Slashdot Mirror
Sally Ride Takes Her Final Flight
fructose writes "Sally Ride, America's first woman in space died today at age 61. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer according to her office in San Diego. Here's to wishing her a safe trip on her final journey."
Condolences to her family.
Godspeed Sally.
What, is she going to die again or something?
I'm glad the news made it to Slashdot (and even the same day!) but that summary left me scratching my head a little.
"Her Final Flight"?
"Here's to wishing her a safe trip on her final journey."?
Is that like a bizarre modernization of Greek mythologies surrounding death, and offered in earnest?
Tough chick, we should all miss her.
I still remember that historic launch. Her name was one everyone who was old enough to remember knew and never forgot from that day forward.
Sally Ride was a true pioneer and hero.
I suspect that many if not most of the people who follow Slashdot don't believe in religious superstition. I find it truly unfortunate that someone would take advantage of her untimely passing and use it as an opportunity to preach his own religious views. And yes, I expect other supposedly "religious" people will now resort to name calling to mod me down rather than enter into discussion.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I remember watching her launch on tv in 5th grade. Shuttle launches at its best during the 80's led me to my career choice, mechanical engineering. God speed Sally Ride, thank you for your contributions to science.
Seriously,
Are you guys so far behind over there that every little thing has to be "by his command".
I'm getting to the stage of feeling thoroughly cheesed off with slashdot. I know it's got a yank spin, but it feels like over the last few years the propoganda and the yearning for america to be number 1 is off the charts.
Yes, yes, I know where this is going my burger eating rotund friends.
Any chance you guys could sort your shit out, and stop fucking up the rest of the planet just because you're greedy?
Also be really cool if you stop with that whole "pushing our economic rules on everyone" crap too.
Thought not.
Rest well Sally. Sorry you passed away because of such a horrible condition. You did good maam.
Are you mad since we haven't let you sit in the front, yet?
We sent a midget into space?
I'm sorry if I'm coming off pessimistic but this whole Sally Ride makes me think how different areas of technology have moved at wildly different speeds. It's a bit pathetic actually. Neil Stephenson and others have also talked about the slowdown and recent disappointments in non-information technology related fields and I tend to agree with them.
...when a supposed 'news for nerds' website starts alluding to dead people going on 'final trips'. What is this, Fox News? The Bible network?
like the chorus from Mustang Sally.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Some people feel sad at the news of death
I do not
While we are living, we are _mostly_ stuck inside this gravity well - with the exception of our imagination
Only after one dies, that the spirit is freed from the bond of the body - if you believe in the existence of "spirit", that is - and in this gal's case, finally she gets to roam the Universe, without having to strap herself next to a big rocket
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dunno, but but we sure as hell didn't send any niggers into space because as you know, they would turn invisible. Makes em pretty hard to keep an eye on and make sure they don't steal the moon rocks or something. GNFOS is a work of fiction, people.
There is no "final journey'. When the brain stops working. life ends.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
All I wanna do is ride around Sally!
Maybe she will get cremated and her ashes sent into outer space, which technically would be a final journey
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
It is simply pointing out a belief in Secular Frisbeeism.
The "final flight" is when your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck for all time.
- May you find the shingles soft Sally! -
I found out reading her obituary that she had a partner of 27 years, a fact that - despite her status as an American Hero - was not publicly announced until after her death.
Death is not a flight, it's not a trip, it's not a journey, it is the obliteration of you where you cease to exist the moment your brain cells have died.
"What happens after you die? Nature is a harsh mistress indeed.
What happens after death is very clear, your body rots as it’s being recycled by Nature and “you” are permanently and utterly obliterated you cease to be no magical heaven, no roasting hell, you just cease to be when your brain stops working that’s it nothing more.
What happens when you take something apart, such as a car? As you begin to remove non-critical pieces it’s still a car, you can take the roof off and it’s still a car, you can take the hub caps off and it’s still a car, you can even take the doors off and it’s still a car; taking the wheels off and while it’s still a car it’s now a disabled car but at some point as you remove parts – critical parts – it’s no longer a car; and if as you take those parts off the car and destroy them so there is no chance of putting it back together either that’s what happens with humans and other living things at some point a critical component or critical components are removed or cease functioning that are critical for it to be alive and that’s it that is the moment you cease to be – when your brain stops functioning, just like a car ceases to be.
Now to be sure, did the car go to “car heaven”? Nope, it simple ceased to be, it vanished it’s car-ness is no more it existed from the point that it’s critical parts made it a car and was a car while it was a car and then it ceased to be after it was disassembled at that critical moment when enough parts where removed that it ceased to be
Enjoy being alive. It is all that matters. Everything else is meaningless.
There is no mystery about death. Only people who don’t want to face it or those that don’t like it make it mysterious and invent alleged gods and being saved by jesus to a futile pitiful attempt to defy the objective reality of Nature in it’s harshness and cold fact of obliterating end of life.
Science wins over mythology. If after reading the attached article/document you still believe in the resurrection of jesus you know that you’re highly delusional and denying the facts of life in the objective reality of Nature.
BE. Even BE kind to others. For no other reason than the shocking horror of our own ceasing to be.
Here is the science:"
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2010/07/29/what-happens-after-you-die/
To think that the first American maker of sammiches in space is gone brings a tear to my eye.
waste of tax payer money
god i fucking hate cancer.
in my less angry mode, i remember talking about salyl ride when i was a kid. these were real people we could look up to. i dont know if they have a name for that kind of idealism of youth but i still think it is worth something, even after all we have been through and all we have learned about our own failures and mistakes as a species.
The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She flew on June 16th, 1963. That was two years after the first man flew into the space.
On the other hand, the first American woman (Sally Ride, RIP) flew in 1982.
Question: Why did it take NASA almost two decades to send the woman in space?
Ride Sally Ride
-KI
#include bier;
Fly in peace Sally.
Now cancer cannot touch you.
Your dream will live on with younger generations, thanks to your books and Sally Ride Science.
Peace!
First American woman in space, she also served on both the Challenger and Columbia disaster investigation committees. She was not outspoken about her personal life but spared no effort so that future endeavors into space might be safer.
We are all sorry for her family's loss.
I met Sally (briefly) at JPL, after her 1984 Challenger mission. My impression was of someone who was confident, supremely able, and didn't worry a lot how she dressed. I got this impression since she showed up at the lab wearing shorts, and seemed instantly at home, like she'd been working there for years. Her later partnership with Tam was a surprise, since she gave no hint of that during her astronaut years. But yes, getting a ride on the big machine in the early 80's was a very political game, as much about appearances as it was about ability. And ability she had in spades. During the October 84 Challenger mission, all kinds of shit went wrong. An RF antenna cable on the radar overloaded and started arcing, causing the SNR to radically drop. The monitoring equipment at Johnson acted up, showing loss of TDRS downlink data when it was actually fine. I also seem to recall that Sally had to take apart parts of the shuttle with a wrench to get access to the data recorder, because of some malfunction or other. So overall, the mission was a disaster. But Sally took it all in stride. Best wishes, Sally. Some of us remember you.
it's not your time it's just your confusion.
"People do not want to admit that death==nonexistence so they make-up imaginary 'trips' to some other place (heaven, hell, Elysian Fields, space, whatever). In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen."
For another perspective, see: http://noetic.org/search/?q=survival
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/
http://physicalismisdead.blogspot.com/2012/05/charles-tart-on-postmortem-survival.html
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charles+tart
http://www.amazon.com/States-Consciousness-Charles-Tart/dp/0595151965
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Materialism-Evidence-Paranormal/dp/1572246456
"Charles Tart reconciles the scientific and spiritual worlds by looking at empirical evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena that point toward our spiritual nature, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing.
Science seems to tell us that we are all meaningless products of blind biological and chemical forces, leading meaningless lives that will eventually end in death. The truth is that unseen forces such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and other phenomena inextricably link us to the spiritual world, and while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place.
In this book, copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart presents over fifty years of scientific research conducted at the nation's leading universities that proves humans do have natural spiritual impulses and abilities. The End of Materialism presents an elegant argument for the union of science and spirituality in light of this new evidence, and explains why a truly rational viewpoint must address the reality of a spiritual world. Tart's work marks the beginning of an evidence-based spiritual awakening that will profoundly influence your understanding of the deeper forces at work in our lives."
Sadly, it looks like Sally Ride might have died of sunlight deficiency and vegetable deficiency:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
According to mike mullane the author and fellow astronaut, a lot of the guys (he admits most of them where planet ad primates like himself) thought she wore her feminisim like a chip on her shoulder. I guess being in the closet kind of explains that. Mike also goes on to say how shocked all of them where that she dated and married steve hawley in the first place. Since he was the biggest womenizer out of the whole group. He attested that to steves charm, but still it was shocking non the less. I got the feeling from his perspective he really didnt like her at all, and thought that judith resnik should have been the one to claim the first "title" since she actually stuck with the program (until she died on challenger). Anyway RIP, Ms.Ride. You accomplished far more then I ever did.
47 down, 9 to go: Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Fidel Castro, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Doris Day, and Bernhard Goetz.
Wow. I'm honestly quite surprised at what is a fairly high level of vitriol over what people choose to believe or not believe from a religious standpoint. C'mon, people. Can't we just let someone hold their religious beliefs without going out of our way to mock and deride them because you think you know better?
Ponder your cat. It has it's own world, it lives life freely, is fairly intelligent. It can plan, make decisions, etc. And yet it is not remotely possible for that kitty to understand, when you open the cat food can, how that food got there. All kitty understands is that you open the can and the food is simply there. Kitty's mind is not able to comprehend how that cat food came to be created, how it was packaged, labeled, transported, sold, etc. Kitty's brain isn't capable of understanding it. To kitty, it's not even a known unknown, it's an unknown unknown (to use some military/war/intelligence terminology).
Why couldn't us mere humans be the same way? Why couldn't there be a God or similar being whose entire existence completely and totally transcends ours? I realize that *could* open the face-two-mirrors-at-each-other paradox, but lets set that aside for the moment. To put it simply - just because you cannot conclusively prove that a God does not exist DOES NOT mean that God doesn't exist.
is that its not like some psycho in a movie theatre. one minute you are there, eating popcorn, the next minute you are in the afterlife. no
cancer last for years. sometimes 10 years sometimes 30. you never know. and what do you get to do while you are waiting? sit around on a fucking tube while your body wastes into some kind of alien being while you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on $9 advils and whatever. but you cant get marijuana, that would be 'wrong'. just a fuckton of morphine. its all fucking bullshit.
If you want to support intolerance of people who think differently of you, say so.
Don't rationalize with this bizarre redefinition of the word "tolerance".
Keep perspective in line. Most people wish they would die in an instant. But what they do not realize is that the world they leave behind is at a much greater loss. Imagine if you had a family member shot in a movie theater. Then, imagine you had a family member die of cancer; painful in the end, but at least you have your chances to say "goodbye," and prepare. For you, dying instantly might be ideal. For those you love, dying slowly may actually be preferred.
So, it's you, you have a cancer. I hate even that word. Maybe, and please don't hate me ( it's me, sternishefan here posting ac again), maybe in 'this' life, we all get 'tested', in one way or another. Sometimes, I think, we even get 'used' by 'the big cheese' for his/her own reasons. Maybe because He/She knows we can handle it. I've been through some stuff in my life, not like what you're having to endure, but hard for me. I learned that I was stronger than I knew, at the time. You couldn't have convinced me of that then, I think. YOU have strength and bravery I wish I had. I've learned that, looking back, every time I was down, don't ask me how or even why sometimes, I got up again. I guess maybe because that's what we do best, getting up after being knocked down, you relate to that, right? Keep on keeping on, dear, until you finally can't. Then, go a little more, then rest. You can't see them, but you DO have angels, spirits, around you, 'singing' you on. And I'm saying this to piss off some other /.ers reading along now. I 'know' some things that quite frankly
I wish I didn't sometimes, as you see the response I get sometimes!
(lol) I would not lie to you dear, I know of what I speak. Stay strong, handle 'your' burden with the best 'grace' possible for you, that is the true measure of a man or woman. Not that bad things happen to us, but in how we handle ourselves when they do. How we 'react' is what we 're 'judged' by. Something tells me you'll do just fine in that department. Be proud of yourself! for getting way further than some of us would ever get if in your position. I don't even know you, and I am very proud of you! Take good care, dear. S.F. ;-)
And 20 years ago there was no such thing as 'medical' marijuana. Our friend wanted to smoke a joint, he smoked! No debate. Any lawmaker had a loved one with cancer would break their own law, if they had any humanness to them. Get a friend to smuggle something in for you, do it in the bathroom or out the window. What are they gonna do, arrest a patient?! I don't think so!
47 down, 9 to go: Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Fidel Castro, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Doris Day, and Bernhard Goetz.
And one fine day, you and I. "No one here gets out alive."-Jim Morrison
I can't decide if you are trolling or not. If so, bravo! If not, I pity your foolish gullability.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
I wonder how Steve Hawley felt?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride#Personal_life
She was the first American woman in space; she was preceded by two women cosmonauts.
So according to your logic we can disprove the theory of gravity (or any other scientific theory) just by finding someone obnoxious to claim it is true.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I don't discriminate between men and women.
That doesn't mean no one else does.
if you want to get into it, lets go!
yes, I hate the belief in god. its a weakness, it causes fights and violence due to the us-vs-them syndrome. its more of a means to separate us than to bind us.
mental illness is mental illness. being in fashion does not excuse the fact that its harmful and is a flaw that should be fixed.
mass delusion does not mean the masses are correct. the masses were wrong and the size of the gullible group does not make their viewpoints any more correct.
what else do I hate about the whole religion thing? the fact that we used to (still do, in some places) fear for our lives just by speaking how we feel. do YOU get threatened by staying you believe in sky fairies? no, you don't. you can't understand what its like to be persecuted and threatened with violence simply because you won't buy into the groupthink that everyone else was forced to go along with.
and yes, its forced. how many children have a free choice in their indoctrination? almost none of them. they get you while you are young, impressionable and defenseless.
the only difference between a cult and a religion is the size of the groupthink and how many followers they have. we don't 'like' cults but we seem to tolerate religions.
I hate illogic and intentional misdirection. that is what religion is mostly about and so I do hate it. I hate what it does to people and I hate that its so lodged in society that its near impossible to remove (safely).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
An awful shame when somebody dies that young.
Anybody know if astronauts are markedly more susceptible to illnesses like cancer due to greater exposure to radiation outside of the Earth's atmosphere?
Or is the increased exposure in their few days out of the atmosphere pretty insignificant in terms of increasing the chances of cancers etc. developing compared to their various exposures in 60 years plus of living inside the atmosphere?
news item from today. witness the power of god and his believers:
http://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/police-have-no-suspects-in-reported-hate-crime/article_7f7885ce-ceb6-5ced-93bc-24c101aab53b.html
'believers' are really the only ones who seem to hate gays. they are so SURE they are right and on god's side, they feel that violence is justified.
remove relgion and its dogma and this woman would not have been victimized.
the brainwashing from the extremist christianists is extremely harmful.
I'm not aware of any athiests that threaten bodily harm to non-athiests, though..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Sally Ride taught the world about how our lives should never be taken for granted. Farewell Dr. Ride. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/aviationspace/p/sally_ride.htm . Ms. Ride's Facebook resume: www.facebook.com/sallyridescience/info . http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/ride.html . Wikipedia http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride
That was a troll, but more to the point, Sally Ride was also not the first woman in space. Come on, this is the internet. It extends outside of America. Why are the accomplishments of non-Americans invisible here? The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, beat Sally Ride by 20 years! I have no problem with Ms. Ride being honored and revered, but the downside of treating her as some sort of pioneer for women presupposes that non-US women don't matter.
Brownies might work better in a hospital setting. ;)
Ride received numerous awards, including the National Space Society's von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame and was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal twice. [5] Ride was the only person to serve on both of the panels investigating Shuttle accidents (those for the Challenger accident and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster). Two elementary schools in the United States are named after her: Sally K. Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, and Sally K. Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland. [4] On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Ride into the California Hall of Fame, located at the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts. [26] (from Wikipediia)
"while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place."
Sorry, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data"
Take all those experiences and add specificity and controls and maybe we can talk.
I watched my two daughters grow up from babies to young adults. I remember that as babies they at times seemed like soleless animals, little more than puppies, eating, sleeping, (and other body functions). At night they would sometimes wake up with a totally blank look in their eyes as if nobody was at home. You can say that this is just the way the human brain matures, that not all of our nurons are switched on at the moment of birth and that we have to make the connections. You can also call this 'learning'. However to me it seemed as if their souls had not been 'delivered yet'. This happened at a few months of age when it seemed they had suddenly turned into people with real consciousness and self awareness. If you've never watched the day by day the process of a new life starting out and developing you might not understand what I've experienced here.
What is the evidence that this was caused by Christianity?
Baseless lie. The Catholic Church condemns unjust discrimination. Violence
against homosexuals is often caused by neo-nazis, who hate authentic Christianity
as much as they hate Jews, blacks and homosexuals.
Marxists.
Straw-man.
Holy would be Aerobeeism
if you want to get into it, lets go!
yes, I hate the belief in god. its a weakness, it causes fights and violence due to the us-vs-them syndrome. its more of a means to separate us than to bind us.
mental illness is mental illness. being in fashion does not excuse the fact that its harmful and is a flaw that should be fixed.
Religion is not mental illness, it's a normative behavioural pattern of human species. Also, without religion to promote literacy and help maintain organized society in times when just not dying of hunger was the number one concern for majority of people, we'd still live in leaf huts in jungles. Without religion to help organize people and keep them in line, there wouldn't ever have been a civilization able to develop science and technology.
Sure, all religions may be fairy tales for adults, and like practically everything we have ever come up with, they can be used for great evil. Still, you have so much to thank religion for in your current life, that hating it sounds like a mental illness to me. You'd be better of thinking religion to be like alcohol, nicotine, drugs, emotion evoking entertainment... Just because overdoing it can ruin and even kill you and your family, and enable "evil" people to gain power, doesn't make the thing itself worth hating, especially when it's so bred into human behaviour by evolutionary pressure over thousands of generations.
There is a difference betwenn "I don't believe in God", and "I hate the belief in God", which became more common after people started idolizing Ruchard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins is not just an atheist, he is an anti-theist.
If I'm not allowed to hate the belief in g/God, what about communism and nazism? All three of these made otherwise good people do bad things. Since I hate the latter two for that reason, why is the former one so special?
Ezekiel 23:20
1.) If anti-theists would spend 10% of the energy they devote to attacking religion to attacking Marxism, I would have more respect for them.
2) Marxism has killed 100,000,000 people in the XX century, yet we respect the human rights of Marxists. But Richard Dawkins actively campaings against the human rights of religious people*, because of things that happened 400 YEARS AGO and were not nearly as bad as Marxism.
* The right to freedom of conscience and religion and the right to political participation are part of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I'm a Christian and I would say that you're perfectly justified in hating certain flavors of the belief in God/gods, as you are in hating certain flavors of political philosophies. You just wouldn't be if you hated all belief in God/gods like you wouldn't be if you hated all political philosophies.
So in summary, the former one is "so special" because it's not equivalent to those others in cardinality. The three are not directly comparable because the latter two are members of a set and the former is itself a (different) set.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
No one forced them to avoid sex. But for what reason should she get a federal benefi? Their relashionship is not marriage.
Do you also recognize "marriage" for groups, or for a mother to her own son? If you don't, you are inconsistent.
And if you do, why? If 9 people (including a brother and a sister) decide to "marry", why should society give them benefits?
(posting anon because of the coward anti-Christian mods).
More research is needed for earlier detection of pancreatic cancer. It has such a devastating diagnosis due to lack of early symptoms. A member of our family was just recently diagnosed. He was one of the very fortunate where it was caught early, and is currently enduring chemo after his recovery from a Whipple surgery. What a difficult road but we are remaining hopeful.
Aqua Moon Keepsakes