Tuesday: Opinion on the World

Every week on Tuesday, I will be finding two different news articles from various news sources and writing an opinion on them.  Please note that the opinion expressed on my blog is representative of my opinion and should not reflect the opinion of others, either the original news author or my professors.

From FOXNews.com, I've learned about the world's "Fastest Supercomputer ever..."  As the news article states, this new supercomputer has entered development less than a year after the last supercomputer was delivered.  The computer will be used for things such as weather forecasting, according to the FOXNews.com article.  When reading this article, my first question is, "Why do we need a supercomputer to try to predict the weather?"  Do we not currently have a group of meteorologist that have, as of yet, been unable to successfully predict the weather even a small number of times?  I understand the importance behind advancing our technology, but how does this advance our technology as a whole?  Does developing a computer than runs at 20 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second) help us to bring computer access to the masses?  It is my opinion that in the 21st century, computer access is no longer a luxury, but is swiftly becoming a necessity.  What are your thoughts on this situation?

On a separate note, I also learned about bailed out financial institutions sponsoring a Squash tournament.  For everyone unfamiliar with the game of squash (I was before finding this article and deciding to do a bit of research), it is described by Wikipedia as being a racquet sport played between two people using racquets and a hollow rubber ball.  My question to the executives of these companies, JP Morgan and American Express, is, "Is this an acceptable use of part of the federal bailout money you received to keep from collapsing?"  Although the companies are believed to have only spent a combined $125,000 on the sponsorship, that money could still have been allocated to helping them recover from their near collapses.  What are your thoughts on having your tax dollars be used for a bailout of the financial institutions and then have those same institutions sponsor a sporting event?

If you would like to check out these two articles, please follow the links below.

Supercomputer: www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487324,00.html

Squash sponsorship:  www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487133,00.html