Olympics Tour - Salt Lake City 2002From NASA, link courtesy InstaPundit...

Advice to a Superpower -- From the Iron Lady.

OpinionJournal - America the Beautiful -- On the Axis of Evil, and how President Bush re-aligned the world with three words. The WSJ is on a high today...

OpinionJournal - Featured Article -- The ABA goes to war against America. A must read...

OpinionJournal - Scene & Heard -- More on the eco-terrorists.

More on Purebreds... Consider this -- look at the average English blue blood. Ever noticed that they are not, um, hotties? They are purebred, however.... Consider some of the loveliest models on the face of the earth. Almost every one has a mixed heritage. -- Yeah, that's a shallow, but highly visible example -- now into the depths -- That mix makes for the opportunity to find some amazing traits, and not just teh physical traits. I suspect that people mixing it up and 'mongrelizing' the races will do a lot of good. Who knows -- maybe the combination of bits and peices from different regions of the earth, by way of genetic intermingling, will create genius at a level as yet unseen. Maybe that blend will result in amazing cures, astonishing inventions, and incredible ideas. Oh, wait, that's already happening... here in the good ol' USA. The Melting Pot refers not only to the cultures that merge together, forming a strong alloy of humanity, but to the genetic traits we bring to our nation's future, by way of our children. The poepl who come here are innately optimistic. They may be afraid, but they are brave. They are often smart, strong, and filled with purpose. We are a random assemblage of the best the planet has to offer.

Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorites, rends and shreds the Westminster Dog Show. Personally, I find purebreds to be so much froo-froo and not enough go. I like working dogs and alley cats. Give me a cocker-schnoodle or a brindle and a tabby or calico cat and I'm a happy guy, petwise.

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today -- An excellent collection today, lads.

Fox News has a blurb about an eco-terrorist testifying before Congress. These are the sort of idiots who give anyone in the eco movement a bad name -- and why is it that there seem to be a greater number of idiots in the radical environmentalists than anywhere else?

Cakewalk In Iraq (washingtonpost.com) An optimist at the Post? My opinion -- Iraq is not as strong as it may appear. It's weaker than eleven years ago, and we're smarter and stronger. I recall sitting with a bunch of coworkers during the last Gulf War discussing the potential counter-invasion of Kuwait. Many of them cited the poundits declaring thousands of US casualties, the difficulties of taking on the Iraqis head on, and the problems presented by the massive installations the Iraqis had thrown together along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border. I countered with the following -- 1. We own the skies, night and day. We have the only operational stealth aircraft, and it's not a load of hooey. I'd read some of the papers on the F-117A Stealth Fighter, and on the theories behind it. It was as good as it sounded. Regardless, we outnumber and out train almost any force on Earth, and when it comes to air-to-air and air-to-ground warfare, we are own the skies. We learned a lot from Vietnam -- how to handle missile installations, ground emplacements, etc. 2. The problem with the Iraqi defense mechanism is that it is beuilt around the concept of the fixed point defense. The Soviets/Russians use similar defense concepts, but they use that as a front line with a sufficient fall back space to bring reserves to bear. If you want to maintain Kuwait as an Iraqi Province, you can't fall back. It's too small. Also, fixed point defenses are easily managed if you can navigate around them. We have the Global Positioning System. The Iraqis followed the roads. We know when and where we are, to a fine degree. The Iraqis get lost in the desert. So we can make an end-run around them while they sit in their trenches and bunkers. Sitting there doesn't win wars. Which we did. We beat them through superior air power, and by running around behind them and enveloping their relatively fixed formations. For the future -- The Iraqis rely to a certain extent upon massed formations. This works to our advantage -- we can pummel these formations from a looser, more dispersed grouping, a concept the Soviets/Russians call a fire-sack. You suck a massed formation into being surrounded. Or you pummel it from the air. Mass formations worked fifty years ago. They don't work against a modern force. Or we can dispatch Predators loaded with Hellfire or Maverick missiles and blot them from the earth by Remote Control. There's a lot we can do that they can't. I'm not suggesting frivilously pursuing a war -- but I beleive that when the time is right, and we're ready to go, we will destroy Saddam Hussein.

TCS: Tech - Changing the World, Below the Radar Well, Mr. Reynolds has an affection for Polish Software Engineers... Me too, since I'm a half-Pole Software engineer...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today A good one today. And apologies for no posts the last few days. Wedding & work keep interfering with my fantasy life of fame and fourtune...