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NASA Daily Image

NASA Image Of The Day
Heads of Agency International Space Station
The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met in Tokyo, Japan, on March 11, 2010, to review ISS cooperation. From the left are Dr. Keiji Tachikawa, President of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator; Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency; Anatoly N. Permirov, Head of the Russian Space Agency; and, Dr. Steve MacLean, President of the Canadian Space Agency. With the assembly of the ISS nearing completion and the capability to support a full-time crew of six established, they noted the outstanding opportunities now offered by the ISS for on-orbit research and for discovery including the operation and management of the world's largest international space complex. The heads of agency reaffirmed the importance of full exploitation of the station's scientific, engineering, utilization, and education potential. They noted that there are no identified technical constraints to continuing ISS operations beyond the current planning horizon, and that the partnership is currently working to certify on-orbit elements through 2028. They emphasized their common intent to undertake the necessary procedures within their respective governments to reach consensus later this year on the continuation of the ISS to the next decade. Image Credit: JAXA...
Global Warning
The Bitch Goddess Print E-mail
Prose - Global Warning
Lisa Jain Thompson   
Saturday, 12 December 2009 09:00

The Bitch Goddess

Fairfax, VA, USA. We Americans, you and I, spring from some Platonic conception of ourselves, forever remodeling our past even as we reconceive our multiple futures. The possibility of success, tempered by the memories our well accomplished failures, bedevils us until our dying days.

We worship a dual headed bitch goddess, pursuing fame, thinking it is success. [N1] In this, the early decades of a new millennium, we confuse our good intentions with actual accomplishment as if the act of aiming at a target is sufficient. [N2] We no longer actually have to hit the target to become famous. Being famous is enough, a well laurelled goal, in and of itself.

Success? Everyone wants success but no one admits to wanting it. If we achieve success, we are half apologetic that we climbed our own personal Mount Everest. The ideal American archetype is a Tin Star who, having just rid the world of the bad guys, responds to praise from the townspeople by casting his eyes down and mumbling semi-audibly Aw shucks, I was just doing my job.

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 19:59
 
A Wop Bop A Loo Mop A Lop Bam Boom Print E-mail
Prose - Global Warning
Lisa Jain Thompson   
Friday, 11 December 2009 09:00

Is The Third Way The Right Way

Fairfax, VA, USA. Howdy-Doody, Crusader Rabbit, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and Ding Dong School with Miss Frances: my roots begin here.

I am older than Rock and Roll but not as old as Dick Clark.

The Woody Woodpecker Song was at the top of the charts the day I was born. Little Richard was not yet 16, Elvis was 13, Jerry Lee Lewis only 12.

It would be four years until Bill Haley and His Comets would be formed, six until Rock Around The Clock would begin climbing the charts.

I am not as old as Little League Baseball but am still older than many of the nations on this planet and yet, I am little more than half way through all the things I intend to do with my life. The future lies wide open before me.

But it all starts in the past. I’m a child of the bastard marriage of coast to coast network television and the devil’s music - rock and roll. I would not be who I am without them.

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 19:58
 
An American on Planet Earth Print E-mail
Prose - Global Warning
Lisa Jain Thompson   
Thursday, 19 March 2009 09:08
US Flag (Betsey Ross)Fairfax, VA, USA. I am not a Republican or a Democrat, a Liberal or a Conservative, a Believer or a Non-Believer, nor am I White, Brown, Black, Red, Yellow, Pink or Green. I am an American, a bipedal primate living on the Northern Continent in the Western Hemisphere of a small blue planet we have named Earth [N1]: all other classifications pale before this fact.
 
I am the product of the 230 year old American Revolution and the six to seven million years of primate evolution that separate Homo Sapiens from our closest living relatives the chimpanzees. [N2] An American, one among many equals, born with the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. [N3]
Last Updated on Thursday, 19 March 2009 09:18
 
Lamplighter, Kemble’s Cascade, and Life Print E-mail
Prose - Global Warning
Lisa Jain Thompson & Father Lucian J. Kemble O. F. M.   
Wednesday, 04 March 2009 21:00
 Lamplighter, Kemble’s Cascade, and LifeFairfax, VA, USA.Father Lucian J. Kemble [N1], a Franciscan Friar, was a friend and my sometimes confessor. [N2] A world class amateur astronomer, he was the discoverer of Kemble’s Cascade, an asterism [N3] located in the constellation Camelopardalis. Luc described it as "a beautiful cascade of faint stars tumbling from the northwest down to the open cluster NGC 1502 that he had discovered while sweeping the sky with a pair of 7x35 binoculars in Canada.
 
Father Luc was an excellent writer whether he was explaining science, discussing the world he saw around us, or just corresponding with a friend, signing many of his emails as Lamplighter.
 
I treasured the emails Luc and I exchanged on subjects ranging from astronomy and science to theology and philosophy and poetry and canon law.
 
Father Luc often talked about the subtlety of nature, the beauty of small things that in the rush of today’s society we often overlook. He worried that many beginning amateur astronomers would turn away from the actual night sky when the Milky Way our eyes see naturally turns out not to be as colorful as the photoshopped images that are published in magazines and online.
 
Father Luc does not need me to paraphrase him. Please read on.
Last Updated on Saturday, 07 March 2009 22:01
 
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