Capitalism is a wonderful thing ain’t it, especially when you control enough politicians to give you big-money projects. I wonder where Malaysians ever got the impression that their country’s politics is unique when it comes to cronyism and government-assisted profiteering - it appears to be something that happens everywhere. Of course the severity of the problem is a different matter.

This article on Wired today : How NASA Screwed Up (And Four Ways to Fix It) discusses how NASA’s priority is messed up thanks to politicking. It’s been a known issue for a while now, but I’ve never seen anyone put it so succinctly.

Of course, “Keep money flowing to favored contractors and congressional districts” is not a formal NASA objective, but these words explain the agency’s core problem. Since the end of the Apollo glory days, NASA seems to have been driven by the desire to continue lucrative payments to the contractors behind manned spaceflight (mainly Boeing and Lockheed Martin) while maintaining staff levels in the congressional districts (mainly in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Texas) that are home to huge centers focused on manned missions. If the contractors and the right congressional committee members are happy, NASA’s funding will continue and NASA managers will keep their jobs. The space station project was built to give the shuttle a destination, keeping the manned-space spending hierarchy intact. With the space station now almost universally viewed as worthless, the manned-space funders need a new boondoggle. The moon-base idea, pushed by President Bush, fits the bill.

For myself and people like my friend William who believes that space is the next important frontier, it is sad to read stuff like this. Again, this could be just one person’s opinion, but I can’t help agreeing with him. The amount of money spent can only be justified by some serious, targeted, high-yield research. Or at least exploratory frontier research which answers important fundamental questions. How much weightlessness based research do we really need to do?

Perhaps Malaysia can show the way through introducing new activities at the space station. Heh - I guess that’s been bandied about enough by now, and we should probably drop it now that the plans have been changed (they sure sounded serious when they talked about the teh tarik though). But if they get really bored up there…

This hilarious headline appeared on Yahoo! News today. Wake up oh dearest homophobic members of the human race. The flamingos are way ahead of us :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070521/od_afp/britainanimalsgay

A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organisation said Monday.

Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge near Bristol.

An article all about gay animals :

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15750604/

What a lead for an article :

From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles.

“Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them,” said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition.

Check out the links btw. Considering that the bonobos are the race of monkeys closest in genetic and social makeup to the human race, I’m sure we will soon either try to convert them, or condemn their sexual behavior as immoral. (They are the most sexual race of animals we know off - they’re kept away from zoos because they would happily ‘do it’ in public. Wouldn’t want our children to see such shameful acts as making love! War on television is so much more appropriate don’t cha think?) Considering that they can learn enough from humans just by observation to do things such as gather sticks to make a campfire, start fires with a lighter, play a harmonica, use scissors to trim their offspring’s hair without hurting them, draw symbols with chalk and to play musical instruments, our moral standards must apply to them too!

And another link.

http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php?page=all&p=y

The text was so inappropriate I had to reproduce some of it here :

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called “homosexual societies.” They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males “effeminate.”

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

This last article is an in depth one, and deals Darwin’s sexual selection theory. There is disagreement in the scientific community towards what conclusion can be drawn from all this information, although the facts remain that facts. These things happen. What’s nice though is how the scientific community argues about the same facts, and how the conclusions should be drawn, rather than pulling assumptions out of their…

They were all enlightening and amusing reads. Of course I know this proves nothing. Conservatives who just as frequently use the argument that homosexuality is against nature will just as quickly turn around and say that human beings are above animal-like behavior thanks to our higher, God-given standards of morals and etc. The same way they’d quote Darwin on the fact that sexual selection goes against the idea of homosexuality in nature, while still being creationists. They can’t seem to decide on which facts to use, although their opinions never really change. Funny, aren’t observed facts supposed to be the ones that don’t change, and opinions the ones which are supposed to be decided upon?

So, by posting this article, how many closed-minded ex-readers have I just chased away from my blog? Tough crowd.

This article disgusted me to no end today :

The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.

Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year’s exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

If you’re lazy to read the article itself, the basic gist of the article is that although there was no direct pressure from politician, the directors of the institutions decided that a toning down of the materials is necessary to ensure that the materials presented will not accidentally anger an administration that decides how much funding they get. Objectivity & neutrality my ass.

Since when are scientists disallowed from presenting their possible conclusions based on their research? Haven’t the past taught us anything - where scientists were then too disallowed from presenting conclusions that cigarettes cause lung cancer despite the availability overwhelming evidence thanks to rich tobacco companies that funds lobbies against such research?

This from the Smithsonian Institution - like the most venerable and respected museum in the world.

/disgust