Odd story, odd silence
Lawmakers across Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans, were surprised to learn recently that the Obama administration has made reaching out to Muslim nations a top priority for the space agency NASA. They will probably be more surprised to learn that administration officials told the Middle East news organization Al Jazeera about it before they told Congress…
Bolden told Al Jazeera that the “foremost” mission he had been given by Obama was “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”…So far, the story has gone unreported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Whether you think the NASA story is important or not, it is certainly odd enough to be reported in the news outlets above. (Many interesting things have been written on the NASA story, including this and this.) Our own take is that Obama’s outreach program is a misplaced, but revealing, attempt to paper over perhaps the fundamental theological issue of our time with feel-good-ism.
July 10th, 2010 at 7:56 am
IMO Bolden’s remarks illustrate just how far the PC rot has set in at NASA. From my point of view it is clear that NASA is more concerned with social outcomes than competency. Actual space exploration seems to have been reduced to a sideline, and is no longer the principal reason for NASA’s existence.
July 11th, 2010 at 4:41 am
No big deal, Obama’s just channelling ‘Star Trek’ …
‘Islam … the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the ship of state (Aversion to Free) Enterprise. Its four-year mission: to explore strange old worlds; to seek out inimical life and ancient blood drenched civilizations; to boldly go where no man (excepting, actually, most of the US Army and USMC) has gone before.’
Even the current ROE fits – phasers on stun of course.
Obvious really.
July 11th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
As someone pointed out … our military and space program are turned into social workers for Muslim nations.
Perhaps it’s good that NASA will take time off from its AGW propaganda, though they will have to car pool it to the space station.