I FEEL GOOD

From the "you can't make this up" file, President Obama is turning NASA into his Muslim-outreach agency. According to Fox News, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says that NASA's foremost mission in 2010 is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

You might want to push instant replay and read that again just to make sure you're awake.

He went on to say, "[w]hen I became the NASA administrator - or before I became the NASA administrator - [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science . and math and engineering."

Huh?  We want our space program to concentrate on making Muslims "feel good" about themselves?  Can someone explain to me why this was the "foremost" mission our Dear Leader directed at NASA?  Not replacing the aging Shuttle fleet?  No no, not that.  How about building our own space station?  Uh-uh, can't do that.  Umm, how about going back to the moon. Sorry, not going to happen.  But we do want Muslims to feel good about their rich history of........?  Let's see, they did invent our numeric system right?  Oh no, wrong.  Our numbers came to us via Indian/Arabic culture around 300 BC (that's Before Christ for those of you in public school.)  That was more than 1,000 years before Mohammed starting lopping off heads to bring us the religion of peace. 

Okay, then they invented the telescope right?  Oh sorry, a man named Hans Lipperhey invented the telescope. He was born in Wesel, Germany and made his home in Middleburg, part of the Zeeland province in the Netherlands.

Alright, how about the pendulum?  Wrong again, that pesky Italian Galileo Galilei invented that between inventing everything else in Europe.  How about the clock?  Nope, the ancient Eqyptians.  The watch?  No again.  The compass?  Nope, Chinese.  Gunpowder?  Double no, our good friends and T-bill holders the Chinese again.

And as to Mr. Bolden's assertion that Muslims invented mathematics and engineering.  Well, not so much.  Actually, no single person invented mathematics.  Mathematical systems have been developed by different cultures independently. The mathematics in western civilization can mostly be traced to roots in Mesopotamia, Egypt (especially for geographical use) and Babylon (especially for astronomical use).  All cultures that preceded Islam.  And call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure engineering began in ancient Egypt with the building of the pyramids.  Again preceding Islamic culture by many millennia.

Well, they must have invented something, after all, they must be made to feel proud about something!  

Well, they did invent jihad and suicide bombers.