Taxing Thoughts

The BBC has an article about the South African version of Sesame Street has recently introduced an HIV positive puppet. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. According to the article, either 1 in 9 or 1 in 5 South Africans has HIV (the author used both statistics, so I’m not sure which is correct) and there is a great need to introduce tolerance within society. From the article: “The idea is to teach children that people can live normal lives with HIV.”

Space.com has an article about a piece of space just that is expected to hit the moon next year. The space just is believed to be a “Saturn IVB upper stage from the Apollo 12 mission that flew in November 1969.” Scientists want to use seismometers that were placed on the moon during the Apollo mission to conduct experiments on the Moon’s makeup. The only problem is that the seismometers were turned off in 1977, so they need to figure out if it is even possible to turn them back on after 25 years.

Today is September 11, 2002, America’s Second Day of Infamy. I truly hope everyone had a healthy and peaceful day. My heart and thoughts go out to those who lost loved ones. I spent the day thinking about my wife, this is a day where you don’t want to be away from your family, it is especially difficult when you a required to be 500 miles apart in graduate school.

I feel the outpouring of emotions by people worldwide is a wonderful thing. In some instances last year’s events showed us that humanity is still alive, but it also showed us that there are people out there who only care about their own points of view, humanity be damned!