This is not good:

The President's ignorance of science might have remained a private matter, but he chose to speak on the subject of evolution and "intelligent design." This is a great pity.

Science -- from the loftiest of theorizing (like that of Einstein or, oh, Darwin) through the conducting of painstakingly difficult experiments to the application of new knowledge to the improvement of human life -- science, I say, is the chief engine of our society. The great bulk of business entrepreneurs so celebrated in certain circles as the movers and shakers have made their marks by exploiting the knowledge gained by scientists.

Even its opponents grant the prestige and accomplishments of science by pretending to do science themselves, whether in the form of "e-meters" that turn galvanic skin responses into signs of mystic energy flows in the body or in that of ID, which artfully turns "unknown" into "unknowable" in a flourish of bad math and illogic.

Our education system is systematically pushing kids away from the "harder" subjects like math and science and into areas like journalism and ethnic studies which require little or no intellectual effort whatsoever. So, while the Japanese are cranking out 3-ounce digital cameras, we're using them to create crap like Current TV.

Wired News reports on the boom of uranium mining claims in the western U.S.:

Wyoming, which has some of the biggest uranium deposits in the United States, hadn't seen more than 100 new mining claims over the last 10 years combined. But now claim offices are jumping across the region. Utah and Colorado, two big players in the market, have gone from virtually no new claims for years, according to the BLM, to a combined 8,500 and rising in uranium-rich counties in 2005.

Thomas Sowell has some thoughts about the NY Times perception of a "lack of heroes" in Iraq:

If you judged by the front page of this and many other newspapers, our troops in Iraq don't do anything except get killed.

The plain fact is that the mainstream media have been too busy depicting our troops as victims to have much time left to tell about the heroic things they have done, the far greater casualties which they have inflicted on their enemies, or their attempts to restore some basic services and basic decencies to this country that has been torn apart for years by internal and external wars -- even before the first American troops arrived on the scene.

The unrelenting quest for stories depicting American troops as victims -- including even front-page stories about the financial problems of some National Guardsmen called to active duty -- has created a virtual reality in the media that has no place for heroes.

To find the reason why "there are no heroes" in this war, media editors and reporters need only to look in a mirror.

Shuttle safely lands at Edwards AFB in California.

Nasa has been extremely careful for the shuttle's return to Earth, looking for ideal weather conditions to make the shuttle's glide down through the atmosphere as trouble-free as possible.

Iraqis debate what role Islam will play in their new constitution.

"If Ayatollah al-Sistani suggests that he wants Islam in the constitution, that will harden the position of those who want a religious-oriented state," says Tom Palmer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, who has met with members of Iraq's parliament on the constitution and is closely following the drafting process.

"It's possible that the law would be innocuous and merely say that no legislation may violate Islam. The big problem is, who gets to determine that? Religious courts? Whose?" says Mr. Palmer.

Here's where we get down to the fundamental problem: Islam does not recognize any separation of religion and state. Until it does, the crisis of Islam vs. the civilized world will continue.

US, Australian, English authorities warn of imminent attacks in Saudi Arabia.

"We continue to believe that terrorists are planning further attacks in Saudi Arabia, including against Westerners and places associated with Westerners," said a warning from the Foreign Office on the British Embassy Web site. "We believe aviation interests remain a possible terrorist target."

Federal Reserve Board set to raise interest rates again in response to the growing economy.

"The economy remains very solid and it appears likely to expand at a pace of 4-1/2 percent to 5 percent in the second half of the year," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management in Boston.

Gang war in prison:

It all started Aug. 1 with three assaults by Latinos on white inmates in North Block, a sprawling section with five tiers of cells. It appears some Latino prisoners took issue with a tattoo or marking that one of the white prisoners had, indicating he was allied with Latino gangs in Southern California.

The north/south gang rivalry in California has been going on for nearly four decades, one of the products of which was the split between the Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia.

Now gangs from the north wear red and gangs from the south wear blue. Territorial fights on the streets are often deadly.

42 inmates were injured in the riot.

The Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, has developed a plan for the U.S. military's response to terror attacks in the U.S.

The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.

The scenarios range from relatively modest crowd-control missions to full- scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device, several officers said.

Some of the worst-case scenarios involve three attacks at the same time; a Pentagon directive earlier this year ordered Northcom, as the command is called, to plan for multiple simultaneous attacks.

Michael Barone, writing at Real Clear Politics:

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.