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By Drew Goins
“In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics” at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., chronicler Dave Eggers writes, “I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when.”
The lab, which specializes in uncrewed satellites, explorers and rovers, is known as “Disneyland for nerds,” Eggers reports, and, Jiminy Cricket, are the nerds impressive; unlike the previous entries in this series, Eggers’s report profiles a whole team of employees, whose job titles on the JPL website are things such as “Structure of the Universe” and “Origin of the Universe.”
Eggers also explains some of the tech being worked on at the JPL, including how something called a coronagraph works (“starlight suppression,” obviously) and how something called a Starshade could work.
Most tantalizingly, he reveals just how close we are to discovering that we are not alone in the universe.
Even though Eggers is talking to folks who have literally single-handedly discovered new planets, one thing remains as true for these public servants as the ones in the Labor Department or Veterans Affairs or anywhere else: Nobody has any interest in staking their claim to fame.
Facts (and falsehoods) of life
“Political violence is contagious,” the Editorial Board wrote in response to Sunday’s alleged assassination attempt of Donald Trump. This observation kind of goes without saying; the weekend’s threat was, of course, potentially the second time in the past couple of months someone tried to kill Trump.
To stop a third, a fourth, a fifth — or attempts on the lives of other public figures — the Secret Service must furnish Trump the level of protection the sitting president receives, the board writes.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna writes that Congress must give the Secret Service whatever resources it needs to make that happen: “If we can allocate nearly $1 trillion every year to the Defense Department, we can afford to expand resources to protect candidates, former presidents and the stability of our nation.”
Dana Milbank pointedly wonders whether in our “gun-mad culture,” assassination attempts are just a “fact of life”; that’s the term Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, used this month to describe school shootings.
“If our gun laws continue to allow deranged people to have unlimited access to weapons of war, it’s likely that those psychos who want to make headlines … will keep taking shots at our leaders,” Dana writes. “Of course, this is the last thing you’re going to hear from Trump and Vance.”
Indeed, in an interview with Marc Thiessen, Trump blames Democrats for “making the bullets fly” by calling the former president a threat to democracy and prosecuting him. But do not worry, he counsels Marc: Donald Trump is not a threat to democracy. “I’m actually the opposite of a threat,” he says in an exhortation to stop calling people threats. Then: “They’re the threat to democracy.”
If you want to draw a line between rhetoric and consequence, how about Trump’s and Vance’s lies about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — lies Vance defended, saying that if he has to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do”?
Alexandra Petri considered spreading the reciprocal story that “every time JD Vance opens his mouth, a sinkhole opens and swallows 30 people whole.” She settled, however, on a different tale of consequence, “a story where elementary schools and colleges and hospitals are receiving bomb threats — by an eerie coincidence, in the very place that JD Vance has singled out.”
She asks: “Do those stories count if they’re true?”
Chaser: Jen Rubin writes that Vance’s debate next month with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz might go just as badly as Trump’s did.
More politics
Jason Rezaian has spent a year fixated on this photo. It was captured the year after the Iranian government killed Mahsa Amini — two years ago this week — for wearing a hijab that did not properly cover her hair.
Here stands a woman without a head covering in a mixed-gender space, Jason writes, even as “two other women wearing the hijab stare at her with seeming disapproval.”
Amini’s death ignited anger and resolve within so many women in Iran (and across the globe) — resolve that persists as much in real life as in this photo.
Spend some time with this image, Jason writes, and you might begin to understand why Iran’s regime “still considers Iranian women — not Israeli assassinations or U.S. sanctions — to be the biggest threat to its continued control of the country.”
Smartest, fastest
- As the Islamic State rebuilds in Syria, the United States is making a hasty and reckless retreat, write experts on the region Charles Lister and Joseph Votel.
- Kamala Harris is creating an economic vision that moves beyond neoliberalism. Call it “middle-class capitalism,” Heather Long writes.
- The struggle over Obamacare might be ending, the Editorial Board writes. Obamacare won.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Your dreams can come true
When you wish upon a star?
Real nerds work, not wish
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
