Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Probe

0110011001110101 writes "NASA's mission that sent a space probe smashing into a comet raised more than cosmic dust -- it also brought a lawsuit from a Russian astrologer. 'Bai is seeking damages totaling $300 million -- the approximate equivalent of the mission's cost -- for her "moral sufferings," Izvestia said, citing her lawyer Alexander Molokhov. She earlier told the paper that the experiment would "deform her horoscope." ' "

Comments

Lets fire lawyers at the rock next time?

[cliffski]

Seriously, without the huge surplus lawyer-mountain in the US, crazy shit like this wouldnt be an option. Why fire a perfectly good space probe at a comet when we could propel a bunch of lawyers instead, preferably shackled to their brain-dead clients.
I think US judges should be given encouragement to laugh in the faces of morons who bring court cases like this, and to charge them costs big time to put them off pulling such pathetic stunts.

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, once again its another dupe - why is everyone still so surprised that this happens? The 'editors' barely pay lip service to their title and I doubt very much that they read the comments either. At face value there is no real passion from the creators of the site - its just the same old shit day after day.

To explain further, Slashdot exists for one purpose: to make money for parent company OSDN. There is nothing wrong with that in itself but don't expect a high quality site the way its currently run. The Slashdot business model (if you can call it that) seems to be to provoke reaction from the loyal crowd of slashbots that frequent the site. Inflammatory / trollish stories (e.g here) and dupes cause the page hits (and therefore ad revenue) to go through the roof.

As a result, most of the comments I see on the stories are neither insightful, interesting or informative. There seems to be no real balanced discussion - something I feel is a product of the moderation system which rewards those who conform to the slashbot mindset and censors everything else. This democratic method of editing the comments is terrible - especially where technical issues are concerned, as a lot of nonsense is modded up by people who don't know otherwise.

You are probably wondering why I read Slashdot. Partly morbid curiosity and partly to laugh at both the flame wars which invevitably break out and the well crafted trolls.

To conclude, Slashdot is neither really "News for Nerds" nor is it "Stuff that matters". If you want the former, go to somewhere like arstechnica or kuroshin and if you want actual stuff that matters: Infoshop

Re:A point of clarification

[penguinoid]

Religion may be logical, but it is based on flawed principles. It is very easy to show the problems with the basic principles, and the rest comes crumbling down.

Care to show me? For example in Christianity, much of the bible is not literal, so first you must prove that something is literal before showing contradictions. Also, you have to assume that contradictions are always false (yes, that's an axiom). Anyhow, if you try to disprove religion here, anything useful you say will be lost in the ensuing flamewar, but I doubt you could do it. Millions have already tried and failed. I would recommend proving we exist first.

I am referring to religion having any bearing on the physical world, e.g. creationism. Leave it in the spiritual realm where it belongs and you won't have any problems.

Everything that has any bearing on the real world involves assumptions. Some, like the default logical axioms, and the scientific method, are quite useful, but they are assumptions nonetheless.

err

[crabpeople]

well your throwing around completely meaningless names, i should stop you and say that both hitler and bush were/are christians.

The problem is that when you have a magical belief system that pretty much only serves as a control for the masses, you have many people who exploit that control for their own gain. As there are no actual "connections with reality" in most religions, I would say they make everyone who is a part of them, part of the problem. What I mean is that when you dont have a firm base in reality, people can easily justify anything with phrases such as "it is gods will" or "this is how it SHOULD be". Religion is just one more way to establish and acclimatize people to authoritarian controls. It is pretty much what holds society back from advancing.

Since you have a whole mass of susceptible "washed" minds, who only need to be given key words to bring them under ones direction, the people in the system are ALL part of the problem. I would compare it to all good soldiers in the army being as much responsible for the war as the politicians. Once people realize they cannot hide behind organizations while they do their dirty business, much of the worlds problems will melt away.