Mars Rover Evolution

I made a joke earlier about the first pictures from the newest rover. Yeah, I made light of it, but it's a major success in a program that has all but been shuttered.

As you all know last night the Mars rover Curiosity landed successfully. Here’s a picture of the 3 rovers all together sent to me last year by one of the NASA scientists. Click the image to enbiggen it.

Notice just HOW much larger the new one is over the previous versions?

Only in America, or from America, would you get larger and more bloated robots - as they evolve. Like our cars, software and soft drinks. It really is amazing.

And only an American would think of sending a car to space. No one else does that, or would think of that. Hell, after the first Apollo mission - "Hey, wouldn't it be great to drive to that rock over there?"

Now we've sent an SUV onto Mars. That's friggin' awesome. Once they figure out how to mine the Iron Ore out of Mars or how to make rammen noodles out of martian water - watch out. This thing is opening up. Deadwood, Agassiz - with the reality show on E! to help fund it.

"Get your ass to Mars!"

Got My Permit Today

Exclusive: First Photos From Mars!

Yeah, yeah, it's from the first one, the Spirit Rover... luckily the cold germs we 'accidentally' put on the blankets we sent them... er, sorry, that's classified information.

Ba ba ba ba ba-bomb Iran?

Former Mossad head: Iran should fear next 12 weeks

Former Mossad chief's statement comes as Netanyahu warns time for diplomacy running out amid speculation an attack may take place before US elections.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy added to speculation of an impending Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear program in a statement published by The New York Times Wednesday.

"If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks," Halevy said.

Speculation in the media and in political circles about the timing of a potential attack on Iran has focused in recent weeks on whether it needs to happen over the summer, before the US elections, or if it can wait until afterward, maybe as far away as next spring.

Earlier in the week, both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that time was running out for sanctions and diplomacy to have an effect on Iran's nuclear ambitions. Both men made the statements during a visit to Israel by US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

“We clearly have something to lose by this stretched time [during] which sanctions and diplomacy takes place, because the Iranians are moving forward, not just in enrichment,” Barak said.

Speaking before meeting Panetta in his office, Netanyahu said the constant rhetoric about all options being on the table regarding Iran has not moved the ayatollahs.

Although acknowledging that sanctions have had an affect, and predicting the recent sanctions US President Barack Obama and Congress have advanced will have an even greater impact, Netanyahu said neither the sanctions nor the diplomacy have had any influence on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program.

Noting that Panetta said recently that if all else fails America would act, the prime minister said that “however forceful our statements, they have not convinced Iran that we are serious about stopping them. Right now the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program. This must change and it must change quickly, because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out.”

The United States of Amnesia

Visit his books on Amazon

Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, has died in Los Angeles…

His works included hundreds of essays; the best-selling novels Lincoln and Myra Breckenridge; the groundbreaking The City and the Pillar, among the first novels about openly gay characters; and the Tony-nominated political drama The Best Man, revived on Broadway in 2012.

Tall and with a haughty baritone not unlike that of his conservative arch-enemy William F Buckley Jr, Vidal appeared cold and cynical on the surface. But he bore a melancholy regard for lost worlds, for the primacy of the written word, for “the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action”.

He was widely admired as an independent thinker in the tradition of Mark Twain and HL Mencken about literature, culture, politics and, as he liked to call it, “the birds and the bees”. He picked apart politicians, living and dead; mocked religion and prudery; opposed wars from Vietnam to Iraq; and insulted his peers like no other… and made some very interesting points about Timothy McVey.

Vidal had an old-fashioned belief in honour but a modern will to live as he pleased. He wrote in the memoir Palimpsest that he had more than 1,000 “sexual encounters” – nothing special, he added, compared with the pursuits of such peers as John F Kennedy and Tennessee Williams.
Vidal was fond of drink and alleged that he had sampled every major drug once. He never married
and for decades shared a scenic villa in Ravello, Italy, with companion Howard Austen.

He was a rhetorician. His condemnations of bigotry and imperial arrogance were always worth quoting. His defense of liberty and advocacy for democratic rights never relented. He will be missed.