Around The Horn
Clicking around the internet today I came across the following courtesy of FARK: Spongebob Squarepants creator defends his show from accusations that Spongebob is gay: "I always think of them as being somewhat asexual." According to the BBC's online edition:
SpongeBob may be "kind of special", but he was not designed to be a gay character, his creator Stephen Hillenburg has told the Wall Street Journal.
I mean, let's all lighten up. It's a freakin' cartoon about a sponge! Let's put the focus back where it belongs, on the Teletubbies. Meanwhile, in other news:
The belief that the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo Galilei for pointing out 
that the earth goes round the sun was quite wrong, the new secretary of the Vatican's Doctrinal Congregation, Archbishop Angelo Amato, has claimed.
Citing a letter recently discovered in the Vatican's archive, Archbishop Amato, who heads the body formerly known as the Holy Office or the Inquisition, said it proved that the church had treated him very well.
Well I suppose that settles that. *snickers* I suppose this will now increase their credibility with the public at large. *laughing uncontrollably now* Well, at least with the Knights of Columbus. I guess you can see I'm having a hard time readjusting to my workday routine.
In more serious news, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board has issued the first volume of its final report. The remaining volumes will be made up of technical documents cited in the report or referenced as part of the investigation. I've downloaded the actual report which is 248 pages, so it will take a while to digest. Apparently, the gist of it is:
[W]hile NASA's present Space Shuttle is not inherently unsafe, a number of mechanical fixes are required to make the Shuttle safer in the short term. The report also concludes that NASA's management system is unsafe to manage the shuttle system beyond the short term and that the agency does not have a strong safety culture.
The Board determined that physical and organizational causes played an equal role in the Columbia accident - that the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with the accident as the foam that struck the Orbiter on ascent. The report also notes other significant factors and observations that may help prevent the next accident.
The Board crafted the report to serve as a framework for a national debate about the future of human space flight, but suggests that it is in the nation's interest to replace the Shuttle as soon as possible as the primary means for transporting humans to and from Earth orbit.
The Board makes 29 recommendations in the 248-page final report, including 15 return-to-flight recommendations that should be implemented before the Shuttle Program returns to flight.
You can download the report from the CAIB's website and hard copies of the report or CDs can be obtained through NASA's Office of Public Affairs at 202-358-1898.
One final bit of news, we actually had an earthquake registering 3.8 in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. I guess that explains why I spilled coffee on my shirt.
File under Current Events.
10:21:39 PM 
