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The Guardian of London has an intriguing piece on the justice of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (discriminating readers will notice I have found a gold mine at Real Clear today). The author, Max Hastings, wishes to...

Ask What You Can Do To Get To Mars

If God had meant for man to fly in space, he would have given him a brain to figure out how to build and navigate spaceships! Now, that THAT issue is settled, the Chief strongly believes that we need to be pushing ourselves into that great beyond.

For many years people have asked the ever so important question, "Why Mars - why should we go to Mars?" For every individual who ponders this question there is a unique response. There is no correct answer to the conundrum and there is no single best answer either. Everyone must challenge their own intellect and form their own opinions on why, or why not, which brings about the focus of this rant. The driving question for those of us already dedicated to human space exploration should not be "Why Mars", but rather "What?" Mars. As in, what will you do to help set the human race on the path to Mars? It is as cliché as "everyone has to do their part" and as direct as John F. Kennedy?s famous speech "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

It's a universal principle that anything that exists is either expanding and growing, or else it is contracting and dying. This applies to humanity as well as anything else. We need to be moving along...if we don't we will surely go down the tubes.

Mars is a goal worthy of only the greatest efforts that we as a civilization can offer. We cannot garner the social, political and economic momentum on the blind faith of assured success alone. We cannot fly to Mars "on the wings of love," or even fuel our rockets with hopes and dreams. Instead, it is by the sweat of our brow, the ache of our muscles and the drive of our will that we have always blazed the trail of exploration, and will continue to do so in the future.

There's more - take a look at it.

Backlash ends Chinese bid for Unocal

China's CNOOC Ltd. on Tuesday abandoned a bold $18.5 billion offer to acquire Unocal Corp. (UCL) in the face of strident political opposition

This generated enough of an uproar, that the ChiComs' CNOOC gave up on trying to snarf up UNOCAL in an $18B+ deal. IT seems that lots of folks here felt pretty queasy about this one, and that concern managed to penetrate into Congress and elsewhere in D.C. Finally the ChiComs decided that it was more trouble than it was worth.

The Chief has a hunch that there's a bit more to it than that - perhaps the backdown was to keep us from getting too riled up at them before they're ready for their moves on Taiwan. In other words, they want to keep the sleeping giant asleep. Hopefully it doesn't work out for them that way.

I was just interviewed by South Dakota Public Radio on the permanent campaign. I don't know when the story will air, but keep your ear glued to the radio for pure brilliance. And I might be on there too. Oh,...

How the British are doing it: British Transport Police have been targeting specific ethnic groups for "intelligence-led" stop-and-searches as part of their heightened security measures. BTP Chief Constable Ian Johnston said that his officers would not "waste time searching old...

If you want to defend imperialism you could do worse than this bit from Monty Python's Life of Brian. I actually read this scene in class this past Spring when we read Niall Ferguson's Colossus: The Price of America's Empire...

A couple business administration nerds defend Wal-Mart on economic grounds in the NYT. Wal-Mart is especially good for the poor. Money quotes: With two-thirds of Wal-Mart stores in rural areas, this means that Wal-Mart saves its consumers something like $16...

Washington Post:Shackled for months by a familiar brand of Washington gridlock, President Bush and the Republican leaders in Congress last week suddenly found a key. A long-stalled energy bill, an international trade accord and a massive highway appropriations measure all...

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