Once more into the jungle of Columbia...

I seem to go about this particular subject once a month... and this last bout with it I learned some more (scary) and interesting things that I thought I would share with everyone :D

About Columbia (STS-107/OV-102):

Columbia's construction was started on March 25, 1975 and she was transfered to Kennedy in 1979. She flew her first flight in 1981 (STS-1, the very first space shuttle launch). She was 24 years old when she broke up over Texas after 28 flights.

The average age of a Boeing 737 pasanger jet is 26 years old (I personally have flown on 737's that were older than me... built in 1967...), and have flown 400+ flights. This I found (Rather alarmingly) on the FAA's website (http://av-info.faa.gov/GetFleetAge.asp).

Fokker flies some ancient aircraft in their fleet, we won't even talk about the Russian Aeroflot...

Columbia was damaged by foam falling from the External Fuel Tank (EFT) which was built just 2 years prior (2001) in Louisiana. The foam damaged the spacecraft (Which, it also damaged a brand-new section of wing used by NASA to test the theory).

I am hearing an awful lot about the "Age" of the shuttle fleet. Yes, they are old, Yes, they need to be replaced. No we should not ground them eternally.

I know the names of the five men and two women who died on STS-107 (As I know the names of the five men and two women who died on STS-51L, Challenger). I don't think their memory should be set aside by any means.

But this is reactionism at it's worst.

The CEV (Which you can bet money I'm gonna be blogging about here in a bit) won't be available until 2010 (Which is in NASA years, it'll really be 2012 for us normal people), which means we won't be going back to space normally until 2015-2020...

Maybe Burt Rutan stands a chance of putting a private spacecraft up after all...

Space is dangerous, the Saturn V (Moon missions) rocket had the equivalent of 200 tons of TNT... if it had blown up on the launch pad, it would have turned most of Cape Canaveral into a crater...

We can hide ourselves and freak out, while China starts their move to the moon, or we can suck it up and move on.

Okay, enough ranting about the STS. I'll get to the CEV here in just a bit!

---Me.

Just a thought...

There are two ways to see God...

You can Die...

...Or you can realize you have been looking at Her all along...

Wrong text..er?

Welcome to the 21st century... where a wrong number now can take all night before you realize you have a wrong number...

My phone beeps... Not a call... a message... usually this is Cricket spam... but not tonight...

My phone: "Hey Cowgirl"....

Me: ...

I type (Very very slowly... I've never used this function before): "Boogers."

My Phone: "What? I'm a booger?"

I start to realize that any of my friends or family would know that only I would respond with "Boogers"... I start to worry.... I... I panic... I ignore the message...

Three hours later:

My Phone: "So, you were calling me a booger?"

I type (Again, with painstaking slowness): "Technically, it's better than Cowgirl" I also note that as keen as my phone is on guessing what words I'm typing in, it neither knows "Technically" nor "Cowgirl"... which is a statement in and of itself...

I don't think the fella on the other end knows he's talking to a 33 year old male... I think he has mistakenly tried to text his girlfriend... and got me...

I sure hope he looks at the telephone number that he is texting... for the next message I shall send back is;

"Son, I don't know who you thought you were texting, but I'm too damn old to type on this keypad... perhaps you should talk to my training daughter..."

Of course, that'll take me all night to type...

Thus, I will have spent six hours telling this poor fella he has a wrong number...

It took me three to realize it myself...

Welcome to the ironies of the modern world...

---Me.

Definition: Charette

The term “charette” evolved from a pre-1900 exercise at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in France. Architectural students were given a design problem to solve within an allotted time. When that time was up, the students would rush their drawings from the studio to the Ecole in a cart called a charrette. Students often jumped in the cart to finish drawings on the way. The term evolved to refer to the intense design exercise itself. Today it refers to a creative process akin to visual brainstorming that is used by design professionals to develop solutions to a design problem within a limited timeframe.

I love the French :D

Moving to Opaque.

I propose an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

No Government Operation or Process shall remain hidden or classified with any title that indicates it is to be hidden from the people of the United States for longer than 40 years, and no Government agency, regardless of position, may fail to disclose a secret operation that is greater than 40 years in age.

I know of a man (lets -for the purpose of false intrigue and mystery- call this man “Bob”) who served in 68-69. During this time he served as… well, for lack of a better word, a spy in Turkey.

“Bob” Found himself doing rather interesting things in Turkey, and when he left the military, he was instructed, as everyone who worked with him, that he had a “30 year lock”, which indicated he couldn’t tell anyone anything about his time in Turkey for 30 years.

However, Bob can now discuss his time in Turkey, which is good, and makes perfect sense, The technology Bob used is now completely obsolete, and the enemy Bob was Spying on (Those nasty Communists from the Soviet Union) are also gone. So Bob can’t really compromise anything at all.

But I have recently talked to people who have a 70 year lock (Which is pretty standard now, I’ve heard)… and more recently a person who has a 130 year lock… which means these people will never be able to talk about what they did for our government… ever (Unless technology really does some impressive things in the next 100 years to extend life)

That means that there are people out there doing things that we will never, ever, know about.

Our Government is going opaque.

The more opaque the government is, the easier it is for them to operate outside of the boundaries of what we, the democratic people of America, would find appropriate.

It should be noted that no one here voted to militarily support Israel, but we do anyway. And we have been attacked us for it. It puts us in the line of fire, something that an opaque government did for us.

(Not that I don’t support Israel, no one knows what I, or any of us support, no one asked us)

Secrecy is the primary operation of a military to protect and defend us. And this I will never argue with. But we are the people who foot the bill for the Government, and we are the people who pay in blood sometimes for the actions of our government, and we are the people who have to watch our family members march into conflict. It’s the least we can do to vote for it.

And when I vote for something, I want to be informed.

Thus, all I ask is transparency. I want to know that my government is on its best behavior, because if nothing else, they know we will find out… Perhaps not today (There is no reason to compromise our security for transparency), but someday we will know what our government did.

As it is now, we are moving to opaque.

Welcome to Colorado... Beware of the Fleas...

Here is a little known fact,

Boulder county is right now exterminating large groups of fleas...

Because (Wait for it), they are infected with plague...

Yes, that plague... Bubonic Plague... Black Death.

Here... in Colorado.

Now, This isn't due to a leak in some super-top secret Level 4 Biohazard facility in Boulder, apparently Plague has lived happily in North America for hundreds of years, brought over by the rats that travel on ships across the Atlantic...

Now, (And here's a quote) Colorado has only had 45 cases of plague since 1951, and only 6 of those are attributed to prarie dogs, and of those 6, only 1 has been a fatality... (No word on how many of the original 45 have been fatalities, the article was talking about Prarie dogs... hence the concentration on the 6).

Interesting how something so terrifying can be your neighbor all of your life and you never knew it. How many time does this happen in your life?

Here we live with one of the most destructive diseases in human history. A slate-wiper, one that killed 137 million people. 2 million people a year.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Of course, and here's another bet-you-didn't-know thing; The Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed 25 Million people in one year...

Certainly something to ponder...

---Me.

Hold the Line...

Go see Joss Whedon's Serenity if you haven't, please.

I don't usually support commercialism in my Blog, I don't feel it has a place here, however...

This is a statement against the Neilson ratings. Everyone who goes to see Serenity proves that the Neilson ratings are inoperative.

Firefly was canceled withing 10 episodes because of bad ratings... but the show was really well done, well written, a good story, and very very unique... But it was canceled.

Now, a mere 3 years after it was killed, it has been brought back... it is now a major motion picture...

And all because the fans said that the ratings were wrong.

Now, if Serenity does well at the box office, it moves into a new realm altogether. Here was a new idea which was good, fresh, and new. It dies so quickly no one really knows about it, and then, in a fantastic change, those few who saw the show spread the word, and many others saw it, and many more... and then a movie was made... now the truth comes out; Firefly wasn't bad, it wasn't given a chance.

If you don't think Serenity is your cup of tea, Go buy a ticket to Serenity and then sneak into one of the other movies instead...

But Serenity is a statement to the networks.

---Me.