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From USA Today:An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack ? and that this technology will soon be wielded again...

I was watching my TiVo'd Battlestar Galactica season finale tonight (ep: Pegasus), when something in the opening credits caught my eye. Maybe sort of a subliminal thing, as I couldn't put my finger on why I had to rewind and...

When you start blocking doors at the Pentagon, expect to get jacked up and your ass hauled off. I mean, that's what happens. Anyway, on to America's Favorite Absolute Moral Authority?, the grieving mother who is tickled (Code!) pink that...

From the AP: Earlier this year, gun control advocates failed to block a Florida bill allowing people to use deadly force in the street to defend themselves. The advocates vow not to let that happen in Michigan. The battle in...

I love Thursdays. Not because there's anything special about them, or because super-extra-wonderful things happen on Thursdays, but because it's my very busy day, and because at the end of every Thursday I can relax a little and look forward...

Uh-oh: Kenner Mayor Phil Capitano suspended a top aide, Cedric Floyd, without pay on Wednesday amid an investigation into whether Floyd took more than his fair share of Hurricane Katrina relief supplies from the donation center he supervised. Police said...

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!

Aberdeen American News:The South Dakota State Historical Society recently received a diary kept by a ranch hand who lived in western South Dakota at the time of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Henry P. Smith's diary was donated to the society...

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