Challenge 30: The Vision of the Future Past

franks (64)in #challenge30 • 8 years ago

The Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 is just so beautiful. It looks like it jumped straight out of a Sci-Fi Hollywood movie. And maybe it will someday.

Image Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz

I've been watching the Sci-Fi show Ascension on Netflix.
And it has thrown up a lot more social questions than answers.
About the Far Future and the recent Past
More social questions than you should ever get out of a mere TV show.

But then again isn't that what they always said television was for.
To Educate the masses, as An Education Tool.

Ascension is the story of 600 souls on a Intergalactic trip to now-wheres ville.
Or Proxima if you want to get technical.

I've read Proxima a Sci-Fi book by Stephen Baxter so I thought I had a good idea where they were heading.
But no, this TV show had some other ideas of where they were taking us.

The shows concept of "A starship launched during the Kennedy era," is so in line with a lot of conspiracy theories, it sort of hangs together.
The ship's vision man is an ex Nazi, as were most of the early US Rocket men.
Bob Hope once joked about the US - Soviet Space Race
"Our German Scientists are better than their German Scientists"
10,000 of these German Scientists flooded into the USA under Operation PaperClip.
A lot of them were Nazi's.
But Hey, wasn't the war over.
Live and Let Live and all that shit.
Nazi Smatzi as another wit once said.
We do tend to forget very quickly about a lot of the nasty stuff, it seems.

Back to the TV Show:
So these people are living like Lab rats, cooped up in a stay forever 60ties environment.
Yes there is advanced Techie stuff on board, but it is all very 1960ies.
These people have never experienced Woodstock.
No Summer of Love, No Beatles, No 9/11.
The girls wear fabulous mini-shirts and the Men are all Retro Macho Manno Manno.

It reminded me of the time I was in West Berlin and crossed over into East Germany.
What a spooky desolate place it was back then. Full of lying cheating Politicians and that was just the good guys.
Everybody more or less brainwashed into believing they where living inside a Grey Toned Socialist Paradise.
While on the unjammed TVs in East Berlin.
They could watch the Technicolor Sodom & Gomorrah Western Culture flitter its way to the needle and the damage done.

The East Germans were trapped in their very own Lab Rat Ascension Space Journey.
Everybody knew their place and the hierarchy that involved moving up or down.
When the Wall came down, everything collapsed and they ended up back of the Dole Queue.
I've watched the same storyline play out in Iraq and Libya.
It's why Assad is still hanging on in Syria.
He represents a known hierarchy.
People need stability to live and prosper.
And most times they do not give a shit who is pulling the trigger.
Or who is getting put up against the wall.
As long as the instability is stopped, people will be grateful to anyone. Even a mass murderer.

So if you have a chance give Ascension a whirl.

If the 60ies was an era of Muscle cars, 2017 shows they are still coming off the design table.
As the article below demonstrates.

Image Courtesy of Lamborghini

THE COOLEST-LOOKING CARS THAT CAME OUT THIS YEAR

Some truly remarkable cars hit the pavement in 2016, and we've already picked our 12 all-around favorites. But we'd be remiss not to highlight the cars that, regardless of how they actually drive in real life, just look cool as hell. Make no mistake, some of them are no doubt fantastic automobiles, but they're on this list because they debuted in 2016 with sensational beauty, oddly alluring lines, or crazy off-the-wall designs. Feast your eyes on the most badass poster cars of the year.

Read the full Article Here:
https://www.thrillist.com/cars/nation/beautiful-cool-new-cars-best-looking-rides-2016/year-in-review

image courtsey of @reneenouveau