The elephant, the dragon and the moon

For some time I have believed that the next space race will not be between an old superpower (America) and a young superpower (China) but between two young superpowers (India and China). It has been developing for some time now. Within the past year China became only the third country in history to launch people into space and India just became the first nation to launch ‘10 satellites in one go’ and currently has one of the most sophisticated satellite systems in the world. As America ponders the role of manned expeditions and robotics in their program and whether to adequately fund NASA both India and China now have their eyes set on the Moon and seem to have no dearth of imagination and ingenuity to push their burgeoning national strength into programs that feed into a sense of national pride.

Northbound

I am headed to Canton, Ohio on Sunday the 12th for several months to help turn the Buckeye state blue in the coming presidential election. In 2004, I was in Maine which at the time was considered a battleground state in what was expected to be a close race and now in 2008 it’s Ohio. Hopefully, this time Ohioans will not cast their lot in with those that want “more of the same”. Canton has lost 10% of its population due to a deteriorating economy and job base as the new service economy hits Northeast Ohio and its manufacturing sector hard. 

Zimbabwean unity

Leaders of rival factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, have united and in the parliament will now have 109 out of the 210 seats in the National Assembly. A clear majority and soon a clear victory will be declared for the Zimbabwean people.

Also, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) may release results of the Presidential vote sometime this week nearly a full month after the election.

Love & Marriage, Love & Marriage

Benoit Denizet-Lewis has a great article on young gay marriage in Massachusetts in today’s New York Times:

“The expectation for many years was that if you did any dating in your 20s, they were essentially ‘practice relationships’ where you did what heterosexual kids get to do in junior high, high school and college,” says Jeffrey Chernin, a Los Angeles psychotherapist and the author of “Get Closer: A Gay Men’s Guide to Intimacy and Relationships.” “But for many gay men, your 20s were about meeting a lot of different people, going out to bars with your friends and having a lot of sex. That has long been considered a rite of passage in the gay community.”

And I understand the part about “practice relationships” because I didn’t come out of the closet until the age of 22. But I never experienced the part concerning “lots of sex”. I just wanted to get married and this article seems to be great evidence that the desires of gay men similar to straight men are exceedingly…normal.

I’ve got a fever!

 

The audacity of a loser

The putative loser of the March presidential election in Zimbabwe is now sending feelers via state-controlled media about the formation of national unity government with him continuing on as president. Am I missing some piece of the puzzle here? The loser of the election (and a man who has made disunity along racial and economic lines an art form in the country) is attempting to install himself as leader of a national unity administration?

Nope, no missing pieces…just a fucked up puzzle.

Action for Somalia?

The UK is stepping up at the UN as its representatives at the UN are currently circulating a Security Council resolution which calls increased peacekeeping action in Somalia. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has suggested that as many as 27,000 troops could replace the Ethiopian contingent currently on the ground to buttress the fragile hold on parts of the country that the transitional government struggles to maintain. The AP also reports that the US and France are circulating a separate resolution which envisions a force to combat piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa which has seen a growth paralleling the instability that has ravaged Somalia for more than a decade.

What puzzles me is why aren’t representatives from the US, France and Britain working on a comprehensive resolution that seeks to simultaneously address political instability on the ground and piracy since they are most likely linked? The Secretary-General in recent comments has highlighted both problems yet there seems to be no coherent plan of action by the international community to help Somalia become more than a fractious war-torn failed state. On a similar line, there seems to be no initiative to recognize the successful example that the Republic of Somaliland has presented to its neighbors to the south as a multi-clan representative democracy that has flourished for the better part of a decade. Why is Mogadishu given more recognition by the community of nations than Hargeisa?

Happy Earth Day

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for linking to this collection of real art Earth images.

Always remember that this ‘pale blue dot’ is the home of all of humanity’s past, present and future.

The prognostication bandwagon

Polls open across the Keystone state in just under 8 hours with prognosticators flourishing and anyone who knows me knows that there are few bandwagons that I do not jump on. As mentioned in my previous post Obamatsunami? there seems to be a pattern where the polls initially have Clinton ahead by double digits then tighten a week or two out and then widen again slightly which is what’s happening in Pennsylvania. So with that unscientific observation comes an unscientific prediction: at the conclusion of voting tomorrow evening polls will indicate a +7 victory for Clinton.

DailyKos’s ttujoe has a good overview of the mystifying conclusions of Monday’s flurry of polls on the race for Pennsylvania.

From Republic to Plutocracy

Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the matter with Kansas?”, has a tremendous article in today’s Wall Street Journal about the return of class wars in America and the decline in social equality. Here is a snippet:

If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they’ve got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don’t care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I’ll fly the plane myself.

I will definitely be reading his next book.