Errata again...

It's blabbermouth time again, so pull up your chairs- all you lurkers out there- whilst I waste yer time and blather on about things you may/maynot be interested in...

I'm sure that you have heard (those who care) about the new Space Shuttle Discovery mission: Get into space and back again in one piece, preferably with a live crew. Oh, yeah, and do some more work on the International Space Station Alpha. I hope this mission and the next mission go without any problems, we desperately need to conduct maintenence and repairs to the space station, not to mention actually finishing the construction of said object d' art. So far little if any science has been conducted onboard this structure due to the fact that there is currently room for only 2-3 astronauts to survive up there, and you need that many astronauts just to keep the complex thing running and stable within it's orbit. Without further modules added to the station, there is no room for additional astronauts, and no-one to conduct experiments on computer/biochemical/medical/biological/metalurgical/chemical type ideas in a micro-gravity environment. Essentially we have a very big, very expensive, very high maintenence dormatory that should be used for research, yet is incomplete for that important work.
NASA has almost always been screwed when it comes to federal funding. That means corners get cut and risks are taken, just to accomplish their basic goals. With all the pork barrel spending being done to build 'sports stadiums' and 'museums of paper and cars' (don't ask about that last one...) it's no wonder NASA has a shoestring budget.

Y'know what's rilly funny ?(I'm being facetious, of course) The funny part of all this is that most elected officials who are in charge of how much funding, if any, goes into Science and Technology...generally know nothing about science and technology. They sure know how to talk endlessly about nothing, but sci and tech are distant smudges on their peripheral vision. And even if they understand a small portion of it, they rarely fund important projects due to the fact that they are there not to do good- but to get re elected. Nice. Stem cell research is less important than getting votes. Makes you wonder what would have happened if Pennicilin or Asprin or the Intergrated Circuit were pushed aside as 'fringe quackery' by these buffoons who are in charge of spending American Tax Dollars.

Check this out, teleportation, has gotten further along and is starting to get the attention it needed 4-5 years ago. This opens up the possibilities of Far Caster portals like Dan Simmons wrote about in his Hyperion novels. Even on a small, non-organic, level the potential is enormous. Just read the article and see for yourself. This is cutting edge technology, so why is it I have to dig around to find it ? It should be on the front page of the newspaper, instead of some millionare athlete or other nonsense. We've got kids in high school and college who are smart enough to utilize this and other new emerging technologies yet instead of fostering and nurtering them, we focus only on achievements in sports and gossip. Nice.

Who will be our next Einstien or Madame Curie if all we allow is someone to get rilly good at playing with balls ?

Well, I'm about done rattling my bonebox. Hope you learned something, hope I made some sense, hope I'm not wasting my time pointing these things out.
Hope, hope hope.
Wonderful word, but it's arrival tends to be rather ephemeral.
s.