[Coco] Re: off-topic, space program

[arikboke at yahoo.com]

--- Brad Grier <bradgrier at cox.net> wrote:
> I take it you don't find it troublesome that the leader of the free 
> world doesn't read. (The one verifiable exception being the children's 
> story he read for twenty minutes after being told "America is under 
> attack". Oh, he can also handle a teleprompter.)


Ouch :)


> I'd be the first to agree we're incredibly lucky to have Bush as a 
> President and not a dictator. We're also fortunate all the jokes he's 
> made about being dictator are just jokes and not some reflection of some 
> subconscious desire.


Bush, der Fuhrer -- not a happy image.


> Is it stupid to be outraged by an unnecessary war started with lies? 
> Forget about our national treasure, people are dying. If that makes 
> someone angry, it only proves to me they still have a conscience. I 
> wouldn't call them stupid. I wouldn't even call the Clinton haters 
> stupid - ridiculous and sexually repressed perhaps, but not stupid.


I don't think Bush is an "evil" man.  In fact, he is probably more honorable
than many of his predecessors.  However, he isn't particularly bright, and this
has caused all sorts of issues.  Invading a nation to avenge Daddy belongs in a
B-rated Western or Kung-fu flick, not in the agenda of the leader of the free
world.


> True - my first reaction to the Chinese sending a man into orbit was 
> "that should restart the space program". The lizard part of the human 
> brain was the reason we went to the moon in the first place. Not that we 
> shouldn't have gone  - it was a amazing accomplishment. I can't wait 
> fifteen years to see us do it again!


I'd love to agree, but the Chinese do not pose the same threat as the old USSR.
 They have largely accepted free market models, despite their "communist"
label.  As a result, they are not the insidious, nuclear wielding "champions of
the proletariat" that we were so afraid of decades ago, and hence, not the same
kind of motivators.  Of course if the Chinese succeed AND find
marketable/profitable materials, we and the Europeans and the Japanese will try
to be all over this.  Speaking of the Japanese, why is it that they have no
space program?  Given their extremely sophisticated technocracy, I would have
thought otherwise.  Are they, perhaps, forbidden by treaty?

-- David