Sure, we are enjoying an age of technological advances that make anything found in Hillard’s “Greater Magic” seem so…20th century. The Hubble Space Telescope is one piece of technology that has absolutely exceeded the expectations of most who encounter it.

Last August, NASA reported that Hubble’s eight year-old Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph failed to respond to commands and went into suspended mode. (This “failing to respond” issue is imminently familiar to parents of eight year-olds.)

The Spectrograph was instrumental in allowing scientists to detect massive black holes. From their web page on black holes, NASA states:

Black holes are objects so dense that not even light can escape their gravity, and since nothing can travel faster than light, nothing can escape from inside a black hole.

So, in a way, think of the common perception of Jessica Simpson’s brain as a black hole, and “intelligence” as light and and you get the general idea.

Realizing the severity of this issue, I sent several notes to NASA alerting them to an alternate source of data on massive black holes — specifically magic shops, both online and the dwindling brick-and-mortar varieties.

I still haven’t heard back from them, but I do recognize they are busy.