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神经网络昆斯林的新闻组分类2006

Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu![e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (Tom)
Subject: Vandalizing the sky
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Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 10:02:44 GMT
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Wm Hathaway comments;
>I'd like to add that some of the "protests" do not come from a strictly
>practical consideration of what pollution levels are acceptable for
>research activities by professional astronomers.  Some of what I
>would complain about is rooted in aesthetics.  Many readers may
>never have known a time where the heavens were pristine - sacred -
>unsullied by the actions of humans.  The space between the stars
>as profoundly black as an abyss can be.  With full horizons and
>a pure sky one could look out upon half of all creation at a time
>- none of which had any connection with the petty matters of man.
>Any lights were supplied solely by nature; uncorruptable by men.
>Whole religions were based on mortal man somehow getting up there
>and becoming immortal as the stars, whether by apotheosis or a belief
>in an afterlife.

>The Space Age changed all that.  [more on man's effect on the environment]

>But there is still this desire to see a place that man hasn't
>fouled in some way.
>.... I think my point about a desire for beauty is valid,
>even if it can't ever be perfectly achieved.

I agree that the desire for beauty is valid, but I think your desire to
impose your vision of beauty is not.  You mention the age-old desire to
somehow get up there, but ignore the beauty of the actual achievment
of that vision.  You mention the beauty of a very dark sky, not impeded
by the effects of humans, but ignore the beauty of the as-dark-as-can-be
sky that is only visible from space, a vision that we, or at least,
our descendents, may one day be able to see, in part, because of efforts
that others call ugly.  One day, I hope, humans will be able to look out,
not upon half the heavens, with only nature-creted lights, but upon all
of the heavens, with no lights.  If advertising in space can help us reach
that goal, it is no less beautiful for the way we reach it, than the
'pristine' sky of yesteryear (or yester-century), which is totally
unreachable.  One of the original conceptions of beauty in wetsern
sculpture was a human form, in the effort of striving to reach a goal.
I don't think there's any reason to believe that modernity has changed that,
just because it has changed the way we strive.

BTW, there are places that people haven't fouled.  Sometimes they make
it better.

-Tommy Mac
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Tom McWilliams 517-355-2178 wk   \\ As the radius of vision increases,
[e-mail] 336-9591 hm \\ the circumference of mystery grows.
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