This is simply ridiculous. With wars, limits on civil liberties and all the rest eating away at our freedoms, it shows the paucity of intellect that this is what they complain about. Get a life! Read the whole story about what Google is doing instead.
Google logo tweak sends critics into orbit
Should the world’s most-used search engine be more of a Yankee Google Dandy?
Google Inc. occasionally features light-hearted doodles on its colorful home-page logo to commemorate special occasions. But now they are drawing criticism from conservatives for not being more patriotic.
The Mountain View, Calif., company bathes its logo in stars and stripes every Independence Day, but last week’s decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch — the second “g” in Google was replaced with a drawing of the Soviet satellite — is being blasted by some conservatives.
Not only did Google honor an achievement by a totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy, they griped, but it did so without having ever altered its logo to commemorate U.S. military personnel on Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
“It’s a kick to your belly,” said conservative blogger Giovanni Gallucci, 39, a social media consultant from Dallas. “I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks and want to make sure people are recognized who might not normally be recognized . . . but why not celebrate the struggles that we’ve come through as a people?”
What it all boils down to is this:
No matter what you do, somebody will think it sucks. © hhopper 2007
#29“the point is to set up a working base, and then a settlement from which the industrial base needed to build spacecraft in space can be managed. It’s the starting point for industry and colonization in the Solar System… an undertaking that if not taken, will lead to the ultimate doom of every last man woman and child on this world.”
Beats me why you would have that point of view, or just how not doing what you suggest will “lead the to ultimate doom of every last man woman and child….” Earth is our home. Earth is the only planet with the right amount of gravity, the right temperature, the right atmosphere, etc. Earth is the only planet where we have food to eat, water to drink, and air to breath. I’ve never been to any other planets, but I imagine that Earth is much more scenic as well. I certainly don’t understand why the “most important task we have on this world is the task of getting off this world,” but I certainly don’t want my tax dollars spent to achieve that misguided goal.
You gotta love short-sighted folk.
#33 – I agree it is our home and I can say with certainty that in our lifetime, or our great great great great great great grandchildren’s lifetime we will never find so perfect a home…
Except for this. As long as we are bound to the cradle, we are mortal. We can end. Eco-disaster maybe… new virus or pathogen perhaps… everyone’s favorite, the asteroid… who knows? Be we are sitting ducks to any number of unforeseen apocalypses.
I don’t literally mean we all need to leave Earth… but once we finally become self sustaining off the Earth… then we are immortal. If we can live on Mars, or Io, or a celestial archipelago of orbiting asteroids, grow food, raise families, raise cities, create, destroy, pass through cycles of birth and death unchained from Mother Earth, then we are no longer a race that lives under the looming specter of extinction.
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Hey… If that ain’t practical enough for you… The Space Program gave us tin foil and tin foil helps keep food safer longer, which in a small way helps fight starvation… Add up all the little innovations that went into landing on the moon, or launching the space shuttle, that were added to our daily lives…
The space program has made our lives better. So even if we don’t need to get off the rock right away… even if we dodge the bullet forever… we can only be made richer and better for conquering the limits of our world and surpassing all the expectations of the Universe… and with hand outstretched, our feet severed from the Earth… lifting off from the shoulders of giants before us… we can touch the face of God… and look back upon the marble we’ve left behind and revel in the glory of knowing we’ve done his will.**
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**metaphorically speaking. Obviously, OFTLO does not endorse literal interpretations of Biblical stuff.
there are entire segments of the media (and this includes bloggers) whose sole function is to make pointless noise. when not bashing each other in some great partisan circle-jerk, they have to flail about looking for other targets. it is just Google’s turn, that’s all.
Obama didn’t wear his man jewelry.
An anti-war group runs a silly ad.
A crippled twelve year old isn’t poor enough.
Google celebrates the space fad.
Hit the wingnut on the head,
and it spins round and round.
God only knows when it will stop,
Over some stupid thing they found.
Outrage drive an engine
Of greed and intimidation.
Spittle flecked cries of sin.
Bring down the proudest nation.
Why stop at the Cold War era? What about the brits? We were at war with them back in the early 1800s. Just because we’re supposed to be all buddy-buddy now, doesn’t excuse giving one of space shuttles an english name! The “Endeavour” should have been spelled “Endeavor”,
as it is in the dictionary. I don’t know why NASA chose to give it the british spelling, after americans footed the bill for it. Talk about killing up to our former enemies for no damn good reason! Where was the conversative outrage on that one?!
Oops sorry. I meant to say “Talk about KISSING up to our former enemies.” I got distracted, typed the wrong word there.
And they didn’t change the google.ca logo for Turkey Day (aka Canadian Thanksgiving) last weekend. Now I’m really offended.
Malicious bastards….
I can’t believe there is this much discussion and finger pointing over someone’s artwork. That’s all it is.
If I were to draw a picture of Hilary’s cankles and post them on the Internet all of you left-wing liberals would be up in arms over my pointing out the fact that yes, the junior senator from Illinois, excuse me, New York has ankles that more than slightly resemble ham hocks.
If, on the other hand, if I point out that IMHO no, we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq because a) we had unfinished business in Afghanistan and b) we had no proof of WMD in Iraq, you right-wing wackos would get all bent out of shape and call me unpatriotic.
As it turns out, I spent 22 years in the military that ended in 2005, so, yes, I did serve during both wars in the Middle East. doesn’t make our current foray there right. And, yes…Hilary has cankles. Get over it.
As far as Google’s pages go…it is a private company with their own art department. until they get public funding prohibiting them from putting drawings of Sputnik or phallus’s or women’s breasts on their page…they can do what they want.
So, I guess this is my way of agreeing with posting #4. I’m just a little more verbose (or exasperated) than Marc.
“the struggles that we’ve come through as a people?”
They say yanks can’t grok irony, right? Which bit of “larger value of `people'” didn’t he get?
You may disagree with these conservatives (big surprise there, eh?) but you can’t write a post saying it’s No Big Deal and then get over 40 comments if it really is No Big Deal. And you can’t use the “how can you talk about this when there’s a war going on?” argument when half the posts on this blog deal with oddball trivia (that’s why we read it and love it, by the way). And if this topic really isn’t No Big Deal, then you can’t say these conservatives are “Wacko” for bringing it up.
The real reason that some people have their knickers in a knot is that the sputnik of google looks like the spaghetti monster god with an eruction (yes, I do spell, but this is a deliberate mist).
#43 – Turns out, we actually can do all of that stuff…
#45 – . . . but not without loss of credibility.
#44,
I never looked at it like that. You may be right.
G