This just seems to be carrying political correctness a bit too far. Yes some things should be off limits but in this case, it just seems like someone found a reason to offense. The full name the first used seemed to fit, but part of the name offended someone.
NASA boffins tackle Nazi alien in space – with the help of Native American tribal elders
NASA has given the Kuiper belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule the official name Arrokoth, which means sky in the Native American Powhatan-Algonquian language. Before the rock was known as Ultima Thule or Arrokoth, it was dubbed the rather tongue-twisting 486958 2014 MU69. After NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft arrived at the …
COMMENTS
-
-
Thursday 14th November 2019 10:06 GMT Rich 11
This just seems to be carrying political correctness a bit too far.
Rubbish. It was a nickname due for replacement as usual, that's all. Your response tells us more about your mindset than it does about NASA's.
-
Thursday 14th November 2019 10:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
I can't see why we should not use a name dating back to ancient Greek writers, used by many great writers in the past centuries to name a distant, hardly reachable land, just because some later dangerous idiot knew it and used it too somehow?
Should we destroy all those "nazi" symbols in Buddhist or Hindu temples too? For someone grown in Europe is at first very uncomfortable so see a wall full of swastikas - until you realize it has a full different meaning there, and it would be utterly wrong to condemn them.
Should the wrong thing be just the cultural appropriation attempts made by nazism, and never the original names and symbols? Could we please put things in the right context? We should never let neo-nazi rewrite our history at their will, and let them appropriate names far older and far greater than them.
I only think the name was wasted for such little object - it would be better used for some more interesting and larger object.
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 14th November 2019 21:52 GMT Simon Reed
Here you go: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/thors-hammer
And: "Swedish Government wants to ban ancient Viking symbols, claiming they “constitute incitement to hatred” " https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/05/swedish-government-wants-to-ban-ancient-viking-symbols-claiming-they-constitute-incitement-to-hatred/
-
Friday 15th November 2019 03:01 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
>Who says? First I've heard of it. Honestly, where do you lot get your information, anyway?
The Anti-Defamation League the major US authority on hate crimes
Anti-defamation League Hate Symbols Database
(or a bunch of zionist reactionaries if you are a Labour MP)
-
Sunday 17th November 2019 18:00 GMT OssianScotland
So 737 is a hate symbol? Has anyone told Boeing?
Looking through that list, it appears that almost anything (including 100% and also the "not equals" sign) is offensive in some way. I was particularly struck by the word "hate" being itself a hate symbol, therefore their list of hate symbols, recursively, is also one.
Stop the world, I want to get off!
-
-
-
Saturday 16th November 2019 00:49 GMT Michael Wojcik
I can't see why we should not use a name dating back to ancient Greek writers [continue usual whinge]
No one said "we" couldn't use the name. NASA decided in this case not to ask the IAU to approve the name "Ultima Thule" for this particular bit of rock. So fucking what?
Personally, I suspect they did it just to get a rise out of all the political-correctness-bugbear scaremongers on the Internet.
-
Saturday 16th November 2019 12:16 GMT Muscleguy
Indeed and the swastika almost certainly comes from space as well. If you observe a spinning cometary tail from end on the tail takes on the shape of a swastika. Since in times past the skies were watched for 'messengers from the God(s)' such things were made religious.
That the Nazis co-opted a Hindu symbol while remaining racist is a major irony.
A few years ago a well meaning Hindu guy in Auckland, NZ painted the roof of his suburban house with a swastika as a religious act but was sadly forced to paint over it by the neighbours and council. Since Hindus have a much, much older claim to it that they can no longer use it because of a blip in history is actually quite sad and I say that as a dyed in the wool atheist.
It is hard in the modern world to grasp how bright the heavens used to be to our ancestors without street lights etc. One of the benefits of moving up here to Dundee from NW7 in London is I can see some stars from my back yard. Not many but some. We only have to drive a relatively short way up the coast to find a dark bit of seaside to watch the aurora from.
But it doesn't match looking up at the sweep of the Milky Way from Southern New Zealand where I did much growing up. At university we would wander up the hill behind our college and lie on our backs looking up. We had a friend into astronomy who would pronounce on 'shooting star or satellite' and name things for us.
When back I go out at night and spot the Southern Cross and know I'm home.
-
-
Friday 15th November 2019 23:34 GMT aks
Re: PiC
The swastika's name and most prominent usage is from India and very ancient. It may well have been used in the heartlands of Asia before being used by the Aryan (Iranian) peoples of central Asia. Usage of this symbol by Scandinavians came later. The fact that the National Socialists of Germany used it in a modified form didn't give them exclusive rights to it.
Thule as recognised by the Greeks and Romans was probably Orkney or Shetland but the Vikings moved it to Iceland or Greenland as Ultima Thule.
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 14th November 2019 15:38 GMT ma1010
Re: one way ticket
No, we want to keep the telephone sanitis(z)ers! Remember what happened to the people on Golgafrincham after they launched their telephone sanitizers in the B-Ark: they all died from a disease caught from a dirty telephone.
Instead, I propose we take all the lawyers, politicians, control freaks and add to them all the people who are involved in designing or implementing Internet trackers, "targeted" advertising, robo-calls and all other forms of spam. And don't forget Ajit Pai. Put them all on the "B" Ark but program it like Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship - launch it straight into the sun. After that, the Golden Age of Earth can begin. It couldn't hurt, and I think it's worth a try, at least.
-
-
-
-
Thursday 14th November 2019 12:51 GMT Doctor Evil
a matter of perspective
"NASA said it obtained consent from Powhatan Tribal elders to use the word. “We graciously accept this gift from the Powhatan people," said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division."
Hmmm. "Gracious" seems to be more what the Powhatan elders were; "gratefully", perhaps?
-
Friday 15th November 2019 13:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Space 1999
The name change means that Ultima Thule is still available for use by Brian Blessed with an unfeasibly large (even for him) beard as the leader of a band of astronauts who crashed on an icy planet and who seem to live forever.
Commentards of a certain age will remember the trauma-inducing ending to *that* episode:
http://scifimusings.blogspot.com/2017/05/space1999-y1-e14-deaths-other-dominion.html