Priceless Paintings from W7

You will not have missed the news that Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, has been blasted to the International Space Station on board a Soyuz TM-16 from Baikonur in Kazakhstan earlier this week.

He pays $35 million for the pleasure, apparently fulfilling a life-long dream.

So far, I have no quibbles with Guy fulfilling his dream.

When it comes to reading a poem from space, which emphasises the need for all the world’s population to have access to clean water, he’s lost me, and my sympathy, however. No matter whether he paid 35 million in US, Canadian or Australian dollars, there’s a lot of clean water, water purification equipment and deep well drilling kits to be had for that amount of money.

Guy. You want to ride in space. Fine. You can afford it. Fine. If you feel guilty about the whole thing (which you should), don’t do it. Just spare me the petty excuses.

Thoughts foolish, human