Why is it that we fund NASA? I mean it's an orgnization that is known for its bloated projects. Millions of dollars of taxpayer paid NASA projects so that we can lob metal objects into space, often with hilarious results.

I'll tell you why, because when you ask NASA to innovate on possible ways to launch things into space, they'll give you well thought out reasonable answers like loading a big-assed containers filled with highly combustible rocket fuel. (God bless America!)

You ask a military guy to think of something and they'll give you the slingatron.

Slingatron you say? That sounds interesting what's it do?

"Well it's really kind of designed as a global strike tool for launching projectiles at high velocities across the globe... but ya know you could always possibly use it for launching objects into space... maybe... if such a thing existed."

Sounds lovely. I won't address the myriad of technical issues involved (mostly because I'm just as qualified as Xeni to comment on them), but perhaps quoting the author of the book "Weapons Grade : How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World" isn't the best source to look for inspiration into the spacecraft launching industry, Xeni.

At least not until the Air Force starts asserting their manifest destiny in space.

But let's get one thing straight: Military innovation is good for one thing and one thing only, finding better ways to kill people and coordinating those skills together. There are going to be crossovers (radar, GPS, DARPAnet) that improve our quality of life, but for the most part if it doesn't involve dropping a bomb or finding a more efficient way to drop a bomb then the military is may not your best source for inspiration...

After Xeni awoke from her sleeping medication induced coma over the weekend, she took the time to post a plug for one of her buddy's new books. Intelligent Thought: Science versus the intelligent design movement.

Fortunately Xeni was kind enough to include a quote that summarizes the entire book for all of the lay-people out there.

School districts across the country — most notably in Kansas and later in Pennsylvania, where the antievolutionist tide was turned but undoubtedly not stopped—have been besieged by demands to "teach the debate," to "present the controversy," when, in actuality, there is no debate, no controversy...

Way to preach to the choir, Xeni and Co. I'm sure you'll win over lots of those evil intelligent design proponents with that one.

-- NEWSWIRE --
HILLA, IRAQ - BBIA news service (5/9/2006)
Written by: Xeni Jardin
Co-written by: Ric Romero

This just in: The government is really bad at handling money in Iraq!!!!

Especially when you give 200,000 dollars in cold hard cash to a woman and then she abruptly dies.

According to the linked article, "those who knew and worked with Ms. Holland, whose efforts on behalf of women had won her recognition, said it defied belief that she could have lost track of so much money."

Authorities reported that the loss of so much money was a blow to humanitarian work for women in Iraq and as a result they were forced to shut down the Hilla Nail Salon/Internet Cafe.

--- snip ---

My favorite part of the article? "So much [money] was available, often in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills known as "bricks," that it was stashed all over the compound, the inspector general said in earlier reports. Millions were held in filing cabinets, a footlocker, even a safe in a bathroom, investigators found."

and you wondered why any of it was missing? I can't even trust the food I leave in the refrigerator at work.

Sorry for the delay, I was busy living my life... Here comes the roundup of today's crop of bloggo-journalistic masterpieces from former child-runaway turned Internet Personality, Ms(?) Jardin:

• Is she trying to be funny, or is she slowly leaking the truth about her identity? I can't tell anymore... Oh, the MYSTIQUE!
• Lord Xenu^Hi has decided that she guesses CSPAN has a right to own their content, after all. Thank you, Lord Xeni. You are nothing if not merciless. And/or mildly retarded.
• Xeni's been busy solving math problems, so how about reading her buddy's NPR article about some movie that sucks?
• Blah blah blah bittorrent blah blah blah. Sometimes I have to double-check the url to make sure I didn't accidentally end up at slashdot, but then I remember slashdot has comments.
• In case you live under a rock, or prefer to get your hard hitting news from BoingBoing, Xeni has kindly copied a single paragraph from an Associated Press article so you can keep up to date with what's going on with government stuff you're probably too retarded to understand anyway. Don't worry, she'll post a lot more if something blogworthy like a hurricane in another state happens. Or a blogger in China loses his job for downloading porn. Or someone knits a sweater for a stop sign. You know, the important shit.

In a self-masturbatory sense of applauding ourselves, I wanted to round up some of the great comments that have been collected here this week that made me laugh ;)

kickstart 70
If you look back a ways, you can see that I fought like mad to hold off friends of XJ and possibly her sockpuppets to keep the criticism section included in the article, and continue to link to this site.

I think what it all comes down to with her is a combination of false ego and an utter lack of justified self-esteem. I'm sure that she goes to bed at night worrying about everyone finding out that she's irresponsible journalistically and not terribly likeable, and everyone will ignore her in the same way they did in elementary school.

Julio Ortega
What's next, when viewing the page you have to listen to her favorite mashup of a Richard Nixon speech and Mark Fingerfucker reading aloud Corey's latest Disneyphiliac e-novel released in Second Life?

ROFL (Copter)
I, for one, welcome our new aristocratic Web 2.0 overlords. The fucking shitheads.

garlic
Don't worry quicksilver. You don't exist anyway. You're just an MNS sock puppet. Just like the rest of us.

Man, does MNS not have a life or what?

uhhh
Does it occur to you that the NEW YORK TIMES only mentioned this site because of the apparent emotional retardation of its creator? It was making fun of you, dude. Is this not obvious to you? Do you really think of that blurb as validation, and not humiliation? You're a grown man who spends a pretty fair chunk of his life writing a blog about how much you hate another blog. It's a sign that something is wrong with you. That you are emotionally stunted. See?

mns
Yes, obviously, I should schedule some time to have my penis removed.

Go@se
You'd think my real ovaries would help me find the energy to wage war against Andre, but that whole life & job thing, not to mention carrying around the weight of real breasts....it's not possible.

*Sigh* I must not be a notable human being either. Do these crocodile tears make me look fat?

So it seems "Andrea James", not content with editing the Wikipedia entries for her friends and business partners, found herself a real-life Comic Book Guy to battle a "small but vocal group of editors insisting on a criticism section for Xeni Jardin". "Motor" was more than happy to oblige, insisting that no consensus is valid unless "he's" signed on.

Oh, the irony of being called a "malcontent with a grudge" by a self-described Star Trek nerd... Surely only hilarity can ensue...

Will the three-revert rule be enacted? Will 'consensus' ever be reached? More importantly, will "Motor" actually figure out that the implied tail he's pursuing is, in fact, a ladyboy, and, ultimately, does that even matter to a desparate Babylon 5 fan? Stay tuned for scenes from the next episode...

Now listen, I'm not a big fan of the new wave of washed out metal music that's popular and Godsmack is no exception. It's bands like Godsmack that make it impossible for me to listen to the radio these days. Their newest album, with inspired song names like, "Voodoo Too" appears to really tread new ground ;)

That being said recently self-proclaimed Music Cognition Theorist, Xeni Jardin, has decided to post excerpts of an interview attacking Godsmack for allowing them to use their music for military recruitment commercials.

God forbid any American made music inspire pride in the military. Cut the military some slack, Xeni. They originally tried to get the rights to "Dancing Queen" by ABBA but the license was too expensive-- and it inspired the wrong kind of pride in our fighting men and women.

Besides, I don't see you railing on Moby for using "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" in Black Hawk Down. Oh wait, that's because boingboing <3 moby.

If you're like me you *love* it when Xeni can take the time away from giving fellatio to our aristocratic web 2.0 overlords. It's during these moments that she often feels compelled to share science with the bourgeois.

A great example is her recent regurgitation of the synthesized telemetry of Cassini-Huygens probe that some schmuck named Craig sent in.

"But why Quicksilver? Why would you take such offense to such an innocent offering."

Easy. Did you watch the video?

Furthermore the inclusion of this text: "Not only is it interesting from a sicnece perspective, the movie embodies some of Edward Tufte's information display principles to represent and relate the data in context."

Well it may be interesting from a sicnece perspective, but I don't see what Edward Tufte has to do with it. If I'm to believe Wikipedia then Eddie "coined the term "chartjunk" to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of information displays"

Obviously the video is a homage to such genius. It's unfortunate that Tufte's genius didn't extend to the sound I had to put up with. I think I would rather listen to Xeni singing the binary american national anthem in falsetto...

Xeni encourages fellow tin-foil hats to contact CSPAN to whine about YouTube taking down CSPAN's content from their site, after apparently being unable to field difficult copyright questions from BoingBoing readers, who feared a conspiracy to hide the truth might be in play. Xeni felt the need to email CSPAN to ask if that was the case, following with linking to the "Contact Us" page at CSPAN's site.

Nevermind the fact that there's a fucking link to watch the video in question RIGHT THERE ON CSPAN'S WEBSITE FRONT PAGE, cleverly disguised with the text "White House Correspondents' Dinner". INFORMATION WANTS TO BE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED FREE AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE, DESPITE THE FACT THEY DON'T OWN THE RIGHTS TO IT, AND DESPITE THE FACT IT'S AVAILABLE FOR FREE AT THE SITE OF THOSE WHO DO!

It tastes like ADVERTISING! From BoingBoing's parent company, FederatedMedia's, "About Our Authors" page, "Authors who join the FM network of sites hold these values in common":

• Voice and Point of View: Strong voices and intelligent points of view drive robust conversations.

Heh, "conversations"? You mean one-sided, commentless "conversations"? About strong points of view that indicate that a comedian's speech not being covered by the mainstream media is, in fact, all part of a vast conspiracy? That's certainly a strong, intelligent point of view.

• Accuracy: Some FM sites are journalistic in nature; others are not. Regardless, FM sites strive for accuracy regarding items we post as facts.

So which is BoingBoing? And wouldn't a cursory examination of the history of the Star-Spangled Banner result in better accuracy than is exhibited here?

• Community: Weblogs are conversations, not lectures. The community that gathers around each site is the essence of its value, and we treat that community accordingly. We listen and respond to feedback, and incorporate it into the way we manage our sites.

BoingBoing. Reader comments. Nuff said.

• Responsibility: We take our role in the community we serve seriously, and feel responsible for our own words. When we make mistakes, we correct them. We do not seek to use our sites maliciously.

Except when Xeni's pissed, then she grabs a copyrighted photo from my band's site, as indicated in the html/htdb code, itself, and posts it, unattributed and without permission, as an update to her entry about xenisucks.com, along with the assertions that I live in Seattle, which a quick WHOIS would have provided more accurate information, as well as an incorrect spelling of my middle name, and my alleged employer's name?

Or except when Xeni's pissed about her goatse dildo cozy posts resulting in web filtering software marking BoingBoing as NSFW, at which point she feels the need to tell the whole world that a dude that works for the company that makes the web filtering software is a freaky-pervy "adult baby"?

• Transparency: We err on the side of disclosure to our readers. If we have an interest in something we're writing about, we disclose that interest. We are as transparent as we can be about our site's statistics, practices and policies.

I'm not even touching that one. BoingBoing needs a "Who's Friends With Who" chart to keep track of all the proverbial back-scratching self-promotion and nepotism going on.

Mmmm, delicious, delicious hypocrisy.