Andrew Sullivan points out Steve Sailer’s column about how the liberals have suddenly embraced IQ as being meaningful, after denigrating it for years as a useless and racist social construct.

Why? Because now, thanks to the recent flawed Supreme Court decision, they can use it to get folks off death row.

But Andrew also uses the occasion to take a poke at Bill Clinton, which, for once, is not justified. Clinton, many may recall, took time off from campaigning in 1992 to make sure that he could preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in Arkansas, no doubt to burnish his anti-crime credentials. Mr. Rector has been repeatedly characterized as “retarded,” and thus even many of his erstwhile supporters were upset at Clinton’s cynical use of this hapless creature for political gain.

But the reality is that he was not retarded. He was brain damaged, as a result of a self-administered lobotomy–he shot himself in the frontal lobe right after murdering his two victims.

To my mind, even if one believes that people of reduced intelligence shouldn’t be executed, that should only apply if the intelligence was low prior to their crime (thus offering some mitigating circumstances). I see no reason, however, to show mercy to someone who happened to reduce their intelligence after the crime was committed.

For all you robosexuals out there, these artificial partners are getting ever more sophisticated.

Be sure to read the testimonials.

The banner ads are a hoot, too.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Magaw won’t let pilots have guns in the cockpits, but at least he has palatial new digs from which to hand down his idiotic edicts.

I won’t believe that Bush is serious about “Homeland Security” until he cans Mineta, and reassigns Magaw to head up security in Thule, Greenland.

Joe Katzman sent me this link about how Scotland has become the UFO capital of the world. There are apparently more sightings there per square mile (or square kilometer, or square furlong, or square whatever units they use in Scotland), than in any other country. I heard the story on the radio this morning. Maybe they’re there for the haggis.

Oh, actually, on reading the post, I see they already mentioned that. He has a bunch of amusing comments from Slashdot, including “Come for the Haggis, stay for the anal probes.”

But that’s not really the subject of this post. While I appreciate links on all kinds of stories, I always get a little irritated at UFO links (though of course there would be no way for Joe to know, and this one doesn’t bother me, because it’s amusing, not serious).

I do so because there seems to be this linkage in many peoples’ minds between interest in space and interest in the grays. I am a fanatic about the former, and have zero interest in the latter. I’ve spent much of my life trying to get people to take space and space technology and policy seriously, and it’s immensely frustrating when you’re being interviewed on some radio talk show, and you get the call from the inevitable caller wanting to know if They Are Out There, and if the Government Is Really Covering It Up, as though that has anything to do with space, or you could be expected to have useful answers.

UFOs may or may not be visitors from another planet, or dimension, but in my humble (and not particularly informed) opinion, they are not.

But what they certainly are is irrelevant to my (and many others’) desire to get humanity off the planet in a big way. They are primarily a distraction, because many people, who know little about both subjects, seem to throw space activists in the same straightjacket with the UFOlogists, and make no distinction between them, and don’t recognize that they are two separate subjects.

The latter are looking for the Truth That Is Out There, whereas we are looking to get out there ourselves, sometime before we shuffle off this mortal coil. One is about engineering and reality, and the other is about fantasy and hysteria and conspiracy. So until one of them shows up at my front door, and offers me a ride, with or without the anal probes (if it’s the former, I’ll have to think about that one real hard, unless she’s really hot), I have almost zero interest in the subject.

Or when the Palestinians throw out the terrorists running the place, and establish a decent society, sans madrassas, bombers, and hate. That’s what I hear Bush saying as to the time frame for the formation of a Palestinian state.

It’s about damned time.

Now it’s up to them. Unfortunately, I fear that there’ll be snow cones in Hades first.

Paula Berinstein (who is apparently coming out with a book on private space activity next month–guess I’d better get my butt in gear and write mine soon) has a nice little survey in today’s Orlando Sentinel of the reasons to go into space.

[Via Mark Whittington]

Eric Olsen, doing yeoman’s work, has a comprehensive survey of NPR’s pro-Palestinian coverage, which I’ve complained about in the past, but gotten tired of continuing to rail against, because it seems such an uphill battle.