Tag: neil armstrong

You Missed It: Ethics of steel edition

Sooooo, how are things? Yeah? How’s work going for you? That’s cool. Me? Eh, things are slowing down, you know how it is …. Yeah, well, um …. I should get going, but it was great running into you like this. Oh, one other thing. If you were busy downloading peephole videos of sports reporters this week, odds are you missed it.

But enough about that, let’s talk about important things, like Michael Vick being freed
Did you hear that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was accused with sexual assault this week? If you did, you did not hear about it from ESPN, who remained eerily quiet on the topic. The story broke earily in the week, when a worker at a Nevada casino filed a civil suit, saying that Big Ben called her up to fix his television, then, well, you know. The point here is that until last night, ESPN was not talking about it. Yes the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” was mum on the quarterback of the reigning Super Bowl champs being charged in a civl case with probably the most career ending charge, other than murder. We don’t want to offend toothless Ben, after all.

The Eagle has landed and provided us with news in a dry week
Forty years ago this week, man walked on the moon for the first time. It’s the kind of thing that makes you stop and pause. Or, if you’re the media, it’s the kind of thing that makes you cover the story from about every conceivable angle. Did you know that Neil Armstong is very reclusive regarding his fame? Did you know that Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin legally changed his name to Buzz in 1988? Did you know that the astronauts had to go through customs when they came back to Earth? It’s all true. Now, let’s move onto talking about the long bureaucratic process the Apollo program took, or President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech, or ….

Put him altogether, then take him all apart
Michael Jackson’s nose. It’s been the butt of jokes, the subject of wonder, and quite possible the target of a surgery or two over the years. However, it seems now that the King of Pop’s nose is missing! Reports are that while his body was in the morgue, witnesses said the nose was not on his face while he was on the autopsy table. Don’t worry, everyone. Inspired by Mister Potato Head he had 16 different, changeable noses, from the skinny and pointed looking to the downright elven.

Lost in space

Photo taken by Neil Armstrong.Let’s say you’re a government agency–a famous one. About, oh, say, 40 years ago your agency had its crowning achievement. In fact, it was hailed as one of the most important events in the history of humanity. It’s a good thing you got the whole thing on tape, right? You’re damn right it is.

Then let’s say a few years ago you admitted you couldn’t find the tapes of the pinnacle of your agency-nay, of your country in the 20th century. You even checked behind the couch, because tapes sometimes get stuck back there. You search high and low, until you find out what happened to the recordings.

You figure it out one day. You erased them. You f&$%ing erased them. What the hell were you thinking about? This satellite launch mix tape you made sucks. The moon landing was a way better jam. You really, really suck, NASA.

And don’t think that restoring other tapes makes up for it, bean bags.

In space, no one can hear your ramblings

Space, so we’re told, is a very peaceful. You have a nice view of the Earth, you get to go outside for a stroll, even some lucky few have walked on the moon. But they don’t talk about what happens to you when you go into space: you go crazy.

That’s right, it happens to a select few, but they get space dementia, which we all know is totally real. Case in point: Edgar Mitchell, a former astronaut best known for orbiting the moon on Apollo 14, said yesterday that UFOs are real and the U.S. government is covering them up.

Another former astronaut, Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon on Apollo 17, says that global warming is fake. He claims that science is being intimidated into supporting global warming because the scientists need their funding. Say, is this why no one really ever hears from Neil Armstrong?

The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already

With a space shuttle landing yesterday and the Discovery Channel’s three-part documentary about NASA, When We Left Earth, space has been in the news a lot lately. Of course, space is all about cooperation and brotherly love these days. But for the first 40 years of space flight there was more of an “eff you, we’re going to beat you there” mentality. Perhaps we need to go back to that, if for no other reason than to get things done.

I remember first hearing about the International Space Station when I was in fourth grade, this was 1993 One of my teachers put on the overhead projector a snapshot of how the ISS would look when it was completed. A couple years later, I remember stumbling across it in an encyclopedia, I was probably looking for the definition of “isthmus” or something. There again was a computer-generated model of the huge structure orbiting the Earth. The caption underneath it said it would be completed around the year 2000.

It’s 2008 and the damn thing still is not finished. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already