On Wonder

For one thing, you always have to wonder who they're actually interviewing for these polls. Do you know anyone who has ever actually been polled? It's as though the same 1,034 people are kept in a warehouse in Des Moines, Iowa and are always on hand to answer questions. Maybe the two million out-of-work telemarketers can find new jobs as official...well, English vocabulary does not appear to support a single word for "people who answer questions in polls." Pollees? Pollites? New jobs as official poll-something-or-others, in any case. But, I digress.

A recent Associated Press poll shows very encouraging numbers regarding the American public and its support for space exploration. Of course, for a true believer like myself, these polls will always be discouraging in some sense, because there's always some notrivial percentage of people who do not support space exploration and whose colossally erroneous opinions will be reliably quoted whenever the poll numbers are cited. This is, to put it bluntly, maddening--and invariably I find myself speculating about a couple of possibilities.

(1) Could we have certified law enforcement officers whose job it is to locate and lock up these people?

(2) Could I be one of them?

But this is just frustration talking. It's like religious freedom and the separation of church and state. I don't want some looney toon dictating my religious beliefs; thus, in order to avoid giving anyone the right to do so, I must refrain from doing so myself. Likewise, I must not punish people simply for being mistaken, lest I be thought mistaken and punished myself.

Ah, reciprocity.

So. Yes. The encouraging poll. http://space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_... Though there are a variety of numbers, a few in particular jump out at me as significant. For one, three-fourths of Americans view the space program as a worthwhile investment. While I am inclined to wonder what exactly the other fourth is thinking, it remains the case that you're never going to make everybody happy. In fact, you can tell a lot about someone by the quality of their enemies, so if any of those anti-space folks happen to be downright malevolent...well, let's accept the compliment. Christ drove the Pharisees right up the wall.

It's interesting to note that young adults, the more highly educated, and the higher earners are all more inclined to support space exploration. Then again, maybe it isn't interesting. Maybe it's exactly what you'd expect. I'm also pleased that a plurality of 49% support a manned mission to Mars. Note that men are twice as likely to support such a mission as are women. Take that, mega-feminists! There is a difference between the sexes, and it's called "a sense of adventure". And while an earlier poll, taken soon after the loss of Columbia, showed that only a small majority (52%) favored manned over unmanned missions, it remains the case that the actual anti-manned-mission crowd is significantly smaller than the remainder, weighing in at a little over a third in that poll.

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