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From Vox
Why a new law requiring Asian American history in schools is so significant -
A sign reading “I am an American” on the Wanto Co grocery store at 401-403 Eighth and Franklin Streets in Oakland, California, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. The store was closed and the Matsuda family, who owned it, were relocated and incarcerated under the US government’s policy of internment of Japanese Americans. | Dorothea Lange/Getty Images
“By not showing up in American history, by not hearing about Asian Americans in schools, that contributes to that sense of foreignness.”
This month, Illinois became the first state in the country to require the inclusion of Asian American history in public school curriculums. While the actual impact of this law will depend a lot on implementation, its passage alone sends a significant message: that Asian American history is American history and is integral to understanding the country’s past and present.
For years, Asian American history has been virtually nonexistent in textbooks or cordoned off to a narrow section at best. Much of the framing has also sought to paint the US as a savior for Asian immigrants, glossing over people’s agency and the government’s role in imperialism and exclusion.
“My general understanding is there is not much, if any [Asian American history], being taught in most parts of the country,” says Tufts University sociology professor Natasha Warikoo, whose work centers on the study of inequality in schools. “I have not seen it in my own experience, in my children’s experience, or in my own experience as a teacher.”
This new Illinois law — the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act (TEAACH) — takes a first step toward addressing some of these gaps by requiring all public elementary schools and high schools to have a unit dedicated to Asian American history. Its passage follows an increased focus on anti-Asian racism, as attacks and xenophobia have surged in the pandemic.
Grace Pai, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago, the advocacy group that first proposed the legislation, notes that its overwhelming passage — it was approved by the state House 108 to 10 — is a testament to the work of local organizers who’ve helped write the law and lobbied lawmakers on it over the past year. The victory comes as conservatives mount a national attack on critical race theory, or what is really education that scrutinizes systemic racism and highlights the importance of lessons that examine the country’s history of discriminatory policies.
By ensuring that more Asian American experiences are included in classroom lessons, the hope is that laws like this will build more understanding among students and combat damaging stereotypes that have persisted for decades.
“TEAACH is fundamentally at its core about building empathy,” Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, a lead sponsor of the bill alongside state Sen. Ram Villivalam, emphasized in a press interview. “Empathy comes from understanding, and we cannot expect to do better unless we know better. And when Asian Americans are missing from our classrooms, what fills that void are harmful stereotypes.”
Asian American history has largely been missing from classrooms
Because states and districts have jurisdiction over what’s taught in schools, curriculums about Asian American history vary widely across the country, and focus mostly on a few events, including the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country.
In her 2016 analysis of history standards of 10 states across the country, Sohyun An, a professor of elementary and early childhood education at Kennesaw State University, discovered that most lessons centered on the treatment of Japanese and Chinese immigrants and didn’t begin to cover the immense diversity of the Asian American diaspora.
Additionally, the majority of the curriculums she studied framed Asian Americans as the victims of nativist sentiment and restrictionist policies, with few highlighting them as active contributors to the country’s achievements.
“They portray them as the victims of racism, but they don’t highlight their agency,” says An.
Nicholas Hartlep, an education professor at Berea College, discovered an even starker breakdown in his 2016 review of K-12 textbooks, Pacific Standard previously reported:
His 2016 study of K-12 social studies textbooks and teacher manuals found that Asian Americans were poorly represented at best, and subjected to racist caricatures at worst. The textbooks often relied on tropes such as dragons, chopsticks, and “Oriental” font to depict Asian Americans. The wide diversity of Asian Americans was overlooked; there was very little mention of South Asians or Pacific Islanders, for example. And chances were, in the images, Asian Americans appeared in stereotypical roles, such as engineers.
Additionally, historic events are often framed in a way that paints the US government in a positive light, while obscuring its role in colonization and oppression.
“K-12 American history texts reinforce the narrative that Asian immigrants and refugees are fortunate to have been ‘helped’ and ‘saved’ by the US,” Jean Wu, a Tufts Asian American history lecturer emerita, previously told Time. “The story does not begin with U.S. imperialist wars that were waged to take Asian wealth and resources and the resulting violence, rupture and displacement in relation to Asian lives. Few realize that there is an Asian diaspora here in the U.S. because the U.S. went to Asia first.”
Without such lessons, there’s little awareness not only about how Asian Americans have been discriminated against in the past — and how that continues to inform current biases — but also about how Asian Americans have helped to build the country.
The omission, and limited portrayals, of Asian Americans in history lessons establishes and reinforces the message that they aren’t part of this country’s narrative.
“By not showing up in American history, by not hearing about Asian Americans in schools, that contributes to that sense of foreignness,” says Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn, a teacher educator with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice Initiative.
The Illinois law was passed as a response to a rise in anti-Asian incidents
The Illinois bill was first proposed in early 2020 by Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago, and Pai notes that the recent rise in anti-Asian sentiment has underscored the urgency of the measure. Between March 2020 and March 2021, the group Stop AAPI Hate has received reports of more than 6,600 anti-Asian incidents ranging from verbal abuse to physical attacks, as lawmakers including former President Donald Trump have used racist rhetoric to describe the coronavirus. Greater history education can help students see how such statements tap into longstanding xenophobia and echo the scapegoating of Asian Americans for the spread of illnesses in the past.
While the Illinois law does not detail exactly what the curriculum should cover, it references a five-part PBS documentary about the history of Asian Americans as a useful resource. Just how much the bill will change in classrooms remains to be seen, though. School districts have a lot of leeway in how to implement the law and designate what they mean by a “unit,” so the actual lessons that are taught could have significant differences from place to place.
“The impact, in terms of children’s education, really depends on what comes next. The extent to which training is provided for teachers and school districts, the provision of curricular materials,” says Warikoo. “Even within states, there’s a lot of flexibility in state standards and how different districts and even schools and teachers implement them.”
Pai says that Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago is working with the state government to offer guidance for districts and teachers. “I think weak implementation is a challenge and a concern,” Pai says. “There has to be a multi-pronged strategy and that means partnering with other organizations on teacher trainings, to receive professional development around this … to provide a comprehensive set of resources,” she says.
Illinois is also not the only state pursuing such changes. Others, including California and Oregon, have established ethnic studies curriculums, which include lessons on Asian American and Pacific Islander history. Connecticut also has legislation in the works to ensure that Asian American history is part of the state’s model curriculum that’s provided as an outline for schools.
“Unfortunately, it took the anti-Asian hate and violence in this country to get people’s attention, and it was a call to action,” says Karen Korematsu, the director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, an organization dedicated to advocating for more inclusive education.
Why teaching Asian American history matters
Expanding education to incorporate a variety of perspectives is viewed as a key way to build empathy and critical thinking among students, which could, in turn, reduce bias. While it’s certainly far from the only thing that’s needed, this curriculum is viewed as one way to help prevent anti-Asian attacks moving forward.
“If you’re thoughtfully inclusive, really helping kids see that difference is not something to be scared of or a bad thing, that can really support empathy. And in a moment when we are seeing more awareness in anti-Asian hate and violence sometimes, that is probably a good thing,” says Blackburn.
Research on children’s literature indicates that exposure to diverse voices can change students’ perceptions: A 2012 Michigan Reading Journal paper from educators Rose Crowley, Monica Fountain, and Rachelle Torres found that consuming children’s literature with diverse protagonists helped children develop more understanding of people who were of different backgrounds. Previous studies have also found that such books can help push back on stereotypes children may hold.
Additionally, such lessons ensure that Asian American students feel seen and included.
“It’s hard for children. … When you don’t know about the contributions of Asian Americans and you’re an Asian American yourself, you don’t have mentors and people to look up to,” says Hartlep. “If you don’t see yourself in the curriculum, and you don’t see yourself in the classroom, it’s like where do you belong? It makes you feel invisible and it doesn’t lead to empowerment.”
This bill points to the important role that schools can play in providing important historic context that informs students and nurtures empathy. It’s also just the latest act the state has taken to make its public school curriculums more inclusive: Last year, Illinois approved a new law requiring history lessons to include the contributions of LGBTQ people, and earlier this spring, another law expanded the scope of Black history taught in schools.
Pai notes that the GOP focus on critical race theory — a term that’s been used as a catchall by conservatives to describe education that addresses race — did not play a major role in the discussions of this bill, which garnered widespread support in Illinois’s mostly Democratic legislature.
Experts have also theorized that this legislation’s focus on the inclusion of Asian American history and contributions, rather than calling out systemic racism outright, may have made it less likely to prompt conservative pushback. “This law … doesn’t call out white supremacy, so it can be very palatable,” says Hartlep.
An, the Kennesaw State curriculums expert, says that Illinois’s actions could spur momentum for concurrent efforts taking place in other states, though she says comparable bills are likely to be a tougher sell in more conservative places, like Georgia, where she lives. Still, it’s a change that helps set a precedent, she says.
“We have a grassroots movement right now to benchmark Illinois and do something similar,” An says.
Why we love drugs -
Cacti containing hallucinogenic mescaline, raised in a private garden in Oakland, California. | Paul Chinn/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Michael Pollan on America’s broken — but improving — relationship with drugs.
What makes a drug a drug?
It’s strange to say, but we don’t really have a good definition of the term. You could say a drug is any substance that transforms our subjective experience of the world, but food does that, too. So what’s the difference?
In this country, it turns out the difference is pretty arbitrary. Drugs are whatever the government says they are. And for a long time, the government has classified them in a deeply dishonest and cynical way. We call this absurdity “the drug war.”
But here’s the good news (especially if you’re one of the groups victimized by it): The drug war is dying. You can see it in the marijuana legalization movement and you can see it in the so-called psychedelic renaissance. The country will have to think seriously about what comes next. How will our taboos shift? What sorts of reforms will we need? What kind of cultural infrastructure should we build?
Michael Pollan is perhaps best known for his 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but his 2018 work How to Change Your Mind did more than any other to vault psychedelics into the mainstream, and it remains one of the best explorations of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.
Pollan’s latest book, published in July, is titled This Is Your Mind on Plants. This one is about psychedelics too, but it’s a much broader look at our all-too-human obsession with psychoactive plants — not just hallucinogens but also caffeine and opium — and why our culture has such a fraught relationship with them.
So we talk about all that, and we explore what we can learn from other cultures about how to use psychedelics, and why he thinks these plants are powerful antidotes to our disconnected lives.
You can hear our entire conversation (as always, there’s much more) in this week’s episode ofVox Conversations. A transcript, edited for length and clarity, follows.
I’ll start with a deceptively simple question: What is a drug?
Michael Pollan
It’s deceptively simple because it’s very hard to say. I think of it as something we ingest that changes us in some way, but of course you could also say that about sugar or chicken soup. I went to the Food and Drug Administration, who you’d think would have nailed this down a long time ago, but they basically decided that a drug is a “substance” that is not food that is called a drug by the FDA. That’s how they define a “drug.”
Sean Illing
It’s still not at all clear to me what makes a “drug” a drug and food food.
Michael Pollan
There are a lot of cases right on the edge. Sugar is a great example. If you’ve got kids and you’ve watched how they respond to sugar, there’s no question it’s a drug. But then what about a placebo? That is something that you ingest that changes you, but it’s not a drug in the pharmacopeia. So it’s a mess. All of this shows that there’s something very arbitrary about illicit versus licit drugs. An illicit drug seems to be whatever the government has decided is illicit.
Sean Illing
We’ll get to that, but let’s step back a little. Humans have always — and I mean always — loved drugs. Why do you think we’re so determined to change our own consciousness? What is it about ordinary states of consciousness that bores us or scares or limits us?
Michael Pollan
I’ve been interested in this question for a very long time, as long as I’ve been writing about the relationship between plants and people. It’s very curious that this appears to be a universal desire of our species to change consciousness, that we’re not satisfied with everyday normal consciousness. You alluded to one reason, which is boredom. I think that people seek novelty, and they seek novelty in states of mind as well as places and activities, so that’s one.
The relief of pain is another, and that’s one of the most important things we’ve used drugs for. For most of the history of what we now call medicine, pain relief was about all you could get out of it. Opium was the greatest drug in the pharmacopeia because it could relieve pain. And other drugs, whether they act directly on pain or not, distract you from pain, and that’s often just as good. Cannabis works that way for some people. It doesn’t really diminish pain, but at certain doses you just don’t give a shit about the pain.
But I think that there are more interesting reasons that we use drugs. One is, the novelty they contribute is useful to us as a species. The way I describe it in the book is that they’re mutagens in a cultural sense. In the same way that mutations in DNA lead to variation and every now and then produce useful traits that then give an advantage to the individuals or the species that acquire them, drugs have a similar mutating effect on cultural memes. They give people ideas, they plant metaphors, images, all these things that feed into cultural evolution in a way similar to the way mutation and variation feed into biological evolution. That’s pretty speculative, and I don’t know that I could prove it scientifically, but I think that’s part of what’s going on.
The other important things that drugs do is increase sociality. Drugs like alcohol make people more fluid socially, more interested in other people. MDMA does this, too. Activities that make us more sociable creatures are very important to our success as a species.
Sean Illing
Our popular conception of drugs seems so flat in comparison to what you’re saying now.
Michael Pollan
During this last 50 years of the drug war, we’ve lost track of this. We’ve really simplified our view of drugs into good and evil. We tend to moralize them, and we’ve lost track of the fact that something that could be dangerous used in a certain way could also be incredibly helpful in another way.
The Greeks really got it with their word for drugs, they called them “pharmakon.” That could mean both a blessing and a curse depending on the context, and context is everything when it comes to drugs. There was also a third meaning of pharmakon, which was something like “scapegoat.” That’s very revealing. A drug was something you could blame things on. And God knows we’ve done that.
Sean Illing
I’d argue that our most incontestable right as human beings is the right to experiment with our own consciousness, with our own minds. Why do you think the state is committed to policing how and whether we do this?
Michael Pollan
I think it’s because the state regards drug use as a tremendous threat. There are certain drugs that contribute to the smooth working of society, like coffee today. But I wrote about coffee in the book and there were lots of problems when coffee first showed up in Europe. King Charles II wanted to ban it briefly because he didn’t like all the political conversation going on in the coffee houses. He felt threatened. He thought it was a seditious beverage, but that didn’t work. It was already too popular and he backed down.
In general, though, a drug like caffeine is making us better workers, more focused, less drunk. It’s a great drug for capitalism. Capitalism loves caffeine. You need no better proof of that than the existence of the coffee break as an institution. Here’s a case where your employer gives you a drug free of charge and then gives you paid time in which to enjoy it. That’s all you need to know about who’s benefiting from caffeine.
But then you have something like LSD or psilocybin, which the government took a very strong interest in, even though they’re virtually non-toxic and non-addictive. But they were disruptive to society in the ’60s. Nixon believed that the reason young boys weren’t willing to go to Vietnam was because of drugs and specifically because of LSD. It may have contributed to their willingness to defy authority. These are substances that, taken in the right context, do encourage independent thinking of various kinds.
Here was a rite of passage, but, unlike most rites of passage, LSD didn’t fold the person more tightly into society. It had the opposite effect. It made this young person feel that they were in a whole other culture and wanted to dress differently, talk differently, have different mores. We called it the generation gap. And you had this very interesting and historically pretty novel split in the values of two different generations.
When Nixon decided to launch the drug war in 1971, he did it because he thought these drugs were threatening his political agenda — and he may well have been right.
Sean Illing
Oh, he was most definitely right, and it speaks to a broader point you were hinting at earlier: One way to determine what a society really values is to look at the drugs it condones and condemns. And it’s awfully revealing that our society says bourbon and caffeine are good but somehow DMT or psilocybin are bad.
Michael Pollan
Yeah, but it’s very interesting that those same chemicals are good in other cultures in other contexts. For example, one of the reasons I was so interested in writing about mescaline is that it’s a psychedelic like LSD, but the way it’s used in the Native American church, where it’s a legal sacrament, is the most conservative way imaginable. It is used to enforce social cohesion and help heal traumas. It’s this very conservative model of psychedelic use. And that told me that there’s nothing inherently disruptive about psychedelics — it’s how they’re used.
Sean Illing
That will surprise a lot of people. Can you say a bit more about how a drug like mescaline is used to reinforce, as opposed to disrupt,social bonds and values in these communities?
Michael Pollan
Well, the indigenous use of psychedelics goes back at least 6,000 years. That’s the oldest evidence we have for the use of mescaline in the form of peyote, the cactus that produces mescaline. These cultures have had a lot of time to experiment with these drugs and figure out what they’re good for. And in most of them it’s always a social application. They don’t use psychedelics alone. It’s always in a group setting and they’re approached with great solemnity and ritual, which I think is incredibly important. They don’t use these drugs (or medicines) for thrills. It’s for communal healing.
Sean Illing
Why didn’t that happen here?
Michael Pollan
One of the most striking things about psychedelics is when they showed up in the West, beginning with Albert Hoffman’s discovery of LSD in 1938, they were novelties. We didn’t look to traditional cultures to understand them, probably out of condescension. So these powerful substances arrived without an instruction manual.
So we just started that process of trial and error that other cultures may have gone through 10,000 years ago. We began in the ’50s and ’60s, and there was a little bit of research into their potential as medicines, but we didn’t know how to use them. We tried lots of things, and some of it was disastrous, and people got into serious trouble.
But now we’re in the midst of this renaissance in psychedelic research, and it’s leading to new ways to use these drugs therapeutically that I think the government will actually support very soon. That’s a huge turnaround. And maybe that will change our understanding of psychedelics from something that disrupts our society to something that helps smooth the operation of society, because right now mental health difficulty is what’s disrupting our society.
Sean Illing
Well, the good news is that the dumb taboos created by the drug war are dying and the laws are starting to evolve, which raises the question: What comes next? How do we fold these substances into society?
Michael Pollan
That’s a fascinating question. What does the piece look like after the drug war? I don’t have the answers but I have some glimmers of answers. I think that in a way the drug war made things easy, because we didn’t have to have this conversation — it was either the drug was illegal or it was legal and we let the government decide. These questions will fall to individuals and cultures when the drug war ends.
One of the really interesting developments to watch is the formation of these new psychedelic churches, around psilocybin or DMT or ayahuasca. They’re popping up all over the place. People are forming churches because they think it’s going to give them some legal protection, and it may. The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court around religious freedom is so expansive that it’s going to be an exploding cigar in front of Sam Alito or John Roberts when the court has to consider the rights of the Church of Lysergic Acid or something. They’re going to be hard-pressed, given the precedents that they’ve laid down.
Sean Illing
A theme in this book and your last one is that human beings have become too separated from nature. I obviously agree and I’d argue that this is maybe the most consequential fact of the post-industrial world. Are you still hopeful that a psychedelic renaissance is at least part of the solution to this problem?
Michael Pollan
Look, all my writing has been about bringing nature back into people’s lives and realizing how plants affect us and how we affect them. That reconnection is a big part of my life. Our distance from nature, which is even more pronounced in younger generations who’ve grown up with social media, is an enormous threat. And I’m really interested in any research that explores whether psychedelics help with that. I do think psychedelics are an antidote to our mediated lives and our addictions to phones and screens and everything else that comes between us and the natural world.
Psychedelic takes you off screens. Your phone is not going to be part of the experience, and it is very much about reconnecting to the body, to the contents of the mind, to your memories, and to nature. I had very profound experiences in nature on some of my psychedelic experiences. But again, I was already well-disposed as a gardener to love my plants. What I wasn’t ready for was to have my plants return my gaze in the garden and announce themselves to me in a way they never had before, as agents with their own perspective and subjectivity. I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but my plants were more alive than they’d ever been.
These are products of nature. This is nature talking to us. And yes, LSD was invented in a lab, but it’s based on a chemical produced by fungus. It’s extraordinary that the plant world might be offering us an antidote to the flight from nature. These plants call us back to nature, and nothing seems more valuable right now than something with that power.
Welcome to the age of billionaire joy rides to space -
Blue Origin is launching its first flight with humans, including Jeff Bezos, aboard. | Blue Origin
Today, Blue Origin is launching its first flight with humans aboard, including billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is flying straight to the border of space. If all goes well, the billionaire — carried in a rocket built by his space flight company Blue Origin and accompanied by three fellow space tourists — will join a small but growing number of people who have traveled to space but aren’t professionally trained astronauts.
Bezos’s planned trip is a big deal for Blue Origin — although its New Shepard rocket, named after the first American to visit space, Alan Shepard, has already had 15 successful test flights. Tuesday will be the first time the rocket carries humans to space. But more importantly, the journey signals that the era of civilian space tourism is officially here — or at least it is for the very wealthy.
On July 11, Richard Branson, fellow billionaire and the founder of space tourism company Virgin Galactic, beat Bezos to the border of space when he flew there on a 90-minute trip with five other passengers on one of his company’s planes.
Bezos’s and Branson’s space travel is a reminder that space is no longer only a place where national governments set out to explore and to learn more about the universe, but a terrain that private businesses are capitalizing on. Bezos has invested billions of his own money into Blue Origin, and his company recently auctioned a ticket to space on one of its rockets for $28 million.
At a pre-launch mission briefing on Sunday, Blue Origin’s director of astronaut sales Ariane Cornell said two more flights were anticipated this year and that the company had “already built a robust pipeline of customers that are interested.”Analysts at the investment banking firm Canaccord Genuity have estimated that tourism to suborbital space could be an $8 billion industry by the end of the decade.
If you want to watch the billionaire’s departure in real time, Blue Origin is hosting a live feed on its website.
Tuesday’s flight path
At 9 am ET on July 20, Blue Origin’s rocket is scheduled to take off from a remote desert in West Texas. At liftoff, the vehicle will launch toward space, carrying a six-seat capsule containing Bezos and the other passengers, pushed upward by a powerful, 60-foot-tall booster rocket.
Blue Origin
The July 20 Blue Origin flight will involve a large rocket that shoots a capsule, where the human passengers sit, into space.
To reach space, New Shepard will move incredibly quickly: faster than Mach 3, or more than three times the speed of sound. A few minutes into the flight, the capsule will separate from the booster, which will then head back toward Earth and land vertically (ensuring it’s reusable for future flights).
Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s capsule will head to the apex of its flight path and cross the Kármán line, the internationally recognized border between Earth’s atmosphere and space. That’s about 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, about 10 miles higher than Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight earlier this month. Like that flight, those traveling on Blue Origin’s New Shepard will also see a stunning view of Earth and have the chance to experience weightlessness.
“They’re obviously going a little bit higher, a little bit faster, but they’re still only going to have just a few minutes of low microgravity experience before coming right back down,” Wendy Cobb, a professor at the US Air Force’s School of Air and Space Studies, told Recode. ”There’s also the notion of what’s called the ‘overview effect.’ That’s when astronauts do get up into space and are high enough to see the Earth for what it is, and it sort of changes how they view things on Earth.”
After reaching the apex of the flight, the capsule will head back into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will eventually deploy parachutes to land. Overall, the whole trip is expected to clock in at just over 10 minutes long.
Blue Origin’s passengers are making history
Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin back in 2000, is fulfilling his lifelong dream of traveling to space. “If you see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity,” explained the billionaire in a video announcing the flight in June. “It’s a big deal for me.”
Bezos will be joined by his brother, firefighter and charity executive Mark Bezos. The flight will also carry both the oldest and youngest people to ever visit space: Wally Funk, an 82-year-old American aviator, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch teenager. Funk, the Federal Aviation Administration’s first female flight inspector, was one of the first women to train to become a NASA astronaut, but was ultimately denied the chance to travel to space because of her gender. Daemen is joining the flight as Blue Origin’s first paying customer; he’s taking the place of a still-unnamed bidder who paid $28 million for a seat (that person reportedly had a scheduling conflict and will travel on a later flight).
While Blue Origin is making history in several ways, the flight is also a reminder that many people see space tourism, at least for the foreseeable future, as primarily funded by and for the very rich — and that it won’t do much to advance science and our understanding of space.
“The experience of a few hyper-wealthy amateurs paying $28 million to vomit for 15 minutes probably won’t bring many average people closer to spaceflight or change their impression of it,” Matthew Hersch, a historian of technology at Harvard, told Recode in an email. “Compared to NASA’s space vehicles, they are clever amusement park rides with minimal utility, intended to support a tourism business that has never been part of NASA’s charter.”
In fact, Bezos and Blue Origin are not the only private ventures looking to cash in on joy rides to space. Virgin Galactic, fresh off Branson’s flight, is already moving ahead with its plans to test and modify its planes for eventual commercial service. And this fall, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is sending its rocket to space too, with billionaire Jared Isaacman aboard. At the same time, NASA is also bringing these companies along for more ambitious ventures, including hiring SpaceX to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.
“Showing customers [and] showing the world that they have enough confidence in their system to get on board and experience it themselves … is a big part of this,” Cobb, of the Air Force School, told Recode. “Part of it is also ego.”
From The Hindu: Sports
Faster, higher, stronger and now ‘together’: IOC adds fourth Olympic motto - The motto now reads ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communis’ in Latin
How would the Olympic Games tell its own story? - Goodwill, friendship, and competition … this is what I stand for.
Tokyo Olympics reports first case of volunteer testing positive for COVID-19 - The Tokyo Olympic organisers on Tuesday announced the first case of a Games volunteer testing positive for COVID-19 along with seven more contractors
Morikawa — taking the pro circuit by storm - Becomes first player to win two Majors on first attempt
Adhiban hits back to beat Vidit - B. Adhiban hit back against Vidit Gujrathi to force the tie-break games while R. Praggnanandhaa lost the second game against Michael Kransekow in the
From The Hindu: National News
Congregational prayers for Id banned in Kashmir - People told to pray at home, trains cancelled as administration cites possible third wave
Navy issues Request For Proposal for 6 submarines under Project-75I - This is the first deal under the strategic partnership model of the procurement procedure
Public health above religion, says Bombay High Court - Disposes of pleas seeking to increase number of animals for sacrifice during Bakrid
Classes X, XI, XII to resume in Punjab from July 26 - Chief Minister announces further easing of COVID curbs, including guests at functions
Parliament proceedings | Govt seeks Parliament nod for ₹23,675 crore extra spending - “As the back-to-back loan are to be met from equivalent capital receipts, the … expenditure will not entail any additional cash outgo,” the supplementary demands for grants said
From BBC: Europe
Record 430 migrants cross English Channel in single day - Some 50 people, including women and young children, were seen landing on a Kent beach in a dinghy.
UK PM ‘resisted lockdown as only over-80s dying’ - Boris Johnson also questioned whether the NHS would be overwhelmed, his former aide tells the BBC.
European Beach Handball Championships: Norway hit with 1,500 euros bikini fine - Norway are fined 1,500 euros (£1,295) for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms at the European Beach Handball Championships.
Tokyo Olympics: Poland send six swimmers home after selecting too many by mistake - Poland send six swimmers home from the Tokyo Olympics after selecting too many by mistake.
Germany floods: Government rejects criticism over flood warnings - As the flood risks ease, questions are raised whether the high death toll could have been avoided.
From Ars Technica
Watch Live: Blue Origin set to launch Jeff Bezos into space - Blue Origin plans to fly two more customer flights in 2021. - link
Dish switching network to AT&T after calling T-Mobile anticompetitive - 10-year deal will make AT&T the primary network provider for Dish MVNO business. - link
The surprising connection between a mockingbird’s song and Kendrick Lamar - A biologist, a neuroscientist, and a musician found four distinct “modes” of transition. - link
Pandemic of unvaccinated rages with delta’s spread; cases up in all 50 states - In polls, the unvaccinated are the least worried about the delta variant. - link
Genealogists say Leonardo da Vinci has 14 living relatives - The Renaissance artist and scientist’s youngest living relative is 1 year old. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A gorgeous young redhead on a flight from Ireland asked the priest beside her, “Father, may I ask a favor?” -
“Of course child. What may I do for you?”
“Well, I bought my mother an expensive hair dryer for her birthday. It is unopened but well over the customs limits and I’m afraid they’ll confiscate it. Is there any way you could carry it through Customs for me? Hide it under your robes perhaps?”
“I would love to help you, dear, but I must warn you, I will not lie.”
“With your honest face, Father, no one will question you,” she replied.
When they got to Customs, she let the priest go first. The official asked, “Father, do you have anything to declare?”
“From the top of my head down to my waist I have nothing to declare.” The official thought this answer strange, so asked, “And what do you have to declare from your waist to the floor?”
Father replied, “I have a marvelous instrument designed to be used on a woman, which is, to date, unused.”
Roaring with laughter, the official said, “Go ahead, Father. Next please!”
A young man went into confession crying, and told the priest: -
“Forgive me father for I have sinned”.
“What have you done?” asked the priest.
“A few weeks ago I went to the library. I remained there until closing time and when I was about to go home, rain started pouring down. It was so intense I had to wait in the library. I had waited for a while with the librarian, a young attractive single girl, then one thing led to another, and I ended up sleeping with her”. The man stopped talking but kept weeping.
“Well don’t cry, it’s a sin but it is not that bad. You should say 5 Hail Marys and it will be forgiven”. Said the priest.
“But it doesn’t end there” the man kept sobbing. “a few days later my elderly neighbor asked me to help her with her computer. Her husband was hospitalized and she couldn’t send an email to her son. I went there and fixed the problem, but when I was about to leave, rain started pouring down. It was really stormy and I had to wait. One thing led to another and I ended up sleeping with the old lady” the man cried.
“Oh dear well that makes it harder indeed, but still - you should say 15 Hail Marys and you will be forgiven” Said the priest.
“Oh I’m afraid the worst part is still ahead” cried the man. “Yesterday I went to the barber. I was his last client that day. As soon as he finished and was about to close the shop rain started pouring down so intensely, I had to wait with him. One thing led to another and I ended up sleeping with him as well” the man cried.
“Oh dear, it is indeed worse than I thought” said the priest.
“So what should I do father?” the man asked.
“Well” answered the priest, “you should get the fuck out of here before it starts raining!”.
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Blue Origin