The Constellation program was proposed in 2004 as a program to return humans to the Moon through the development of two new rockets and a whole slew of new hardware. Unfortunately, the administration at the time neglected to allocate much funding for the program, which forced NASA to cut funding to a lot of other programs to operate Constellation with a shoestring budget (even increasing NASA’s budget to what amounts to occupying Iraq for about a week was apparently too much). It didn’t help that the Augustine Commission had a less than stellar opinion of the program.
Certain Christians just love citing Leviticus 20:13 from the Bible to justify their homophobia:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
The Mars Spirit Rover has been stuck for months in a sand trap, and it hasn’t helped that one of the wheels were broken in the first place while another wheel broke down as well. Efforts to get Spirit out of the sand trap now have finally been given up. Considering that it has roamed around Mars for six years (albeit over very small distances), far longer than its original three-month planned lifespan, that ain’t so bad. And even with the Spirit rover being stuck, it will now be serving as a static station observing the Martian weather and seismological activity. Not to mention that Opportunity is still roving …
In response to a South Korean defense minister raising the possibility of a first strike if North Korea showed clear signs of attacking with nuclear weapons, North Korea accused the South of declaring war. The defense minister was being unwise: he should have been vague enough to make North Korea wonder if South Korea would ever strike first, while not making statements that the North could unambiguously use in accusations without making themselves look like even bigger jerks than they usually come across as. On the other hand, North Korea is yet again vastly overreacting (as usual).
Maybe for most people in the world, a “you just declared war on us” claim from a neighboring nation might be cause for great alarm. But for the average South Korean, it wouldn’t be cause for panic, even if it does increase worry, since the North Korean government has been regularly saying things like that for decades. And it’s rather hard to stay in total fear mode for so long when total open warfare has not broken out during all that time. No doubt such aggressive posture by North Korea is ulcer-inducing for military planners, since this might be the one time that the North actually starts something drastic, but North Korea has been crying wolf far too many times for the average person.
The average person in North Korea might have similar attitudes regarding aggressive proclamations from the South Korean government, except I suspect they never actually get to hear about them …
One thing that always occurs to me when there is a mass shooting is that they often don’t seem to be fundamentally different from suicide bombings. In both types of events, the perpetuator usually ends up killing and wounding a lot of people, and the perpetuator almost always end up getting themselves killed, by getting themselves blown up, shooting themselves, or getting shot by cops. And yet, suicide bombings are invariably described as terrorist acts while mass shootings are treated as ‘merely’ very tragic events (well, except perhaps if the shooter is Muslim). The one fundamental difference between a mass shooting and a suicide bombing seems to be that there might be less property damage from the former, even if in practice there might be different proportions of motives.
Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but the different perceptions have been bugging me …
