I was working at Disney World when the first shuttle took off, and saw every shuttle launch before Challenger without a TV. One was a night launch I saw from my mom's house in Tampa. We drove to the cape to watch one, man that thing is LOUD.

The first one I not only didn't see firsthand was Challenger; I missed that launch completely. I was in Illinois looking for work (we'd just had our first kid and moved back to be close to family and besides, Florida is a shitty place to live).

You're my age then, I was working at a drive in theater and brought my TV with me (I had a little twelve inch Panasonic). The boss was pissed. I've written about it before.

Bullshit, were it not for Apollo we would not have the ISS, robots on Mars, telescopes in space, or probes all over the solar system.

I reposted this journal the day before the anniversary; it's my story of that day.

our driver of innovation today? cat pictures and dashcam video of accidents.

Telescopes in outer space, robots crawling around Mars, all sorts of robotic probes all over the solar system, self-driving cars, a permanent space station, GPS, private space launches... And, you know, when Apollo 11 took off, flat screen displays and Star Trek communicators were only fantasy. Those cat pictures themselves were impossible science fiction; a computer as powerful as a smart phone didn't exist. Hell, cars didn't even have seat belts then, let alone ABS, disc brakes, air bags, bluetooth... I think your memory of just how primitive it was and how far we've come is a bit faulty.

Investigators would not say whether the shooting occurred inside the home or in the alley behind the house. According to the station, Greer is not under arrest and police are still determining whether or not the homeowner will face charges.

The guy was eighty years old, the young people attacked and robbed him in his own house and had done so before. If he shot her before they left, it was certainly justified. If it was indeed in the alley he should certainly face murder charges. As the article says, that hasn't been determined. Personally, I'm going to withhold judgement.

I not only can't argue with that, I'd say the efforts won't sway anyone. But the tea party has never been rational.

Which is neither here nor there.

"Buss" is a word that has passed into our vocabulary in modern times, an era no less legitimate for creating new words than any other.

That's right, real words come fully formed from a magical oracle. How silly of me...

Though I am a bit surprised that it would take a week to get and install replacement parts...

For those who are wondering, a "buss duct" is a duct that contains "busbars", which are generally large flat copper bars that conduct substantial current.

From the Wikipedia...

An electrical problem effects power to a signle building, this is news? This has nothing to do with "failing infrastructure" like old bridges, highway maintenance, or such. It's an electrical problem in a single building.

It's about making the President and his party look bad to voters. There won't be any impeachment, only talk of impeachment.

The goal of NASA is worthy, but the reality is a little off. The people working for NASA are intelligent and capable, but management is a major issue. Not the management at NASA, the management of NASA. There is no reason that politicians, including the president, should have anything to do with assigning the projects that NASA works on. They should just give them a budget and let NASA manage their goals and spending. I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed, only to have the project canceled by a politician somewhere. The government only needs to look at a company like SpaceX to figure out that they need to get out of the business of managing what NASA does. Politicians are proving that a privatized space program is far more efficient and effective than a government-run program. That's not the way it needs to be, but that's the way it's going to be if people in Congress and the president keep interfering with what NASA works on and how they work on it. Imagine what would happen if the government gave SpaceX $12 billion dollars to develop a rocket by 2017. The rocket that SpaceX came out with would be able to land on Mars and take off again for Earth. NASA can't even get the thing into orbit on time. That's not the fault of the engineers working for NASA either.

It makes a little more sense to conclude something like that when the fossils are very old and of a different lineage than other feathered dinosaurs. The Guardian article does a much better job at explaining the reasoning than the NatGeo article.