizard with a drunken lout of a father and an ex-stripper mother. He is a bookish boy and is in his room studying his heart out while his mother throws a frying pan at his father and his father breaks a bottle on the tile floor. With his great powers of concentration, he tunes it out, promising himself he will rise above this all by pursuing the truths and mysteries of mathmatics. Do you want him to stop, get real and go address the anarchy in the kitchen? I don't.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (90 feet baby!) will see almost to the origin of the universe, as we know it. The intelligence that allows us to create such a telescope, that permits us to set aside superstitions to place it on Mauna Kea, and that allows us to interpret what we see through it may well lead us out of some of our other problems as well.

Intelligent endeavors are good. Science is good. We are stardust, gazing up on stardust. The sacred path is flanked my stars, passes through a Magellan cloud and is illuminated by immense nebulae and stars-a-borning. Watch out for wormholes.

And yep, Punatics are individualistic. That's what we like about each other.

[anthonyf]

quote:

---

Originally posted by KelenaThe quest for knowledge is sacred to me. No one ignores the present and its harsh realities by learning to play Clair de Lune, or by looking through the world's most advanced telescope to see the light from moons beyond our galaxy. Instead, by reaching higher we elevate ourselves, and pull away from the brutishness of which we are capable.

Imagine a 14 year old math wizard with a drunken lout of a father and an ex-stripper mother. He is a bookish boy and is in his room studying his heart out while his mother throws a frying pan at his father and his father breaks a bottle on the tile floor. With his great powers of concentration, he tunes it out, promising himself he will rise above this all by pursuing the truths and mysteries of mathmatics. Do you want him to stop, get real and go address the anarchy in the kitchen? I don't.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (90 feet baby!) will see almost to the origin of the universe, as we know it. The intelligence that allows us to create such a telescope, that permits us to set aside superstitions to place it on Mauna Kea, and that allows us to interpret what we see through it may well lead us out of some of our other problems as well.

---

So many memes, where to start.

You wish to pull yourself away from brutishness by ignoring the screams of your mother. Another escape. Might as well take to drink or drugs.

You know, that 14 year old kids hell was create by the very thing you are using to save him. Knowledge made the alcohol and the frying pan and the low wage jobs his family is forced to work becaue of the knwoledege people have over them. But you say more of the same! I say we free the whole family, not just the child, pull them out of the wretched farce they call a life. Do you see how uncaring you are of the whole? Just like a lover of science, only seeing the little pieces.

The very fact of building the telescope is a brutish act. Have you see the forges that make the steel? A very brutish example of humanity. The raping of the earth and the poisoning of water. But you say that brutishness is worth it for some imaginary child.

And you say mathematicians is a truth. What fools we were to create a number out of nothing! Concepts are not truths, they are only daydreams. Tell a whale to count to ten and it will count to infinity before you finish your sentence.

And the glory you put on a simple man made device. A moth sees it as nothing more than a resting place. A 20 year old device on a billion year old world.

And you end of of this with a notion that it MAY lead us out of our other problems. As a science lover you should realize it MAY lead us into more problems as well. What problems has technology the lever of knowledge solved that it has not created in the first place?

But it is your little hobby, and you are just concerned about yourself regardless of your silly pretend caring about some myth of a small child. I can tell you that it happens right here in Puna. Where is the care? Easier to care about myths and ghosts on mountains.

Yes, the individualism. I think that might be unappealing to me.

And let me add, when I was 13 I worked at a gas station all summer to buy a Celestron C90 telescope. I spent long nights in the New England cold looking at the rings of Saturn and the Horsehead Nebula. But when I was older I saw it for what it was, another human fetish, something to excite us while living an utterly boring and wretched lives.

[Greg]

That pesky science stuff is pretty infuriating! I'm just glad I flew here on the giant metal bird and have my magic box to post with.
[]