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“and do the other things”

arthwollipot said:
Did he ever do that?
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I'm sure he did; everyone does.

But that's just the way it struck me, like he kind of lost his place and was adding something to keep his momentum going until he found it again.

Dunno if it's true or not. It's just something I came up with while watching From Earth to the Moon back to back, which starts with that quote.
 
How different would history be if he’d said
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade, we choose to explore space for the benefit of all man kind”
How hard would that have been to remember Mr. President?
 
Say, now! This is a really pointless thread so I'm gonna bump it with some pointless counterpoint.

WTF does it matter what he meant by "and do the other things"? And do you really think history revolved on a single line in a speech that was merely confirming what he'd committed to several months earlier and which reference, in turn, was merely confirmation of decisions made elsewhere.

How about if he'd said "... go to the moon and crap I lost my place, here, but maybe we should all invest in organic succotash ranches". Imagine how the world would have changed!

Imagine how history would've changed if Armstrong had said, "Hey, it really is made of green cheese!" Now that would've changed some thinking!
 
hgc said:
Here's the text of the speech. Can't wait to hear what you find out.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historica.../Speeches/JFK/003POF03SpaceEffort09121962.htm
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"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"


Clearly referring to the "things" mentioned in the previous sentences. We choose this for the same reason we choose to do things like climb mountains.
 
Sorry Mr. Wong, but you’re wong.
“and DO the things” is future tense .
I f he was alluding to the other achievements of the century he would have used a past tense like “we decide to go to the moon in this decade just as we did the others”
I still think that was the intent of the speech and he just flubbed it.
 
kedo1981 said:
I f he was alluding to the other achievements of the century he would have used a past tense like “we decide to go to the moon in this decade just as we did the others”
I still think that was the intent of the speech and he just flubbed it.
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I disagree. I'm almost certain it was a reference to the other milestones that hadn't yet been achieved. (Manned orbit of the moon, space docking of two vehicles, unmanned soft lunar landing, first spacewalk, etc.)

ETA: Though I agree that the meaning of "do the other things" was not a reference to climbing a mountain and so on. As you say, that's excluded by the grammar.

ETA again: Don't forget, this was our official entry into the space race that we'd already been in. To that point, though, we were a decided second place to the Russians (Sputnik was the first thing humans put into Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, etc.) From the same Kennedy speech:
JFK said:
The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
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A timeline of the space race:

http://www.thespacerace.com/timeline/

NB: Even as late as '68, the USSR beat us to launch the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon and return to Earth.

Here's another timeline: http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/exhibits/dateline_moon/space.htm
And another: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/moon/timeline/index.html


ETA: I remember lines from Dylan's I Shall Be Free No. 10 (released in about 1964):
Bob said:
Well, I don't know, but I've been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first.
Wowee! Pretty scary!
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kedo1981 said:
Thanks for for making it that much more pointless with your opinion.
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Well, you're quite welcome.

Here's a simple theory. There's an excess article. The statement is perfectly fine without "the".

".... and do other things." That would work just fine.

Alternate: Replace "the" with "these". Also works nicely.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Well, you're quite welcome.

Here's a simple theory. There's an excess article. The statement is perfectly fine without "the".

".... and do other things." That would work just fine.

Alternate: Replace "the" with "these". Also works nicely.
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Again, I don't think that's necessary. The other things referred to specific goals (just like landing a man on the Moon).

They were the many other steps between say John Glenn's flight (not a first--because the Russians beat us) and Neil Armstrong's "small step": unmanned orbit of the Moon, long term humans in space (longer than minutes to hours, that is), manned orbit of the Moon, docking craft in space (a necessary step in the return trip for Apollo 11 and others), soft unmanned landing on the Moon, and so on.

By the time Kennedy gave this famous speech, the race for many of these milestones was already on. He defined the ultimate finish line for the space race: landing a man on the Moon.
 
kedo1981 said:
Sorry Mr. Wong, but you’re wong.
“and DO the things” is future tense .
I f he was alluding to the other achievements of the century he would have used a past tense like “we decide to go to the moon in this decade just as we did the others”
I still think that was the intent of the speech and he just flubbed it.
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Except that clearly he wasn't saying "just as we did the others" but instead "for the same reason we do those other kinds of things" past, present, and future.
People still climb mountains. People are still developing new science, as he refers to at the beginning of the speech.

If I said "why do we do these things?" I am referring to things already done, but also things that I expect to continue to be done.
 
Roboramma said:
Except that clearly he wasn't saying "just as we did the others" but instead "for the same reason we do those other kinds of things" past, present, and future.
People still climb mountains. People are still developing new science, as he refers to at the beginning of the speech.

If I said "why do we do these things?" I am referring to things already done, but also things that I expect to continue to be done.
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Again, I think this reading strains the grammar and context of the speech.

The U.S. was solidly in second place in the space race at the time of this speech. Yuri Gagarin had just recently become the first man in space.

The speech was a statement of a goal. We would beat the USSR in the race to the moon. We would also do the other things--get a man in space, get a man in space for more than a short time, orbit the moon, manned orbit of the moon, unmanned soft landing on the moon, and so on. We had to do those other things as part of the Cold War space race. We "won" many of them, but we still had to do the other ones, even if we were only the second country to do them.

Kennedy was defining the ultimate finish line, though--putting a man on the moon.
 
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