Wake up in the Morning Feelin' Like Neil Armstrong?

For several weeks now I have had this very catchy song entitled "Tik Tok" by an artist named Ke$ha stuck in my head. I always thought that the song was rhythmically interesting and the lyrics were clever, but I had apparently missed the deeper meaning. When Ke$ha performed on Saturday Night Live the other night, I realized that this song was more than your ordinary dance song about partying. The song is clearly about space or aliens or astronauts or America or ...something...I am not entirely sure, but I will try to make some speculations and We The Internet and try and solve this one.

Was Ke$ha trying to take a stand to keep the astronaut program? This has been an issue recently. The future plans for NASA have people everywhere wondering if people will ever get to go back to space. In this number, her dancers and her band are clearly dressed like some sort of astronaut, although I do not think those suits would do too well on the moon (but they might have more success on "Dancing with the Stars"). Her microphone stand had an American flag on it, as if she was claiming the famous studio 8H stage the way Neil Armstrong did the moon. People from all walks of life have expressed their disappointment in the future of space exploration. Astronauts are the rock stars of the scientific community. They are the reason kids want to become scientists. Perhaps Ke$ha is expanding on this metaphor by being a rocker astronaut (but she'll kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Buzz Aldrin).

Did anyone ever stop to think maybe we are the aliens? In the middle of the song she asked this question during her SNL performance. Is this supposed to be a symbolic commentary on the way immigrants are viewed in America? Other political commentators and musicians alike (most notably The White Stripes out of the music I listen to) have made the point that American was founded by immigrants and we were the aliens who kicked the Native American tribes off their land. And now we are doing the same thing in space? Maybe we are the aliens. Maybe we are the ones who do not belong. But what does all this have to do with having a night on the town like the song's lyrics suggest?

Quite frankly, I have no idea. I just thought this song was really catchy on the radio and I did not thik too deeply into it until I saw the SNL performance. Maybe I am just an idiot who is trying to find meaning and symbolism in what an artist just thought was a cool costume theme for a concert (English majors have an annoying habit of doing that). Maybe there is a deeper message, but I am still way off. Please comment on this post either to tell me I am an idiot or to provide your own insight into this. Together, as one giant collective blogoshpere, We The Internet will figure this one out (by the way, I really like the sound of "We The Internet". That would make a great start to the preamble of the Internet code of law if America ever goes totalitarian and starts censoring people's rights online while still trying to appear to uphold the principle of liberty, but that is another story for another day). Yes we can!

Near Space Ballooning: The Almost Final Frontier

When I first heard about amateur high altitude photographers last week, I was in disbelief that something like this could be so accessible. My astronomy professor did say that this field was the last scientific field where amateurs could make significant contributions, but ordinary people taking pictures that NASA needed rockets and space shuttles to take? That seemed too good to be true. I think it is amazing that people are innovative enough to come up with ideas like this and be able to do it much more cheaply that the methods NASA used and all it took was a digital camera, a weather balloon, a GPS, and a tank of helium. Granted, theirs was an unmanned mission, and NASA has better quality cameras, and NASA is able to accomplish more and study more than one thing in each space shuttle mission, but it is still really cool that people can do this by themselves. NASA should seriously consider employing these methods to get more photos of the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. An amateur balloonist spends a couple hundred dollars per mission to gather these photos, while NASA spends hundreds of millions on each of their missions. A lot can be learned from amateurs exploring space as a hobby. It is too bad that other fields of science require higher levels of qualification, because the most innovative minds are not always the ones with the advanced degrees or the ability to focus on just one field.