Consider this a bonus Quote of the Week, but since it’s not climate/science/weather related I didn’t give it top billing for QOTW this week. That honor went to a study from the Max Planck Institute.
You are probably thinking though that I’m going to write about something related to satellite sensing or NASA GISS. Maybe with Jim Hansen or Gavin Schmidt as topics? No, there’s even more FAIL than those two can muster. It’s about their boss.
h/t to a zillion people who wrote in, but borrowing a bit from Russ Steele at NCWatch:
Charles Bolden, head of NASA, tells Al Jazeera in a video that:
…the “foremost” task President Obama has given him is “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Thus, NASA’s primary mission is no longer to enhance American science and engineering or to explore space, but to boost the self-esteem of “predominantly Muslim nations.”
I can think of a few satirical images I could create to illustrate this folly, but they’d probably start a Jyllands-Posten style jihad.
Exploring space didn’t even make the top three things Obama wants Bolden to accomplish. The other two are:
…”re-inspire children to want to get into science and math” and “expand our international relationships,”
See the video below if you find this quote unbelievable.
Fire. Them. All.
We have insulted the middle east.
oil addiction
Dependence on foreign oil
This infers they are not good people.
Dirty oil
After insulting their livelyhood, we need to build up their self esteem
Can we send James Hansen to Detroit?
He can do some community organizing there and then hit Dearborn Michigan.
Ken Haylock says at 3:15 …..
It is my understanding that most of the terror activies in the West can be traced to home-grown, well educated Muslim wannabes, not un-educated Wahabis.
And you might just get be in line for a job spuking the Islamic contributiion to science. Much of it was recycled from Indian science, Christian Byzantium science, and preserved Greek and Roman science. Its my understaning that the non-Muslim population were responsible for the bulk of translations and preservation anyway. Good for them for not wiping it all away like they would do today, but lets not get too carried away. But if we can bending of history and science to serve the purpose of politics, that has to be good in this brave new world of ours?
BarryW,
In 1964, between junior and senior high school, I tried to read Atlas Shrugged. I literally could not finish it because, as you say, the villains were simply beyond believe. Somewhere, perhaps in the heaven she ridiculed, Ayn Rand is smiling.
How coincidental! Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Dan Brown’s novel, Deception Point, the back cover of which carried the following blurb:
“When a new NASA satellite detects evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory. . .a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election”.
Another case of life imitating art?
Obama is turning out exactly as I expected. He is an anti-western, anti-freedom, anti-Jewish, pro-slavery(socialist) leftist academic. This is what these people do. It’s too bad he has turned on NASA. I figured NASA was too small and had too much of a mandate for space exploration to be turned in to something else. I guess on NASA I was wrong.
BarryW,
Ayn Rand was raised in Soviet Russia. She had first hand experience of the sort of society that gets built when people like Obama come to power. She saw it first hand and came to America and told us about it.
The Prez must be feeling groovy lately.
He just handed out a feel-good ambassador mission to NASA’s head.
What’s next, a full diagnostic tuneup for Kim Jong Il’s car?
Other Space Nerds will understand…
The Dream is Dead. Dead and Gone.
This is what we can expect from having three to five layers of political appointees directing the work of civil servants who are supposed to be functioning as directed by laws established by congress as representitives of the people. NASA has no business doing the business of the State Department.
The panel found that President Barack Obama and Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear physicist, lacked the power to close the Yucca repository unilaterally; doing so, it ruled, would require another act of Congress
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/04/96995/judges-rule-obama-cant-close-yucca.html?storylink=MI_emailed#ixzz0swiECDTp
Obama is making end runs around congress.
This is Chicago style corruption. The regime decides what friends get what money.
Charles Bolden, all your space are between your ears!
Reply: All your comments are belong to us. ~ ctm
Third and perhaps foremost?
who friggin talks like that?
Don’t be so hard on Obozo. After all, he has done the previously considered impossible feat of making Jimmy Carter look good by comparison.
Spartacus: Since you admit to not being an American, let me help you. NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautical and Space Agency. It is funded by American taxpayers for the purpose of American space exploration. It is not for purpose of elevating the self-esteem of a particular religion or other countries because they are predominantly Muslim.
Let’s replace Muslim with Christian and see if you understand.
“…the “foremost” task President Obama has given him is “to find a way to reach out to the Christian world and engage much more with predominantly Christian nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
I won’t even go into the implication that Obama is once again apologizing for America’s success or that his administration is diverting American assets to serve a larger, international agenda.
Islam is what 1200 years old? That makes them relative newcomers in the science and innovation biz. Egypt, China, Japan, Maya, India, Greece, Rome, Carthage, and many others contributed far more, centuries before Muhammed was even a gleam in his daddy’s eye. They don’t impress me at all.
How is it thzt NASA gets a mission to kiss-up to mullahs and the EPA gets the power to regulate the air we breathe? Meanwhile, the DOJ has thrown up its hands and said that the Arizona law would give them too much work to do.
I had a lot of Iranian friends at university . They told me this 25 years ago. MI6 put the Mullahas in power. Democracy and oil do not mix.
**
Mike uncovers papers which accused the BBC of biased reporting as Iran descended into revolution in 1978 and 1979. The documents show that the BBC’s Persian Service found itself attacked on all sides, with the most vociferous critics claiming that the Corporation was not simply reporting events but influencing them in favour of regime change. As Ayatollah Khomeini sat in exile in Paris, the BBC stood charged with galvanising the radical cleric’s supporters and acting as his mouthpiece in Tehran.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j6lfk
Here’s a quiz
Which country did the USA supply arms to during Iran Contra ?
Was it
1) Iran
2) Iraq
3) Ireland
What was the October Surprise 1980 ?
Muslims dont need us to patronisingly tell them their own history.
OK Islamic countries made scientific and mathematical achievements, hundreds of years ago. As did the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, (all these pre-islamic), Mayans, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols etc.. But they all kind of lost it somehow.
But the science the world now operates is predominantly almost exclusively European and (later) American, dating from the Renaissance, and initiating individuals such as Galileo, Regiomontanus, Copernicus, Andreas Vesalius, Brahe and Newton. Figuring out differential calculus was of more significance than figuring out how to count up to ten.
And why does it matter? Science is important to the extent that it is true and effective and predictive. Science doesn’t need racial profiling. Today’s scientific community is remarkably globally cosmopolitan, probably more than any other profession (if its feudal political structure deserved to be called a profession which is doubtful). Look at the researchers and PhD students in scientific research groups. A laboratory in Oslo or Helsinki can have members from Iran, Spain, Morrocco, China, Libya, even Britain, you name it.
The Islamic world dont need our sychophantic Stockholm-syndrome self-loathing appeasement and patronising, any more than they need Western military forces in their territory. They can sort out their own problems best when we leave them alone.
I wonder, how I and my countrymen would feel, if some guy from the USA would say in our TV, that they want us to feel good about our scientific heritage.
WTF comes to mind… or maybe more classically: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?”
From White House spokesman Nick Shapiro: “The President has always said that he wants NASA to engage with the world’s best scientists and engineers as we work together to push the boundaries of exploration. Meeting that mandate requires NASA to partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries. The space race began as a global competition, but, today, it is a global collaboration.”
Sorry to be picky ☺ ☺, but that should be:
All your comments comment are belong to us.
/dr.bill
Me thinks the Muslims did about as much, if not more, conversion by the sword as anyone. Al Hazen, arguably the finest Arab “scientist” from that time when Arabs were actually contributing to learning, once said that he did much of his best thinking on the back of a Camel–as he escaped one “enlightened” Muslim ruler after another.
Damn that WordPress HTML!
All your
commentscomment are belong to us./dr.bill
[REPLY – SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB. TAKE OFF ALL ZIG. ~ Evan]
According to Wiki Answers the Arabs invented zero in the 4th Century BCE. However, it may be perhaps time to recognize that the “O” in Obama is a big fat zero.
[snip]