Never attribute to malice...

...what can simply be attributed to stupidity."
~My dad

Except in this case, I've decided to go into one of my rare forays into whole-hearted malice attribution.

Here's the story that triggered this outpouring:
CNN reports that officials at NASA are saying "The system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse."

Normally, I'd just say "Yeah well, we pulled all the money from the satellites to send folks to the Moon & Mars. We all know how much our idiot prince likes big projects."

But in this case I have to say this is a clear case of retardation meets malice in a new, previously undiscovered fusion of the two.

My theory: The addle-pated cronies installed at NASA saw a certain magic word in their list of ongoing projects and decided they deserved less attention than others.

See if you can spot the magic word in the following sentence: "The system of environmental satellites."

They see the word "environmental" and immediately that triggers some sort of reptilian reflex in their brains closely related to touching a hot stove or zipping up their zippers a bit too fast.

Not realizing, in this case, "environmental" is being used in its original sense of "The world around us", "The planet" or more simply: "Stuff"

End result, the budget is cut and we're potentially left without little things we've come to enjoy.

Like Hurricane prediction.

Not that that seems to matter.