09:20:29

I wrote the following post on 13 September at around 10:00 CDT:

Nine hours, twenty minutes, twenty-nine seconds.

I keep looking at it, thinking about the change it represents. A choice. To live the rest of my life wondering about the what-ifs, or to be brave and be a man. To be like my father. Like my grandfather, his father, and his father, and so forth back to the beginning. I'm grateful for the choice they made, as it enables me to express a wide range of emotions and resolve in this hastily written screed.

A choice. To turn my back on the bizarre romanticism of the loner, or to take the first step of changing that.

What if I can't? What if it's a mistake?

But I know I can, and I know it's not. I just know.

Nine hours, eleven minutes, twenty-one seconds.

I resist the temptation to take it out of the locked cabinet again. To gaze upon it. Part of me is worried that someone will see me moping over such a silly object, and ask me why I have it. Part of me is worried someone won't.

I can't wait to take it with me to the airport. I can't wait to nervously worry about it falling out of my pocket. And I can't wait until I get down on my right knee, take it out of my pocket, take her left hand, and show it to her. And I can't wait until I ask her to be my wife.

Nine hours, five minutes, forty-nine seconds. Maybe I'll sneak another quick look.

She said yes.

Spoiling the memory of a great man by linking him to your political agenda

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120901/OPINION04/309010032/Letter-to-the-editor-Honor-Neil-Armstrong-by-honoring-science?Opinion

That's what Ira Lacher of Des Moines does in this recent letter to the editor:

For those of us fortunate enough to have lived during the 1960s and to have been transfixed by the shadowy images on our black-and-white TVs, the image of Neil Armstrong descending the spindly leg of the lunar module signaled a bright future with unfathomable possibilities.

On Dec. 7, it will have been 40 years since the last human walked on the moon. Forty years!

Where the reaches of space once beckoned, like a gateway to the future itself, those gates now appear padlocked. If my children see another human walking on the moon or another planet, the explorer most likely will not be an American.

This is because in the intervening years, America has been subjected to a war on science, research and education. Some elected officials want our children to be taught that Adam and Eve shared the Earth with dinosaurs 2,000 years ago. Others bring to the policy-making table a profound ignorance about human biology. The indisputable, increasing evidence of global warming is treated as a hoax. And there is a concerted effort to equate unprovable religious belief with observable and verifiable scientific observation.

Progress toward knowledge is not an inexorable line upward. There are dips and troughs. But hasn’t this trough lasted long enough? Wouldn’t it be an appropriate legacy to the memory of Neil Armstrong if America could find its sanity and regain the high ground on the road to science and learning?

Mr. Lacher would be surprised to find that I agree with him that we should teach science in school.  I don't agree with teaching Creationism in schools, but I also don't agree in suppressing the very mention of it.

Mr. Lacher does something common amongst the elitist mindset:  He mocks and belittles a differing opinion. 

Opinion.  Not fact.

Evolution, in spite of supporting data, is still just a theory.

As for the crack about "profound ignorance about human biology", I'll grant Mr. Lacher that Todd Akin is a moron.  Even the GOP wanted him to drop out of the race after his idiotic comments about legitimate rape and the female human body having the ability to shut down and prevent pregnancy.

As for global warming, what indisputable evidence is Mr. Lacher referring to?  The land-based temperature-monitoring stations with their data corrupted by placement by burn barrels, air conditioner exhaust fans, and asphalt?  The refusal by climate scientists to share their climate models's algorithms and raw data with the scientific community and the public, especially when being funded by public funds?  The use of satellite data to measure sea ice coverage in two dimensions instead of a more realistic three?  Or how about models using this imperfect data to dictate economic and national security policies, when the data is at best 50-100 years old, an infinitesimal fraction of the geological estimate of the planet's 4.6 billion year age?  How about e-mails amongst scientists using phrases like "hide the decline"?

Little Ice Age?

Medieval Warming Period?

The Year Without Summer?

Ice cores that show CO2 atmospheric concentrations in Earth's distant past succeeding temperature increases, as opposed to preceding them?

Face it, Mr. Lacher, it's not settled science.  It's not indisputable.

Mr. Lacher may be correct in stating there's a war on science.  But it's been perpetrated by alarmists who seem content to take shortcuts in the scientific method.  Who label people who dispute their findings as "deniers", which I've stated before is more telling about the rigidity of the alarmists' belief in those conclusions than in skeptics inclusion of data that doesn't support the conclusions.  Skeptics who don't accept the explanations for the data's exclusion.

One more thing, Mr. Lacher.  It's not the "anti-science" types whom are the reason why the next explorer who walks on the moon probably won't be an American:  It's Barack Obama.