Well, this is one way to get there.

The moon could become a final resting place for some of mankind thanks to a commercial service that hopes to send human ashes to the lunar surface on robotic landers, the company said on Thursday.

Celestis, Inc., a company that pioneered the sending of cremated remains into suborbital space on rockets, said it would start a service to the surface of the moon that could begin as early as next year.

The cost starts at $10,000 for a small quantity of ashes from one person.
Celestis president Charles Chafer said his company reached an agreement with Odyssey Moon Ltd. and Astrobotic Technology Inc., to attach capsules containing cremated remains onto robotic lunar landers.

Odyssey Moon and Astrobotic are among private enterprises seeking to land a robotic craft on the moon and conduct scientific experiments. The cremation capsules would remain on the moon with the lunar landers when the missions were complete.

When I was 6 years old watching the Apollo 11 land on the moon and men walk on that orb high overhead, I believed that we would see frequent and reasonably inexpensive travel to the moon in my lifetime. Such has not been the case. Maybe, however, I’ll still get there – in death, if not in life.

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Now this presents an interesting question. Is an increase in home sales good news if the prices of homes are down?

Sales of existing homes increased unexpectedly in February after six months of decline, but private economists said it was too soon to say the prolonged slide in housing is coming to an end.

The National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes rose by 2.9 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.03 million units. It marked the first sales increase since last July, but even with the gain sales were still 23.8 percent below where they were a year ago.

Prices continued to slide. The median sales price for single-family homes and condominiums dropped to $195,900, a fall of 8.2 percent from a year ago, the biggest slide in the current housing slump. The median price for just single-family homes was down 8.7 percent from a year ago, the biggest decline in four decades.

Those numbers make it hard to say that we are out of the housing slump -- and analysts are predicting another six months of a weak housing market. But I can't help but remember that for the last couple of years we have been hearing that the housing market in many areas of the country was overheated and overpriced. Would this not simply constitute a readjustment of the market to reflect the actual value of the properties in question -- especially after rash speculation on the part of some buyers and sellers?

I don't pretend to have an answer to the question -- but I feel that it is an important question to ask.

Especially since the drop in prices may allow some families to purchase homes that they could not have purchased a year ago because of the inflated prices. And if so, do we really need the sort of increased government intervention in the housing market that some politicians are proposing?

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Even though free municipal wi-fi plans appear to be deader than a doornail, the Bill White Administration here in Houston is intent upon creating one.

Except you won't get wi-fi everywhere in the city.

You'll only get it if you live in one of ten "bubble" zones around the city.

Houston is aiming to turn EarthLink's lemons into the city's lemonade.

The company had to pay the city $5 million after defaulting on a contract to build a citywide wireless Internet network last year. On Monday, Mayor Bill White announced the city will use about $3.5 million of that money to build 10 free wireless network "bubbles" in low-income parts of Houston to give residents access they otherwise might do without.

The long-term possibility, White said, is that the bubbles could be connected and the areas between them added to the network, providing WiFi access across the city.

"It's a matter of connecting those bubbles," White said.

Monday's announcement launched the first bubble in the densely populated Gulfton area of Southwest Houston. The city is establishing a committee to determine where future networks will be located. Build-out is expected to happen over the next two years.

Yeah, it is a matter of connecting those bubbles, Mr. Mayor -- and how you are going to pay for it. Is the city headed for a tax increase?

And how can you justify undermining businesses that have already set up for-profit wi-fi networks in Houston -- or other broadband services -- which cost subscribers around $30 a month? Is undercutting business a legitimate city function? And why not free telephone or cable television service, too?

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Many of us wondered about the feasibility (not to mention the propriety) of these municipal internet schemes when they were first announced. Now it would appear that we were right -- and there is a question as to how much these failed efforts will cost taxpayers.

It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor.

Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match PhiladelphiaÂ’s plans.

But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be profitable led to sudden withdrawals by service providers like EarthLink, the Internet company that had effectively cornered the market on the efforts by the larger cities.

Now, community organizations worry about their prospects for helping poor neighborhoods get online.

Of course, this begs the question of whether or not it is the responsibility of government (whether municipal, county, state, or federal) to provide internet access -- especially high-speed internet access -- to residents of any economic class. We wondered how the private companies involved would make a profit on the programs, and whether it would eventually be taxpayer dollars that would sustain what is, in the end, a luxury rather than a necessity. We also questioned how poor people who could not afford the cost of internet service could afford the cost of a computer to access that service if it were free.

While the last question has not been answered, advocates for free municipal wi-fi networks are already attacking what they see as the root problem that led to the failure of the programs in the American cities mentioned above -- free market capitalism and the concept of a profit-driven market.

“The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects,” said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Mr. Meinrath said that advocates wanted to see American cities catch up with places like Athens, Leipzig and Vienna, where free or inexpensive Wi-Fi already exists in many areas.

He said that true municipal networks, the ones that are owned and operated by municipalities, were far more sustainable because they could take into account benefits that help cities beyond private profit, including property-value increases, education benefits and quality-of-life improvements that come with offering residents free wireless access.

So the solution, in the eyes of the folks from the New America Foundation, is increasing the level of socialism in America and undermining the free market. After all, if cities offer for free (or at cut rates) what private businesses have spend billions developing and building, we will quickly see the vast improvements in internet connectivity come to a screeching halt. After all, why invest in improving the ability to access the internet when the government is going to strip you of your market?

Adam Smith is no doubt whirling dervishly in his mausoleum.

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Now here's an interesting bit of news for all of us dinosaur buffs -- a mummified dinosaur!

Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all.

Think about the possibilities here -- we can learn much more about the anatomy and physiology of these long-extinct beasts.

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota—a duckbilled dinosaur found in southwestern North Dakota in 1999 and announced to the public last December — is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron.

It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.

"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota and a National Geographic Expeditions Council grantee.

"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life," Manning said. "This is a full chapter."

Frankly, the possibilities are intriguing. This is probably the best preserved fossil of its type, and so we are getting the opportunity to learn about the soft-tissue structures that most fossils do not preserve. We've got lots of fossilized bones, but few fossilized hearts, as an example.

And what's more, there is talk of a world tour for this fossil. That means that Dakota could be coming to a town near you one day, and you might actually get to see what a real dinosaur looked like.

Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg!

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The Baltimore Sun presents a very fair look at the lovely and multi-talented Michelle Malkin.

A couple of quotes stand out in the article.

. I've lived among many different kinds of people in this country, and it has always been the case -- in life or on the Internet -- that the most vicious attacks I've faced have not come from the archetypal red-necked bigots on the right. It's always been the people who profess to have the best intentions for me and my race and my gender. The loudest cheerleaders for tolerance are the most intolerant of all."

And she is even more explicit in her observation later on.

It also amuses her that so few of her critics realize "I actually believe what I believe." Why, she says, should being born "with brown skin and a uterus" confine her to any particular set of beliefs?

In other words, it isn't her fellow conservatives who hold to stereotyped views of what a woman or an ethnic minority ought to believe. Rather, it is those who rant and rave about diversity who object most strongly to her words -- because she threatens their stereotypical notion of what "diverse" (read that liberal) views she is supposed to bring to the debate because of the color of her skin and her genitalia. And it is why she is regularly berated and attacked in the most vile racist and sexist terms by writers who claim to be opposed to racism and sexism.

Michelle Malkin remains one of the most articulate voices on the right side of the blogosphere -- and this conservative would like to express his appreciation and love for her.

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You would have thought that this crime is something relegated to the past -- but it appears that cattle rustling is alive and well in Idaho, with a twist.

Two guys and a four-door sedan.

That's all it took for cattle rustlers to relieve dairy owner Pete Wiersma of three valuable calves.

Once the province of outlaws and the bane of hardscrabble ranchers who grazed their cattle on the open range, cattle rustling has never gone away. Like the livestock industry, it's only gotten more efficient.

In general, cattle rustling tends to increase whenever beef prices are high, said Larry Hayhurst, head of the Idaho State Police Division of brands. Because the price of cattle feed has been relatively high this year — making the cattle more expensive to raise and lowering the potential profit — the theft reports should be on a downswing. But in rural dairy regions — where milk cows can nearly always fetch a high price and methamphetamine use is becoming as much a part of the landscape as grain silos and milking barns — the rustling reports seem to stay fairly constant.

The Idaho State Police gets between 300 and 500 reports of lost or missing cattle a year, Hayhurst said. The numbers have been consistent for about a decade.

* * *

"Rustling is alive and well everywhere in the West," said Jim Connelley, director of the Division of Livestock Investigation for Nevada's Department of Agriculture. "The gooseneck trailer and diesel pickup are probably the best piece of equipment to come to a rancher in many years and also the most useful equipment for a rustler."

A gooseneck trailer allows a pickup to haul a heavier load.

The pickings are even easier on many dairies. Investigators are still looking for the thieves who stole three of Wiersma's yearling heifers, valued at around $700 each, several weeks ago. Brown, the Twin Falls County sergeant, said the calves — which were unbranded — are probably long gone.

"The way that it happens is you drive your little Mazda into the dairy, in the back where the cameras don't pick it up," Brown said. "And you take four small calves out of the calf hutches and you put two in the trunk and two in the back seat and you drive off."

Two in the back seat and two in the trunk. If it weren't a serious property crime, I'd have a joke or two to make about frat boys or Aggies. But rustling is big business, with each calf worth about $700. That's a tidy profit for a rustler.

Maybe we need to go back to the old way of dealing with such folks -- hanging on the spot.

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This headline seems to state something really obvious to me.

Family Massacre Casts Pall Over Town

One would think that this sort of brutal murder of a family -- perpetrated by a group of local teens, including one of the children of the family -- would have quite an impact on this small town. And certainly the article itself is beautifully written (unusual for the AP), I just can't get past that dumb headline.

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The more we use, the higher food prices go.

Another reason for the sharp hike in food prices is the increasing demand for ethanol, which has driven up the price of corn – and at the same time created a shortage of wheat as farmers shift their crop to the more lucrative corn.

Yes, I know that the article is pointing to higher gas prices as the source of much of the price increases in foods like pizza, beer, hot dogs, and such things -- but imagine what will happen whe we start seeing a federal mandate for increased use of "renewable" ethanol as a fuel source More corn production will lead to less wheat production which will lead to higher prices for anything that uses flour -- you know stuff like bread.

Are the Greenies really sure that ethanol is a bright idea now? What will they say when they can't afford to buy a loaf of organic bread to make their staving children tofu and jelly sandwich?

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DoesnÂ’t this make us safer?

For the first time in the nationÂ’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

But wait. If these folks are, in fact, committing real crimes against real people, it strikes me that this is a good thing. I want the violent folks, the thieves, and the drunk drivers off the streets.

Don Surber pegs it.

Question: What does 1 in 100 Americans behind bars mean?

Answer: That the other 99 of us are safer. Look the reason so many black men are behind bars is that so many black people are beat up, raped or murdered by black men. When one-eighth of the population suffers nearly half the nationÂ’s homicides, the problem is not that so many members of that eighth are behind bars, but that you suffer so many homicides.

The black men who should be saved are not the ones behind bars but the ones in coffins.

IÂ’m tired of my students being crime victims. IÂ’m tired of their relatives being crime victims. LetÂ’s start worrying about the victims instead of the victimizers.

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