Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Shots from NASA’s Galileo space probe as it swung by the Earth and the Moon in 1992.

(May take a minute to get going – click image for a larger version. Animation by Gordan Ugarkovic, via The Planetary Society.)

Since the Mission is not actually visible in the above video, I will reuse this awesome shot of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon from Japan’s late Kaguya orbiter.

Hopefully this puts some things in perspective. That earth is beautiful, no?

Next to the space program, infrastructure (specifically water and sewer systems) is likely our civilization’s crowning achievement. (Think about it — if you only could have one, would you choose running water/sewers, or electricity?)

All of this is an excuse for me to publish this absolutely disgusting picture of what happens when you dump unnecessary crap down your drain, from our friends at the SF Sewers blog:

So don’t bitch when you can’t make your usual left turn on your commute home for a couple of weeks in order for the hundred-plus year old infrastructure that your great-great-grandfather installed to be replaced so you can continue to dump old bacon grease down the garberator. And don’t bitch if taxes go up a little — as you may have noticed all sorts of infrastructure around here is COLLAPSING IN ON ITSELF.

You only appreciate this shit when it’s gone. And I don’t want that to happen on my watch. Time to get proactive, people. (Analogies may also be made for the global environment.)

Oh, and Merry Christmas.