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It looks like Gerhard is out....

From TBND blog:This has to make Senator Conrad's collar a bit tight. Survey USA has released a new surveyout on the approval rating of all 49 governor's and the one governator.John Hoeven is NOW tied for the most popular governor...

The U.N.'s terrorism gap

The feckless usefulness of the UN once again is apparent as it failed agin to come to any agreement on condemning terrorism. The opposition came primarily from the 56 OIC (Organization of Isalmic Countries)members...surprise, surprise, surprise! Who woulda ever thunk it!

A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation. To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes.(Emphasis added)

Not only did the OIC oppose any meaningful definition of terrorism, it proposed changing the resolution to approve attacks, but it sought a refaffirmation of language in a 1970 resolution: "reaffirm[ing] ? the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples and peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal."

The final phrase is euphemistic language included to implicitly approve terrorism. In the current action, the US claimed a partial victory by stopping such a reaffirmation.

If this is the best that can be hoped for from the UN, then we would be well served to bail out, and then to send them all packing off to Geneva or somewhere, anywhere away from the U.S.

With a courage based on the proposition that, if I get it wrong no one will remember, and if I get it right, I can remind everyone that I'm brilliant, I confidently predict that John McCain will be the Republican...

I can't say as though I've ever watched Bill Maher's show on HBO, but couldn't resist tuning in tonight to see George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens. It was about what you'd expect, and nothing worth noting. Galloway truly is treacherous...

Now this is news: Tyra Banks Proves Breasts Are Real on TV. Link safe for work, as is the photo. Er, unless you work for James Dobson or something. (And yes, I am posting this just for the Google searches....

I received this email on an issue that I don?t believe gets enough attention:As the Congress currently reviews some of the provisions in the Patriot Act that are up for consideration again, I would like your blogs to address this...

Going Up?...all the way to Geosychronous Orbit

A couple of articles on a concept found in science fiction from Arthur C. Clarke and others: a tethered orbital elevator system! At first glance if one is unfamiliar with the concept it sounds like something from a hallucination - but the physics works, and with recent new developments in materials technology, the means are also now available.

The big advantage: CHEAP cost to orbit, especially compared to rocketry. Check these articles out: one from this weeks Sunday (London) Telegraph, and the other from none other than the big gorilla of the blogosphere hisself: Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds writing on Tech Central Station.

Click on image to enlarge. (Image from liftport.com)

Stairway to heaven

The race is on to build the first "space elevator' - long dismissed as science fiction - to carry people and materials into orbit along a cable thousands of miles long.

In a significant step, American aviation regulators have just given permission for the opening trials of a prototype, while a competition to be launched next month follows in the wake of the $10 million (£5.6 million) "X Prize'', which led to the first privately developed craft leaving the Earth's atmosphere, briefly, last year.

Folks, this isn't pie in the sky conceptualizing - it's going into the engineering phase - that's about as concrete as it gets!

Space Program: Looking Up

I've written here in the past about NASA's work on space elevators, and on the new leaner, meaner, prize-oriented approach favored by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. Now there are some signs of real progress on a number of fronts. As I noted earlier, NASA was offering prizes for space elevator research. That's still going on, but there are some new studies suggesting that space elevators may be closer to practicality than previously thought.

Indeed!

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