The head of the Nasa has said Barack Obama told him to make “reaching out to the Muslim world” one of the space agency’s top priorities.
Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that Nasa was not only a space exploration agency but also an “Earth improvement agency”.
Mr Bolden said: "When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.
“One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
He added: “It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim [nations].”
Byron York, a conservative columnist for the Washington Examiner, characterised Mr Obama’s space policy shift as moving “from moon landings to promoting self-esteem”
This politicization of a space organization is just sickening, especially to someone like me who loves space science so much. Obama just gets more and more ridiculous as the days go by. What was he smoking when he said that?
lol maybe if he wanted Muslims to “feel good” he’d stop killing the shit out of them. “BOOM! There goes your village. Thanks to your efforts in science/engineering we were able to figure out how to kill you Muzzies good.”
Largely a culturally leftist myth to begin with anyway. The few real advancements seen under the Caliphate were just transmissions of knowledge from India and China anyway, and the ‘preservation of Greek/Roman knowledge’ one is equally hilarious, as the Byzantines were the primary preservors of Greek texts in the East, and monastic orders the primary preservers of Latin texts in the West.
Not to get off-topic(although maybe I should’ve PM’d you this, but I have a feeling you don’t mind)- but what exactly sparked your crusade against possible anti-white rhetoric. Its evident in almost all of your posts and the topic of race seems to be your favorite. I’m especially curious since your dislike of people like Oscar Grant seems to go beyond his own actions and seems more closely associated with the race he is going by all the terms you used to describe him and his life.
To get children into science you don’t need an overbloated bureaucracy running the worst vehicle ever built by mankind. And the thought of NASA trying to make Muslims “feel good” just boggles the mind.
I think the mating habits for flies was the one that really floored me. They spent millions of dollars just to observe flies doing it, I mean c’mon >_<
Americans wanted a space program run by politicians, now the politicians are politicizing the space program. What’s to complain about? It seems Americans got what they wanted!
Please stop with your irrelevant assertions about the left all the time. One, it betrays a very narrow worldview, and two, it’s intellectually useless in discussion. I read your comment on auctionguy’s page, and your own personal hangups should never be confused with a position of reason. You wrote that the logic of an Austrian approach is appealing, so please abandon your emotional positions from your past incarnations.
It’s been well known to many on the so-called right that much early science was created in the Islamic world. That’s as near as indisputable as one can get when it comes to history.
Is it not correct to say that all the scientific advances of the middle-eastern people were BEFORE they became the “Islamic world” ?? Since then not much in the way of advancements. That’s as near as indisputable as one can get when it comes to history.
Most of the crap from NASA goes towards military and corporate research. As a subsidy to both in the form of harmless ‘space flight’ in PR terms. it’s always been political in the sense of ‘politics’ meaning the decision of who gets what resources and when.
People talk about how it brings technology. But the technology has certain people in mind, not Americans in general. This is basically for all things when some science becomes a ‘public’ good. Certainly when science is a private good, sometimes only certain people benefit. But in a different way and to a much different magnitude than million dollar research grants from uncle sam.
And anyone who disagrees with me is a cultural leftist who needs to get bent.
It’s not just this thread. And I read his clarification. He has some hangups from when he was a leftist. That and making the thread topic, doesn’t excuse being wrong about a subject.
Agriculture was before Islam. But most everything else was after Islam. Around 622 AD.
Though I don’t think it was because of Islam. Moreso probably because there was less opposition to accepting new discoveries in Islam than in Christianity during the Dark Ages. From other people or from Muslim individuals. For instance, in math, medicine, chemistry, philosophy, economics, etc. They never had a bias against wealth, either.
People of the Islamic faith (worshipped Allah and followed the hadiths) made significant contributions to science, medicine and mathematics. How they were politically organized, is a topic worthwhile of this forum. Whether their faith was conducive to these achievements, is worthwhile.
But to suggest it is a leftist conspiracy that it ocurred, that’s just nonsense.
