I looked online for some pictures. Here’s one–but its not nearly as grand as some pics that my brother brought back.

Understand that in the last month NASA confirmed the presence of significant amounts of water on the moon by rocketing one satellite into a crater and then rocketing another satellite through the debris thrown up by the first satellite. Analysis of the debris by the second satellite in the seconds before it crashed showed the presence of water.

That means that all the primary ingredients for colonization of the moon are available on the moon: water, power, oxygen.

But imho serious space colonization won’t get started until the second half of the 21th century. The first half of the 21st century will be about turning the deserts of the world green & doubling the size of the habitable planet.

I have been to China also, 2004 and 2008.
The airports were clean the cabs were clean the hotels were clean the restaurants were clean and the stores were clean.
The people with one exception were polite friendly helpful and clean.
At one stop in Chongquing we met a Ford executive who was sent to build a factory from the ground up. He said there was not an alley in this city of millions that he would be afraid to be alone in at three o’clock in the morning.
The crime rate in China is very low.
We visited an elementary school in Nanchang where the daughter of our guide attended. It was huge and clean and so were the kids.
The air is very dirty and you can’t drink the municipal water.
I know the country runs on bribes
and politics but the average Chinese is as decent as the average American.

One of the reasons why the Nobel Peace Prize is now regarded with such contempt is because it has historically gone only to those who somehow advance the interests of Swedish foreign policy. Hence, Hitler and Stalin were beneficiaries as well as the occasional genuine hero.

When there is endemic corruption with a regime with no ideological bearings, the “forlorn hope” works in reverse. Hence, the panic in 1975 that ensued in South Vietnam when President Thieu tried to evacuate the central highlands.

I would argue that a regime of government requires a raison d’être, without which it is a hollow shell. Bureaucrats need a reason to not be corrupt. Priests need a reason to not be corrupt. Government leaders need a reason to not be corrupt. It helps if one believes in a religion where God (or “the gods”) is neither corrupt nor arbitrary. Perhaps corruption is not so much a cause of a lack of legitimacy, but rather its effect.

Afganistan is historically a tribal confederation masquerading as an empire (much like medieval Ethiopia) within a region accustomed to being a series of satrapies within the Persian Empire. Its present configuration is the result of the combined arms of the United States and the Northern Alliance. This puts the United States into the odd position of being an overlord.

Now, imagine a satrap comes to the court of the King of Kings. Then, imagine the Padishah gratuitously chewing out the satrap in public for the satrap’s corruption. Never mind the Padishah’s own corruption. Never mind how press accounts of the corruption of the Padishah’s court get squelched. Never mind that the nickname of the lord of the state next door is “Mr. 10%”. No, the satrap must crack down on corruption or else the Padishah might not send any more troops to quell raids by bandits, never mind that opium has become the life blood of the economy of his satrapy. That satrap is scared; he is glad for every day of life he has because he knows the grisly fate of the previous satraps.

If the satrap had been reminded in private of the necessity of reform, the satrap may have listened. Yet, by humiliating the satrap in public, the Padishah undermined the satrap’s legitimacy. As it is, arguments are raging in provincial capitals whether the Padishah is seeking to undermine the Empire, he is acting incompetently, or whether the power of his office is merely going to his head much as it did for Caligula and Nero. Grumbling is rising in the ranks of the imperial guard. Yet, since the present Padishah is still seen by half of the empire as a living deity in a new Ptolemaic religion that promises “Change”, court rivalries are mostly rhetorical. For the time being.

Thank you for your kind comments.

I needed to take one PhysEd course in college, and I chose tennis. There was actually a textbook for that class; it was about 50 pages long.

I still can’t play tennis worth a damn, but after 35 years I still remember a very important principle, bold-faced in that thin book:

Never change a winning game; Always change a losing game.

We are losing the War on Drugs, and along with it we’re losing our Constitution and our society. IMO we should change this losing game post haste. It’s true that we can’t know all the consequences, but we already see the horrible consequences of the present policy. In this case I’d rather “fly to others [ills] that we know not of”.