Mine for intelligence?

As Charlie Brown would say, UGH, I CAN'T STAND IT!! It's been WAY too long since I've written here -- my overdue apologies!!

OK, here are some things that have been rolling around in my brain for a while -- hopefully they've solidified to something somewhat intelligible. (I hope that's a word... well, it is now. :))

This is old news, but what the heck was the deal with all those mining accidents that were happening a couple of months ago?!??? Was the devil just taking aim at a particular industry & destroying some innocent lives, or are there just some primitive ideas that need to be conquered here?? In case it's the latter, I humbly submit the following.

(Well, OK. I idealistically submit the following.)

Why do we need human beings stuck in coal mines every day? I was telling someone the other day that maybe in certain parts of the country it's a cultural thing. (Here in West Texas, working out on the oil fields can be pretty risky, but we do it anyway.) But still I'm sure they're down in the mines risking their lungs & their lives so they can earn money & support their families with an honest living.

And (I know I keep harping on this) why the heck do we keep paying government money for that antiquated space shuttle program? All that rocket science just so we can prove YET again, mission after mission, that there AIN'T no life on other planets, no matter how you spin it??? There is some serious brainpower, though, on those projects.

So why not combine the two efforts and design robots or something to do the mining for us? No lives risked necessarily, just all the dirty work done by remote control. And maybe the coal miners could be trained instead to do the operation and tech support, etc. I personally would MUCH rather spend my tax dollars supporting a state-of-the-art safety technology for coal miners rather than ANOTHER rinky-dinky ol' shuttle mission. We've been to the moon. We've got the solar system mapped out. Can't we PLEASE just save a few lives with our brainpower and tax dollars???

If only we weren't so wishy-washy.