Space race.
There have been two notable, historic even, achievements in space to kick off the New Year. First, NASA’s New Horizon flew past Ultima Thule taking pictures and gathering data as it went. Ultima Thule, aka The Snowman because of its shape, is 6.5 billion km from Earth marking the furthest ever space exploration.
A good deal closer but no less technically challenging, China has said it has landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon. According to state media the Chang’e-4 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin and will explore local geology as well as conduct biological experiments.
Taking a Devil’s advocate stance. The NASA mission is great, but I am concerned that the further out we go the chances of being noticed by someone, something else, increases. Chances are we’ve already been noticed but, just saying. The China mission, I really hoped that when mankind went into space it would be part of an international brotherhood, not a national scramble for power and resources, which I fear the moon may turn into.
The federal election, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has put all of his chips out there and bet on the carbon tax as the issue to fight on. By now I expect you know that I’m not a fan of taxation to cure climate change. In the timeframe we have, there are to my mind, two chances of taxation fixing the problem, slim and none. Action must be big, pragmatic, bold and global. I can’t see it happening. Back to Scheer, attacking a policy without having declared an alternative is inviting months of political attack without being able to shoot back. In short, I think he’s made a political mistake, which if he has a plan, is easily fixed.
Brexit will be back in the news again as the clock ticks down to the end of March. It’s deal or no deal. I’m still thinking it will be deal as the harsh reality of no deal sinks in.
As I write this U.S. President Donald Trump’s world has taken a turn for the worse. Do I think it will change his behavior? No, I think it will be same old attack and distract. Do I think he will be globally more dangerous in 2019? Yes, I fear so. Some enforced checks and balances would be nice. I also think its appalling that around 800,000 government workers have no pay. Going forward, shut downs such as this should not be allowed to happen, ever. Maybe Congress and the Senate can fix that.
Online shopping is popular, yet during the postal strike many returned to the still dominant bricks and mortar stores. I think Amazon and the like have a bad security problem. Parcels are being stolen, big time. Thieves are even following delivery vehicles. People can’t be in all the time nor delivery times guaranteed. Bricks and mortar stores have for some time, years even, been running a system where a customer buys online and collects from the store. With the right infrastructure in place this works really well and maybe Amazon may do well to start having, let’s say, more visible collection points in towns and cities for items that won’t fit in the mailbox. Ironically, that means a bricks and mortar presence opening up further sale opportunities.