Year: 2007

What Charlie Said

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In this case, Charles Pierce, in a letter to Eric Alterman.

Damn, that dude can write.

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I don’t know if it counts if you only said it in a bar and never wrote it down anywhere, but back in 1988, when it became plain that absolutely nobody was going to pay a price — criminal, civil, or in the case of the senior Bush, political — for the staggering mess that was Iran-Contra, I was in the late, lamented Eliot Lounge in Boston, chewing it over with a friend who’d reported extensively on the scandal. I told him that the country was going to pay a fearsome price one day for having let these crimes go unpunished. That the whole business lodged something malignant deep in the government that needed to be roughly, and bloodily, excised.
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Dems are Finally Telling Lieberman to Go Cheney Himself

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Let me be the first to say:


Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out, loser.

Altitude Drop For Lieberman the Hawk
by Steve Kornacki
Early last week, a distressing, if not entirely unsurprising, Newsweek poll found that fully 40 percent of American adults continue to believe that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

It must, then, have been this exasperating chunk of the electorate that Joe Lieberman had in mind when he declared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Democrats are doomed in the 2008 presidential race unless they re-embrace the Iraq War.

“I think that’s the best tradition of our party, and if we don’t recapture it … the Democratic candidate is going to have a hard time winning that election next year,” Mr. Lieberman said, likening his own hawkish Iraq posture to Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson – all of them much too deceased to protest such a questionable comparison.

Ouch!!!!!

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Given the Senate’s partisan balance – 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats (one still recuperating from a December cerebral hemorrhage), and two tie-breaking independents who caucus with the Democrats – Democrats are still technically at Mr. Lieberman’s mercy, their fragile control of the chamber dependent on his continued willingness to live up to his campaign pledge to side with his old party for organizational purposes.

But it’s now apparent that they need nothing more than that from him. Republicans have labored to portray Mr. Lieberman’s defeat in last year’s Senate primary as evidence that the Democratic Party has been over-run by weak-willed McGoverniks, a contention that Mr. Lieberman, in making reference to Democrats’ past vulnerabilities on foreign policy and national security issues, sought to reinforce on Sunday.

That game, however, has ceased to work. In years past – 2004 and 2002, say – a public association with Mr. Lieberman was helpful to Democrats, a reassurance to a more hawkish electorate that they were as “tough” as the G.O.P. But in 2007, embracing Mr. Lieberman’s intransigence is a decided political liability – evidenced most startlingly by a recent poll that found that even 58 percent of Republicans in Iowa want a troop withdrawal in the next six months. When, as he did on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman uses a national television interview to dust off old attacks on the Democratic Party’s foreign policy credentials while at the same time actually declaring that “the surge is working,” it only benefits his former party’s standing with the war-wary public. There are few, if any Democrats, quaking at his threat to endorse a Republican in ’08.

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Those politicians are on the run to catch up with the public before November 2008. Mr. Lieberman should probably consider himself lucky that his seat was up last year – and not next year.

Congress Grows a Set of Balls (FINALLY!)

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Not only is this of limited utility and provocative, it’s being pushed because it’s provocative.

Lynn Cheney was trying to start a war with China in the early 1990s, and Francis Fukuyama said that during the 90s, “There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn’t do as well”.

This is a calculated attempt to put a new enemy in the pipe line for Republican partisan advantage.

Senate threatens Bush missile plan
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Friday July 6, 2007

Guardian
President George Bush’s controversial plan to establish a missile defence system in eastern Europe could be scuppered next week if Congress votes to block funding.

The Senate appears ready to join the House in cutting from the defence budget the millions Mr Bush requested to fund US missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. The president would have to use his veto to go ahead but that would put the whole defence budget in peril.

The Senate move would add to the lengthy list of obstacles that have built up to Mr Bush’s plan. A consequence would be to end the stand-off with Moscow, which views the missile system as a threat. Speaking on Monday at the Bush family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, reiterated his opposition to placing the missile system so close to Russia. There is also opposition within Poland and the Czech Republic.

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“DC Madame” Phone Records Available.

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The big lesson, of course, is about how asset forfeiture is used in coercive ways in the United States.

The fact that it is this totalitarian regime is going to reveal all the law and order types who want to be made to dress up in French maid uniforms and be urinated upon, is really just an ironic side effect of this policy.

Judge lifts injunction on ‘DC madam’ phone records

A judge in the US district court in Washington, D.C. has lifted the temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the so-called ‘DC madam,’ Deborah Jeane Palfrey, from selling or distributing the list of phone records from her escort business.

“The List in question is the Defendant’s personal property,” wrote judge Gladys Kessler, “and contains only a log of telephone numbers. It was neither seized by the Government when it searched the Defendant’s residence in California, nor listed in the Indictment putting the Defendant on notice as to which items of her property were subject to forfeiture.”

Kessler concluded that the government had not satisfied the requirements of the forfeiture statute that would enable them to make the “extraordinary step of freezing the property of an individual, not yet convicted of any crime, and barring her from giving away that property.”

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Danes tout flamethrower-packing robot ‘farmworker’ | The Register

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This is not a farm impliment. It’s the non-nuclear alternative to neighborhood nuclear superiority.

Watch the vid, it’s funny as hell, and proof that Nesmith is a genius.

Danes tout flamethrower-packing robot ‘farmworker’
By Lewis Page
Published Thursday 5th July 2007 13:50 GMT

Danish agro-boffins have developed a robot which appears at first sight to be a welcome diversion from the ongoing parade of deadly military slaughter machines.

“Hortibot“, brainchild of Scandinavian scientists led by Dr Rasmus Nyholm Jørgensen of Aarhus University, is supposedly a peaceful robot farmworker. It uses GPS to navigate itself around the fields, mowing, spraying, or doing other tiresome tasks while the human landowners fill in the subsidy forms.

Hortibot can even do the weeding, and not simply by spraying chemicals about. The Daily News of Ludington, Michigan, got the story when one of the Danish designers visited the States.

“Currently, the robot can identify approximately 25 different kinds of weeds,” according to the Michigan newshounds.

“Hortibot has a variety of weed-removing attachments and methods. It can manually pick weeds,” apparently.

This is good news indeed; at last, a faithful robot pal intended to toil away for the benefit of humanity rather than spying on people or eliminating them in an apocalyptic mechanised bloodbath.

But such foolish dreams of amity and between man and machine were swiftly unsettled. It seems that Hortibot also has other, more robust capabilities as well as its weed-picking apparatus. The agro-droid can also target its adversaries with “flames, or a laser”.

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“The labour problem will bring this in, when the government gets done with their immigration laws,” Schwass reportedly commented. He was no doubt referring to the US Border Patrol’s plan to install Eye-of-Sauron style scanner towers along the Mexican border in order to stand off the terrorists and huddled masses.

People Cannot Sell Their Hedge Fund Investments at ANY Price.

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There is something like 500 trillion in instruments like this. What happens if even 5% of that goes south?

Buyers avoid Bear Stearns’ cut-priced sale
By James Mackintosh and Gillian Tett in London

Published: July 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 4 2007 03:00

Investors in the worse-hit of two stricken Bear Stearns hedge funds are offering to sell their holdings for as little as 11 cents on the dollar but still finding no buyers, according to unfilled trades on Hedgebay, a secondary market for funds.

Vulture funds and others have been quick to bid for holdings in the two funds, but the best bid for Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leveraged Fund, the more geared of the two, is just 5 cents on the dollar.

Private sales of stakes are the only way investors can exit the two Bear funds, after the bank suspended redemptions in May amid a wave of withdrawals.

“There are buyers but they can’t agree on price,” said Jared Herman, co-founder of Bahamas-based Hedgebay.

The less-geared Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, which the bank has rescued with a $1.6bn loan, is being offered at about 70 cents on the dollar. The fund is only attracting bidders at about 30 cents, according to people who use the system.
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The Enhanced Leverage Fund’s net assets of $638m were more than 10 times geared in March, meaning a drop of just 10 per cent in the value of its holdings would wipe out investors.
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drop of half the value is not unrealistic right now if a seller needs to sell

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A 50 percent drop means that anyone who has bought or refinanced in the past 15 years would be owing more than they could sell the home for.

This is why short sales, where the bank accepts a loss, are becoming more common.

Seller cuts price of house by $1 million

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Mary Anne Windes, a veteran broker in Destin who has Real Estate Professionals of Destin, said in an e-mail interview, “The trend is that prices are moving to the same level that they were in 2003. As you will recall, 2004 and 2005 saw tremendous and often unrealistic growth. The market has now corrected itself. Many properties doubled in value during that time, so a drop of half the value is not unrealistic right now if a seller needs to sell.”

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The Money Is In Batteries

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Seriously, the expansion of batteries, whether in hybrids, military, laptops, etc. makes this an area where the rewards, and the potential for investors is nearly unlimited.

DOD officials offer $1 million prize for wearable power innovations
by Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

7/5/2007 – WASHINGTON (AFPN) — A typical dismounted troop going out for a four-day mission carries as much as 40 pounds of batteries and rechargers in his pack. Defense Department officials want to reduce that load significantly, and they’re dangling a $1 million carrot to entice people to help them do it.

They launched their “wearable power” prize competition July 5 to come up with new innovations to lighten warfighters’ loads.

The goal, explained William Rees, deputy undersecretary of laboratories and basic sciences, is to reduce the weight for the power system that drives radios, night-vision devices, global positioning systems and other combat gear, including a recharging system, to about 2 pounds per day.

“The mantra is four days, 4 kilograms,” he said.

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Bush To Seek New Powers to Spy on Political Opponents

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There is credible evidence that Bush’s illegal wireless surveillance activity targeted CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour in 2004.

Her husband is James Rubin, who served as Wesley Clark’s chief foreign policy spokesman, and then as a senior foreign policy adviser for John Kerry, so he would be included in any such surveillance. It’s unavoidable.

Does anyone believe that these intercepts did not get passed off to Karl Rove?

VOA News – Bush Seeks Changes in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

By Deborah Tate
Capitol Hill
05 July 2007

The Bush administration is seeking to update a law governing U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. But members of the Democratic majority in Congress are signaling they may be reluctant to approve the proposed changes because they have concerns about a controversial administration wiretapping program. VOA’s Deborah Tate reports from Capitol Hill.

The Bush administration is asking Congress to approve changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The proposed modifications would give the government more power to gather foreign intelligence information. Supporters say the changes would bring the law up to date with changes in new technology, including e-mail and wireless communications.

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Military Times Says Army “Nearing a Breaking Point”

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They are deploying troops for a year. In WWII, they determined that soldiers needed relief after 180 days.

When this is over, we will have many broken men, and recruiting problems for a generation.

Editorial: Balance home, away time

Many soldiers have deployed three, four and more times to Iraq, Afghanistan or both. But you won’t hear much in the way of complaints, because a shared sense of honor and duty overrides most self-interest.

Yet there is no escaping the fact that the Army is nearing a breaking point.

In the fifth year of war in Iraq, when deployments should be winding down, combat tours instead are being extended.

Time between deployments, meanwhile, is unchanged. So today, soldiers can look forward to 15 months in the war zone for every 12 months at home.

Fifteen-month deployments mean some soldiers can expect to miss two Christmases, two anniversaries, and two of the same child’s birthdays in one war tour. It means more mental health problems for soldiers, more stress on families and less support for the mission at home.

This is bad policy.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., plans to introduce legislation to mandate that deployed troops get a month at home for every month deployed. So if a deployment does have to last 15 months, soldiers wouldn’t have to go back for another 15 months.

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US Mega Embassy in Baghdad Uninhabitable

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Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.

Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007; A01

U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.

A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards’ base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a Middle Eastern firm that is already under Justice Department scrutiny over alleged labor abuses. First Kuwaiti also erected the guard base, prompting some State Department officials in Washington and Baghdad to worry that the problems exposed in the camp suggest trouble lurking ahead for the rest of the embassy complex.

The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.

All the food from the old guard camp — a collection of tents — had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers.

“Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad,” the May 29 cable informed Washington.

Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.

The “fairly serious problems” noted in the cable indicate that First Kuwaiti’s work fails to meet basic safety standards, said an administration official who was not authorized to speak to the news media. But the State Department’s Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), which oversees construction of the new embassy, has kept a “close hold” on the project, making it difficult for anyone else in the government to gauge progress. “We are suspecting we will find the same issues in the new embassy,” resulting in months of delays, the official said.

The embassy cable prompted a stinging response from James L. Golden, OBO’s managing director for the embassy project. In a cable dated June 8, he berated personnel in Baghdad for sending their message over an open embassy system, rather than keeping the complaints in-house. He defended First Kuwaiti and accused the embassy and KBR — a Texas-based company that runs many facilities in Iraq and discovered the wiring problems — of making false claims to deflect attention from their own errors.

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Hmmm….is James L. Golden a political appointee? I quick google can’t confirm one way or the other.

United Capital Asset Management hedge funds halt withdrawals – Jul. 3, 2007

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This is called a run on the bank, and when investments start to become illiquid this way, people lose everything.

United Capital Asset Management hedge funds halt withdrawals
Embattled hedge fund management group suspends redemptions from four funds following losses in subprime mortgages.
July 3 2007: 3:43 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — United Capital Asset Management has temporarily suspended payments from four of its Horizon funds following losses from its investment in subprime mortgage bonds.

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In the past ten days, the firm received an unusually high number of redemption requests, including one from its largest investor which accounts for one-quarter of the firm’s assets under management.

Where People Will Find Themselves Under Water with Their Mortgages

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Under water means owing more than it is worth.

Top 10 Places Where the Housing Bubble Will Bust
The current housing bubble first reared its ugly head in 1997. Prices began to climb so rapidly that they quickly became unaffordable for potential buyers making the median household income. By 2006, some of the air started being released from the bubble, and now the balloon is on the verge of busting.

What Goes Up…Must Come Down
Experts say that prices need to fall to 1997 levels to be sustainable.

Which experts? Nice Chart though. Also, there is always an overshoot.

Metro Area 2007 Price 1997 Price* % Decline to Return to 1997 Prices
SF-Oakland-Fremont, CA $748,100 $288,484 61.4
Miami-Ft Lauderdale, FL $385,300 $148,900 61.3
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA $404,400 $157,011 61.1
Sarasota-Bradenton, FL $337,000 $135,977 59.6
Los Angeles, CA $589,800 $241,976 58.9
San Diego, CA $595,200 $249,553 58.0
Orange County, CA $697,300 $293,362 57.9
San Jose-Sunnyvale, CA $788,000 $390,660 50.4
Nassau-Suffolk, NY $479,800 $240,933 49.7
Sacramento, CA $365,500 $196,738 46.1

*1997 prices have been adjusted at the general inflation rate and are reported in 2007 dollars.

Note also, that anyone who got a conventional old fashioned mortgage, 20% down, fixed rate, will be under water in these locations, and in many more not shown.

For those with interest only, no money down, negative equity, 5% down, etc., these numbers will be much higher.

Russia To Locate Missiles In Baltic Coast In Response to US Missile Defense Plans

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Let’s see. We locate a “Missile Shield” against Iran somewhere that leaves much of NATO naked, but is along the Russian border, and we are surprised when they get huffy?

This is Condi Rice trying to recreate the “Evil Empire” because her profession has vanished with its fall.

Someone should tell her that Diplomat means more than, “An extremely unwise thing to call Guido “Knuckles” Lomat“.

FWIW, missiles fired from Kaliningrad could take a depressed trajectory, and strike NATO targets with little or no warning, and said “missile shield”, which is exclusively exo-atmospheric, won’t be able to touch it.

Russia threatens European rocket deployment
MOSCOW (AFP): Russia issued a veiled threat on Wednesday to deploy rockets in its Kaliningrad region bordering the European Union if the United States built a missile defence shield in central Europe.

Moscow and Washington are locked in a standoff over the US plans for a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor rockets in Poland.

Russia says the plans threaten its security.

The threat to put missiles in Kaliningrad was made by the influential First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov only two days after President Vladimir Putin again raised the missile shield dispute with US President George W. Bush.

Putin has suggested to Bush that the United States use a Russian-controlled radar in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, near the Iranian border, instead of having a shield in central Europe.

Putin has also offered the use of another radar under construction at Armavir in southern Russia.

“If our offers are accepted, Russia will not consider it necessary to deploy new rocket units in the European part of the country, including Kaliningrad, to counter the threat” from the United States, Ivanov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Ivanov, who was on a visit to Uzbekistan, said Russia had “found an asymmetrical and effective response” to the US project for a European shield.

“We know what we’re doing…. If our proposals are not accepted, we will take adequate measures,” Ivanov said.

Washington insists that its proposed missile shield is intended to guard against possible attack from “rogue states” such as Iran. Moscow believes the systems are directed against Russia.

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They believe that it is targeted against Russia because it is targeted against Russia.

NKorea’s Kim indicates it will disarm nuclear weapons : Nuclear Weapons : Defense News Air Force Army Navy News

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Funny that. Once the US stopped calling the DPRK c***s*ck*rs, and stopped calling for regime change, and stopped reneging on deals, they are willing to talk.

These people really do believe that the US is planning to take over the country, and doing things like cutting an agreement one day, and reneging on it the next, as with the frozen money, only reinforces this paranoia.

Go figure.

NKorea’s Kim indicates it will disarm nuclear weapons

BEIJING (AFP): North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il indicated on Tuesday that he was ready to begin dismantling his country’s nuclear weapons, China’s official news agency reported.

In rare conciliatory remarks the leader of the communist state raised hopes that a stalled nuclear pact will finally be realised.

“Recently some signs of easing on the Korean peninsula have appeared,” Kim was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying.

“All sides should implement the initial actions (of a six-nation pact on eradicating North Korea’s nuclear capabilities)”, he said.

The comments, made during a meeting with visiting Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, will strengthen hopes that the North will disarm.

Under the agreement struck in February, Pyongyang pledged to scrap its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and various diplomatic incentives.

But implementation has been stalled by a financial dispute over millions of dollars of North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank due to US sanctions.

That obstacle was removed last week when the last of the funds were returned to Pyongyang.

In another hopeful sign, diplomatic sources in Berlin said on Tuesday that North Korea has agreed to broad cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog to close its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the first step in the deal.

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Adventures in Amateur Rocketry

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Last night, we went to the local school playground with Charlie’s brand spanking new Estes® rocket.

We had tried to launch a few days earlier, and had gotten only fizzles, because the batteries were dubious.

This time it launched, and the parachute deployed. Charlie was very happy about this.

Unfortunately, I got the winds aloft wrong, and it drifted across the playground, over the school, and got hung up in a tree about 80 feet in the air.

It was my fault, I chose the location, so I’ll be replacing the rocket for Charlie (he spent his hard earned allowance on the first one), and Charlie was a very good sport about all of this.

Next time, I think we go to Hannah Moore Mark, which has a lot more space, and I check the winds better.

Hydrocarbons on Saturn’s Moon Hyperion

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Straight from the NASA Pages. The more we study the solar system, the more we find of “the stuff of life”.

I think that there are a lot of planets out there supporting life currently, though not in our solar system. (Mars might have at one time)

NASA Finds Hydrocarbons on Saturn’s Moon Hyperion

PASADENA , Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the first time surface details of Saturn’s moon Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons that may indicate more widespread presence in our solar system of basic chemicals necessary for life.

Hyperion yielded some of its secrets to the battery of instruments aboard Cassini as the spacecraft flew close by in September 2005. Water and carbon dioxide ices were found, as well as dark material that fits the spectral profile of hydrocarbons.

Organics Sprinkled on Hyperion Image right:This map shows the composition of a portion of Hyperion’s surface. Blue shows the maximum exposure of frozen water, red denotes carbon dioxide ice (“dry ice”), magenta indicates regions of water plus carbon dioxide, yellow is a mix of carbon dioxide and an unidentified material. Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Ames/Space Science Institute
+ Full image and caption
Related images: + Hyperion’s Kaleidoscope of Color
+ Hyperion’s Icy Surface
+ Related story

A paper appearing in the July 5 issue of Nature reports details of Hyperion’s surface craters and composition observed during this flyby, including keys to understanding the moon’s origin and evolution over 4.5 billion years. This is the first time scientists were able to map the surface material on Hyperion.

“Of special interest is the presence on Hyperion of hydrocarbons–combinations of carbon and hydrogen atoms that are found in comets, meteorites, and the dust in our galaxy,” said Dale Cruikshank, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the paper’s lead author. “These molecules, when embedded in ice and exposed to ultraviolet light, form new molecules of biological significance. This doesn’t mean that we have found life, but it is a further indication that the basic chemistry needed for life is widespread in the universe.”

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer captured compositional variations in Hyperion’s surface. These instruments, capable of mapping mineral and chemical features of the moon, sent back data confirming the presence of frozen water found by earlier ground-based observations, but also discovered solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) mixed in unexpected ways with the ordinary ice. Images of the brightest regions of Hyperion’s surface show frozen water that is crystalline in form, like that found on Earth.

“Most of Hyperion’s surface ice is a mix of frozen water and organic dust, but carbon dioxide ice is also prominent. The carbon dioxide is not pure, but is somehow chemically attached to other molecules,” explained Cruikshank.

Prior spacecraft data from other moons of Saturn, as well as Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto, suggest that the carbon dioxide molecule is “complexed,” or attached with other surface material in multiple ways. “We think that ordinary carbon dioxide will evaporate from Saturn’s moons over long periods of time,” said Cruikshank, “but it appears to be much more stable when it is attached to other molecules.”

“The Hyperion flyby was a fine example of Cassini’s multi-wavelength capabilities. In this first-ever ultraviolet observation of Hyperion, the detection of water ice tells us about compositional differences of this bizarre body,” said Amanda Hendrix, Cassini scientist on the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Hyperion, Saturn’s eighth largest moon, has a chaotic spin and orbits Saturn every 21 days. The July 5 issue of Nature also includes new findings from the imaging team about Hyperion’s strange, spongy-looking appearance. Details are online at: http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=3303 .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

More information on the Cassini mission is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .


Media contact: Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Ruth Dasso Marlaire 650-604-4709
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Taliban Learns from Iraq Insurgents

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You this whole “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here”, bulls$%@ is going swimmingly.

We have created a petri dish for terrorists, and proving and training grounds for tactics ant technology to be used against us.

If this is safer, I’m going to have start taking up French Kissing Cobras as a hobby.

Taliban adopt deadly Iraqi tactics
6 Canadian soldiers and interpreter die as insurgents use powerful bomb against Canada’s strongest troop carrier

GRAEME SMITH

July 5, 2007

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Six Canadian soldiers and their interpreter died yesterday as the Taliban continued to launch bold attacks inside zones considered mostly pacified, shifting their tactics toward the kind of bombings that have proved devastating in Iraq.

About a dozen military vehicles, Canadian and Afghan, were driving west along a gravel road after finishing a search of a village about 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, when a powerful bomb detonated at 11 a.m. local time.

The explosion engulfed an RG-31 Nyala troop carrier, a vehicle manufactured in South Africa and specifically designed with a boat-like hull to withstand mine blasts. It’s the Canadians’ strongest vehicle against roadside bombs, but the insurgents have recently been wiring up bigger caches of ordnance and more sophisticated-shaped charges into their so-called improvised explosive devices, breaking through even the best armour.

“We’re not perfect and we do miss some, as we have seen today,” said Brigadier-General Tim Grant, the top Canadian commander in Afghanistan. “But the battle against the Taliban and the battle against their choice of weapons, IED, is successful.”

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SiliconValley.com – Court upholds ruling vs. publisher

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This was actually a VERY important decision. If it had gone the other way, you would have seen much of the internet based credit card activity simply stop.

It’s nice that someone has FINALLY found a limitation to “compensatory infringement.

Court upholds ruling vs. publisher

FIRM SOUGHT TO PUNISH CREDIT CARD ISSUERS OVER PIRACY OF ADULT IMAGES
By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Los Angeles Times
San Jose Mercury News

Credit card companies that process payments for Internet pirates are not liable for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided that a judge in San Jose was right in dismissing a lawsuit brought by a publisher in Beverly Hills against Visa International, MasterCard and other financial companies.

The 2-1 decision found that Perfect 10, a publisher of adult magazines and Web sites, failed to prove that credit card providers were liable because the financial companies played no role in helping people find or download the infringing images.

The decision dealt a setback to Perfect 10’s efforts to cripple Web sites that sell access to its erotic photographs without permission. The company said it would request a new hearing by a larger panel of appeals court judges.

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