Opportunity has made it to Victoria Crater!!!

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has made it to the rim of the crater Opportunity. A recent Navcam mosaic of the crater is here. On this mission, we have gotten so used to seeing rocks that might look big in imagery from the rover but in actuality are only a meter or so high. In this case though, the things around Victoria really are big. The promontory of rock to the left of the rover, a feature we're calling Cape Verde, is 10 or so meters high! Once again, it is like a whole new mission!

Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday

Did you catch Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday. Man! The guy is out of his gourd. Can you imagine what the reaction of the press would be if a Republican went off on an interviewer like that? Byron York did a good job of deconstructing Clinton's excuses.

Asia at the House of Blues Las Vegas

I made the “there and back again” trip out to Las Vegas to see Asia perform at the House of Blues. That concert was this past Thursday night and I just flew out there Thursday and back on Friday. I had vacillated about whether to make a dedicated trip for that show and now I am glad that I did because it was a really great show. I thought the band members looked pretty good for their age. Sure, John Wetton has chunked up some (but he still has his voice) and Steve Howe… well, we all know how Steve Howe looks, but, boy, he sure can still play the guitar! Perhaps most importantly, they all looked like they were having tremendous fun. Especially Geoff Downes. During the final number (“Heat of the Moment”), he got out front with the portable keyboard and he looked like a kid on Christmas morning with a new toy. Maybe it was just my imagination, but he seemed a lot more animated than he did when he was in Denver with the John Payne version of Asia. They all took turns talking to the audience. In terms of material, I think they performed every track from the first album. They did nothing from “Astra” and from “Alpha” they just did “The Heat Goes On” (one of my personal favorites) and reworked, pseudo-accoustic versions of “Don’t Cry” and “The Smile Has Left Your Eyes”. One thing that really convinced me that I had to go was when I heard that they were going to be doing tracks from their respective former bands. That was fabulous. As part of that component of the show, they did “Roundabout”, “Fanfare for the Common Man”, “In the Court of the Crimson King”, and “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Steve Howe also did an extended version of “The Clap” and Carl Palmer did an awesome drum solo as part of “The Heat Goes On”. I think the people in this group would really have loved “Fanfare for the Common Man” since the addition of Steve Howe’s guitar to that track was really amazing. The House of Blues was a good venue and I think they mentioned that they were taping the show so maybe that show might even come out on DVD.

Opportunity is close to Victoria Crater

Opportunity is only about 50 m away from the rim of the 740 m diameter Victoria crater! There is an AWESOME Navcam mosaic here. Some flight software upgrades are going on so the rover won't get to the rim until early next week. We will have some spectacular views when we get to the rim! This is going to be good!

interesting omission from coverage of Ahmadinejad's UN speech

It is interesting and telling that the major media outlets have neglected to highlight the fact that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad concluded his speech to the U.N. with a prayer calling for the hasty return of the "12th Imam" (aka Muhammed al-Mahdi). For those who don't know, Ahmadinejad is a devotee of the sect of Shiite Islam that believes that the messiah-like 12th Imam will return at the time of Armaggedon. So... basically, the guy is praying for Armageddon. Seems to me that's fairly newsworthy. Can you imagine what the outcry would be if President Bush had ended his speech to the U.N. with a prayer for the second coming of Christ? Good grief! Why does the mainstream media give Iran a pass?

The writer of "The Path to 9/11" speaks out

Cyrus Nowrasteh wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal outlining some of the outrages he has been subjected to for daring to write a screenplay that simply told the truth about the somnolent behaviour of the Clinton administration with regards to terrorism. Very enlightening!

more on the Pope's comments

Victor Davis Hanson, as always, has it just right in his comments about the Pope's speech on Islam.

Cheers for Pope Benedict; Jeers to CNN

I was just in the gym working out and on the TV on CNN Headline News there's the headline at the bottom of the screen: "Pope attacks Islam". Boy... what a misrepresentation of what Pope Benedict said on Sept. 12 at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Now, I'm by no means a fan of the Roman Catholic church. However, I have to applaud Pope Benedict for taking an honest look at the history of Islam and an honest look at Islam will reveal that it has been a violent religion since its inception. It has been! There is no denying that. In the Pope's speech, he quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel Paleologos II and that guy had some more vicious comments about Mohammed. I couldn't hear the sound from the CNN but the blurbs on the screen made it sound like they were attributing Benedict's quoting of Emperor Paleologos to Benedict himself and that's simply untrue. Gee... CNN being misleading and inflammatory... who'd have thought it?

Two Years at Meridiani Planum: now in Science

The peer-reviewed journal article (of which I am a co-author) detailing two (earth) years of science performed by the Opportunity rover at Meridiani Planum is out in the current issue of Science. You can check out the abstract at the preceding link.

the Path to 9/11

I just finished watching ABC TV's "The Path to 9/11". It was a pretty powerful presentation. I'm glad ABC didn't cave in to the Clintonoids and yank it. It was pretty much as tough on the Bush team as it was on the Clintonistas. The only big problem that I had with it was how much they played up Richard Clarke's role. I don't think the real life guy is really the selfless seer of future terrorism as the guy portrayed in the Mini-Series, but oh well. I hope it got a big audience though. People should see the threat we face in the radical Islamists as portrayed in that production and realize that political correctness could literally be the death of us.

One way that the American media is hurting us

On the O'Reilly Factor, Bill was talking with Debra Burlingame, the sister of one of the pilots who were killed by the hijackers on 9/11/01. She made a good point, that the media is really hurting us in the Moslem world by their constant harping on "torture" going on in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. For goodness sake, what happened in those places were prisoners getting panties put on their heads or being forced to listen to loud music or being subjected to sleep deprivation. In NO possible way can that be construed as "torture", but that word is still what shows up in the headlines and people in the Moslem world see that and they think of REAL torture (eg., hot pokers in the eyes, fingers being cut off, etc.) and they think we are performing REAL torture on moslem prisoners and we're not. The media and the left (they're really one and the same) keep on harping about "war is not the answer" but by turning the Moslem world against us (as they are doing with their stories) they are effectively making war the only possible answer because they have so poisoned those people against us.

Space.com articlle picked up by MSNBC

The space.com article regarding the impending arrival of the Opportunity rover at the rim of the 740 m diameter Victoria Crater has also been picked up by MSNBC. A colleague at SSI said that I was quoted in an MSNBC TV report too... cool!

another Space.com appearance

I am quoted in a new article on Space.com about Opportunity's progress in getting to Victoria crater.

Bravo to Gov. Romney

I just heard on Hugh Hewitt's radio show that Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts will be withholding any Massachusetts state escort or security services to the former president of Iran, Khatami, who will be speaking at Harvard on Sept. 10 (Sept. 10! how galling!) It is abominable that the U.S. State Dept. gave a visa to that man, a man who represents a country that wants our destruction. The visa was given however, but at least Gov. Romney has the stones to say that he won't support that terrorist's visit. Let the libs at Harvard defend him with their flower power rifles.