One Giant "Whoops!" for Mankind

This one time, I popped in a VHS tape on which I had recorded a recent episode of “The Amazing Race”. As the picture appeared, I realized that the tape was actually my sister’s last ballet performance prior to the wild dog attack that left her in a wheelchair. A few seconds into the performance, the tape cuts to the opening of the Amazing Race. Ruh Roh! It turned out later that I hadn’t taped over the original, just a copy, but nonetheless, I still feel bad about it. That was until now. NASA just announced that for over a year, they have been unable to locate the 700 boxes of original tapes and recordings of the first (and subsequent 2^nd-5^th) moon landings. NASA is playing down the incident, saying they have back-ups of everything that was lost (and by back-ups they mean ‘we once played the moon landing tapes on a TV screen and videotaped the TV’. No. I’m not kidding. That is how NASA backs up data.)

The US Government really needs to come up with a form or something to keep better track of their stuff. First it is the moon landing tapes, then what, the Constitution? "Oh we haven't seen that in awhile! Somebody took it out of the archives and never brought it back. Until we find it, we're gonna make all decisions for the country based on this word scramble we got off the side of a Happy Meal box." There is a chance that this is already what is going on.