This is a really fast survey on your current news knowledge.
I scored 12 out of 12, which put me in the 94th percentile.
When you're underemployed, you tend to read the news...a lot!
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Bad Day...
I always remember where I was when I hear really awful news.
I was watching TV a January night in the '60s when the news broke in with a special report that three astronauts had died in a fire during a training mission.
I was returning from a quick post office trip at lunch that January day in 1986, when a man on the radio said "The Challenger seems to have exploded."
I was walking into work a brilliant late summer morning, went into the vending machine area to get a soda, and a total stranger said to me, "Oh, it's a terrible day, a plane hit the World Trade Center."
I was watching Comedy Central this morning, laughing at Bill Murray in Scrooged when I just happen to check SFF Net newsgroups on my laptop. Adam Troy Castro titled a bleak message at 9:34 in sff.discuss.obituaries with "Not Again"
Terrorism, I thought. Oh shit.
Then I read the message.
"It's beginning to look like we've lost the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia..."
Shit! I grabbed the channel changer and immediately switched to NBC. And cried for about 10 minutes.
I have been a huge fan of spaceflight. I don't remember the Shepard or Grissom flights, but Glenn flew just after my fifth birthday and I remember that vividly. Space travel is an act of supreme confidence in the future - it meant we were living in the future.
I find any death related to the space program to be doubly-heartbreaking. It's sad when any person dies in the course of their work; but every death related to space travel seems to drive a nail in the coffin of NASA.
Life has risks. I just hope we don't mothball the program for another two and a half years due to this tragedy. Astronauts know that it's risky. Most Americans know that it's risky. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
If everyone was so risk-averse, we'd still be little monkeys living on a beach in Africa.
I was watching TV a January night in the '60s when the news broke in with a special report that three astronauts had died in a fire during a training mission.
I was returning from a quick post office trip at lunch that January day in 1986, when a man on the radio said "The Challenger seems to have exploded."
I was walking into work a brilliant late summer morning, went into the vending machine area to get a soda, and a total stranger said to me, "Oh, it's a terrible day, a plane hit the World Trade Center."
I was watching Comedy Central this morning, laughing at Bill Murray in Scrooged when I just happen to check SFF Net newsgroups on my laptop. Adam Troy Castro titled a bleak message at 9:34 in sff.discuss.obituaries with "Not Again"
Terrorism, I thought. Oh shit.
Then I read the message.
"It's beginning to look like we've lost the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia..."
Shit! I grabbed the channel changer and immediately switched to NBC. And cried for about 10 minutes.
I have been a huge fan of spaceflight. I don't remember the Shepard or Grissom flights, but Glenn flew just after my fifth birthday and I remember that vividly. Space travel is an act of supreme confidence in the future - it meant we were living in the future.
I find any death related to the space program to be doubly-heartbreaking. It's sad when any person dies in the course of their work; but every death related to space travel seems to drive a nail in the coffin of NASA.
Life has risks. I just hope we don't mothball the program for another two and a half years due to this tragedy. Astronauts know that it's risky. Most Americans know that it's risky. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
If everyone was so risk-averse, we'd still be little monkeys living on a beach in Africa.
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