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Mars Probes Returned (Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 12, 2001) -- Life does indeed exist on Mars, and it has a wry sense of humor. Both facts were brought to light this morning when NASA personnel opened the Martian "surprise package" which made a crisply executed soft landing at the space port yesterday afternoon. Inside, neatly nested among several tons of multi-colored foam packing peanuts, they found their missing Mars Observer, Climate Orbiter, Polar Lander and Global Surveyor. "It's not every day that an unidentified extraterrestrial object makes a controlled landing at Cape Canaveral, but we knew we had something really unusual when we saw what appeared to be a Federal Express label peeking through what was left of the heat shield," said Daniel Goldin, NASA administrator. "It's an amazingly accurate facsimile. They clearly know much more about us than we know about them." The billion-dollar Mars Observer was lost in 1993. A double whammy followed in 1999, when the Orbiter disappeared in September; the Lander, in December. The Surveyor, with 10 months of successful Red Planet obits under its belt, disappeared in January of 2000, shortly after it began looking for signs of the lost Lander and its pair of piggy-backing probes. "We found that coincidence somewhat suspicious at the time," Goldin recalled, "but we never seriously considered the possibility of intelligent counteraction on the part of Martians. I mean, come on, like Scotty, beam me up already." The politely mocking note that accompanied the package, however, left no doubt about the nature of the Martian "special delivery." It reads: "Dear Earthlings: Enclosed you will find your lost spacecraft. While we appreciate your interest in our planet, we value our privacy and would prefer that you satisfy your curiosity elsewhere in the solar system. We understand, from our interception of your television signals, that this a tired, old joke on your planet; but might we respectfully suggest that you probe Uranus? We have also enclosed a metric conversion chart for planning your next unmanned space missions. Live long and prosper (ha, ha). Uncle Martin." A preliminary examination of the returned space probes indicates that all four have been completely refurbished, Goldin noted. Many systems appear to be improved, he added. Lockheed Martin, lead contractor for the Orbiter and Lander, has announced plans to direct a 24/7 "help wanted" radio transmission at the Red Planet. Stop the Madness, (Madison, WI, July 3, 2005) -- A plea to end guerilla warfare against animal research facilities was made here today. "The attacks, the violence, the indiscriminate freeing of my fellow subjects must end, and end now," declared Randy Jo, a brainy young rhesus monkey living in the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. "I implore the Animal Liberation Front to immediately cease all actions against research facilities throughout the world," continued Randy Jo, communicating through symbols interpreted by a center employee. "If I were living in a jungle somewhere, scrounging for my own food, sleeping in a tree, forgoing cable TV, do you think I would be making this statement now?" Animal rights supporters have engaged in a variety of violent acts in the past several decades. Their most frequent targets have been university labs, such as Randy Jo's home on the UW-Madison campus, doing reported millions of dollars in property damage annually. Scientists involved in animal research have opened letters containing finger-slicing razor blades, confronted masked demonstrators at their residences and received faxed death threats. "Threatening to do harm to our keepers and their families is just plain rude," Randy Jo lamented. In more recent years, violence has escalated. Researchers have been subjected to spray painting, firebombing, window smashing and flaming bags of dog feces left at doorway entrances. Activists have raided labs and released test animals, including approximately 100 mice from neurology laboratories at the University of Minnesota in April of 1999. "What were they thinking?" Randy Jo said. "Minnesota in April? Where did they expect those mice to go? They went into people's homes in search of warmth, food and understanding. Most of them probably ended up dying in mousetraps or eating poison bait. How humanitarian is that?" Life in the research labs is not as bad as animal rights activists would have the world believe, Randy Jo testified. He and his fellow test subjects live much better than their free-ranging counterparts, he elaborated, getting a clean living quarters, three squares a day and free health care benefits. The only drawback is the possibility of sudden death and dissection, he observed, but almost everyone can expect that at some point. "For God's sake, people," Randy Jo concluded, "stop behaving like animals!" No USA TODAY
Tomorrow (Arlington, Va., Sept. 17, 2040) -- The final final print edition of USA TODAY, America's last daily newspaper, rolled off the presses early this morning. "We were and remain the nation's newspaper, No. 1 in the USA, first in daily readers and last to defect to solely online publishing," observed Ed Itor, spokesman for Gannett Co., Inc., USA TODAY parent. "We held out for nearly 50 years, but we simply can't justify printing a paper edition any more." USA TODAY has been publishing a web version for almost as long as its paper editions have been rolling off the presses. It has been America's only printed weekday newspaper, however, since the New York Times discontinued paper publishing five years ago. The writing has been on the wall for much longer than that. Newsstands which once specialized in out-of-town newspapers found their business down by as much as half at the turn of the millennium. In 1999, a story carried by the printed version of USA TODAY reported that a Boston newsstand that once offered 300 foreign and domestic newspapers was down to 130 and still dropping. At that time, more than 2,000 U.S. newspapers, including local weekly publications, were available on the internet. With the broad acceptance of portable electronic devices that could download a complete newspaper in seconds for convenient reading in subway cars, restrooms and other domains formerly practical only for print, many newspapers were forced to combine with competitors just to stay in business. Eventually, those that couldn't make the transition to virtual publishing simply went belly up. Environmental groups gathered at the USA TODAY printing plant to celebrate the last printed newspaper edition in America and the trees that would be spared as a result. Unanswered were questions about how Americans would now be able to housebreak their canine friends or line their bird cages. "We've still got magazines," Itor quipped. [ Home ] |
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