A teenage girl died tragically avoiding cigarette smoke.

I guess second-hand smoke can be deadly.

Some on the left have commented sarcastically that the Bush administration plans a state-run health-care system for Iraq, though they won’t allow one here.

Now, it appears that even though Americans aren’t allowed to have “assault weapons” (at least until the prohibition sunsets next year), the Iraqis will be allowed to keep theirs.

A lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum have pointed out Bob Geldof’s apparent apostasy, in which he praised George Bush, and said that when it came to aiding Africa, Bill Clinton did, errmmm…nothing. Actually he used a much cruder phrase than that, but this is a family blog. Follow the link, and you can read it yourself.

What I found surprising is that no one has pointed out the most egregious example of Clinton being all hat and no cattle when it comes to Africa. President Bush is being praised by Mr. Geldof for pledging fifteen million dollars to AIDS relief. Remember Bill Clinton’s trip to Africa in the spring of 1998, on which he took seemingly half of his administration, including Betty Currie (after pressuring her to perjure herself on his behalf)? The GAO estimated that it cost over forty million dollars.

Imagine how much more usefully that money could have been spent for Africans than on an African junket for his staff and photo ops for a man who was in the process of trying to distract the country from his intern and perjury problems. But apparently poor Mr. Geldof hasn’t learned that Mr. Clinton is above criticism, particularly when it comes to Africa–he is, after all, the first “black President.”

[Update at 8:15 PM PDT]

D’oh!!!!

A commenter points out that Bush pledged fifteen billion dollars, not fifteen million. Big deal–I was within three orders of magnitude.

My point still stands. Clinton was all show, and no go. Geldof was right.

Here’s a pretty nifty piece of software from IBM.

I tried it with “luxury yacht.” If it had been my code, I would have programmed it so that if it saw those words together, it would come out “throatwarbler mangrove.”

Just in case you need another reason to dislike Barbra Streisand, check this out. She’s suing an aerial photographer for fifty million dollars, because he took pictures of her estate in the process of doing a coastal survey. I hope the suit gets tossed.

According to Andrew Lloyd, the X-Prize and private space will be the subject of today’s Science Friday, which starts in a few minutes (2 PM EDT).

A US submarine was attacked by a hungry polar bear.

Sounds like the bear did better against our navy than Saddam did.

Former astronaut and current space activist Phil Chapman has a long and depressing (but largely accurate) history and assessment of our “manned space program” over at Space Daily today.

Fortunately, he also has some policy prescriptions. They involve, among other things, taking it away from NASA, which in his words, has thoroughly “bungled it.” I think he’s right.

He makes one other point that I’ve been meaning to post on.

…Apollo existed because Jack Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev chose to make space a principal arena for competition between the superpowers. The purposes of the program were to overcome the perceived Soviet lead in space, and to foreclose the possibility that the USSR would reach the Moon first and claim it as Soviet territory. No Congress was willing to spend more than the minimum needed to achieve those objectives.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 relieved concerns about Soviet hegemony by banning weapons and territorial claims on the Moon. This allowed Congress to respond to Lyndon Johnson’s simultaneous expansion of social programs and the war in VietNam by slashing funding for NASA. As shown in Figure 1, the budget peaked in 1966, and then fell precipitously.

This is one of many reasons to withdraw from the OST. Like the ABM Treaty, it’s a relic of the Cold War, and the collectivist mind set in vogue in the decolonializing fifties and sixties.

There are at least three good reasons to make it null and void.

1) The one listed above–it destroys any possibility of international competition by banning sovereignty, (which was in fact one of the reasons that we entered into it–it did indeed allow us to spend less money on space, which was what Congress wanted).

2) It discourages private property rights, due to the lack of sovereignty, because it’s not clear how a government would defend the property rights of its citizens absent it. This in turn significantly reduces incentives for private investment.

3) It places a heavy liability burden on the governments of its signatories, which is one of the reasons that we have such an onerous regulatory process for space launch.

OK, there’s a fourth reason, perhaps the best one–it would really cheese off the French.

It has no explicit recognition of individuals or private corporations, or provisions for their activities–it is written as though only governments are actors in space (largely because at the time it was written, that was the case, and few could imagine any other possibilities).

So, as long as, “cowboy like,” we’re undoing the damage of other treaties, I propose that we consider getting out from under this one as well, and start negotiating a rational replacement.

It’s been holding us back in space for decades, and it’s long past time to consign it, along with the socialist impulses from which it’s derived, to the dustbin of history.

[Update at 8:38 AM PDT]

Ken Silber points out a column he wrote on this subject in Reason five years ago, which I’d read, but had forgotten.

There’s an old saying that there are no poisons per se–only toxic doses. Many things that are toxic in large quantities can be harmless, even beneficial, in small ones (which is why the Delaney Clause–the federal mandate requiring products to be banned if they cause cancer in lab mice in any quantities, is absurd). Now, we have another example of it, that may have staggering scientific consequences.

Ultra-violet light is often used to kill micro-organisms, so as a major component of sunlight, it’s always been seen as an impediment to the development of life on a young earth. But now researchers have found that it may, under some circumstances, actually contribute to building organic links, and may have contributed to the early development of replicating systems.

My latest Fox column is up. It’s basically the same as last week’s post on saving Columbia, but shortened and tightened somewhat.