Thoughts about the last shuttle flight

At first I did not know what to think of the last shuttle flight.
On the one hand the Space Shuttle  was a cool project, that I followed from my childhood days, and pretty much the only thing going on in manned space flight recently (besides the international Space Station, but the two are interrelated).
On the other hand the Space Shuttle program had a pretty atrocious record of safety, with both the Challenger and the Columbia blowing up in under 200 flights. Amazingly, Israel can now note the death of one of its fighter pilots, Ilan Ramon, in a Space Shuttle flight: STS 107.
That's when I read the Economist leader from June 30th. According to this leader: "Inner space (UM: Earth's atmosphere) is useful. Outer space is history", they also say that this is: "The end of the Space Age".
On the other hand I listened to the guys from http://www.spacevidcast.com/ talk on Dr kiki's science hour. They were very cheerful, and said something along the lines of: "now that NASA and fat government is out of the way, the time for private space flight is here, and it is very exciting!"
I'm not sure who I'm going to believe in this debacle, but one thing is for sure: I want manned space flight to go on. And I'm willing to put my own time and effort into it, not that I know anything about the subject.
So to end all this, I just found out that one of Israel's SF guys wants to fly a computer into space. I'm following him, and you may too.
This is his Hebrew blog: http://nicecriticalmass.blogspot.com/

So I've been using Google Plus for a week now

Here are some of my thoughts regarding that.
I think my Google Plus story so far says more about me than about it. You see, I've come into Myspace as a fan of some alternative Arab Rock artists. From there I've joined Facebook, because many of my Montreal High school friends have been in it.

When I've joined Facebook in 2007 it was new in Israel, but hardly a new phenomenon in the US.
With Google Plus it was all different. I wanted to join the day it was founded, but they would not let me. Then last week one of my Gmail friends (someone who studied creative writing with me three years ago), asked if anyone wanted invitations.
Others said "why?"
I said: "Yesss!"

So here I am, a week later, 233 people I've added to my circles, 40 people have added me to theirs.
What does this say about me?
Dunno, probably not very good things.
Why did I become such an active socialite?
Also dunno, but I like my Google Plus feed wayyyy better than my Facebook feed.
Hope all my Facebook friends will join me, but realistically, that will take years, if ever...

Explaining this blog part III - General Issues

OK.
This took a while!
If any of you are reading my Hebrew blog, then you know that I also did not post there for quite a while, and when I did , recently, I apologized, said that this was partly because of my long period of Hebrew Literature studies at the Ben Gurion University in the Negev (actually in Beer Sheva to be more specific, but that's the name, what can I do?).
So same goes for this blog. It has been a long time when I had to both work and study, and this blog suffered. Now I only have work, and I promise to blog more regularly. Also, I promise to stop saying (after this post) what this blog is going to be about, and start actually blogging.
Truth of the matter?
It took me a long time to start to figure out what to write in this blog and what to write in the Hebrew one. For a long time it was some version of "I'll write the posts in one, and translate them (or some of them) to the other".
But gradually I figured that this blog needs to deal with more global or general Israeli issues (a look from the outside on Israel), while the Hebrew one is more local  / a look from the inside.
So, if you also want to read me Hebrew ramblings, but you can't understand the language, feel free to Google Translate!
Next time, which will be soon, I promise y'all a real post!