Christians in Pakistan fear a backlash when we depose Saddam.

Christians are a small minority in Pakistan and dozens of Christians died in targeted killings by Muslim extremists last year.

Their fears have been exacerbated by a pamphlet distributed last week in Pakistan, which urged Muslims to attack Christians to avenge “the defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and an expected U.S. invasion of Iraq.”

Al Sharpton has entered the presidential race.

This should be fun.

If people who run a regime like this cannot be called evil, then no one can.

Which is, of course, the goal of many of our “allies.” It’s gruesome reading, and bear in mind, while reading it, that the organizers of Saturday’s “peace” marches support this regime.

T. L. James has a thoughtful post on the space program as the outcome of a mass movement.

Jay Manifold has a post on nanotech and its implications for space, and vice versa.

Jay Manifold has a post on nanotech and its implications for space, and vice versa.

Jay Manifold has a post on nanotech and its implications for space, and vice versa.

The White House has pointed out that, in attempting to persuade the world that we shouldn’t go after Saddam, France has essentially admitted that he has WMD programs.

Also,

In a backhanded slap at France, Fleischer also said the president wasn’t terribly surprised that some countries are advocating going easy on Iraq. Fleischer said the president has often viewed his own role as one of “putting spine” into the U.N. and the international community.

Boy, for all of supposedly being the people who invented diplomacy, the Frogs are sure off their game. And being outsmarted by a retarded cowboy, too. That’s gotta hurt.

Derek Lowe has an interesting post about bacteria that may hold the key to long-duration space travel. Unfortunately, it won’t be of much use to any of us, other than Bacterium-Americans…

But what about keeping spares around in a spare nucleus – a sort of “break glass in case of emergency” DNA vault? That would require biological engineering beyond our current capabilities, but if and when we get there, I can think of a good use for such an organism. For some years now, Freeman Dyson (yep, him again) has been advocating what he’s called an “astrochicken” space probe. That’s a part-living device that is hardened to survive in vacuum, use solar power, furnish its own propulsion, obtain its fuel from local sources, and so on. A satellite that needs to eat, in other words. (You can find one description of such a device in his book Infinite in All Directions)

I think he’s got a very good point, and that biotechnology might well turn out to be a key for space exploration. What better way to package such an organism’s DNA than to follow the durable example of Deinococcus radiodurans?

Mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of Innumeracy) has the numbers that show why Total Information Awareness won’t work, and will have a tremendous cost in both money and freedom.

…the system will arrest almost 3 million innocent people, about 3,000 times the number of guilty ones. And that occurs, remember, only because we’re assuming the system has these amazing powers of discernment. If its powers are anything like our present miserable predictive capacities, an even greater percentage of those arrested will be innocent.