I'm a bit more zoned than usual, so you guys are going to be a bit less Zoned than usual tonight. Just a few bits and pieces from here and there running through the news:
First off, some recent war games between the United States and India seem to have some Implications for the quality of US air superiority. I'm not enough of an afficiando of more esoteric military stuff to know for certain just how legitimate the results were - the US planes were apparently handicapped somewhat - but the implication that the USAF is challengeable is clear. This will probably spur the development of the successor aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 more than current trends already have; on the other hand, I'm not sure how much I can see them being useful yet. All of the major powers - yes, even China these days - powerful enough to put up the pretense of a fight against the US are on at least correct terms with Washington. On the one hand, sure, you're losing a war game - but on the other hand you're losing it to someone you have good enough relations to wargame with. I dunno.
In the wake of the Columbia accident, the crew of the International Space Station is being forced to take increasingly drastic measures to keep the thing from plummeting back into the atmosphere. The kind of spacewalk being planned for this goes beyond the standard "merely" difficult traditional ones into something truly outlandish and, indeed, legendary by the standards of spacewalks. Mike Fincke and Gennady Padalka are officially on the Better Than Me List, which is growing depressingly long. "This is going to be fun," Fincke says. Aiee.
As the election increasingly begins to imply a minority government after the June 28 election, discussions of a coalition government are being firmly tossed into the circular file by Prime Minister Martin. This is making one of those odder moments, where Harper accuses Martin of not being willing to compromise by forming such a coalition even as he refuses to form a coalition with any of the other parties anyway.
Don't smoke, dumbass. This has been a recording.
Blaring across a number of news services' headline is news of the abandonment of ICC immunity resolutions by the United States, which has been flinging them around for a couple of years now. There's a vague, vague threat of hamstringing peacekeeping operations more than Washington already has been, but we'll see what happens. Their abandonment of the attempt to get extraterritoriality is particularly critical at this time, when a number of US troops are fairly plainly documented taking part in war crimes in Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay.
This one from Demagogue; the Bosnian Serb government has acknowledged responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre in the nineties. With luck, maybe the Sudanese government, which has just claimed to have ordered a forceful disarmament of the Janjaweed, be taking notes. Unless, of course, the disarmament order is a sham, which it might well be.
Or perhaps it almost certainly is, going by this interview with Physicians for Human Rights' John Heffernan, which reports attacks on the refugee columns by the Sudanese air force (unless the militias can field Antonov bombers)...
In the wake of the X-Prize competition approaching a state of having-a-winner-ness, NASA is considering prizes for further private spaceflight milestones, with the example of a $200 million(!) prize for the first private mission to actual orbit. I could live with seeing this sort of thing get more popular, at least with more outlandish goals (say, establishing a viable industry in orbit), though I'd be equally happy with NASA getting a significant budget increase...
Anyway, that's that for now. I'll try to have the NDP platform up tomorrow, and then do a multi-topic post on the weekend to get together the last ideas about the parties and my other general impressions for the Canadian election.
Posted by zibblsnrt at June 23, 2004 08:09 PM