Eideard

India has launched seven satellites from a single rocket, demonstrating its growing skills in multi-satellite launches. The success comes nearly a month after India had to end its inaugural Moon mission early.

Within a space of 20 minutes, an Indian rocket placed one big satellite and six small ones into space from the Sriharikota space center in eastern India.

The big remote-sensing satellite will map fishing zones around India, measure ocean surfaces and wind speeds and track monsoons and cyclones.

The six small satellites belong to other countries – four to Germany, one to Switzerland and one to Turkey…

In the past decade, India’s 46-year space program has focused on developing rocket-launching capabilities to gain a slice of the multi-billion-dollar space-launch market. It has put an Italian satellite and an Israeli spy satellite into orbit. But India is still a relative newcomer in a field dominated by big players such as the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency…

In recent years, India has scaled up its ambitions to explore space, not wanting to be left behind by countries like China. It hopes to send a manned mission into space, in four years time.

India’s space program functions on a relatively modest budget of about $1 billion a year.

I’m trying to recall if the U.S. has done anything on a modest budget ever since management of our government became a function of the military-industrial complex.

Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, holds out a dog biscuit.

“Henry!” he says. Henry is a big black schnauzer-poodle mix–a schnoodle, in the words of his owner, Tracy Kivell, another Duke anthropologist. Kivell holds on to Henry’s collar so that he can only gaze at the biscuit.

“You got it?” Hare asks Henry. Hare then steps back until he’s standing between a pair of inverted plastic cups on the floor. He quickly puts the hand holding the biscuit under one cup, then the other, and holds up both empty hands. Hare could run a very profitable shell game. No one in the room–neither dog nor human–can tell which cup hides the biscuit.

Henry could find the biscuit by sniffing the cups or knocking them over. But Hare does not plan to let him have it so easy. Instead, he simply points at the cup on the right. Henry looks at Hare’s hand and follows the pointed finger. Kivell then releases the leash, and Henry walks over to the cup that Hare is pointing to. Hare lifts it to reveal the biscuit reward.

Henry the schnoodle just did a remarkable thing. Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can.

Har! I won’t even suggest the political implications of such a study.

Poisonally, I can’t wait to try this. Especially, if and when Google is allowed to offer out-of-print books.

The Justice Department is preparing to impose new limits on the government assertion of the state secrets privilege used to block lawsuits for national security reasons. The practice was a major flashpoint in the debate over the escalation of executive power and secrecy during the Bush administration.

The new policy…would require approval by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. if military or espionage agencies wanted to assert the privilege to withhold classified evidence sought in court or to ask a judge to dismiss a lawsuit at its onset.

“The department is adopting these policies and procedures to strengthen public confidence that the U.S. government will invoke the privilege in court only when genuine and significant harm to national defense or foreign relations is at stake and only to the extent necessary to safeguard those interests,” says a draft of a memorandum from Mr. Holder laying out the policy and obtained by The New York Times.

Under the Bush administration, the Justice Department frequently asserted the state secrets privilege, blocking lawsuits by people who claimed that they had been illegally wiretapped or tortured as part of the government’s counterterrorism efforts…

Several lawmakers adopted a cautious stance on whether they would press forward with the privilege legislation, because they had not yet seen the policy. Still, the lead sponsor of the House version of the bill, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, noted in a statement that the bills would affect courts, too.

“Fixing the executive branch’s assertion of the privilege is only one part of the equation,” Mr. Nadler said. “Congress must still enact legislation that provides consistent standards and procedures for courts to use when considering state secrets claims. Our constitutional system requires meaningful, independent judicial review of governmental secrecy claims.”

Say “Amen!”

Man U probably won’t need the extra time against Wolves, today. But, everyone’s suspicions appear to be confirmed by this bit of mathematics. Football referees are afraid of the Red Devils and Sir Alex.

Sir Alex Ferguson likes to boast that his Manchester United team score more late goals than any other side in the world. Others argue that they get a bit of extra help from referees. It has now emerged that the Premier League champions do, as suspected, benefit from an imbalance in the amount of stoppage time that is added to their matches.

After the controversy over Michael Owen’s winning goal in Sunday’s Manchester derby, the Guardian has looked at all of United’s league matches at Old Trafford since the start of the 2006-07 season and discovered that, on average, there has been over a minute extra added by referees when United do not have the lead after 90 minutes, compared to when they are in front…

When Owen made it 4-3 on Sunday the game was five minutes and 26 seconds into stoppage time. In total, the referee, Martin Atkinson, allowed almost seven minutes, even though the fourth official had signalled a minimum of four. Mark Hughes, the City manager, spoke of feeling “robbed”. His sense of grievance will not be helped if he analyses the last three seasons.

In 2006-07, for example, United were winning 15 times on entering stoppage time and referees added an average 194.53sec. In the four games when United were not winning there was an average of 217.25sec. The following year the disparity was greater, Opta’s figures showing an average 178.29sec added when United were winning and 254.5sec when they were not. Last season it was 187.71sec compared to 258.6sec.

The pattern has continued in the first three games of the season. In the two games United have led they have played an average 304sec of injury time. On Sunday, Atkinson allowed the game to go on for 415sec.

We’re not exactly unfamiliar with the habit here in the colonies. The American League treats the Yankees much the same. When the Dallas Cowboys actually were a winning team – they were America’s Team. I lived outside Boston when the Celtics could do no wrong as long as they were playing on parquet.

Oh – and good luck, today, Mick.

Vicki Reggie Kennedy at memorial for her husband Senator Edward Kennedy

The Massachusetts Senate voted on Tuesday to allow the governor to name an interim U.S. Senate replacement for the late Edward Kennedy and fill a key 60th seat for the Democrats during the healthcare battle.

The heavily Democratic state Senate passed the bill 24 to 16, following approval by the state House of Representatives last week. The bill will go back to both chambers on Wednesday for a final vote and then requires a signature from Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat who backs the legislation.

Patrick is likely to name a temporary replacement for Kennedy within days and is certain to pick a Democrat. That will return the party to the 60 votes it needs in the U.S. Senate to override Republican procedural hurdles, giving President Barack Obama a boost as he tries to get healthcare reform and other contentious legislation passed this year…

Without an interim replacement, Kennedy’s seat would have lain vacant until a January 19 special election of a permanent senator to serve through 2012, hurting Obama’s plan to pass an overhaul this year of the $2.5 trillion healthcare system.

I was chuckling over newspaper articles claiming Blue Dog Democrats were going to keep this from happening. They may be in the pocket of corporate lobbyists slightly more often than run-of-the-mill Dems; but, Massachusetts is still a state with above average education [for the U.S.A.] and an electorate with some understanding of how to function as part of a nation.

The San Ysidro Port of Entry on the U.S.-Mexico border in California was temporarily closed tonight after four people were wounded by gunfire that erupted from three vans packed with than 70 people headed from Mexico toward the border, officials said.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer also fired their guns, said Angela Decima, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol.

Three of the casualties were critically wounded, said San Diego, California, Fire Department Spokesman Maurice Luque. The fourth person wounded was in a separate vehicle, said Decima…

Four of the five people who were hurt were part of the entourage of cars involved in the shooting, he said. All of the occupants of the three vehicles were taken into custody, said Luque.

The crossing point, officially declared a crime scene, will remain closed for several hours while the San Diego Police Department investigates.

These gangsters obviously didn’t do their homework. I don’t care if you’re driving armored cars, you ain’t about to just drive your way through a major border crossing from Mexico, nowadays. Way too much hardware in your way.

The local mine is a mere three miles away and is clearly visible from the offices of the Brecon Mountain Railway in Merthyr Tydfil.

But regulations about how it can be transported mean that coal for the railway’s newly converted steam train comes not from the south Wales valleys but from Siberia, 3,000 miles away.

Coal from the Ffos-y-Fran opencast mine in Merthyr has to be moved by rail rather than road. As there is no rail link from the mine to the railway, coal for the converted engine comes from the wilds of Siberia via rail to the ports, then container ship to Hull, then by road to Merthyr…

The railway owner, Jayne Hills said it was even more galling because the local coal was perfect for use in a steam locomotive. It generates steam quickly and maintains its heat…

“Being from Merthyr, where everyone has a relative who was a coal miner, or knew somebody who was a miner, this seems just crazy,” she said.

The mine operator, Miller Argent, said it was not just the railway that had to source coal from faraway locations despite there being a mine close by. Local coal merchants who supply homes, pubs, schools and hospitals were also having to look elsewhere for their supply because the mine’s planning permission stipulated it could only move coal by rail.

See. It’s not the Republicans – alone – who invented Red Tape.

Sometimes, I think that nations beginning to fail at imperialism have to do something with excess bureaucrats; so, they put them to work “regulating” the lives of ordinary citizens.