Nasa Rover "Spirit" Feared Dead On Mars

Nasa this week has decided it will no longer make any attempts to contact it's long silent Martian rover known as "Spirit." The rover has failed to respond to radio communications and instructions from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Control Center in Florida since March 22, 2010. Daily attempts since that date have been made to reach the rover via UHF radio signals and the only reply has been silence. On May 25, 2011 all attempts to revive the rover ceased. "Spirit" was launched in January of 2004 along with its sister rover "Opportunity" to explore the surface of Mars and radio back data and images in what was expected to be a three month mission. "Spirit" ended up lasting over 6 years and "Opportunity" is still going strong. "Spirit" is believed to have gotten stuck in some kind of a sand trap on the surface of Mars which limited it's ability to roam. It is further believed that it suffered damage to its internal electronics systems while trying to survive it's last Martian winter where it was exposed to temperatures of 55 degrees below zero for extended periods of time.

The Missing Girls Of India

A crisis is evolving in India and it has gone on for decades. The preference for Indian families to have male children is becoming so epidemic that there is now a lack of females in the culture and society that is leading to problems. Some estimates are that over 8 million female children have become victims of infanticide in India since 1986. The reason for male preference in having children is economic in nature. Males are preferred due to the fact that when they grow up they often bring money into the families that they belong to. They also help retain property that is owned by their families. With females in India the opposite is true. They do not help a family gain wealth, in fact the family of the female must often present a huge dowry to the family of the male when a marriage takes place and also surrender property to their daughters new husband. Indian couples often believe that it is not worth it to have and raise a female child for these reasons. The use of Ultrasound techniques in India is widespread in order to determine the sex of the child before it is born. Often after the female child is born it is either killed or abandoned somewhere and left to die. There is now beginning the makings of a crisis in that adult males in India are now finding it harder to find suitable females to marry when the time comes. Some adult males now indicate that they have to look farther and farther beyond their home villages in order to find women of their own age that they can marry due to the shortage.

The Cost Of Bin Laden

Now that the U.S. finally got it's man and dispatched the leader of Al Queda it might be a good time to try and figure out at what cost it all came to. So exactly how much money has the U.S. spent on the war on terror since 9-11-01? Lets start with both of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To date both conflicts have been estimated to have cost about 1.3 trillion so far. Some experts say that by the time we untangle ourselves from both of those messes it might be well over 2 trillion. If you count Homeland Security spending that figure to date is somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 billion dollars. Let us not forget the Annual Defense budget for the Pentagon. Before 9-11 the defense budget was at about 365 billion a year. This years defense budget is in excess of 700 billion a year. If you factor in other results of the war on terror that are not monetary such as longer waiting lines at the airports for security, invasions of privacy with scanners at airports and body searches that can be invasive and uncomfortable, the increased cost for an airline ticket in order to pay for the new security layers, the PTSD that many Americans have developed in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and the accompanying health issues and health bills than you can easily add up the total to be in excess of 3 trillion and more and the whole matter is far from over as we all know. That 3 trillion total by the way does not even include the 60 million dollar Black Hawk Helicopter that we lost during the raid on Bin Laden's house. Osama Bin Laden had said on several occasions that one of his goals was to economically damage the United States by forcing it to spend serious amounts of money in order to defend itself against Al Queda and its terror tactics. On that score Al Queda is doing well. 3 trillion dollars is currently about 20% of the total U.S. National debt as of this writing.