What we know about the Connecticut school shooting
By By The Associated Press – 40 minutes ago
Key facts related to the Connecticut elementary school shooting:
THE INVESTIGATION: Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza was carrying an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of deadly ammunition — enough to kill nearly every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said, raising the specter the bloodbath could have been far worse. Lanza shot himself in the head when he heard police approaching the classroom where he was gunning down helpless children.
He had multiple high-capacity clips each capable of holding 30 bullets, and the chief medical examiner said the ammunition was the type designed to break up inside a victim's body and inflict the maximum amount of damage, tearing apart bone and tissue.
The gunman shot his mother four times in the head before going to the school and gunning down 26 victims there.
THE VICTIMS: All the victims at the school were shot multiple times with a high-power rifle, some of them up close. All six adults were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.
Among the dead were popular principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, who rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who died while trying to hide her pupils; 30-year-old Lauren Rousseau, a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year, and Ana Marquez-Greene, a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada.
THE GUNMAN: Lanza was described as a bright but painfully awkward student who seemed to have no close friends. In high school, he was active in the technology club. The club adviser remembered that he had "some disabilities" and seemed not to feel pain like the other students. That meant Lanza required special supervision when using soldering tools, for instance. He also had an occasional "episode" in which he seemed to withdraw completely from his surroundings, the adviser said.
Authorities said Lanza had no criminal history, and it was unclear whether he had a job.
THE SCENE: Families sought to comfort each other during Sunday church services and vigils devoted to impossible questions like that of a 6-year-old girl who asked her mother: "The little children, are they with the angels?"
Many of Newtown's 27,000 people wondered whether life could ever return to normal, and, as the workweek was set to begin, parents pondered whether to send their children back to school. Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through."
THE PARENTS: One of the parents who lost a child in the attack spoke publicly about his loss.
Robbie Parker fought back tears and struggled to catch his breath as he described his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, as a little girl who loved to draw. He also reserved surprisingly kind words for the gunman, saying he was not mad and offering sympathy for the gunman's family.
To the man's family, he said, "I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you."
THE GUNS: Federal authorities visited local gun ranges but found no evidence that the gunman trained for the attack or was an active member of the recreational gun community. Investigators also have interviewed gun dealers trying to determine whether there was any training or other behavior that precipitated the attack.
THE HISTORY: The Newtown massacre is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and one of the deadliest mass shootings around the world. A gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 33, including himself, in 2007. It appears that only Virginia Tech; the mass killings of 77 in Norway last year; and a resort massacre with 35 victims in Australia had greater death tolls across the world over the past 20 years.
Just gun them all down and then clain God judged them for their sins...
That is the base human response we all might have, but it aint' the way for a civilized man to act, my God wouldn't want us to murder, killing in defense of you or yours only is defensible. No, the WBC aren't worth our souls. Just pity them for their money-grabbing tactics. I've slept on it, and what I wrote about assaulting them for demonstrating and heckling WOULD just be playing into their hands, I'd be 'their' fool for doing it. They try to provoke for the lawsuit money it gets 'em. Best not to play their game by showing restraint. That's what a logical, thinking man should do. Not easy to walk away, but it's really just sticks and stones, and legally I'd have been in the wrong.
People might not want to use LBE Privacy Guard, it might be a data miner... From Android forums...
LBE Privacy Guard: Possible Malware
I installed LBE Privacy on my LG ESteem, and tried it out for for a few days. I uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard a couple days ago, because it kept hassling me to set permissions every time I installed or used a new app.
Since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard, my phone has not been able to install new apps properly. Whenever I install a new app, the new app would only work until I reboot my phone. After I reboot my phone, the newly installed apps would fail to launch and give the error message: "the application XXX has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again". That's for every new app I have uninstalled since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard on Wednesday.
Another app on my phone, DW Contacts and Phone Dialer Pro, could no longer retain any of my customization settings. DW Contacts popped up an error warning and informed me that the file permission database has some "exception". I immediately knew it's LBE Privacy Guard that had screwed up my phone.
I tried re-installing LBE Privacy Guard, and then reboot my phone. As I expected, LBE Privacy Guard has continued to work after multiple reboots. Then I installed a few other apps, but I am still getting the same errors with all other apps. So now LBE Privacy Guard is the ONLY app that has continued to install and work properly after it had screwed up my phone.
Then, I googled for information on LBE, and found this:
[APP][ROOT] LBE Privacy Guard - Most Powerful privacy protection app for Android - Page 48 - xda-developers
Apparently LBE mines user data and is quite shady about doing it, and it also does not like being uninstalled. I suspect LBE made some low-level changes to the permission. It seems to me that everything else (i.e., every new install) has been blocked and denied permission... except LBE itself.
http://androidforums.com/esteem-all-things-root/555032-lbe-privacy-guard-possible-malware.html
I am more than 17 by about 40 years. Laws are one thing I believe in, to a point. But if I was at my daughter/son/niece/nephews funeral, and the surviving family members were being subjected to this form of "free speech" by this group of pariahs, I very well might forget that at heart I am a peace loving man. And I would accept whatever punishment society deemed proper at my trial for assault of any demonstrator. They could sue me for all they want and would never see a dime of any award for their hospital bills and pain and suffering.
Westboro Baptist Church is an object lesson in why it's good to have some restrictions on speech, such as limiting it to a reasonable time and place.
And who gets to deside what "reasonable" is? And do you trust them?
Screaming "It is God's judgement" to the parents of the slaughtered children at the childrens funerals IS unreasonable. This is not justifiable, just like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater isn't justifiable. The WBC gets attention and cash donations to their 'cause' whenever they pull these stunts. It's disgusting, and this form of free speech should be dis-allowed, if for no other reason than to show mercy to these shellshocked families. You don't kick someone when they're down, and this is as down as it gets.
One of the article's commenters spoke about the govt. can't limit free speech but individuals can. In 2010, at a Topeka demonstration by the WBC, church members found their tires slashed, and no one in town would sell church members replacement tires. Sounds like a fair deal to me.:
" McALESTER -Members of a Kansas church that protests at military funerals may have found themselves in the wrong town Saturday. Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed. To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20101114_11_a12_cutlin105145
Just a heads-up, I found a pretty good free firewall app, for rooted Android devices, called "Droidwall" (in android's playstore, tools section). No permissions, I've been using it for a few weeks now on my Arnova pre-rooted ICS $99 tablet, works perfectly! Should be sop for all of android. It lets you 'whitelist/deny' internet access for any installed app, useful if you're on a limited data plan.
No worries here.:) I don't know if I'd want the job of a/. editor, can't be easy when, if you make a mistake or omission, you got the entire internet community that'll call you on it. I agree with all that you said, though reading through Phil Plait's article, his thoughts on NASA seem to be,... "evolving"?
... be sure to take a look at the 2002 film "Space Station 3D". It's a 47-minute documentary made in IMAX 3D; since it's not likely to be showing in IMAX currently, you can check it out in 2D on DVD. Narration by Tom Cruise, if that matters to you.
And those fluorescent lights are going to get replaced soon. I read that they think the current lighting may be the cause for the ISS residents having insomnia problems.
...FYI, there is another video tour, this one by Mike Fincke (another amazing person - look at his wiki page, he has about 6 advanced degrees). It's in two parts:
Weren't there plans to scuttle the ISS at one point?
You may be thinking of "Freedom", a Reagan era space station proposal that never happened. From Wikipedia:
"The new Space Station configuration was named Freedom by Reagan in June 1988. Originally, Freedom would have carried two 37.5 kW solar arrays. However, Congress quickly insisted on adding two more arrays for scientific users. The Space Station programme was plagued by conflicts during the entire 1984–87 definition phase. In 1987, the Department of Defense (DoD) briefly demanded to have full access to the Station for military research, despite strong objections from NASA and the international partners. Besides the expected furore from the international partners, the DoD position sparked a shouting match between Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and powerful members of Congress that extended right up to the final Fiscal 1988 budget authorisation in July 1987. Reagan wanted to invite other NATO countries to participate in the U.S-led project, since the Soviet Union had been launching international crews to their Salyut space stations since 1971. At one point, then-anonymous disgruntled NASA employees calling themselves "Center for Strategic Space Studies" suggested that instead of building Freedom, NASA should take the back-up Skylab from display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and launch that." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
Submitter here:, just FYI, I or Timothy didn't offer our opinion here, it's the author of the article's opinion.
Nice afterthought, but that should have been made clear in the submission where you failed to note it.
Well, I think Timothy did give the proper credit : " SternisheFan writes with an excerpt from Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, writing at Slate:"
If I submit a story I do try to credit the author since all I do is a copy/paste from the article, not being a writer myself. Sometimes it doesn't always happen, though the story's always linked somehow to the article.
I do think it's a cool video though, closest I'll ever get to the real thing. You can see she makes no quick movements in zero gravity, must be real easy to bang your head if you do. Nice.
Research is rarely profitable. Most of our knowledge of how to do it right comes from testing out all possible ways of doing it wrong. So when you point and say "Well, this particular project didn't pan out" as a reason not to undertake any future projects, you're misrepresenting the facts. It's true, most research fails. But the research that succeeds more than makes up for the costs of all that other research before it. Every technology within your range of vision right now was developed through a iterative process of failure.
And yet, here we are, and I am thankful that, unlike the editor and submitter, I can see the big picture. The space program has contributed way more in commercial developments than it has cost us. Way, way, massively way more. And that's in spite of its bureaucratic failures (of which many have written small books on -- see Appendix D of the Challenger Disaster report for one such example). Research is essential. If you want to argue about the cost of the space program, pick something else -- there are juicier targets than that.
Submitter here:, just FYI, I or Timothy didn't offer our opinion here, it's the author of the article's opinion. I happen to like anything space related, and submitted this because it's an interesting video, and thought other people here would think it is too.
I remember reading twenty years ago that by now the population would be so big that we couldn't possibly feed everyone, now there is too much food? I also remember hearing that we would be out of oil by now too.
Why is it the "experts" seem to always be wrong?
The wrongness of the experts is an effect of global warming.
There are answers to all of the problems of this life on the planet. We just don't know what they all are, yet.
So what? For each Stephen Hawking, who, despite his considerable disabilities, is able to give more to society than he takes, there are thousands of other who aren't. Nobody is saying that we would like to see them unattended, but at some point it may be necessary for society to severely limit the resources that are directed towards it.
Now how can society know that a person who was allowed to die because of 'the cost' may or may not have been the person who in the future makes a discovery that would be of great benefit to humanity? Say, finds the cure for cancer or inexpensive power generation? Or would have been the parent of such a person?
Now the Nazi's believed in killing off the weak and infirm of mind and body. Not 'desirable' candidates for their "master race". Would these same rules apply to a cherished family member of yours? What of just plain caring for another life?
In the last 100 years many diseases have had cures, which never would have been cured if there had not been thoughtful, caring people to find the answers. No, I cannot accept this concept, it flys in the face of all that makes human beings worthy of being called "human".
What would be the point of building a space station with a planet-destroying superlaser when all live on the same planet as all of our enemies?
Actually the plan has already been approved and funded by a 'specially secret Congress vote, construction's halfway complete... You do raise an interesting point though. Nothing can be done about it now, you see. The Evil Empire has a really strong lobbyist group...
Slashdot Mirror
What we know about the Connecticut school shooting By By The Associated Press – 40 minutes ago Key facts related to the Connecticut elementary school shooting: THE INVESTIGATION: Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza was carrying an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of deadly ammunition — enough to kill nearly every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said, raising the specter the bloodbath could have been far worse. Lanza shot himself in the head when he heard police approaching the classroom where he was gunning down helpless children. He had multiple high-capacity clips each capable of holding 30 bullets, and the chief medical examiner said the ammunition was the type designed to break up inside a victim's body and inflict the maximum amount of damage, tearing apart bone and tissue. The gunman shot his mother four times in the head before going to the school and gunning down 26 victims there. THE VICTIMS: All the victims at the school were shot multiple times with a high-power rifle, some of them up close. All six adults were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old. Among the dead were popular principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, who rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who died while trying to hide her pupils; 30-year-old Lauren Rousseau, a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year, and Ana Marquez-Greene, a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada. THE GUNMAN: Lanza was described as a bright but painfully awkward student who seemed to have no close friends. In high school, he was active in the technology club. The club adviser remembered that he had "some disabilities" and seemed not to feel pain like the other students. That meant Lanza required special supervision when using soldering tools, for instance. He also had an occasional "episode" in which he seemed to withdraw completely from his surroundings, the adviser said. Authorities said Lanza had no criminal history, and it was unclear whether he had a job. THE SCENE: Families sought to comfort each other during Sunday church services and vigils devoted to impossible questions like that of a 6-year-old girl who asked her mother: "The little children, are they with the angels?" Many of Newtown's 27,000 people wondered whether life could ever return to normal, and, as the workweek was set to begin, parents pondered whether to send their children back to school. Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through." THE PARENTS: One of the parents who lost a child in the attack spoke publicly about his loss. Robbie Parker fought back tears and struggled to catch his breath as he described his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, as a little girl who loved to draw. He also reserved surprisingly kind words for the gunman, saying he was not mad and offering sympathy for the gunman's family. To the man's family, he said, "I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you." THE GUNS: Federal authorities visited local gun ranges but found no evidence that the gunman trained for the attack or was an active member of the recreational gun community. Investigators also have interviewed gun dealers trying to determine whether there was any training or other behavior that precipitated the attack. THE HISTORY: The Newtown massacre is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and one of the deadliest mass shootings around the world. A gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 33, including himself, in 2007. It appears that only Virginia Tech; the mass killings of 77 in Norway last year; and a resort massacre with 35 victims in Australia had greater death tolls across the world over the past 20 years.
Yep, it'd be playing their game, and only a fool would do that. It's a shitty game they play for money, despicable people who aren't worthy.
You're right, I now have read and slept on the othermcomments made, see my next comment below to Turingcheck.
Just gun them all down and then clain God judged them for their sins...
That is the base human response we all might have, but it aint' the way for a civilized man to act, my God wouldn't want us to murder, killing in defense of you or yours only is defensible. No, the WBC aren't worth our souls. Just pity them for their money-grabbing tactics. I've slept on it, and what I wrote about assaulting them for demonstrating and heckling WOULD just be playing into their hands, I'd be 'their' fool for doing it. They try to provoke for the lawsuit money it gets 'em. Best not to play their game by showing restraint. That's what a logical, thinking man should do. Not easy to walk away, but it's really just sticks and stones, and legally I'd have been in the wrong.
LBE Privacy Guard: Possible Malware I installed LBE Privacy on my LG ESteem, and tried it out for for a few days. I uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard a couple days ago, because it kept hassling me to set permissions every time I installed or used a new app. Since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard, my phone has not been able to install new apps properly. Whenever I install a new app, the new app would only work until I reboot my phone. After I reboot my phone, the newly installed apps would fail to launch and give the error message: "the application XXX has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again". That's for every new app I have uninstalled since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard on Wednesday. Another app on my phone, DW Contacts and Phone Dialer Pro, could no longer retain any of my customization settings. DW Contacts popped up an error warning and informed me that the file permission database has some "exception". I immediately knew it's LBE Privacy Guard that had screwed up my phone. I tried re-installing LBE Privacy Guard, and then reboot my phone. As I expected, LBE Privacy Guard has continued to work after multiple reboots. Then I installed a few other apps, but I am still getting the same errors with all other apps. So now LBE Privacy Guard is the ONLY app that has continued to install and work properly after it had screwed up my phone. Then, I googled for information on LBE, and found this: [APP][ROOT] LBE Privacy Guard - Most Powerful privacy protection app for Android - Page 48 - xda-developers Apparently LBE mines user data and is quite shady about doing it, and it also does not like being uninstalled. I suspect LBE made some low-level changes to the permission. It seems to me that everything else (i.e., every new install) has been blocked and denied permission... except LBE itself. http://androidforums.com/esteem-all-things-root/555032-lbe-privacy-guard-possible-malware.html
I am more than 17 by about 40 years. Laws are one thing I believe in, to a point. But if I was at my daughter/son/niece/nephews funeral, and the surviving family members were being subjected to this form of "free speech" by this group of pariahs, I very well might forget that at heart I am a peace loving man. And I would accept whatever punishment society deemed proper at my trial for assault of any demonstrator. They could sue me for all they want and would never see a dime of any award for their hospital bills and pain and suffering.
An act of vandalism cannot be compared with taking of human life. Surely you would agree on that, no?
Westboro Baptist Church is an object lesson in why it's good to have some restrictions on speech, such as limiting it to a reasonable time and place.
And who gets to deside what "reasonable" is? And do you trust them?
Screaming "It is God's judgement" to the parents of the slaughtered children at the childrens funerals IS unreasonable. This is not justifiable, just like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater isn't justifiable. The WBC gets attention and cash donations to their 'cause' whenever they pull these stunts. It's disgusting, and this form of free speech should be dis-allowed, if for no other reason than to show mercy to these shellshocked families. You don't kick someone when they're down, and this is as down as it gets.
" McALESTER -Members of a Kansas church that protests at military funerals may have found themselves in the wrong town Saturday. Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed. To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police. http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20101114_11_a12_cutlin105145
Just a heads-up, I found a pretty good free firewall app, for rooted Android devices, called "Droidwall" (in android's playstore, tools section). No permissions, I've been using it for a few weeks now on my Arnova pre-rooted ICS $99 tablet, works perfectly! Should be sop for all of android. It lets you 'whitelist/deny' internet access for any installed app, useful if you're on a limited data plan.
The alleged decoded message:
AOAKN - Artillery Observer At "K" Sector, Normandy HVPKD - Have Panzers Know Directions FNFJW - Final Note [confirming] Found Jerry's Whereabouts DJHFP - Determined Jerry's Headquarters Front Posts CMPNW - Counter Measures [against] Panzers Not Working PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz KLDTS - Know [where] Local Dispatch Station 27 / 1526 / 6 - June 27th, 1526 hours
I knew this all along. I just didn't want to tell anyone.
Is it just me, or do the newer batch of asteroids resemble big poops? Back in my day, they resembled little moons. And get off my lawn!
My first thought was, "That looks like one ugly, badly grown potato!"
Cool. You mean to say that alligators aren't native to Arizona? (lol) Why do some people own pitbulls if not to attempt to show how 'thug' they are?
No worries here. :) I don't know if I'd want the job of a /. editor, can't be easy when, if you make a mistake or omission, you got the entire internet community that'll call you on it. I agree with all that you said, though reading through Phil Plait's article, his thoughts on NASA seem to be,... "evolving"?
... be sure to take a look at the 2002 film "Space Station 3D". It's a 47-minute documentary made in IMAX 3D; since it's not likely to be showing in IMAX currently, you can check it out in 2D on DVD. Narration by Tom Cruise, if that matters to you.
Found a couple links for "Space Station 3d". Here's the movie's trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5cGHk7hSp0
Bad scientest Phil Plaitt review has a video link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/14/extremely-cool-3d-space-station-video-taken-from-the-ground/
Google search has some download links: http://www.google.com/search?q=space+station+3d&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d¬a=1&biw=1067&bih=640
And those fluorescent lights are going to get replaced soon. I read that they think the current lighting may be the cause for the ISS residents having insomnia problems.
...FYI, there is another video tour, this one by Mike Fincke (another amazing person - look at his wiki page, he has about 6 advanced degrees). It's in two parts:
Part 1 Part 2
Thanks to the submitter - it was half an hour well spent!
Thanks for those links, very cool to see. Way more informative than the spelling nazi's post! :-)
Weren't there plans to scuttle the ISS at one point?
You may be thinking of "Freedom", a Reagan era space station proposal that never happened. From Wikipedia:
"The new Space Station configuration was named Freedom by Reagan in June 1988. Originally, Freedom would have carried two 37.5 kW solar arrays. However, Congress quickly insisted on adding two more arrays for scientific users. The Space Station programme was plagued by conflicts during the entire 1984–87 definition phase. In 1987, the Department of Defense (DoD) briefly demanded to have full access to the Station for military research, despite strong objections from NASA and the international partners. Besides the expected furore from the international partners, the DoD position sparked a shouting match between Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and powerful members of Congress that extended right up to the final Fiscal 1988 budget authorisation in July 1987. Reagan wanted to invite other NATO countries to participate in the U.S-led project, since the Soviet Union had been launching international crews to their Salyut space stations since 1971. At one point, then-anonymous disgruntled NASA employees calling themselves "Center for Strategic Space Studies" suggested that instead of building Freedom, NASA should take the back-up Skylab from display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and launch that." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
Submitter here:, just FYI, I or Timothy didn't offer our opinion here, it's the author of the article's opinion.
Nice afterthought, but that should have been made clear in the submission where you failed to note it.
Well, I think Timothy did give the proper credit : " SternisheFan writes with an excerpt from Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, writing at Slate:"
If I submit a story I do try to credit the author since all I do is a copy/paste from the article, not being a writer myself. Sometimes it doesn't always happen, though the story's always linked somehow to the article.
I do think it's a cool video though, closest I'll ever get to the real thing. You can see she makes no quick movements in zero gravity, must be real easy to bang your head if you do. Nice.
Here's "Earth's Amazing Sights"... http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=W-Zk8WqCAf4&featu
Research is rarely profitable. Most of our knowledge of how to do it right comes from testing out all possible ways of doing it wrong. So when you point and say "Well, this particular project didn't pan out" as a reason not to undertake any future projects, you're misrepresenting the facts. It's true, most research fails. But the research that succeeds more than makes up for the costs of all that other research before it. Every technology within your range of vision right now was developed through a iterative process of failure.
And yet, here we are, and I am thankful that, unlike the editor and submitter, I can see the big picture. The space program has contributed way more in commercial developments than it has cost us. Way, way, massively way more. And that's in spite of its bureaucratic failures (of which many have written small books on -- see Appendix D of the Challenger Disaster report for one such example). Research is essential. If you want to argue about the cost of the space program, pick something else -- there are juicier targets than that.
Submitter here:, just FYI, I or Timothy didn't offer our opinion here, it's the author of the article's opinion. I happen to like anything space related, and submitted this because it's an interesting video, and thought other people here would think it is too.
I remember reading twenty years ago that by now the population would be so big that we couldn't possibly feed everyone, now there is too much food? I also remember hearing that we would be out of oil by now too.
Why is it the "experts" seem to always be wrong?
The wrongness of the experts is an effect of global warming.
There are answers to all of the problems of this life on the planet. We just don't know what they all are, yet.
So what? For each Stephen Hawking, who, despite his considerable disabilities, is able to give more to society than he takes, there are thousands of other who aren't. Nobody is saying that we would like to see them unattended, but at some point it may be necessary for society to severely limit the resources that are directed towards it.
Now how can society know that a person who was allowed to die because of 'the cost' may or may not have been the person who in the future makes a discovery that would be of great benefit to humanity? Say, finds the cure for cancer or inexpensive power generation? Or would have been the parent of such a person?
Now the Nazi's believed in killing off the weak and infirm of mind and body. Not 'desirable' candidates for their "master race". Would these same rules apply to a cherished family member of yours? What of just plain caring for another life?
In the last 100 years many diseases have had cures, which never would have been cured if there had not been thoughtful, caring people to find the answers. No, I cannot accept this concept, it flys in the face of all that makes human beings worthy of being called "human".
What would be the point of building a space station with a planet-destroying superlaser when all live on the same planet as all of our enemies?
Actually the plan has already been approved and funded by a 'specially secret Congress vote, construction's halfway complete... You do raise an interesting point though. Nothing can be done about it now, you see. The Evil Empire has a really strong lobbyist group...
It will be a big moon size money pit!
That's no moon...