Day: 9 August 2005

Shuttle Lands Safely

NASA has recorded another successful shuttle landing. CNN is reporting that the Discovery Space Shuttle has landed. The last time a shuttle re-entered Earth’s atmosphere it was vaporized as a result of an accident.

After reviewing what went wrong with the Columbia shuttle NASA introduced new safety standards. Clearly they have worked. This successful landing means that we have not seen the end (and perhaps a resurgence) of human space travel. NASA has announced that the next shuttle launch will be in September.

The Way Wants to Show you The Way

A group of recent graduates from York University have written a fun play about modern western civilization’s current obsessions. The writers of the play, The Way are concerned about the lack of social and environmental awareness in North America and warns us that this will come back to haunt us.

Obviously they want to change that; the play sends the message that people must become more aware of their surroundings.

For an in-depth review of the play check out my post on it at blogTO.com. The play is running this week in Toronto more information can be found at the SummerWorks Festival website.

A Latin American Al Jazeera

This year Telesur, the first multi-state TV channel in the world was launched from Caracas, Venezuela. The station is being launched with help from other Latin American governments including Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay. The channel’s board members include a group of international supporters including the actor Danny Glover, the writer Tariq Ali and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
But even before its launch, Telesur was being attacked in Washington. Last week the House passed an amendment calling for the U.S. to begin broadcasting its own channel into the region to counter Telesur.
We know that not everything Washington dislikes is necessarily good (Saddam Hussein being a good example), but the arrival of Telesur to the world of Latin American news broadcasting, overwhelmingly dominated by FOX news, CNN, ABC and others, is a pretty good thing.

(Based on Democracy Now!)