Editorials

Congratulations to SpaceX for completing its first mission to the International Space Station. The company ought to expand its capabilities and realize the vision of Elon Musk, its co-founder, to take human explorers to the moon and eventually to Mars.

But although the privatization of transportation to outer space is a welcome development, it should not herald the end of the leading role for American government in setting an agenda for our nation and financing the most advanced research.

Anyone who expects to lead a diverse group of people, be it a little club or a great nation, must avoid revealing too much about personal beliefs. People hold a great variety of opinions, and giving the slightest suggestion that we hold a different view can stop a conversation, fuel a heated argument, start a nasty shouting match, or begin a war.

Certain words like 'abortion', 'evolution', 'socialism', and these days even 'science' or 'reason', 'Mormon' or 'Muslim', 'fundamentalist' or 'liberal' can be incendiary in debates.

The riots that began on August 6 and lasted at least four days damaged or destroyed much property in scattered areas in England including Birmingham, Bristol, Camden, Clapham Junction, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Hackney, Lewisham, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Peckham, Salford, Tottenham, Wolverhampton and Woolwich.

Did Casey murder Caylee? No one has the right to say, and no one even has the right to an opinion on the matter except the person with certain knowledge or the jury in the case of the State of Florida v. Casey Marie Anthony.

Some TV personalities have asked viewers whether they think Casey is guilty or not--as if the vote, as if what respondents thought about the matter, makes a difference. (It probably does: getting responses may bind viewers, at least for a time, to a given channel or keep them, at least for a while, tuned in. It whips up a little frenzy.)

In 1969, around his birthday on July 20, the author had a conversation with his grandmother about the landing of two men on the moon. She doubted that it happened--and that it ever could happen. And she had good reasons. First, when we see it, the moon is always above the Earth. Anyone getting up to it could hardly stay on it for long: a person would fall off. Second, in any case, the moon was too small to hold one man, let alone two men and a vehicle. Furthermore, the moon changes shape. At one time, it is a full disk and, at another, a mere sliver. For a time, it disappears altogether.

Unfortunately, many schools fail to accomplish their primary goal: the education of their students. The immediate causes of this failure are the boredom and chaos that students experience in their classrooms.

Little projects and great public works alike depend on the physical and psychological resources of individual human beings. And the achievement of any goal--major or minor--depends on how well the people in pursuit of that goal are motivated. Motivation, then, is crucial to the progress of a whole society as well as to the progress in an individual's life. Activism, in particular, depends on extraordinary motivation.