World in the Satin Bag

NASA does it right. Okay, maybe not, but for those of you interested in how space travel really looks right now you should watch this video of spaceflight STS-122 doing a pitch maneuver. The interesting thing about this is that space travel isn’t all flying around and shooting off like we see in the movies. You remember Armageddon? The Bruce Willis flick that attempted to do what Deep Impact did right, but was more successful because it gave us a more flashy, exciting picture with oddball characters (albeit an unrealistic picture).Well, in that film we saw the two ships, which aren’t that much different from what we see in the space shuttles today, take off at wild speeds, swooshing and zipping around as if they were in the air. While it was certainly beautiful to watch (who doesn’t want to see spaceships going back and forth like we’d expect to see on Earth?) it was entirely unrealistic and, well, ridiculous. The space shuttles we have today are actually very cautious and there’s no such thing as a simple maneuver. Sure, that maneuver in the video looks simple, but it’s precisely calculated because if you screw up you spin more than you really want to, and then you either have to do it all over again or you really screw yourself and crash. Maneuvers are calculated pretty much down to the wire on purpose so that there aren’t any accidents (yes, we do see accidents, but they are exceedingly rare).There’s just something to be said about being realistic over being completely unrealistic. Certainly in the far future we can expect space travel to be a little more, well, interesting, but as it stands right now, it’s not very interesting to folk that aren’t necessarily interested in what NASA is up to anyway. I might find that little maneuver rather fascinating, but it’s not the most thrilling video. There are no aliens, no flashy moves, no blasting of engines. It’s just a simple pitch maneuver in space using nothing more than a little momentum. Exciting? Is to me. I like it. Granted I wouldn’t watch it all the time, but it’s worth a peek. That’s the point, though, and perhaps the public is a little misled to think that space travel is, right at the moment, super flashy and all Star Wars/Star Trek-ish. It’s not folks. In fact, as space debris gets more and more of an issue, space travel might become even more dangerous.So, think on that for a while. Give it a few hundred years and maybe we’ll fly ships around in space like we see in the movies. But don’t count on it. There’s no gravity or air pressure up there. Talk about a blank slate, eh?

I’ve been meaning to blog about this very subject for quite a while. The links have been sitting in my “Discuss” folder and I think it’s about time it was brought up. I think this will work in two stages. The first stage is to talk about the group Anonymous and their war against Scientology (as it currently stands) and the second stage is to talk about cyber-terrorism in general, since it is an issue we are facing in the real world and will face to a greater extent in the future. For those of you a little out of the loop, Anonymous is a, well, anonymous group of people all around that world that have essentially declared war against the Church of Scientology. They (the people behind it, some of which do have names since there’s really no way to keep yourself hidden entirely) believe that the Church of Scientology not only is limiting free speech in acts of legal battering, among other acts, but is a dangerous, violent cult that is quite similar to a totalitarian regime in religious format. Given the length of controversy over the Church of Scientology there has to be a certain amount of skepticism in their position. Are we to assume that the entire Church is evil? Well, Anonymous would argue yes, and to some extent I would have to agree. Whether or not Scientology is a “religion” that can help people is put out of view in comparison to how the Church has acted in the past and in the present towards its members and towards dissenters and critics. The Church has silenced many people, threatened legal action against protesters, passed out defamatory leaflets and sought to ruin the lives of people that have spoke out against the Church. And there is no small amount of criticism on Scientology’s history (you might not know this, but L. Ron Hubbard was actually banned from the country of England–banned, not just deported, but banned from touching English soil). I think if you look at all the links I’m going to give you’ll get an idea of what Anonymous stands for. There are the two videos released by Anonymous here, here, and here that talk about their mission (not to mention their criticisms of the Church and the media). You can find a transcript of the first of those videos here. If you really want to get into who they are you can go to their main page and read all about where they come from, who they are, what they are doing, etc.Anonymous is not just playing around either. In fact, they are pretty damn serious about this. There are, according to their reports, 7,500 people protesting right now in cities all over the world (find that info here) as of TODAY. There were reports by news agencies a while back about the first protests, but what’s interesting is that they are still protesting and in rather large numbers when you think about it. Now, this sounds all well and good, but you might be asking what this has to do with cyber-terrorism. Not long ago there were reports about cyber-attacks by people claiming to be from Anonymous on Church of Scientology websites. Now, whether or not these folks were actually members of Anonymous and were told “yeah, do that” is entirely up to speculation, which of course the lovely Church will do into order to continue it’s long spew of legal silliness. Anonymous has never called themselves hackers, as you’ll see, in fact they simply call themselves “Anonymous” or “Legion” and make it very clear that they are doctors, teachers, construction workers, etc. They are just people, not a bunch of Internet hackers with nothing to do. The protests have very clearly shown this. (By the way, you should probably do a good look around Youtube to see just what all the hubbub is about the Church–there are some really interesting videos about what Church personal do about people who are just standing across the street with a camera, or even what Church people say to those who actually are quite peaceful.) Whoever hacked into the Church websites clearly has done something that is wrong. That can’t be avoided, but I don’t see Anonymous taking credit for it. One thing I find most fascinating about all this is that the Church is not taking efforts to deny that things happened (i.e. that there are some people that have died, which you can find a lot about here). In fact, they seem to almost ignore it. The cyber-war has, it seems, been remarkably successful in presenting the information and it is a wonder why the Church doesn’t play the nice card and try to solve the problems. Surely the death of Church members is bad right? Cyber-terrorism is not isolated to such silly things as bringing down Church of Scientology websites (which I find to be bad, but at the same time I don’t think it’s religious persecution, since the Church is not necessarily a religion, though it calls itself that. This is a point Anonymous is trying to make). Cyber-attacks are not at all isolated to website hacking, which has been around for probably more than a decade now. In fact, we’re seeing the dawn of a whole new era of cyber-attacks. The CIA reported a while back that: We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet. The scary part of this is that while it has not affected the U.S. to public knowledge as