Four Left

The space shuttle Endeavor lifted off this morning at 4:14 am ET, marking the last night liftoff off the space shuttle program.  Four launches remain for the space shuttles: March 18th, May 14th, July 29th, and September 16th.  The earliest projections for future manned U.S. space missions after September 16th started in 2015 with the Constellation Program, which President Obama canceled last week by way of exclusion from his 2011 budget.  Minus Constellation, any domestic space missions by NASA astronauts in the next decade are left to hitching rides on private spacecraft, which only caught up to 1960s standards in 2004.  At that, even private spacecraft are confined to low-orbital space and will likely remain so for at least another decade.

When will NASA again be capable of not just entering low-orbit space but leaving Earth's orbit for the moon and beyond?  A 2020 prediction would be optimistic at best, and anything closer to 2030 is more likely.  Some insiders are saying that a lack of direction on NASA's part is at fault for the agency's paltry advances over the last thirty years, that deciding on the Moon or Mars (or wherever) as a primary destination could have jump-started more consistent progress for NASA and the U.S. as a whole.  But the president has already set the destination and the tempo: maybe Mars, eventually. 

In the meantime, NASA's focus has shifted.  President Obama's budget actually includes $6 billion increases for NASA over the next five years, but when viewed closely, the goal is shifted from exploration to environmental monitoring.  This is terrific, if imminent global meltdown theories are valid.  But the Truth of these theories (and the trustworthiness of their authors) are subject to quite a lot of partisanship and opportunism, indeed too much to be trusted.  And frankly, if imminent, inevitable catastrophe is upon us, we had better get ready to leave this rock for another, and we're many decades away from even establishing an extraterrestrial colony.

Space exploration is a bountiful endeavor, something that rides the cutting edge of human progress.  When space exploration falls back, so does that progress.

Well, don't I feel like the jackass. I didn't bother to leave you folks a post here on Independence Day to fill you with love of country and appreciation for our bountiful gifts, but that's not to suggest I wasn't feeling it. Especially when I saw this picture. This was the first thing I saw when I woke up yesterday (courtesy of wwtdd.com), and damned if it didn't fill me with 4th of July spirit right off the bat. Bob and I agree: we're not big on people wearing flags, but Jessica Simpson is sort of our nation's prize hotty, so this time we'll let it slide. Next time, though, she'll have to take it off. I'll even forgive the peace sign, because I know she's probably spent about as much time in Iraq as I have, entertaining the troops in a way only a girl of her looks and charm could.

Rather than spending my Independence Day posting here, I went with Bob down to our coworker Jimmy's house in Vienna. We discharged a multitude of firearms throughout the day, including my first two revolvers and Bob's cherry Browning pump shotgun, we drank beer, ate grilled meat and drank home-brewed wine. Then we went to Harrah's casino in Metropolis (home of Superman!) and I lost $23 while trying to win back $3. This just speaks to my fear of growing much stupider since high school. Anyways, short of watching fireworks and military parades (or sticking it to the terrorists like I was doing a few years ago on the Fourth), this was about the most American behavior I could hope for.

If you couldn't tell, Independence Day is my favorite holiday by leaps and bounds (though scantily-clad women make a strong argument for Halloween as second place). In all seriousness, I hope you all had a meaningful and inspiring Fourth, and I wish I could've been around to spend it with you.

On April 29, 1866, at Woodlawn Cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, Gen. John A. Logan spoke in an event that likely originated his idea for a holiday commemorating the fallen soldiers of the Union, which he later proclaimed in his capacity as commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. May 30th, 1866 was the first Decoration Day, which came to be called Memorial Day in 1882.

142 years later, I stood in Woodlawn Cemetery in pouring rain with fifty-some other people who saw this commemoration as more important than their comfort. Across the country, millions of others are doing the same. 4,082 Americans have died while fighting in Iraq, and 29,978 have been wounded. These gallant men and women
are the salt of the earth, brave souls who regardless of politics have advanced the cause of freedom at the highest possible expenses to themselves. An estimated 1.3 million uniformed Americans have given their lives in service to their country since its creation, and today we renew our pledge never to forget. The highest honor we can give them is to remember what they died for and why. God bless America and keep our servicemen safe.


"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Jeeze, Facebook, you don't have to be so harsh about it.

Living, breathing Bible

Living, breathing Bible

I've heard of the concept of a "living, breathing" Constitution. Now, it seems the Bible lives and breathes just the same.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/10/eavatican110.xml
I wish I had the primary source of this article, so I wasn't at risk of misunderstanding the language used in these new "mortal sins" ("genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs").

So many thoughts bug me about this that I don't know where to start. I guess my first problem with it is that it seems to be encoding modern political fads into the eternal moral standards of the Church. Like I said, this is just like someone reinterpreting the Constitution to mean something that fits their political purposes. It goes without saying that the Church ought to be above this kind of nonsense.

The doctrine of the Church ought to be eternal, absolute, and self-evident. What is absolute about saying that pollution is a mortal sin? Is my soul going to suffer eternal death because the lightbulbs I use aren't energy star compliant? How about using drugs? Am I to stop drinking soda and start refusing penicillin, or is it only illegal drugs that I cannot use? Illegal in what country? How wealthy can I become before it is considered obscene? Shall I cut myself off before reaching the highest tax bracket, or shall I not have any savings at all? To me, the chief virtue of the church is that its moral standards are absolute. It provides a moral foundation, a system of deciding if something is right or wrong, a bedrock of unquestionable morality. With these behaviors now considered to be mortal sins, it should be pretty important to know if I am at risk of eternal damnation, for which there doesn't seem to be any standard.

The "sins of yesteryear" - sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride - have a "rather individualistic dimension", he told the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.
The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.
"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Mgr Girotti. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."

So far as I'm concerned, this means that the nature of my entire relationship with God must have changed. I had considered it to be a personal one, in which He cherishes me individually and favors my personal relationship with Him, but now the Church seems to be telling me that He kind of just likes us all as a whole. Evidently not only am I to meet a minimum standard of not being bad, but I actually have to be really, really good, or I'm going straight to hell. And, so far as I can tell, all in the pursuit of political correctness. I wonder how many years it will be before the Church stipulates that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I have to eat organic foods and always defer my moral judgments to the United Nations.

New title banner today, and I tinkered with the size of the main body, but it was not how I'm used to tinkering with those settings, so let me know if it looks really goofy. The biggest problem I could see with it would be that it would edge out the profile and links and what have you on the right side of the screen.

Marines in Fallujah

Today I went to Fox News' website to find out when the State of the Union Address would air. While there, I caught this article about the troop levels in Fallujah having decreased from 3,000 at the end of 2006 to around 250 today. It's gone down 90% since I was there. I can't even imagine that massive base having only two or so companies on it. The point is, evidently things are pretty much cleaned up in Fallujah, and the Iraqi Police are nearly ready to take over (or whatever you want to call it...I wouldn't trust those bastards with a butter knife).

I mentioned this to my friend Karnolt, who was my best bud there, in an email after talking to him tonight. His response was "Wow, I'm very proud to say that I served in [Iraq] out of Camp Fallujah and it is practically a success." I hadn't even thought of it like that, I'd just thought it was an interesting news item. But indeed, the impending success of the Fallujah Marines' mission is in part my own success, and my efforts there helped to make this happen. And that feels pretty damn good.