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A RENEWED SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
Source: The White House - January 2004
President Bush announced a new vision for the Nation's space exploration program. The President committed the United States to a long-term human and robotic program to explore the solar system, starting with a return to the Moon that will ultimately enable future exploration of Mars and other destinations.
The President's vision affirms our Nation's commitment to manned space exploration. It gives NASA a new focus and clear objectives. It will be affordable and sustainable while maintaining the highest levels of safety.
The benefits of space technology are far-reaching and affect the lives of every American. Space exploration has yielded advances in communications, weather forecasting, electronics, and countless other fields. For example, image processing technologies used in lifesaving CAT Scanners and MRIs trace their origins to technologies engineered for use in space
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BOX OFFICE MIRACLE
Source: AP – FEB 2004
LOS ANGELES – Mel Gibson’s PASSION OF THE CHRIST focuses on the 12 hours of Jesus' life leading to his crucifixion. All characters speak Latin and Aramaic without the aid of subtitles.
Mel Gibson explained at a news conference…"Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages. They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius. I want to show the film without subtitles. Hopefully, I'll be able to transcend language barriers with visual storytelling. If I fail, I'll put subtitles on it, though I don't want to. The idea came to me 10 years ago and has been rambling around in my empty head, very slowly taking shape ever since. I think this is a pretty timeless and timely story to tell, involving an area where there's turbulence now just as there was turbulence then because history repeats itself. I want to show the humanity of Christ as well as the divine aspect. It's a rendering that for me is very realistic and as close as possible to what I perceive the truth to be."
For many, Christian depictions of the Crucifixion of Christ through the centuries became so decorative that they lost the original passion. Beautiful works of art indeed, but they became nearly bloodless with no evidence of real emotion or pain. Artistic depictions of the Passion were reduced to a mere religious iconography. These works of art have deep connection to the faithful, but no connection to rest of the world apart from their obvious decorative beauty. Mel Gibson's artistic masterpiece restores the lost dimension of the suffering of the Christ in a very graphic manner.
Over the centuries, many churches have de-emphasized the use of graphic images. But, of all the denominations of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church has done the best job of preserving the passion of Christ within its art. It is out of this rich tradition Mel Gibson comes. For many, his film becomes a wonderful gift of remembrance. It restores an important dimension of the life of Christ.
Eventually, subtitles were used and as of July 2004, Mel Gibson’s PASSION OF THE CHRIST has grossed $609 million dollars worldwide.
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LORD OF THE BOX OFFICE
Source: AP - FEB 2004
LOS ANGELES – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING fulfilled every expectation - and then some. In a historic sweep, the final installment in the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy (a work based on Christian mythology) won 11 Oscars in 11 nominated categories, including Best Picture, at the 76th annual Academy Awards, held Sunday night at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.
The 11 wins for "Rings" tied it with "Titanic" and "Ben-Hur" for the most in Academy Award history. Its perfect record, though, is unprecedented. (The first film, "Fellowship of the Ring," won four Oscars out of 13 nominations, while the second, "The Two Towers," went two for six.)
The coronation of the "Rings" - the first fantasy film to win Best Picture - included three Oscars for writer-director Peter Jackson, capping a long and enormously successful seven years spent devoted to bringing the trilogy to the screen. The New Zealand-made films have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.
NOTE: Look further down this page to CHRISTIANS EMBRACE MYTH an article from Christian History Magazine
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SPRING EQUINOX
Source: Knowth.com - March 2004
For the Spring Equinox experience check out the illumination of the back-stone in Cairn T at Loughcrew by the rising sun.
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Quote from the book "Light Year Ago" by Tim O'Brien..."Observing the sun beam on the backstone around the days of the equinox reveals a find interplay between the symbols on the back-stone of Cairn T and the sun's movement."
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SCIENTISTS DISCOVER PLANETOID
Source: AP - March 2004
LOS ANGELES – California Institute of Technology - Scientists announced the discovery of a frozen, shiny red world some 8 billion miles from Earth that is the most distant known object in the solar system. They are calling it a "planetoid,' saying it does not meet the definition of a planet.
Named Sedna, after the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, the planetoid is 800 to 1,100 miles in diameter, or about three-quarters the size of Pluto, and probably half rock, half ice. Sedna is the largest object found orbiting the sun since the discovery of Pluto in 1930. It trumps in size another icy world, called Quaoar, discovered by the same team in 2002. It is currently three times farther from Earth than Pluto, the ninth and outermost planet.
Sedna follows a highly elliptical path around the sun, a circuit that takes 10,500 years to complete. It loops out as far as 84 billion miles from the sun. From Sedna's surface, the sun would appear so small that it could be blocked out by the head of a pin. Scientists believe Sedna is the first known member of the long-hypothesized Oort Cloud, a sphere of material orbiting the sun that explains certain comets. If Sedna is part of the Oort Cloud, the cloud extends much closer inward toward the sun than previously believed. The Oort theory holds that comets in the cloud probably started out as icy objects in places like the Kuiper Belt that were flung out of the solar system by one of the giant planets.
The location of Sedna suggests that it got stuck where it is because its orbit was affected long ago by a star that is no longer nearby and is one of the most pristine objects in the solar system. Scientists believe that very little has happened to this object since the beginning of the solar system because there's not much else out there, so it hasn't been impacted by other objects, and it hasn't been heated by the sun.
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THEY'RE BACK!!!
Source: MSNBC NEWS- March 2004
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican Air Force pilots filmed eleven unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
A videotape made widely available to the news media on Tuesday shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in the sky.
The lights were filmed on March 5th by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 11,480 feet, and allegedly surrounded the Air Force jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar.
The plane's captain, Maj. Magdaleno Castanon, said the military jets chased the lights. When the jets stopped following the objects, they disappeared, he said. A Defense Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the videotape was filmed by members of the Mexican Air Force, but declined to comment further.
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SPACE SHIP ONE MAKES HISTORY
Source: LA TIMES - JUNE 2004
MOJAVE, Calif. - Rocket plane SpaceShipOne instantly transformed private-sector space travel from a rocket geek’s fantasy into reality with its 100-kilometer milestone flight.
The rocket plane's designer, Burt Rutan, or billionaire backer Paul Allen claim that SpaceShipOne could be a profit-making venture, but it's up to the wide spectrum of players in the field to figure out how to make piloted suborbital flights profitable.
Although they may differ over the best way to do that, nearly all agree the flight to the 100-kilometer mark eliminated their biggest obstacle.
At the Mojave Airport, where SpaceShipOne was developed and flown, eight companies are working on space projects. And just days after the airport was designated a commercial spaceport, a $100 million proposal for yet another Mojave space venture was sitting on his desk and they're just looking for the name to put on the check.
"Burt Rutan (the rocket plane's designer) has destroyed the giggle factor in this business forever," said Pat Bahn, who is the Washington director of the Suborbital Institute as well as president of Oklahoma-based TGV Rockets. TGV is developing its own vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vertical landing for suborbital space flights.
SpaceShipOne proved that a company with only a few dozen employees could indeed build a vehicle capable of flying to outer space, for a few minutes of weightlessness and a view that pilot Mike Melvill said made him feel like he was touching "the face of God."
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