Month: March 2006

Iran Crisis Gets More Serious

Israel’s Defense Minister:

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz was asked whether Israel was ready to use military action if the Security Council proved unable to act against what Israel and the West believe is a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

“My answer to this question is that the state of Israel has the right give all the security that is needed to the people in Israel. We have to defend ourselves,” Mofaz told Reuters after a meeting with his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung.

Everybody say “uh-oh!”

Warp Drive Watch

Space.com[*1] has another article on scientists taking seriously warp drive for space travel.

So you’re looking for the latest in faster-than-light interstellar travel via traversable wormholes? That’s one theme among many discussed at Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF), a meeting held here Feb. 12-16 that brought together more than 600 experts to thrash out a range of space exploration issues.

Along with the run-of-the-mill space debates of the day, STAIF has also become a respected venue for researchers that dabble in the exotic, the thought-provoking novel, or the downright weird anomaly.

STAIF’s web site is here[*2] .

Stories I Don’t Care About

A random sampling, from Yahoo! News Top Stories[*1] :

Fastow says Lay lied about Enron’s problems[*2]

Stone Offers Kisses for Mideast Peace[*3]

Paisley Leads ACM Nominations With Six[*4]

Hatcher Discloses She Was Sexually Abused[*5]

Study Warns Women About Spring Break[*6]

NYSE goes public, shares surge[*7]

From the Guantánamo papers[*8]

Blair to raise ‘more ambitious’ trade plan with Brazilian leader[*9]

Bush returns to New Orleans[*10]

DeLay Wins Texas Republican Primary[*11]

Dana Reeve Dies of Lung Cancer at 44[*12]

I know that this pretty much guarantees that FNCNNMSNBCABCCBSNBC will spend months obsessing on all of these stories. I used to think I was interested in just about everything, but that’s just not true.

I Wish I’d Said This . . .

The Opinionated Bastard Blames the Media[*1]

I want to be able to read the New York Times or watch CNN, or listen to NPR and be able to trust what they’re telling me. Since I can’t do that, since the media is no longer fulfilling their basic function, I have to blog, and I have to read blogs. It pisses me off, because I had better things to do this decade than be my own news service. I don’t like having to read transcripts of press conferences because I can’t trust the media to even write down what was said correctly. I don’t like having to spend hours finding real experts on the web to analyze how this or that media expert has distorted the facts. I don’t like having to pore through the blogs of journalists, soldiers and Iraqi citizens so I can get some inkling of how things are really going, without the hype. Even though I do it, I don’t even like having to download the Brookings report once/month in order to see what the numbers say about how the war is going.

But I have to do all that, because its the only way I can truly be an informed citizen.

Damn, I wish I’d written that. Well Done, O.B

Hat tip: Instapundit[*2] , of course.

Trophy Snub Irks Jayhawks

Via Yahoo News: Self wondering why Big 12 had a trophy for Texas but not Kansas[*1]

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — When Texas beat Oklahoma 72-48 Sunday afternoon to clinch a tie with Kansas for the Big 12 championship, the Longhorns were handed a handsome trophy to hoist in a midcourt celebration.The day before, when Kansas beat Kansas State 66-52 to clinch at least a tie with Texas, nobody from the Big 12 office was even at the game to congratulate them. The co-champions from Austin were pictured in newspapers and on television proudly displaying their Big 12 trophy. The co-champions from Lawrence merely got back on their bus and went home without so much as a handshake from anybody from the conference office.

A prediction: Kansas will beat Texas should the two teams meet again in the Big 12 or NCAA tournaments.

Spaceplane . . . retired?

]This brings up the question of “what do we have now that replaces this thing?”

AviationNow reports Two-Stage-to-Orbit ‘Blackstar’ System Shelved at Groom Lake?[*1] .

A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital.

The manned orbiter’s primary military advantage would be surprise overflight. There would be no forewarning of its presence, prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights.

Photo credit: www.aviationnow.com/Aviation Week & Space Technology

Cats 1, Bird Flu 0

Austrian cats get, then beat, bird flu; health experts plan for pandemic[*1]

VIENNA (AFP) – Austrian officials confirmed the H5N1 bird flu was found in cats but said the felines had managed to fight off the virus, while world health experts prepared for the dread possibility of it mutating into a form capable of devastating humans.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 virus appeared to be spreading broadly.

Well, Who’s Surprised By This?

ABC News reports EXCLUSIVE: Iraq Weapons — Made in Iran?[*1]

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

“The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production,” says explosives expert Kevin Barry. “So it’s the same make and model.”

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.