I was musing about pulp settings the other day. Off the top of my head: It’s the 1930s, and the Romany have taken to the skies. After the Hindenburg disaster, the public shied away from hydrogen dirigibles; but Paulo Pettersen, the sort of engineering genius who comes along once in a generation, believed he could make the vessels safe enough. What’s more, he convinced quite a few others of the same, and la! Before anyone realized it, the Romany flew, rising up above Europe in first a dozen and then a hundred great silvery balloons. ...

This story pretty well summarizes the state of affairs in Turkey; it’s a country with two ruling factions. The military is very wary of Islamic rule and has in the past led coups to prevent Islamic government. The most recent military action was in 1997. The current government is rooted in political Islam. What Turkey does will depend on who wins the current power struggle, and it may be a military victory. ...

The London Times published this thoughtful discussion of reasons to be anti-war; it sums up a lot of what I’ve thought and said, but better, cause they’re the Times and I am not. (The epitome of blogging, here: all I’m really doing is pointing to an article that agrees with me. But damn, it’s a good article. Oh, and yeah: via The Volokh Conspiracy. Now it’s a real blog post…)

If I was smart enough and lucky enough to do anything I wanted in life, I might want to do [something like this](http://web.archive.org/web/20200324075615/http://web.archive.org/web/20200324075615/http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/table/explore6.html (original) “Large monitors - Four frames ([1/2]/1)”) (original). “The Waste Land” is special to me. (Via Metafilter.)

The Times of India is proud of Kalpana Chawla (original), as they should be. While this was her second shuttle flight, she was the first person born in India to go to space. If Ilan Ramon deserves recognition for trailblazing, and he does, she does as well. Here (original) are some notes, written by her husband, about the weeks leading up to this mission. ...

CNN is showing photos that a viewer emailed in. Real time citizen reporting is here. Why did it have to be about this? The picture appears to be the moment of actual explosion; you can see chunks of debris centered on the shuttle. There’s a shot of Mission Control, which is utterly quiet. My god. Addenda: now they’re asking a caller to hold her phone up to her radio scanner. No good news, although she hasn’t heard anything about injuries on the ground. She has heard that a lot of debris has been found. She’s been deputized to relay from the scanners to CNN.

It looks like the space shuttle Columbia has been lost. The Columbia had the first Israeli astronaut on board. I can’t believe this. This week is the anniversary of Challenger. CNN is showing footage of the debris falling. The administration is saying there’s no indication that it was a terrorist attack, since it happened at such a high altitude.

It occurs to me that one of the large obstacles in the way of invading Iraq is the Security Council veto. It further occurs to me that the rationale behind the veto, that being the great power status of the Allied nations after World War II, is somewhat antiquated. I don’t think any pro-war pundit can deny that the veto is tremendously frustrating. As so many have pointed out, it seems ridiculous that France can effectively stand in the way of UN action. That ability — the ability of one nation to unfairly stop debate in its tracks — prevents the UN from being effective. Again, many argue that the UN’s inability to press the issue of Iraq is ruining the UN as we watch. ...

I’m sort of having trouble wrapping my mind around this one. I just got my birthday gifts from my Mom. Among them was something I was actually given thirty-three years ago: a pair of gold diaper pins from Tiffany & Co. with my initials monogrammed on them. Inside the little Tiffany box is a note: “For Bryant, with love from Uncle Alex.” That’s apparently Alex Haley; yeah, the one who wrote Roots. (Not actually my uncle.) ...

Sure; when there are easy ways to send text messages around on little tiny devices, students will cheat (original). I wonder how you keep that from happening in the Steve Mann vision of always-on cyborgs? You’d have to actively jam the devices, since communication inside the classroom is as much a problem as access to the Internet. Or just retool to an open book system, which might be much better.