NASA's artificial Mars mission plan sounds awfully familiar

You are qualified for a job advertised by NASA.

NASA is taking applications for four people to live in an artificial Martian habitat for a year. While there, they will conduct spacewalks, have limited communication with home and exist with restricted food and resources. Oh, there will be occasional equipment failures.

Kind of like that period when your toilet paper supply was running low, you walked around the block once a day and you couldn't figure out how to do a video call with family. Except you'll get paid. By NASA.

NASA seeking people for the fall 2022 mission that will be followed by two others – each lasting a year. Three tries.

The initial announcement said NASA is looking for "healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, age 30 to 55 years old, and proficient in English for effective communication between crew and mission control." The selection of the crew will follow standard NASA criteria for astronauts, which is to say most of us don't qualify.

Candidates are required to have a master’s degree in a STEM field such as engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical or computer science from an accredited institution with at least two years of professional STEM experience or a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft.

However, that's not rigid. NASA says it may also consider candidates who have completed two years of work toward a doctoral program in STEM, or completed a medical degree, or a test pilot program. (Still, almost none of us qualify). The announcement also said NASA will consider candidates with four years of professional experience, applicants who have completed military officer training or a bachelor's of science degree in a STEM field. One more step down and many of us might qualify.

The four "winners" will live in a house-sized habitat in Houston that is created by a 3-D printer. It's called Mars Dune Alpha and takes up 1,700 square feet in the Johnson Space Center.

Let's step back a moment and consider what's being sought. Those who get the gig will:

• Live with three other people for a year in a 1,700-square-foot space.
• Have limited communications with outsiders.
• Have limited food and resources.

Forget that "qualification" stuff. You're qualified for this! So am I!

This job sound like the past 18  months.

Sure, they want people to do scientific experiments to simulate what will happen on Mars, but didn't we show that we were qualified when we were creating handmade masks and finding replacements for toilet paper? Will NASA acknowledge our experience from we were having to figure out how to keep our kids learning while not going crazy? Do we get credit for our COVID gardens or our "creative projects" we started during the lockdowns?

NASA is still our best and brightest. NASA sent 24 men to the moon and returned them safely. NASA dreams big.

Mars is worth exploring and I'm on board with having people  simulate living on Mars in isolation with very little communication with their friends and family.

We could do this! However, I'm not very interested in doing it and I suspect most of us aren't.

For one thing, most of us don't qualify under NASA's exacting standards.

But the main reason we're not interested is that spending a year in isolation, trying to navigate a dangerous new world where things are difficult, unprecedented and potentially lethal doesn't sound like fun.

It sounds like 2020.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

The movie-like story behind a 70-year-old electric shaver

Mrs. Brad and I drove to our hometown a few weeks ago to visit my dad. He's 90 and still going relatively strong: He still drives. He watches a lot of golf on TV. He has opinions on sports and politics and pop culture. He has a flip phone. He has a girlfriend.

As we were sitting on the couch in his apartment, Dad suddenly remembered something.

"Do you need a satchel?" he asked me. Quickly trying to remember what a satchel is (a briefcase!) I initially said no, then realized he wanted to give it to me. So of course I need one. I'm sure I could use it someday.

He brought it out, explaining its origin. He received it when he became a manager at Arthur Young & Co., the old accounting firm, in the early 1960s. He got a new leather satchel and a raise, he said. The satchel was in good shape, with some old accounting ledger sheets in it. I took it and smiled. His story made it cooler. Maybe I'll use it.

Then he remembered something else. "Oh, do you want an electric razor? It's my old one."

An electric razor?

My dad brought out an old Norelco plug-in shaver. Cool, right? The story is better.

My dad won the shaver in a poker game. On a ship. Coming back from the Korean War in 1953.

Is there a better story than that behind what's ostensibly an electronic device of the 1950s? Having left his hometown in eastern Montana, my dad joined the Air Force ahead of being drafted into the Army. He spent time in Korea (where he picked up habits that continued into my childhood, including really short showers and a love of Spam) and then came home. At that point, he was in his early 20s and hadn't met my mom. His whole life was ahead of him.

During a poker game on the trip home, one of his fellow passengers ran out of money and offered a Norelco electric razor as collateral. An electric razor! New technology!

My dad won the hand, taking the shaver.

I remember the shaver from my childhood and may have even used it on some of my early shaves. Since it's from the early 1950s, it's not rechargeable. As my dad said, in those days, if something was electric, it was plugged in.

Back at our hotel that day, I plugged it in and it worked. It was sluggish and probably wouldn't be very effective at shaving a beard without a new motor, but it was a SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD electric razor, still trying to do its job.

Before my dad was a 90-year-old living in a senior apartment complex, before being married to my mom and stepmom (both of whom died), before having any kids – heck, before getting a leather satchel for being promoted to manager on his way to being a managing partner of an independent CPA firm – he was like a movie character: A guy coming home on a ship from a foreign war, winning an electric razor in a poker game.

Maybe when I'm 90 I'll pass something like that on to my sons. Except it will be a CD that I burned on my desktop computer or something like that.

Or maybe . . . it will be an electric shaver that my dad won on a transport ship in 1953, coming home from the Korean War.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Tomato Festival poetry sample shows my credentials are ample

The Fairfield Tomato Festival (now called the Tomato and Vine Festival) returns next weekend.

It was canceled last year due to the pandemic, but remains one of Fairfield's best events. Notably, my son (now 30) and I saw "The Goofy Movie" for free at the downtown movie theaters in the early years of the event. So there's that.

During the festival's history, I've made probably several pitches to become the event's poet laureate.

Not because I want to read my poetry in public. Not because I'm the greatest poet in town. It's mostly because it would be a great addition to my LinkedIn page and it provides me a column topic during the dog days of summer.

It's selfish. But it also seems like something the Tomato Festival organizers should consider, since having a poet laureate would add a layer of class. Otherwise, the Tomato Festival will be trying to ketchup with other festivals. Get it?

That's not a poem, that's a joke, but it shows my cleverness.

Anyway, here are some samples of my poetry (consider this my resume):

SONNET

What fruit does yon county seat honor?

Its beauty is far greater than the plum

We use it on burgers and on hot dogs

It's detractors? Universally dumb

During August we hail thee as queen fruit

Thine taste and thou uses we celebrate

For thy majesty serves as the top seed

All other contenders are second rate

We'll beat towns that fete the digestible

With you, our great Tomato Festival

HAIKU

Oh, downtown Fairfield

Oh, Tomato Festival

Oh, add the word "Vine"

LIMERICK

In Solano's fields it brings lots of loot,

But is a tomato a veggie or fruit?

Whether it's either or neither,

Just please take a breather

At this festival that question is moot

RHYMING COUPLET

All hail the tomato, for all that you do

You originally come from our friends in Peru

The favorite in salads in South Carolina

The top exporting country is actually China

It provides useful fruit for a son or a daughter

And 94.5 percent of its weight is from water

While weeding around them, keep on your glove

In France it is known as the "apple of love"

For Solano County, it's agricultural glue

In dollar volume of crops it's ranked No. 2

As California's sun rises, the vines they stretch up

Creating what can be used to make ketchup

If hearing these details make you feel shook

Go find Tony Wade and buy his history book

ACROSTIC

Touch the world, wild vegetable

Or are you a fruit, as our teachers told us?

Maybe you're a combination of veggies and fruits

After all, you don't have to be only one thing

Turn your focus to ripen and feed us

Or become pizza sauce or a V-8

Even then we'll enjoy you

Surely that spells out your name!

BEATNIK POETRY

Solanum lycopersicum!

Grows on the ground!

Tomato, potato, tornado!

Spinning to infinity!

Your juices are blood red, the blood of tyrants!

Curse the darkness!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How drinking sour milk didn't teach me anything

One night decades ago–when Mrs. Brad and I were still dating–we ate dinner at my parents' house.

I had my own apartment, but it was important to visit my parents so they could get to know my girlfriend. Mrs. Brad and I were getting serious.

My parents weren't warm and fuzzy. I was used to it, but Mrs. Brad (who was still a couple of years from officially becoming Mrs. Brad) was understandably nervous around them.

We sat down to eat dinner and I poured a big glass of milk (then, like now, I drank milk at most meals. It does a body good ®). Mrs. Brad similarly had a glass of milk. My parents probably had wine. We were eating roast or casserole or whatever people my my parents' age ate in the early 1980s.

Mrs. Brad took a sip of milk. Unbeknownst to me, she realized it was sour.

Meanwhile, I was telling some long-winded story and didn't see her react. I ate some food. Then I took a big drink of milk, chugging it down. It took a second to realize what was happening.

The milk curdled in my mouth. It was awful. It was sour. It was disgusting. I still swallowed it.

I lunged for the carton and read the label. The milk was two or three weeks past the expiration date. Making a face, I announced it to the table.

"This milk is way past the expiration date!"

"I thought it tasted off," Mrs. Brad said.

She hadn't said anything, although it was really my parents' fault for keeping milk weeks past the expiration date.

Disgusting. Decades later, I still remember the horror.

You'd think an experience like that would make me vigilant about expiration dates. You'd think I'd throw out food as soon as it passed its due date. You'd think I'd be nervous about eating old food.

You'd be wrong.

I thought about the Mrs. Brad Sour Milk Incident (which is what historians call it) recently while reading an article about food expiration dates. The article highlighted the confusion Americans have about food expiration date labels and why the confusion happens: There's little rhyme or reason to labeling. The rules are kind of made up and our reaction is to be overly careful.

According to an eight-year-old study, Americans throw out between $1,365 and $2,275 worth of food every year. A decent percentage of it is still good, but the fact that food manufacturers have varied standards to determine the date (switching between "use by" and "best by" dates as one example) means that we're not clear when to keep it and when to throw it away.

The article explained why proposed solutions don't work. It reminded us that our leaders tend to favor deregulation. As consumers, we buy more than we need and want new things to replace it.

Here's all I know: You'd think that a bad experience would change a person's perspective on it, but I survived the Mrs. Brad Sour Milk Incident. Decades later, I'll take a chance on milk that's past it's sell-by date. I'll eat fruit that's been in the fridge for a month. I'll take my chances.

The point: We don't always learn the lessons we should, even though I'll never forget the night at my parents house when I chugged down a glass of sour milk.

However, I don't trust expiration dates. Actually, I don't care about them. In a variation of the old saying, there's no use crying over sour milk.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Count me out when people say they could beat up a rat

A survey by YouGov America reveals that 72% of respondents thought they could win a fight against a rat.

A rat? I couldn't win a fight with a rat if I was armed with a shovel, gun, dynamite and full body armor. I'd still scream and run away.

I'm not a fan of rats. Not a fan of fighting, either, which may be related.

For years at our home in Suisun City, I battled field mice. In the yard. In our shed. One memorable time, the mice were angry after I fed their friends poison, so they chewed through a plastic gas container, hoping to burn down our shed.

It was terrorism. It worked: I was terrified.

That was mice. To get a comparison for a rat,  think of yourself as a mouse and your crazy cousin as the rat. You know the cousin: The family member most likely to start a fight or to show up drunk a a major affair. The one who thrilled and terrified you in childhood. That cousin. They're the rat in this comparison.

If I couldn't win a fight with a mouse, I couldn't win one with a rat.

I'm not sure I could beat up any animal, but ask Americans and most think they could beat up some animals, at least according to the Yougov America survey. That includes house cats (69%) and geese (61%). Are Americans unaware that cats are insane and would never quit fighting? Have they never been to a local park and encountered an angry goose (every goose)?

These Americans-vs.-animals survey results are a follow-up to the original study. In the first survey, YouGov asked people who would win in a variety of animal fights to determine which animals are considered the best fighters. The animals with the highest winning percentage among matchups were considered the best fighters, so this isn't science. It's not based on facts. It's based on what people think.

The elephant was considered the most difficult animal to defeat in that survey, followed by the rhino. Both were estimated to win about three-fourths of their matchups, narrowly ahead of the grizzly bear. Cheetahs, by the way, were picked to win 56% of their fights, which shows that we have some work to do to convince people that cheetahs never prosper (Get it?).

Humans, meanwhile, were picked to win only 17% of their fights, a winning percentage better only than the goose (again. Have these people never been to a local park and encountered aggressive geese?).

The follow-up survey – the one that provided the percentage of people who thought they could win a fight with a rat – asked whether people thought they could win a fight against a variety of animals. As mentioned, respondents were confident they could win only against the rat, house cat and goose. Most of us think we'd lose to most animals. For instance, fewer than 30% of Americans think they could win a fight against a large dog, chimp, wolf or crocodile.

In some ways, maybe the most confounding result isn't that 61% of people think they could defeat a goose or that 72% are foolhardy enough to think they could outfight a rat. It's that 6% think they could win a fight with a grizzly bear.

That means roughly one out of 15 people you know thinks he could beat up a grizzly bear in a fight. You know who that includes?

Your crazy cousin. The rat.

Now do you understand why I couldn't beat up a rat?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.