Hope or Nope

My wife and I will get our second dose of the Moderna vaccine today. 

I'm not looking forward to joining Batman in his quest to bring justice to Gotham City. I'm not planning to volunteer at a food bank or shelter. I won't be joining marches for social justice. I just want to go out to dinner with my wife. Yes, I realize that makes me not the hero but an uncredited extra in the movie of my life. That first bite of chicken parmesan will be worth it.

I have no idea when the grocery store where I shop for sustenance will take down the sign requiring a mask; thanks to those folks too dim or stubborn to take the vaccine, that might not be any time soon. 

Regardless of the CDC guidance, I won't be throwing out my collection of black, purple, and ocean patterned masks. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic (is there a right amount of pessimism?) but I think we've entered the Golden Age of Pandemics. Hated COVID-19? You'll really hate the sequel, COVID-22! Do we really know how COVID-19 started in any factual detail? After such lack of knowledge, what forgiveness? 

I think Planet Earth may well have just had it with humans. Old Testament remedies - flood, famine, fiery frogs raining down on cities and villages (pretty sure it was something like that, definitely involved frogs somehow) - just can't match the scale of modern day earthlings ability to screw things up. We're down to apocalyptic times. 

Pestilence.

I have never thought that human beings could change, so much as they can adjust. 

Air too poisonous to breath? You can own your own personalized, lightweight Scooba™ pack for walking around outside. (We'd need to rebrand scuba because the "U" stands for underwater. Or not. Does anyone remember that scuba is actually an acronym? How else can my fellow humans disappoint me today?) 

Water too foul to drink? Oh wait, that's already true. (This paragraph was brought to you by Brita water filters. And Dasani water. And Bud Light Seltzer.) 

We've seen the early stages of the transition from hamburgers on the hoof to "impossible burgers" and plant-based beer (yes, I know wheat and barley are plants - and what's wrong with grilled brussel sprouts?) but we'll need to turn plains states like Kansas and Nebraska into greenhouses covering hundreds of square miles to grow those impossible burgers. Maybe we'll just 3D print "meat." Or learn how to eat bugs. Crunchy and high in protein. I'm clearly going to have to get over my "no more than four legs" rule when it comes to food sources. Maybe we can turn the entire state of Florida into a fish farm. It won't be that long before it's completely under water.

Maybe it's time to think big. Really big. Like Moonbase Alpha big. (Come on people! Once upon a time we thought we'd be there by 1999!) Like terraforming Mars big. Okay, so, some people will die. Like that never happens here. (By the way, Elon Musk; you refer to Ernest Shackleton and his "hazardous journey" as your comp for the trip to Mars. You do know Shackleton brought home every single member of his party alive, don't you? And did you know scuba is an acronym?) Hey, wait a minute! Terraforming Mars. It's an infrastructure project! We should all be able to get behind that, right?

We can't?

How about a 21st (or 22nd - these things take time) Century Homestead Act? A Marstead Act. I'm thinking Disney would be first in line to buy up the Cydonia region to create Marsney World Park with its shovel-ready Face on Mars Ride. Well, more of a flyover than a ride. 

I'd pay 1M dogecoin for that.