A national tragedy

You may have heard that, over the weekend, Neil Armstrong passed away. For me, there are few words to describe how this affected me. I literally would not exist without the space program. My parents met while working at NASA in the early 60s, and while my mother left work just weeks after Armstrong's Moon landing to care for my newborn brother, my father continued to work there until the 80s, when he then moved on to one of their contractors. It's always been a major part of my life, and holds a special place in my heart. Losing Armstrong, one of the pioneers of the modern era (he travelled to an orbiting rock and then WALKED ON IT, and then CAME BACK--with less computing power than what's in your phone, if the internet is to be believed) is a blow our psyches cannot quite fathom yet. Scientists and engineers had to design the craft, but someone had to have the nerve to get in the thing and fly it, and I am sometimes concerned that America isn't encouraging those people anymore. Risk-taking dreamers who are confident enough to fail once and keep going.

Y'all know, of course, whom I think we ARE encouraging. I mean, COME ON.

Screengrab by JF

FOR SHAME. I saw a few posts on the Twitter about how a great many people were so sad about Armstrong having just given up the fight with USADA and now this! Also, more tweets asking who the heck Neil Armstrong is, which is just silly, because you're already on a computer, so google that before the rest of the earth finds out precisely how stupid you really are.

But there is no excuse for a major news agency to have this headline ever appear. EVER. Even for the few minutes it was probably up. "Oh, I typed it out of habit! He's my favorite!" Yes, that's fine. In an email to your mother. Reporting for NBC? NOT COOL.

(FYI, you can find the original screengrab at this link. Thanks to JF, and to AW for pointing this one out to me!)