Good news is boring

It’s interesting how little press NASA gets unless they make a mistake. Why is that? NASA does some crazy stuff that takes some of the most brilliant minds in the worlds to accomplish; but it’s always an afterthought. That is, until they make a mistake. Sure they have their problems, some of them seem minor to us…but are you launching people into outer space? No. It’s not that easy.

“KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) — The space shuttle Discovery touched down Tuesday morning, completing NASA’s first shuttle mission since Columbia broke apart during re-entry in February 2003.”
– [CNN] ‘Discovery is home’ – Aug 9, 2005

A pet peeve of mine is not that NASA doesn’t get enough credit, it’s that good news in general is boring to most people.

Why?

Why is it that we don’t stop for someone with a flat tire, but we slow down (and almost stop) to see someone being pulled out of a burning wreck of a car accident? We hate that people die in war, but we want to see the pictures…the high definition video-feed that makes you think you can taste the sand, sulfur and that weird rusty taste from blood? We want that “in your face” bad news, but we change the channel when it’s good news.

Why?

We go to the movies to see the hero. We look for the warm fuzzy movies to take our kids to. We give terrible ratings to movies without happy endings. We loath movies were the bad guy wins.

Why?

I don’t know, but it’s sure confusing to me that we worry about video games being too violent, but we have family hour watching the news which is just as violent. It’s confusing that we demand bad news so much, now that’s all the media wants to give us. It’s confusing to me that we want to look past reality when we go to the movies and when we watch the news.

I’m going to go watch Disney movies now. Thanks for listening to my doomsday report. :)