Self congress apparently is prophylactic against prostate cancer.

Choke that chicken, guys, especially you young’uns.

[Thursday morning update]

Hey, girls can get in on the healthy fun, too!

In Best of the Web today, James Taranto discusses some of the loony leftist Democrats calls for Bush’s impeachment (sorry, no permalink until tomorrow), and in the process makes a misleading statement:

the 20th century, Congress impeached 10 officials: Clinton and nine federal judges. As the chart on this page shows, all were charged with actual crimes, mostly financial corruption of one sort or another. (Of the 10, five were convicted and removed from office; four, including Clinton, were acquitted of all charges, and one resigned before his Senate trial began.)

No, James, Clinton was not truly “acquitted on all charges,” he was only acquitted for the ones for which he was impeached, in a sham trial. In a criminal sense, he wasn’t acquitted because he was never indicted, or went to trial. Had he done so, it’s possible (thought I think unlikely) that he would have been acquitted, but I think the most likely outcome would have been hung juries, as in the case of Susan McDougal, because it would have been very difficult to get a jury that didn’t have at least one member that was going to vote to acquit, the facts be damned. This is almost certainly one of the reasons that Bob Ray didn’t bring any indictments (though another one was probably the desire to spare the nation the trauma of a trial). Unfortunately, the impeachment acquittal provides an excuse for his diehard defenders to declare him innocent of everything, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

And when Clinton defenders say Ray had no evidence, that’s a lie, pure and simple. He had abundant evidence, despite all of the evidence destruction, witness tampering and other obstructions of the judicial process. The only way to really get to the bottom of it would have been to do a RICO type investigation, and the Justice Department never had the stomach for it, particularly with Janet Reno at the helm.

Certainly, if the defendant had been anyone other than Bill (and Hillary) Clinton, charges would have been brought.

Which reminds me. Sunday, in addition to being the thirty-fourth anniversary of the first Apollo landing, is also the tenth anniversary of the untimely end of Vince Foster, an affair in which the full truth still remains to be revealed.

That looks like a good explanation for the Oracle of Delphi.

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe has decided that the Orbital Space Plane must be developed faster.

Somehow (as is often the case) this reminds me of a Simpsons episode. Specifically, the one in which Homer decides to change his name. The new nom de plume?

MAX POWER…

(He got it off a hair dryer…)

He says, “there are two ways to do something: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way.”

When Bart asks what the latter means, the reply is, “It’s like the wrong way, except faster!”

He says that he would advise his children to resist homosexual “temptations.”

I’m sorry, but this just comes across to me as a statement appallingly ignorant of the nature of human sexuality.

“You try to point out to them what is the right thing to do. And we have many temptations to do things we shouldn’t do. That doesn’t mean we have to give in to those temptations. I have temptations, as we all do, all the time, to do things we shouldn’t do.

“Whether we have that disposition because of environmental factors, genetic factors, whatever, it doesn’t mean you have to submit. We are people of free will and free choices.”

So, is the senator saying that he’s had “homosexual temptations” that he’s overcome? In other words, is he bisexual? I know I’ve never had any. I occasionally have temptations to do things that are wrong, or illegal, and I generally overcome them, but I’ve never in my life been tempted to engage in sexual activity with a man.

Homosexuals have two problems. First, they’re attracted to the same sex. Second, they are unattracted to the opposite sex. So what the senator is proposing is that for his children, if they’re truly homosexual, and not bisexual, their only option is life-long celibacy. Is that really what he’s saying, and does he think it realistic advice?

[Update at 11:22 PM PDT on July 17]

I’ve started a new thread on this one, as a result of the extensive comments.

Researchers in Japan are going to attempt to clone a mammoth.

I got a chuckle out of this. Hurricane Claudette chased some tree huggers out of their trees.

The G8 is getting smarter about avoiding anti-globo whackos for their meetings. The next one is scheduled on Sea Island.

I wouldn’t make it illegal, but I think that men who would want to do this have some wiring problems, and I’d keep an eye on them.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

Snopes thinks it may be an elaborate hoax, but it’s still undetermined.

Jeff Faust has an interesting piece on what is, and isn’t the space industry:

When the space industry is defined in this manner, it becomes clear why it lacks influence in Washington: it?s very small. At just $37 billion in worldwide revenues in 2002, the space industry is smaller than many corporations. For example, US automaker General Motors records more revenue in a single quarter?an average of $47.5 billion per quarter in the last year?than the entire space industry made in all of 2002. Even if satellite service revenues are added into the space industry?s total, it still comes to less than half of GM?s total revenues for the year. In Washington, money talks, and the space industry is whispering. No amount of space industry organization consolidation can solve that problem.

There’s another point to be made here. In fact, though it’s small, it seems generally to get what it wants, by bribing powerful congresspeople with jobs in their districts. Unfortunately, for the most part, what it wants has little to do with space, and mostly to do with rent seeking from the taxpayer.

Consider one more point that Dr. Patrick Collins makes often. We have spent hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on civil space over the past four decades. Yet we’ve only managed to create an industry valued in the tens of billions annually (and much of that is defense contracts). Is such poor leverage typical, or are we doing something wrong?

I think you know my opinion on that subject.

[Update at 1:35 PM PDT]

Another sign of the incredible shrinking space industry. Boeing is pulling Delta IV out of the commercial market, which has a glut of launchers. They’re going to stick to government contracts.