The luxury American cruise ship teeming with hundreds of tourists just might have been too much for the Somali pirates to resist.

But the bandits, riding in two skiffs and firing rifle shots at the gleaming ship, were outrun in minutes when the captain of M/S Nautica gunned the engine and sped away in the Gulf of Aden, a spokesman for the company said Tuesday.

My only question is: why the hell is the State Department allowing cruise ships near the waters off the coast of Somalia given the recent pirate activity there? Or even if it's not something the State Department can restrict, given international maritime law, why is the company operating that cruise ship allowing a ship in its very expensive fleet to operate near the waters off the coast of Somalia?

Barack Obama is 47. By contrast, David Cameron - who leaps to mind as another potential national leader in the coming years, whatever you may think of that fact - is 42. I got to thinking about what a national leader might look like in ten years time, 2018. Let’s suggest, based on Obama and Cameron, that they’re 45.

They’re 45 in 2018 when they stand for office - that means they were born in 1973. They would have been four when Taito released Space Invaders came out [sic]; seven when Pac Man came out. In 1985, when they were 12, Nintendo would launch the NES in the west. At 18, just as they would have been heading to University, the first NHL game came out for the Genesis/Megadrive and might consumed many a night in the dorm. At 22, the Playstation was launched. At 26, they could have bought a PS2 at launch; at 31, they might have taken up World of Warcraft with their friends.

They would have been a gamer all their lives. Not someone who once played videogames, trotting out the same anecdote about “playing Asteroids once” in interviews; someone for whom games were another part of their lives, a primary, important medium. Someone who understood games.

And if that was the case, what might they have learned?

The blogger who wrote this up really needs an editor (or at the very least let a friend proofread) but brings up some very good points.

"But the more we work with these kids these less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem," adds the addiction specialist.

A breaking study indicates that 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year could be locked up in rock formations that cover half of Oman—finally putting a dent in global greenhouse gases. And the same principle could be transferred to rock formations in shallow seas.

The first country to deploy a space elevator will have a 95 per cent cost advantage and could potentially control all space activities.

Sounds to me like something worth competing for.

On board the orbiting probe Mars Odyssey is the Mars Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, a device which can measure the abundance of elements on the Martian surface. When it was trained on the lowlands of Mars, it found evidence to support the existence of those oceans! The elements in question were most abundant below the shorelines, as expected, when compared to regions outside (above) the shorelines. The regions with higher concentrations of potassium are marked in red and yellow in the map above, right where the lowlands are.

Still more evidence needed, but this is a pretty big find!

For the first time, ever, astronomers have captured an optical image of a planet orbiting a star like our own.

(Hat tip: Dave Shea)

I love that he's keeping true to his word of opening up government to the people.

Jon DeVore at HorsesAss.org:

As Republicans survey the smoldering wreckage of the party of Lincoln and the inevitable reassessment occurs, here’s some free advice for them: stop lying about everything.

I don’t mean spinning and fudging and trying to put a good face on your policy positions. I mean stop lying as a first, middle and last resort about every last damn thing under the sun.

If you think a specific tax proposal is a bad idea, just explain why, don’t paint anyone and everything who might think it is a good idea as a communist. Don’t call birth control abortion. Don’t paint opponents as lovers of sex offenders. If your opposition is pointing out that the Constitution needs to be upheld, don’t call them terrorist sympathizers. If Americans are concerned about the economy, don’t try to blame people who were in office 30 years ago.

Stop lying. If you can.

So long, Ralphie! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

On election night, thousands took to the street in celebration. Best part of the video is the guy 2:00 in. (Hat tip: Wesa)