An Exercise In Futility

I can’t recall the last time i was ‘bored’. I hear people around me complaining “i’m bored”, “there’s nothing to do”. Adults! I can understand school children being stuck in class and maybe trudging through work that is utterly mind-numbing, and thus being bored with it, but an adult who has every means of basically doing whatever they want? Something is wrong here… To me it seems that adult boredom is really an unwillingness to be creative when there is no other option. Stop complaining that there is nothing to do and MAKE something to do! Go for a run! Shovel some snow! Draw something! Write a story! Play solitaire! Go to the library! Anything! If more people would stop being sloths and instead show initiative, the world would probably be a better place. Personally, there are so many things I could be doing that I don’t have time for, I can’t possible imagine having absolutely nothing to do.

I’m not quite sure who this Bill O’Reilly guy is, nor who Jeremy Glick is, but I find this exchange of theirs absolutely appaling. Well, what I mean is that I find O’Reilly’s behaviour appaling. It’s Closed-minded self-centred fucks like Bill who give the USA a bad name. He sounds like even more of an asshole when you actually listen to the conversation. It’s people like Bill who put us all at risk. Beware.

I should have posted this yesterday morning, when I first had the opportunity - 2 nights ago I had this radical idea that maybe the Columbia’s demise was the result of a space junk collision. Hey, anything’s possible, right? If a small object (be it man-made junk or naturally occuring meteoroid), hurtling at thousands of miles per hour, was to hit a space shuttle, would anyone find out? If this tiny projectile collided with, say, the shuttle’s wing, would astronauts on board feel a ‘bump’ sensation, or would the debris just blast right through unnoticed, leaving a big hole and impending doom? This is mere speculation, but it turns out that many news outlets have made similar suggestions today… so maybe my idea isn’t all that farfetched after all.

This article was linked to in a friend’s blog. It’s a very cynical and sarcastic (though interesting) piece on the shuttle program, circa 1980.

I didn’t see the launch of STS-107, and have not found any information regarding debris that apparently struck the wing of the shuttle during liftoff. It’s a rumor that had me thinking that perhaps the break-up of Columbia had something to do with a damaged heat shield. I’ll have to sit on that one for a while. What I have dug up are a few links regarding the flow liner cracks discovered on allshuttles halfway through 2002; which delayed the launch of STS-107 for about 6 months. At seems that after a lot of study, the cracks were deemed to pose a low risk. Draw your own conclusions:

• “…cracks found in metal liners …”
• Lots of detail regarding flow liner cracks
• Fuel line inspection delays Columbia launch (spacetoday.net)