Monday Newsbreak: 5/26

--Today is Memorial Day in the United States. We express our appreciation for those many brave Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms and way of life here in America as soldiers during times of war.

--Hillary Clinton has been lambasted for making a comment about Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June of 1968 as part of her justification for remaining in the campaign against Barack Obama. Many have taken this as a statement meaning that Obama might be suddenly (and possibly tragically) "taken out" of the presidential race, leaving her in a position to assume the Democratic mantle. But I think that Hillary was only trying to refresh people's memories (or educate them for the first time) that in the past, campaigns for nominations often went on strong into the month of June. Her slip-up, as I see it, was to utter the word "assassination", although it was obviously (to me) only intended to point out the month (June) and not to imply anything potentially calamitous about the present campaign.

--Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor with a poor prognosis. Although his personal life has been pockmarked with scandal at various times over the years, I have grown to respect Kennedy for his advocacy for the poor and the middle class, workers' rights, the environment, and his talent for reaching across the senate aisle and working with his Republican counterparts on legislation. His absence will be heavily felt. On a side note, after long-time (more than four decades) senate colleague Robert Byrd cried on the senate floor regarding Kennedy's terminal diagnosis, acerbic political radio host Michael Savage cruelly derided the West Virginia senator. And yet millions of American listen to Savage and subscribe to this obviously disturbed man's worldview! Scary!

--An unmanned NASA craft landed in the polar region of Mars yesterday with one of its main tasks being to extract some water in hopes of possibly determining conditions for (or existence of) life there. Unlike the recent landing of a probe using air bags to cushion the landing, this craft, called the Phoenix Mars Lander, used rocket thrusters and parachutes to make a soft landing. There had been concern due to previous Mars landing failures using this system, but the craft made it safely to the red planet's surface. Of course, there are many other things that need to "go right" in the next few days as well.

--In the "thanks but no thanks" department, Steve Newman's Earthweek feature reported that an Australian professor, Tim Flannery (field unspecified) who is a climate change activist, advocated gradually injecting sulfur into the atmosphere (through jet emissions) in order to deflect the sun's heat back into space. This would purportedly counter the carbon dioxide-induced increasing greenhouse effect causing our global warming (as well as turn the sky a yellow color). Flannery stated that he was unaware of how any negative effects could arise from doing this. To which I say, "Are you crazy, dude?!" Just look over to the next planet, Venus, and its sulfuric acid-enriched atmosphere to get a taste of what the future holds for us if loony ideas like this hold sway.