NASA may soon face a shortage of rocket scientists as older employees reach retirement age and the space agency has difficulty attracting young people. Oddly enough, the reason obvious:

NASA's trouble recruiting college graduates may be as a result of the perception that NASA no longer is on the cutting edge of space research, said Bruce Mahone, director of space policy at the Aerospace Industries Association.
"They're not doing a huge number of shuttle flights a year. They're not going beyond low-Earth orbit. I think a lot of [the shortage of young workers] has to do with the program. It is a good shuttle program, but we aren't moving forward," he said.
In addition, the shuttle program is a money pit that makes investment in other research difficult, said Howard McCurdy, an American University professor of public affairs who studies NASA's history and culture.
"We weren't supposed to become transfixed with developing the shuttle program for 30 years. NASA should have moved on," he said.

So it seems to me that the solution is obvious. Give people things that are interesting and productive to work on and they will come.

"McCarthyism" is a term much overused by the Left ever since the real McCarthy was terrorizing folks back in the fifties. Now some Hollywood anti war folks are raising that bloody shirt again because people are getting ticked off by actors and rock stars campaigning against a war against Saddem Hussein. Clearly, the theory goes, Martin Sheen and Mike Farrell are just inches away from being put on a black list and being forced to spend their declining years doing avant guarde theatre in France.

Of course this is silly. Though if ratings for The West Wing take another nose dive, leading to it's cancellation, I should be very entertained to hear the yelps of outrage.

The ironic thing about all this is that it is an open secret that there are many conservatives in Hollywood who are afraid to speak out, lest they be denied jobs and parts. Maybe the Hollywood Left should show a little more tolerance toward other points of view before yelping about a few angry e-mails.

Fifty years ago today, Joe Stalin, one of the greatest killers and tyrants of the last century, passed from this Earth and entered Hell.

Faced with the need to reach a consensus in the face of a coming war in Iraq, Islamic countries have decided to attack each other with the style and ferver of grade school children.

A few years back, before 9/11, the folks who bring us South Park attempted a sit com based on the daily trials of President George W. Bush. "That's Our Bush" was short lived and not very funny, since it stuck to the stereotype of the President as a clueless doofus. Now, the actor who played the President in that series, Timothy Bottems, will reprise his role in a much more serious vein in a film DC 9/11, depicting the events of that day from the point of view on the White House staff. Penny Johnson, who appears as the scheming ex wife of President David Palmer in the series 24, will play Condi Rice. George Takai, of Star Trek fame, will play Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta. Yet to be cast are the roles of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell.

"Human shields" are fleeing from Iraq in terror for their lives. Seriously.

In a review of The Life of David Gale, an anti death penalty screed disguised as a movie, the reviewer suggests that the title charecter deserves to swing.

The Bard speaks across the gulf of four centuries upon our current troubles.

More on China's lunar ambitions. If the Chinese do go to the Moon and we are not there to greet them, then the eternal shame is ours.

According to Newsmax.Com's Left Coast Report, not everyone in Hollywood is getting on the appeasement bandwagon:

Although Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garofalo have been dominating the anti-war airwaves of late, some stars with differing points of view have decided to speak up.

Bruce Willis, Brian McKnight, Kid Rock, Rob Lowe and Jean-Claude Van Damme are saying things that are undoubtedly making the anti-war crowd steam. On the other hand, the celebrity rhetoric that's coming out of these guys is warming the hearts of the kick-Saddam's-butt bunch.

According to the New York Daily News, Willis seriously thought about enlisting in the U.S. armed services.

Singer Brian McKnight told MSNBC, "If we do go to war ... I'm going to support whatever President Bush decides to do."

Kid Rock colorfully expressed his views by saying, "We got to kill that mother-[bleeper] Saddam. Slit his throat."

Rob Lowe, Sheen's former co-star on "The West Wing," told Fox News Channel that Americans should support our armed forces, and that the best way to do that was to support our commander-in-chief.

And action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme told Globe magazine, "Some of those in Hollywood are part of the axis of ignorance!"

Turkey is already paying a price for tweaking the Eagle's tail feathers and refusing permission for a northern front against Saddem.

Just when you thought things could get get any weirder. According to Drudge, Vanity Fair is about to publish an article which claims that Michael Jackson paid a voodoo priest $150,000.00 to lay a curse on media morguls David Greffen and Steven Speilberg in order to kill them. Apparently, even though at last report both gentlemen were very much alivem 42 cows gave the last full measure during the ceremony.

The Chinese, like the Washington Post, may be thinking of the lessons of Zeng He. I think the Post is wrong to apply the example of Zeng He's treasure fleet to the shuttle. The shuttle is not about exploration or expanding frontiers in any real sense. It's about going around in circles.

China has hinted at some more details of their proposed lunar program.

For an example of what Peggy is talking about (see below) Teddy Kennedy, by inciting a jihad against Miguel Estrada, is leading the Senate judicial confirmation process into ruin and chaos.

Peggy Noonan describes in her usually superb way how the Democrats have gone freaking nuts. And since they are, I'm not sure that they'll heed her advice about how they can recover from their thirty year vacation from sanity and decency.

About ten thousand folks showed up for a pro war rally in Houston.

Will Houston be a center of nanotechnology business in the 21st Century. Could be, but the technology is just one of the challenges standing in the way.

The nabbing of one of Al Qaeda's biggest bad guys is a serious blow against the drive for power of-the Democratic Party. The Democrats have been trying to tell us that the War onTerror has been neglected in favor of the War on Iraq (as if they were not part of the same conflict.) Now I wonder what they have to say.

The Speaker of Turkey's Parliement just threw away tens of billions of dollars and earned for his country the enmity of the United States and her allies for what appears to be a technicality.