NASA, which stands for...?

Okay, so Charlie Bolden, the head of NASA, shows up in Cairo last month and does an interview with Al Jazeera.

In the course of the interview, Bolden says the following (starting at about 1:10 in the Al Jazeera video posted on YouTube):

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me 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 ... and math and engineering." (Clarification mine.)

Aside from the immediate question of why any kid should want to get into science or math when such skills are not essential for careers to "expand international relationships," and the secondary question of why NASA should be engaged in an outreach effort to make any group, much less a group of nations, "feel good about themselves" (a goal that, in my opinion, is the last refuge of failed educators and their unfortunate students), there would appear to be a couple of phrases missing from the text of Bolden's marching orders from the President.

Those would have something to do with "space" and/or "aeronautics."

Cheers...

Odds and ends...

Perhaps the best purchase I made in anticipation of the recent launch campaign in Baikonur was the Zoom USB modem I picked up at Fry's. I would have been high and dry without it, as there often were problems with the Ethernet connection at the office, the USB modem I bought from Beeline in Moscow didn't roam at the rate that had been represented to me (resulting in my exhausting $20 of credit after receiving about 800 KB of data), and the wireless system at the hotel was not available to me.

To be sure, Beeline pretty much restored my balance once I returned to Moscow, and their USB modem worked well enough at the Marriott Grand and Aurora hotels for the time I spent there, but performance wasn't so hot on the literal outskirts of Moscow, where my niece's apartment is located.

Of course, now that I'm back... the modem isn't of much use, so I guess it'll go into storage until the next campaign. (If there's a next campaign in my future. :)

* * *Feht came over just short of lunch time with a load of KFC and a couple of six-packs of beer to help while away the time watching the Dutch wallop the Uruguayans 3-2 in today's World Cup semifinal. The Uruguayans went down fighting, though, scoring their second goal at very near the end of the game and raising the hopes of a lot of fans who were rooting for them.

Feht will be coming over tomorrow as well, for the match between Germany and Spain, where he'll be rooting for the latter. Moi, I have no particular fan loyalty attached to the outcome, so it's mostly all the same to me.

* * *In other news, I'm trying to find a reasonable rent-a-car place that's not too far from New York's LaGuardia for late next week. I'm planning a trip, and so far, the hotel and the cars I've found each cost more than the air fare. Yikes!

Cheers...