Drug runners? What is this, the 1970's? Pot/Meth is grown/cooked in houses/trailers. In other words, someones house. I read about meth and grow houses getting busted all the time. The only reason this is news is because it's a copy-write bust. These are rare, at least in the States.
The whole Isos concept was lame - like a digital evolution or some garbage nonsense.
I think you mean digital creationism. Flynn's explanation for them was that once the conditions became right they just [magically] appeared. And Flynn, who is supposed to be this genius, goes on to say that they're just algorithms that are really complicated. Yep, that makes sense.
It falls into the realm of speculative fiction, which contains sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, horror, alternative history and a few others. The problem is that most people who go to see movies have never learned how to tell the difference between sub-genres of speculative fiction, so they tend to lump everything into fantasy, sci-fi and horror.
But to get back on topic, I've seen Tron Legacy twice. The first time I saw it I thought it was pretty good, but something was bothering me about it. The second time I saw it the things that bothered me came to the foreground and I could finally be objective about what I didn't like about it.
It seemed to me like this should have been split into two movies, but instead they cut all the character development out of it and condensed it into a single movie. I honestly didn't care about any of the characters. Flynn was the opposite of himself in the first movie; instead of being a freedom fighter he turned into Gandhi. And the entire ISO plot seemed like it was tossed in there just to make Clu more of a bad guy. Genocide? Really? Didn't Flynn have a back-up or something?
And Tron... come on! The title character was turned into a motorcycle helmet wearing ninja! Every time he was on screen one of the characters had to say "There's Tron" just so the audience would get it. I guess they spent so much money making Jeff Bridges young again that they had no money left to give Bruce Boxleitner a digital make-over.
I chalk this up as yet another movie that was tossed on to the big screen before the story was finished cooking. A story written by committee that simply falls apart when you take a serious look at it. Yes, the CGI was awesome, but CGI doesn't make a story good! CGI is merely packaging; without a solid story inside the package it just ends up being an empty box.
My complaints:
*Eli's character was what after the first two episodes? I know, boring interruptions. Good actor, just the writers screwed him over.
Eli was the good to Rush's evil scientist part. It's just so happens that, by total accident, Rodney McKay was a fully formed character. Truly 3 dimensional! So the writers took that character, split him into good and evil versions and created Rush and Eli. It's quote obvious once you know to look for it. Eli is the playful, joking genius. Rush is the angry, arrogant genius.
*Once Destiny left the galaxy, the stones should have failed to work. Point of no return and cut off. Could have been interesting seeing people trapped in another's body.
The stones were a stupid concept in SG-1 season 9, and they were stupid concept in SGU. Personally I would have had the crew of Destiny completely cut off from Earth; no communication and no hopes of ever getting home. That way they could actually get on with telling stories about human exploration and survival, instead of keeping some ridiculous hope of returning the crew home. But that's just me.
*Very little contact with life on other passing planets.
OK, you mean intelligent life, right? Because they ran into several planets with breathable atmospheres (a sure sign of life) and plenty of plants on their journey.
As for aliens, I was pissed that when they finally did run into aliens, they turned out to be CGI humanoids. In fact, the show runner Brad Wright said prior to SGU's premiere that the aliens in the show would be like nothing we've ever seen before... Lets see: 1 head? Check. 2 arms and legs? Check. Head has 1 mounth, 2 eyes and some nostrils? Check, check and check. LAME.
*There needed to be more space on space action and not planet surface shoot and scoot battles through the gate.
How is it that this ship, which clearly predates the construction of Atlantis, can possibly still be operational after millions of years? It's fantasy, not science fiction. Atlantis was a joke in itself, because it was only about 5-6 million years old. Destiny is approximately 20 million years old! My suspension of disbelief almost disintegrated when I started watching this series.
*To many filler episodes that progressed actor development. That stole from the over all story line and slowed things down. I could careless who is a lesbian, divorced, or wanting to see their mommy.
Right! You just want to see ship-to-ship combat against aliens we know nothing about. See, this is why science fiction series can't survive.
For me the writers deserve 100% of the blame of the failure, not the actors, set crew, or other support staff.
Well, the writers deserve some of the blame, but mostly it falls on the shoulders of Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, the show runners. These are the same guys that continued to take these series out of the Milky Way and put them farther and farther away from what made them cool! I mean, the whole concept of StarGate is that it's happening, now, in the real world. By moving the series farther and farther away from Earth, it diminished any worries that Earth was in any sort of danger, which is what viewers on Earth care about! I don't give a shit about a couple hundred people stuck a few million light years away. And I care less about a couple dozen people stuck a few billion light years away even less.
HINT: The further removed Earth became from the series, the less I cared about the series. Make sense?
Science Fiction is a cerebral medium. It always has been. Television series got away with making sci-fi series because they made them as visceral as possible. SG-1 is a perfect example; it balanced the aliens and technobabble with military action and explosions. Star Trek hit this wall when Enterprise came out and suddenly there was a need to have a phaser fight in every episode.
The fact is, most people don't like science fiction. They simply don't have the want or will to try and contemplate the issues that science fiction raises, so they turn on a reality show, or a celebrity gossip show, or any show that doesn't make them think. Hell, I had a friend who once told me, "I don't like Sci-Fi. I have to think all day at work, why would I want to come home and watch that?".
This is why there's wrestling on SyFy. This is why SyFy has opened the gates to all the paranormal, horror, and otherwise non-scifi content. They're trying to broaden their audience because they feel science fiction can't carry the entire channel. The sad thing is they're probably right.
The problem with The Science Channel is that they only show "intro to science" material. Every other show is a disaster special: Super Volcanos Erupt! Asteroid Collides with Earth! Global Pandemics! Tsunami hits Chicago! It's just as bad as any other cable network, they just hide it a little better by saying, "It's science". Yeah, it's science. But just barely.
Out of date? The Wii was considered "low-tech" compared to all other consoles on the market when it came out in 2009. The real innovation was the controller. But seriously, why would Nintento want to come out with a Wii successor so soon? Since when is 3 years between consoles considered a generation?
1985: NES
1991: SNES
1996: N64
2002: GameCube
2009: Wii
So with an average span of 6 years between generations, why are they changing it up to 3 years?
My beef with DA is that it lacked a convincing villain. We had a big bunch of orc-like Darkspawn, led by an infested dragon who periodically rose up to take over the world. The motives therein were not addressed at all.
You must have ignored all the codex entries you pick up throughout the game.
The dragons taught human barbarians how to use magic. Eventually this leads to the foundation of the Tevinter Imperium, which is sort of like Rome led by mages. The people of the Imperium worship dragons. Eventually the dragons influence the mages to invade the golden city of the Maker, and all hell breaks loose, literally. The mages corrupted hearts taint the golden city and it turns black (The black city in the fade). The Tevinter mages are cursed, becoming the first Darkspawn, and then cast into the deep roads. The dragons are cast to the deepest parts of the world for leading humans astray. Part of the Darkspawn curse is that they can hear their former gods calling to them psychically, which causes them to seek them out, but, also due to the curse, as soon as they come into contact with one of their former gods it is immediately cursed as well, turned into an Archdemon. This archdemon then leads the horde of Darkspawn to the surface and there's a blight, which only a Grey Warden can end by killing the Archdemon.
The blight in Origins is the 5th. There were only 7 "Old Gods" the Tevinter Imperium recognized. This means that there can only be two more blights. Sounds like the makings of a trilogy, doesn't it? One Archdemon to kill per release. But that went out the window when Awakenings came out. I'll let you discover out why that is.
Probably in the same way that the Bureau of Investigation knew that Al Capone was breaking the law. They just didn't have the evidence to get a conviction until they discovered he'd cheated on his taxes.
Star Wars: Galaxies will likely be shut down within 3 months of Star Wars: The Old Republic being released. Now, this might sound unlikely, but LucasArts has already given Sony Online Entertainment a new IP: The Clone Wars. TCW is going to be based on SOE's Free Realms platform, which is going to be aimed at ages 8+. So SOE shutting down Galaxies is all but a done deal.
There are emulator projects out there. Someone mentioned Everquest; there are about 30 EQ emulators based on different rules and times in that game's life. UO has emulators, Star Wars Galaxies has emulators. Even Earth & Beyond has an emulator. If you want to play these games, do a GIS and get your game on.
It's much cheaper to simply launch your weapon on an ICBM or launch a stealthy weapons platform in space than it would be to go to the moon and set up a giant frickin' laser. If there's ever weapons on the moon, they'll probably be used for fighting other people on the moon.
Besides, there's that whole outer space treaty that makes the moon a neutral zone like Antarctica. Hasn't been too many wars on that continent, and it's a lot nicer than the moon.
The country already is ruled by religious law to some extent: thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. Murder and burglary are against the law. Why aren't you all riled up about that?
Probably because those crimes generally involve an unwilling participant, usually referred to as a victim. Homosexuality is usually an act committed between willing participants, and in the case a participant isn't willing, we have laws for that.
Constitution doesn't say anything about murder or stealing but yet we have laws for them.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Those Republican officials' views are shared by a vast majority of the country's citizens. It just goes to show you that despite what the minority don't believe in, the majority of the population still enjoy and prefer having religion as a large part of their lives.
Here's my beef with theocratic Republicans: They're trying to impose their religious teachings to non-believes through law. If Christians and other religious folk could simply practice their religion and not impose it on others, I wouldn't have problem with them at all. But they do. So, problem.
Biosphere II was a failure because it's inhabitant's lives weren't on the line. The sponsors weren't going to lose face due to their employees dying. That meant that it was only a half-hearted attempt at a self-sufficiency experiement.
What we really need is a Biosphere III to be built in orbit. That way when the crew starts running out of air, they'll have a reason to fix the problem instead of saying "well, we could just open a window".
This is probably the stupidest argument against exploring space I've ever seen, and it keeps being repeated like it's a valid statement. Guess what? There was nothing on Antarctica prior to 1905 either. That's when the first research station was built there. Private industry has been sending cruises with tourists for the last 60 years.
There are hundreds of thousands of destinations out there, just in our system alone. Only a tiny fraction has been explored and as far as anyone can tell, it's all raw resources up for grabs. The big expense in space expeditions is the cost of sending everything up there. What we need is a place where we can start to manufacture things from the resources available, and that's not all that far off.
Things like 3-D printers and Fab-Labs are just the beginning when it comes to what we'll be able to do with manufacturing in the near-future. Sure, anything we build up there will still need regular supplies, but I would assume that a corporate sponsored space station or colony's "second order of business" would be to become as self sufficient as possible in order to cut expenses. Once we have the capability to manufacture things like station modules and space craft in space the costs will drop dramatically, just like they have for every industry before.
So yeah, there's not a lot of nearby cheap destinations right now, but they're coming and they'll continue to grow in number as long as there's a market for it.
Decimate us, huh? Thank goodness! You see, Decimate literally means "to reduce by ten percent", or "to kill one of every ten". If an alien asteroid attack on Earth is only going to kill one in ten, I'll take my chances.
Had you said we'd be annihilated, which means "to destroy completely", then I'd be scared.
South Park is fighting the good fight, and, even though I'm not a Fox News fan, I applaud Fox News for backing them up. We give too much respect to religion. Sometimes, religious practices need a good belly-laugh.
The only reason Fox News is backing up Trey and Matt is because they were poking fun at Muslims. Had it been Jesus, Fox would have ignored them, or gone the opposite route. While I agree that we, as Americans, give too much respect to religions, I wouldn't be applauding Fox News for acting exactly like the scumbags they are.
Here's the conundrum: We want to have a presence in space, both robotic and manned, for both science and exploration. It turns out that the robotic/science side of NASA has been doing really well for the last 30 years, minus a few stumbles here and there. The robotic/exploration side of NASA has done really well also, what with all the new telescopes up there and the pictures of the universe they give us. The manned sides of NASA hasn't come close to the achievements of the robotic missions. Obama wants to change that.
Here's why no moon: We've been there. Besides the 6 manned missions, we've sent lots of landers, satellites and probes. We know it's geography really well, have a decent understanding of the chemical composition of the regolith, and even know where the water-ice is hiding. In other words, we've explored the moon. Not completely, but it's mapped, cataloged and now it's time to move on to the next target for exploration. There's still plenty of science to be done on the moon, but that's best left to the probes and landers and rovers for the time being. I'd like to see the next moon missions be more about science and settlement and less about exploration and national pride, but with China and India ramping up for moon-shots something like that probably wouldn't happen until the mid-2020's at least. The point is, everyone wants to show that they can do it all by themselves. Then we'll work together to do something bigger.
But exploration is what is being brought to the front again. Asteroids. Deimos and Phobos. Then Mars. Then perhaps a trip around Venus or a shot out to Ceres. Then on to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Then Uranus and Neptune, and after stopping at every ice ball floating beyond Pluto. Go. Map. Look around. Discover. Name things. Then move on. That's what exploration is all about, and has been sorely lacking at NASA for some time now.
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Drug runners? What is this, the 1970's? Pot/Meth is grown/cooked in houses/trailers. In other words, someones house. I read about meth and grow houses getting busted all the time. The only reason this is news is because it's a copy-write bust. These are rare, at least in the States.
The whole Isos concept was lame - like a digital evolution or some garbage nonsense.
I think you mean digital creationism. Flynn's explanation for them was that once the conditions became right they just [magically] appeared. And Flynn, who is supposed to be this genius, goes on to say that they're just algorithms that are really complicated. Yep, that makes sense.
It falls into the realm of speculative fiction, which contains sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, horror, alternative history and a few others. The problem is that most people who go to see movies have never learned how to tell the difference between sub-genres of speculative fiction, so they tend to lump everything into fantasy, sci-fi and horror.
But to get back on topic, I've seen Tron Legacy twice. The first time I saw it I thought it was pretty good, but something was bothering me about it. The second time I saw it the things that bothered me came to the foreground and I could finally be objective about what I didn't like about it.
It seemed to me like this should have been split into two movies, but instead they cut all the character development out of it and condensed it into a single movie. I honestly didn't care about any of the characters. Flynn was the opposite of himself in the first movie; instead of being a freedom fighter he turned into Gandhi. And the entire ISO plot seemed like it was tossed in there just to make Clu more of a bad guy. Genocide? Really? Didn't Flynn have a back-up or something?
And Tron... come on! The title character was turned into a motorcycle helmet wearing ninja! Every time he was on screen one of the characters had to say "There's Tron" just so the audience would get it. I guess they spent so much money making Jeff Bridges young again that they had no money left to give Bruce Boxleitner a digital make-over.
I chalk this up as yet another movie that was tossed on to the big screen before the story was finished cooking. A story written by committee that simply falls apart when you take a serious look at it. Yes, the CGI was awesome, but CGI doesn't make a story good! CGI is merely packaging; without a solid story inside the package it just ends up being an empty box.
My complaints: *Eli's character was what after the first two episodes? I know, boring interruptions. Good actor, just the writers screwed him over.
Eli was the good to Rush's evil scientist part. It's just so happens that, by total accident, Rodney McKay was a fully formed character. Truly 3 dimensional! So the writers took that character, split him into good and evil versions and created Rush and Eli. It's quote obvious once you know to look for it. Eli is the playful, joking genius. Rush is the angry, arrogant genius.
*Once Destiny left the galaxy, the stones should have failed to work. Point of no return and cut off. Could have been interesting seeing people trapped in another's body.
The stones were a stupid concept in SG-1 season 9, and they were stupid concept in SGU. Personally I would have had the crew of Destiny completely cut off from Earth; no communication and no hopes of ever getting home. That way they could actually get on with telling stories about human exploration and survival, instead of keeping some ridiculous hope of returning the crew home. But that's just me.
*Very little contact with life on other passing planets.
OK, you mean intelligent life, right? Because they ran into several planets with breathable atmospheres (a sure sign of life) and plenty of plants on their journey.
As for aliens, I was pissed that when they finally did run into aliens, they turned out to be CGI humanoids. In fact, the show runner Brad Wright said prior to SGU's premiere that the aliens in the show would be like nothing we've ever seen before... Lets see: 1 head? Check. 2 arms and legs? Check. Head has 1 mounth, 2 eyes and some nostrils? Check, check and check. LAME.
*There needed to be more space on space action and not planet surface shoot and scoot battles through the gate.
How is it that this ship, which clearly predates the construction of Atlantis, can possibly still be operational after millions of years? It's fantasy, not science fiction. Atlantis was a joke in itself, because it was only about 5-6 million years old. Destiny is approximately 20 million years old! My suspension of disbelief almost disintegrated when I started watching this series.
*To many filler episodes that progressed actor development. That stole from the over all story line and slowed things down. I could careless who is a lesbian, divorced, or wanting to see their mommy.
Right! You just want to see ship-to-ship combat against aliens we know nothing about. See, this is why science fiction series can't survive.
For me the writers deserve 100% of the blame of the failure, not the actors, set crew, or other support staff.
Well, the writers deserve some of the blame, but mostly it falls on the shoulders of Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, the show runners. These are the same guys that continued to take these series out of the Milky Way and put them farther and farther away from what made them cool! I mean, the whole concept of StarGate is that it's happening, now, in the real world. By moving the series farther and farther away from Earth, it diminished any worries that Earth was in any sort of danger, which is what viewers on Earth care about! I don't give a shit about a couple hundred people stuck a few million light years away. And I care less about a couple dozen people stuck a few billion light years away even less. HINT: The further removed Earth became from the series, the less I cared about the series. Make sense?
Science Fiction is a cerebral medium. It always has been. Television series got away with making sci-fi series because they made them as visceral as possible. SG-1 is a perfect example; it balanced the aliens and technobabble with military action and explosions. Star Trek hit this wall when Enterprise came out and suddenly there was a need to have a phaser fight in every episode.
The fact is, most people don't like science fiction. They simply don't have the want or will to try and contemplate the issues that science fiction raises, so they turn on a reality show, or a celebrity gossip show, or any show that doesn't make them think. Hell, I had a friend who once told me, "I don't like Sci-Fi. I have to think all day at work, why would I want to come home and watch that?".
This is why there's wrestling on SyFy. This is why SyFy has opened the gates to all the paranormal, horror, and otherwise non-scifi content. They're trying to broaden their audience because they feel science fiction can't carry the entire channel. The sad thing is they're probably right.
The problem with The Science Channel is that they only show "intro to science" material. Every other show is a disaster special: Super Volcanos Erupt! Asteroid Collides with Earth! Global Pandemics! Tsunami hits Chicago! It's just as bad as any other cable network, they just hide it a little better by saying, "It's science". Yeah, it's science. But just barely.
But it doesn't make sense. To the companies I mean.
Underage children? As opposed to those children over the age of 18?
Out of date? The Wii was considered "low-tech" compared to all other consoles on the market when it came out in 2009. The real innovation was the controller. But seriously, why would Nintento want to come out with a Wii successor so soon? Since when is 3 years between consoles considered a generation?
1985: NES
1991: SNES
1996: N64
2002: GameCube
2009: Wii
So with an average span of 6 years between generations, why are they changing it up to 3 years?
This has never been a problem for me. I only wear a speedo and flip-flops when I travel by air.
How long until Apple has a deal with all the major text book publishers to sell their e-books on iTunes?
Intelligent life will not be found on Mars. Seems outside the scope of SETI's purpose to me.
My beef with DA is that it lacked a convincing villain. We had a big bunch of orc-like Darkspawn, led by an infested dragon who periodically rose up to take over the world. The motives therein were not addressed at all.
You must have ignored all the codex entries you pick up throughout the game.
The dragons taught human barbarians how to use magic. Eventually this leads to the foundation of the Tevinter Imperium, which is sort of like Rome led by mages. The people of the Imperium worship dragons. Eventually the dragons influence the mages to invade the golden city of the Maker, and all hell breaks loose, literally. The mages corrupted hearts taint the golden city and it turns black (The black city in the fade). The Tevinter mages are cursed, becoming the first Darkspawn, and then cast into the deep roads. The dragons are cast to the deepest parts of the world for leading humans astray. Part of the Darkspawn curse is that they can hear their former gods calling to them psychically, which causes them to seek them out, but, also due to the curse, as soon as they come into contact with one of their former gods it is immediately cursed as well, turned into an Archdemon. This archdemon then leads the horde of Darkspawn to the surface and there's a blight, which only a Grey Warden can end by killing the Archdemon.
The blight in Origins is the 5th. There were only 7 "Old Gods" the Tevinter Imperium recognized. This means that there can only be two more blights. Sounds like the makings of a trilogy, doesn't it? One Archdemon to kill per release. But that went out the window when Awakenings came out. I'll let you discover out why that is.
Some would argue that we've been under invasion since the mid 1990's... Oh, you meant "invaded by a foreign military".
I want one, but I don't want the hospital bills from doing 90 degree turns at 200 mph.
Probably in the same way that the Bureau of Investigation knew that Al Capone was breaking the law. They just didn't have the evidence to get a conviction until they discovered he'd cheated on his taxes.
Star Wars: Galaxies will likely be shut down within 3 months of Star Wars: The Old Republic being released. Now, this might sound unlikely, but LucasArts has already given Sony Online Entertainment a new IP: The Clone Wars. TCW is going to be based on SOE's Free Realms platform, which is going to be aimed at ages 8+. So SOE shutting down Galaxies is all but a done deal. There are emulator projects out there. Someone mentioned Everquest; there are about 30 EQ emulators based on different rules and times in that game's life. UO has emulators, Star Wars Galaxies has emulators. Even Earth & Beyond has an emulator. If you want to play these games, do a GIS and get your game on.
It's much cheaper to simply launch your weapon on an ICBM or launch a stealthy weapons platform in space than it would be to go to the moon and set up a giant frickin' laser. If there's ever weapons on the moon, they'll probably be used for fighting other people on the moon.
Besides, there's that whole outer space treaty that makes the moon a neutral zone like Antarctica. Hasn't been too many wars on that continent, and it's a lot nicer than the moon.
The country already is ruled by religious law to some extent: thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. Murder and burglary are against the law. Why aren't you all riled up about that?
Probably because those crimes generally involve an unwilling participant, usually referred to as a victim. Homosexuality is usually an act committed between willing participants, and in the case a participant isn't willing, we have laws for that.
Constitution doesn't say anything about murder or stealing but yet we have laws for them.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Those Republican officials' views are shared by a vast majority of the country's citizens. It just goes to show you that despite what the minority don't believe in, the majority of the population still enjoy and prefer having religion as a large part of their lives.
Here's my beef with theocratic Republicans: They're trying to impose their religious teachings to non-believes through law. If Christians and other religious folk could simply practice their religion and not impose it on others, I wouldn't have problem with them at all. But they do. So, problem.
When asked about potential choking hazard to dolphins, the Japanese scientists were quoted saying, "Fuck you dolphin!"
Biosphere II was a failure because it's inhabitant's lives weren't on the line. The sponsors weren't going to lose face due to their employees dying. That meant that it was only a half-hearted attempt at a self-sufficiency experiement.
What we really need is a Biosphere III to be built in orbit. That way when the crew starts running out of air, they'll have a reason to fix the problem instead of saying "well, we could just open a window".
1) There is nothing in space.
This is probably the stupidest argument against exploring space I've ever seen, and it keeps being repeated like it's a valid statement. Guess what? There was nothing on Antarctica prior to 1905 either. That's when the first research station was built there. Private industry has been sending cruises with tourists for the last 60 years.
There are hundreds of thousands of destinations out there, just in our system alone. Only a tiny fraction has been explored and as far as anyone can tell, it's all raw resources up for grabs. The big expense in space expeditions is the cost of sending everything up there. What we need is a place where we can start to manufacture things from the resources available, and that's not all that far off.
Things like 3-D printers and Fab-Labs are just the beginning when it comes to what we'll be able to do with manufacturing in the near-future. Sure, anything we build up there will still need regular supplies, but I would assume that a corporate sponsored space station or colony's "second order of business" would be to become as self sufficient as possible in order to cut expenses. Once we have the capability to manufacture things like station modules and space craft in space the costs will drop dramatically, just like they have for every industry before.
So yeah, there's not a lot of nearby cheap destinations right now, but they're coming and they'll continue to grow in number as long as there's a market for it.
Decimate us, huh? Thank goodness! You see, Decimate literally means "to reduce by ten percent", or "to kill one of every ten". If an alien asteroid attack on Earth is only going to kill one in ten, I'll take my chances.
Had you said we'd be annihilated, which means "to destroy completely", then I'd be scared.
South Park is fighting the good fight, and, even though I'm not a Fox News fan, I applaud Fox News for backing them up. We give too much respect to religion. Sometimes, religious practices need a good belly-laugh.
The only reason Fox News is backing up Trey and Matt is because they were poking fun at Muslims. Had it been Jesus, Fox would have ignored them, or gone the opposite route. While I agree that we, as Americans, give too much respect to religions, I wouldn't be applauding Fox News for acting exactly like the scumbags they are.
Here's the conundrum: We want to have a presence in space, both robotic and manned, for both science and exploration. It turns out that the robotic/science side of NASA has been doing really well for the last 30 years, minus a few stumbles here and there. The robotic/exploration side of NASA has done really well also, what with all the new telescopes up there and the pictures of the universe they give us. The manned sides of NASA hasn't come close to the achievements of the robotic missions. Obama wants to change that.
Here's why no moon: We've been there. Besides the 6 manned missions, we've sent lots of landers, satellites and probes. We know it's geography really well, have a decent understanding of the chemical composition of the regolith, and even know where the water-ice is hiding. In other words, we've explored the moon. Not completely, but it's mapped, cataloged and now it's time to move on to the next target for exploration. There's still plenty of science to be done on the moon, but that's best left to the probes and landers and rovers for the time being. I'd like to see the next moon missions be more about science and settlement and less about exploration and national pride, but with China and India ramping up for moon-shots something like that probably wouldn't happen until the mid-2020's at least. The point is, everyone wants to show that they can do it all by themselves. Then we'll work together to do something bigger.
But exploration is what is being brought to the front again. Asteroids. Deimos and Phobos. Then Mars. Then perhaps a trip around Venus or a shot out to Ceres. Then on to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Then Uranus and Neptune, and after stopping at every ice ball floating beyond Pluto. Go. Map. Look around. Discover. Name things. Then move on. That's what exploration is all about, and has been sorely lacking at NASA for some time now.