Tag Archives: United States Congress
Congress Holds the Purse Strings
The debate is by no means over – it just will shift venues. Congress holds the purse strings – and the Constellation program has some very powerful supporters on both sides of the building and both sides of the aisle. … Continue reading
Tagged Alabama, Bill Nelson, Florida, Human spaceflight, Richard Shelby, Space, United States, United States CongressO'Brien BLOG »
Science for Sale »
posted March 13, 2013 by Miles O'Brien
HINKLEY, Calif. – We all love a neat, tidy Hollywood ending to a David and Goliath story. Sadly, in the real world, they are hard to come by. More often than not, the little guy might win a battle, but Goliath prevails over the long haul — winning the war.
Before I went to Hinkley, I did, of course, watch the movie once again. As it turns out Erin Brockovich is accurate in many respects.
You might remember the woman who gets a big check at the end of the movie after the down-on-her-luck, crusading legal assistant has brought a giant utility to its knees for polluting the groundwater beneath the tiny desert town half way between L.A. and Las Vegas.
In the movie, she was known as Donna Jensen (and played by Marg Helgenberger). There is no real-life Donna Jensen — the details of her story are a composite of several real-life travails.
But Roberta Walker was the main inspiration. Naturally, it was not long after I met her that I asked her what she thought of the movie.
Read the rest of the post and see the video story here.
About Miles
Miles O’Brien is a veteran freelance broadcast and web journalist who focuses on science, technology & aerospace.
He is the Science Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, and a regular correspondent for the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE and the National Science Foundation Science Nation series.
For nearly seventeen of his thirty years in the news business, he worked for CNN as the Science and Space Correspondent and the anchor of various programs, including American Morning.
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