Current events

Juxtaposition of the day. First this:

Maybe the Final Frontier just got a little closer:

We all know that what we think of as "the news" is evolving rapidly. The social networks are a part of it, and it looks like they're becoming a more signigicant component  even sooner than many of us thought:

After a journey of nine years and 3+ billion miles, the New Horizons sends us the remarkably sharp photo of Pluto. How freakin' cool is that? I like Charles Krauthammer's take:

Oh, suck it up, ladies:

 A Marine officer who led the service's only all-female recruit battalion was fired amid complaints of a toxic leadership environment — but her supporters say she was only trying to make the unit better by holding women to tougher standards.

The Final Frontier is still there . . .

Now, I really believe there is true equality:

The first time I heard the question was a year ago at my brother’s wedding, an occasion where such coaxing is commonplace. “When are you and Christian going to get married?” asked a well-meaning aunt whose daughter married another woman several years previously. “I know it’s legal in New York. Wouldn’t it make your mother happy?”

I've written before that there is a difference between refusing to serve a gay couple at your restaruant and declining to cater a gay wedding. How that difference, largely unacknowledged now, is handled will deteremine how well religous libery advocates and and anti-discrimination advocates are going to be able to accommodate each other.

Now comes a new wrinkle:

The most chilling part of the horror inflicted by the gunman in the AME church in Charleston is that he worshiped with the congregation for an hour before shooting nine of them dead. Was he trying to work up the courage? Was he savoring the moment to come? Whatever it was, that one hour he spent among them just underscores the absolulte evil he took into that church.