'I guess NASA doesn't need or care about my work anymore' NASA has excised former Space Shuttle manager Wayne Hale's blog from its website in a reminder that nothing is forever. An eraser NASA rewrites Moon mission goals in quiet DEI retreat READ MORE Hale began his blog in 2008, as the Space Shuttle program was winding down. The agency had named him as deputy associate …
"You think "a top tier science and technology organization" should have more joss sticks and crayons people?"
I'll throw in the thought that ANY large, professional organisation should have a logically structured, easily navigable web site that makes all of its publicly available information readily accessible, and through a compact presentation. Arguably that requires somebody capable of logical thought, and zero of the wax crayonistas.
Unfortunately, large organisations disagree with me, and it's been fashionable for a good while to go for complexity and unneeded graphical novelty, lots and lots of videos that present any facts with lumbering slowness compared to my reading speed.
Sadly the best organised web site I have visited requires an exorbitant subscription for ongoing access, although they occasionally allow a month's membership for £1. It is the Financial Times, ft.com and one of the best around, but, very very pricey (to me, multi-billionaires, such as the average Register reader may disagree).
The FT is, imho, the cream of news reporting and comment. It may be capitalist but even capitalists need to know what's really going on.
The FT's info is worth a lot to the time critical business world. The sub is a minor business expense to them (and me in the past). They could possibly extort more. The articles are largely lost to the rest of us as their pricing model doesn't accommodate us.
A friend of mine suggested they should offer a 48 hour delayed website for a modest subscription. That wouldn't eat into the current time critical sub base. It would both enlarge their customer base (ie increase total income) whilst better informing the folks and building their image.
Anybody here from the FT who would like to comment?
I do have issues with the FT's reporting. They are very 'capitalist' as you put it. On 20th Feb, page 8, they published an article accepting that research shows that the environment matters a great deal for development and life expectancy among humans. On Thursday 6th March, they had no fewer than three articles (pages 3 (two articles) and 21), including the main opinion piece stating that benefits should be cut to save government money to be spent on other things, without once mentioning the effects this would have on those receiving benefits. I even wrote to them about it but sadly my message was not printed.
So, as with a lot of other things, with respect to the FT, caveat emptor.
FT opinion pieces are just that, opinions and often written by guest authors.
I ignore the opinion section unless I fell like writing my own rebuttal. Which I have found, if FT accepts, will absolutely verify the facts of your rebuttal. They even called me halfway around the world. I was impressed.
"Sadly the best organised web site I have visited requires an exorbitant subscription for ongoing access"
Yes, because doing all that properly actually takes time and hence requires money.
Having been on the other side, working at a University in a past life the other option is saying to people who have a full time job "here's how you add content to the web site, get to it".
Of course you're going to end up with an inconsistent mess. And updating older content to new formats and layouts? Yeah, that's not happening.
"You think "a top tier science and technology organization" should have more joss sticks and crayons people?"
NASA isn't about S&T, it's about information. The S&T is a means to getting that information. It's very important that the information is accessible and presented in a way that makes it understandable by a wide range of people from the just curious to serious scientists. If the blog wasn't seeing much traffic, it might have been to the lights and stairs being out. The sign regarding the leopard could have been off-putting as well.
You think that large organisations websites are going to be designed to find out what was done, who was responsible, who signed off and who carried out the work?
Or are even capable of that or actually have records that match reality?
Oh sweet summer child, that is not the way of the world.
The thing is that NASA isn't really a monolithic single organisation like it appears from the outside. If you start digging into it a little it's a whole lot of disparate programs and projects all running under one banner but organised by different groups and organisations within that. Which means that there's already several different approaches to how to handle project communication. On top of that the "house style" keeps changing for each group over time, but very often once set up a project sticks with the format and design chosen at the start, even if it's a project that runs for decades. Sometimes there are upgrades to newer styles but these are often basically their own project run by their own little "silo".
So yes, NASAs website and documentation of it's various programs and projects feels fractured and possible a little schizophrenic because for a large part it seems to me as an outsider that's how NASA as an agency actually functions.
"When I am right no one remembers, when I am wrong, no one forgets."
- Larry Goetz (and possibly Muhammad Ali too).
Glorious genius Musk in support of Great Leader Trump decided to Cut Costs. If NASA keeps good engineering blogs hanging around, it might impact Starlink (who keep dropping satellites on puny earthlings) or even SpaceX. I think the $8.13 saved on keeping useful technical knowledge freely available is well worth it, if it keeps Musk richer and the fascists in power.
Cutting costs? Because a filesystem with 89% free is so much cheaper to operate than one with 84% free.
Institutional ignorance, as opposed to institutional memory, is the goal. They're taking the most direct path. If an agency looks likely to question a Führerbefehl, lobotomise it.
I guess its just a bit of overkill, like the articles about enola gay. Automation can be helpful but if no real brain looks into the aftermath, its quite likely going like shooting a nuclear warhead on a single cockroach.
I know that noone likes the trumpeltier ("trampeltier", not meant biologically but in the sense of elephant in a china shop) and much of the seemingly or factually erratic behaviour isnt something i would or could understand.
On the other hand, the DEI madness really overdid it, overreached and contaminated far too many aspects of life and media so filtering out as much as needed (like the firefox extension that filters gendernewspeak contaminated texts to make them readable again) to not get that destructive ideology thrown in the face with each and every text, picture, movie or whatever is not something i would oppose but is long overdue. If you dislike "right wing" parties getting stronger and elected to power, ignoring what pissed off the majority of voters so much, that they chose "the enemy" and instead insulting them wont help but keep the trend alive, kicking and expanding.
As long as the DEI removal teams keep correcting every potential filter overkill, this kind of news is non news. When something stays offline that doesnt have anything to do with the DEI trash, that should be reported and - if uncorrected - could be newsworthy.
If you intend to misunderstand, just do so. I personally am more impressed by Morgan Freemans approach to racism and fully agree with him. See the respective interview with the brilliant (although i often disagree with him) Bill Maher about black history month, i believe it was a "Club Random" episode but might misremember.
And now its "news" that an inactive (!) blog was taken down. Wow. Would it be "news" if this happened due to a cleanup effort to weed out outdated stuff that noone clicks ? Of course not. But now its the anti-DEI-Devils so its "news".
Concerning the strange comment that the evil (TM) russians would rejoice that an inactive blog from some NASA guy is down, why should they care at all ? If it was of interest, they would have copied it long ago. As would the chinese, indians or other spacefaring nations.
I gave you a possible reason for the downtake as well as my opinion of wether its indeed newsworthy or not. Mind you, we are speculatiing here why its really taken down although there is a high probability its another anti-DEI overreach.
I also gave you my opinion why the anti-DEI efforts seem so excessive currently and why i believe thjey are necessary, if not unavoideable. Theres one thing to want tolerance but its quite another thing to demand or enforce any kind of newspeak under direct threat of societal consequences up to loss of work or even legalized fines. You can speak as distorted as you like but dont expect me to try to mimic a grammatically and factually false distortion of natural language. As to any kind of outward appearance, i am working in a company that doesnt care about anything as long as you do your job. We dont need "DEI" enforced from above, we have got around 8 to 10 different nationalities, from eastern europe to albania with one tamil guy and one from senegal as well as a multitude of cultural backgrounds from the abrahamitic religions to something like pagans of all kinds as well as atheists. You do your job, you are OK to have around, thats all that matters.
As posted, if you want to misunderstand, you are free to do so. The immature statement of "vladimir" being "proud" of me clearly hints at a nonsensical correlation that DEI madness is something positive and the even more primitive hatred against russia as counterpart and permanent antagonist.
A nice way to show that you dont have arguments albeit a bit too obvious for my personal liking but you do you.
No. The reason that this is unwelcome is nothing to with DEI. It's because Wayne Hale's blog represented institutional knowledge, paid for with the lives of astronauts. Apart from that, it was heartfelt, honest, moving and a tribute to the people who were lost. I sincerely hope that the knowledge has been codified within NASA.
This post has been deleted by its author
"I suspect it captures useful information from Mr. Hale."
Perhaps, in condensed form with no attribution. If there is attribution, the original is gone so one can't go look at it to see what editing has been done. Quick brief summaries are a useful thing as a means to finding information, but if that's all you have are those summaries, the value has been thoroughly expunged.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
