Aug 30, 2021 05:37 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 30, 2021 06:55 PM by C C.)
Jeff Bezos’ NASA lawsuit is so huge it’s crashing the DOJ computer system
https://futurism.com/the-byte/bezos-nasa...g-computer
EXCERPT: As if NASA didn’t have enough issues on their hands, the agency’s computers keep crashing because the files from Blue Origin’s lawsuit are too big — resulting in a further delay to SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) contract. [...] The issue stems from the fact that the Acrobat can’t combine “several hundred files at one time without crashing.”
“We have tried several different ways to create 50-megabyte files for more efficient filing, all without success thus far,” the document reads.
[...] To further rub salt in NASA’s wounds, the crash has resulted in a weeklong delay to the HLS contract award to SpaceX because the agency staff that could have fixed the issue were at the 36th Annual Space Symposium last week.
[...] The original end date of NASA’s stay of SpaceX’s contract was slated for November 1st. Now, it’s been pushed to November 8th.
Bezos’ Revenge. It seems as though Jeff Bezos’ plot to get back at NASA for awarding SpaceX the HLS contract back in April is going off like the grand scheme of a Bond villain. Early last week, NASA chief Bill Nelson announced that Blue Origin’s lawsuit would “further delay” the Artemis program... (MORE - details)
RELATED: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-10751-...l#pid45340
It’s easy to judge the unvaccinated. As a doctor, I see a better alternative
https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/27/its-...ternative/
EXCERPTS: I don’t ask “Why?” when a patient with Covid-19 tells me they are unvaccinated for the same reason I don’t ask why someone whose alcohol level is four times the legal limit decided to drive, or the badly burned grandmother with emphysema lit a cigarette with oxygen prongs below her nose. Nor do I ask it when I find myself elbow deep in a bag of chips after an overnight shift even though I am fighting high blood pressure.
We humans are beautifully flawed creatures with inexplicable needs and impulses that run counter to our best interests.
Sure, I’m curious why someone didn’t take steps to stave off the threat that has, as I write this, infected more than 38 million Americans and has claimed more than 630,000 lives. Recent reports showed 301 new Covid-19 cases in one day in my small state of Rhode Island and the highest transmission rate since April 2021. Yet 40% of Americans are unvaccinated against the disease.
The worried looks in the eyes of my Covid-19 patients hint that questioning motives isn’t necessary. When they have oxygen masks strapped to their faces, previously passionate arguments rooted in individual liberties, misinformation, and mistrust deflate like punctured balloons. And the blame I might have harbored before turns to sorrow.
[...] I recognize that “moral” is a term open to distrust and eye rolling. The premise that medicine is a moral profession might sound like a hallucination in today’s profit-driven health care climate. But medicine has a rich tradition as a moral profession based on ideals — placing patients’ interests first, using medical knowledge to benefit others, and acting in a manner that promotes societal trust — that are foreign to health care providers today or often flouted by them.
The anger I feel toward vaccine-hesitant people becomes a more complicated emotion when I witness them reckoning with their choices. Many of the unvaccinated people I’ve talked with are hard-working, loving individuals struggling to catch a break in a life that hasn’t been fair. They’re unmoored and don’t know what to believe when truth itself has supply-chain problems and the health care system has been letting them down for years.
Belonging to a moral profession implies the possibility of moral distress and even moral injury, described as the emotional strain that results when the right thing to be done in a situation conflicts with what the situation permits, producing “mental, emotional, and spiritual distress.” Moral injury was a hot-button topic for clinicians long before the pandemic upended our lives and raised the ante for all of us.
Covid-19 rehitched many of us to this forgotten moral force. “This is why I went into medicine” was a frequent refrain from fellow nurses and physicians during the pandemic’s first wave, even as we donned suboptimal personal protective equipment. The moral distress that had weighed on many of us before the pandemic was balanced by worry and fear as well as a reminder of what it means to be part of a moral profession.
[...] I recognize that getting vaccinated and wearing masks make many people uncomfortable. It’s a sacrifice, an infringement of their liberty. But suffering the consequences of Covid-19 seems to be a more significant sacrifice, and death the ultimate and irreversible infringement on personal freedom.
That’s something I would love to talk about with people who are vaccine hesitant and those reluctant to wear masks. Unfortunately, the voices on the extreme right and the extreme left drown out, even obliterate, the opportunities for the conversations we should be having...
[...] Many leading organizations believe we must target misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines by focusing our attention on debunking myths and improving science communication. I think we also need to design community spaces, starting with multimedia platforms, that honor personal stories and highlight the emotional experiences of individuals and families trying to make sense of these destabilizing times with the pandemic, vaccines, and one another. Stories can be more powerful than data. To persuade people, to get them to think, you must first get them to feel. Stories move people emotionally, and the best stories reveal how people face, cope, surmount, and succumb to the obstacles in their lives and make their way in a world we all share.
[...] The only way out of this pandemic is by supporting one another, shifting the focus from judgements about right and wrong and exploring ideas that ask what degree of discomfort each of us is willing to accept to put the current crisis behind us... (MORE - missing details)
https://futurism.com/the-byte/bezos-nasa...g-computer
EXCERPT: As if NASA didn’t have enough issues on their hands, the agency’s computers keep crashing because the files from Blue Origin’s lawsuit are too big — resulting in a further delay to SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) contract. [...] The issue stems from the fact that the Acrobat can’t combine “several hundred files at one time without crashing.”
“We have tried several different ways to create 50-megabyte files for more efficient filing, all without success thus far,” the document reads.
[...] To further rub salt in NASA’s wounds, the crash has resulted in a weeklong delay to the HLS contract award to SpaceX because the agency staff that could have fixed the issue were at the 36th Annual Space Symposium last week.
[...] The original end date of NASA’s stay of SpaceX’s contract was slated for November 1st. Now, it’s been pushed to November 8th.
Bezos’ Revenge. It seems as though Jeff Bezos’ plot to get back at NASA for awarding SpaceX the HLS contract back in April is going off like the grand scheme of a Bond villain. Early last week, NASA chief Bill Nelson announced that Blue Origin’s lawsuit would “further delay” the Artemis program... (MORE - details)
RELATED: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-10751-...l#pid45340
It’s easy to judge the unvaccinated. As a doctor, I see a better alternative
https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/27/its-...ternative/
EXCERPTS: I don’t ask “Why?” when a patient with Covid-19 tells me they are unvaccinated for the same reason I don’t ask why someone whose alcohol level is four times the legal limit decided to drive, or the badly burned grandmother with emphysema lit a cigarette with oxygen prongs below her nose. Nor do I ask it when I find myself elbow deep in a bag of chips after an overnight shift even though I am fighting high blood pressure.
We humans are beautifully flawed creatures with inexplicable needs and impulses that run counter to our best interests.
Sure, I’m curious why someone didn’t take steps to stave off the threat that has, as I write this, infected more than 38 million Americans and has claimed more than 630,000 lives. Recent reports showed 301 new Covid-19 cases in one day in my small state of Rhode Island and the highest transmission rate since April 2021. Yet 40% of Americans are unvaccinated against the disease.
The worried looks in the eyes of my Covid-19 patients hint that questioning motives isn’t necessary. When they have oxygen masks strapped to their faces, previously passionate arguments rooted in individual liberties, misinformation, and mistrust deflate like punctured balloons. And the blame I might have harbored before turns to sorrow.
[...] I recognize that “moral” is a term open to distrust and eye rolling. The premise that medicine is a moral profession might sound like a hallucination in today’s profit-driven health care climate. But medicine has a rich tradition as a moral profession based on ideals — placing patients’ interests first, using medical knowledge to benefit others, and acting in a manner that promotes societal trust — that are foreign to health care providers today or often flouted by them.
The anger I feel toward vaccine-hesitant people becomes a more complicated emotion when I witness them reckoning with their choices. Many of the unvaccinated people I’ve talked with are hard-working, loving individuals struggling to catch a break in a life that hasn’t been fair. They’re unmoored and don’t know what to believe when truth itself has supply-chain problems and the health care system has been letting them down for years.
Belonging to a moral profession implies the possibility of moral distress and even moral injury, described as the emotional strain that results when the right thing to be done in a situation conflicts with what the situation permits, producing “mental, emotional, and spiritual distress.” Moral injury was a hot-button topic for clinicians long before the pandemic upended our lives and raised the ante for all of us.
Covid-19 rehitched many of us to this forgotten moral force. “This is why I went into medicine” was a frequent refrain from fellow nurses and physicians during the pandemic’s first wave, even as we donned suboptimal personal protective equipment. The moral distress that had weighed on many of us before the pandemic was balanced by worry and fear as well as a reminder of what it means to be part of a moral profession.
[...] I recognize that getting vaccinated and wearing masks make many people uncomfortable. It’s a sacrifice, an infringement of their liberty. But suffering the consequences of Covid-19 seems to be a more significant sacrifice, and death the ultimate and irreversible infringement on personal freedom.
That’s something I would love to talk about with people who are vaccine hesitant and those reluctant to wear masks. Unfortunately, the voices on the extreme right and the extreme left drown out, even obliterate, the opportunities for the conversations we should be having...
[...] Many leading organizations believe we must target misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines by focusing our attention on debunking myths and improving science communication. I think we also need to design community spaces, starting with multimedia platforms, that honor personal stories and highlight the emotional experiences of individuals and families trying to make sense of these destabilizing times with the pandemic, vaccines, and one another. Stories can be more powerful than data. To persuade people, to get them to think, you must first get them to feel. Stories move people emotionally, and the best stories reveal how people face, cope, surmount, and succumb to the obstacles in their lives and make their way in a world we all share.
[...] The only way out of this pandemic is by supporting one another, shifting the focus from judgements about right and wrong and exploring ideas that ask what degree of discomfort each of us is willing to accept to put the current crisis behind us... (MORE - missing details)
