Out of that hotbed of progressive thinking, Texas, we now have pay-by-the-mile auto insurance, I like the idea of insurance only charging for miles driven. But the author, Aaron S. Edlin, advocates confirming the miles driven with GPS systems. The next step then would be to charge not just for how much you drive, but where you drive, and the compilation of large databases on all your travels. Do you think the goverment snoops can keep their fingers out of something like that?

Here we learn that Nigeria wants to enter the space race. More power to them. But I did notice this rather ludicrous statement in the BBC article:

"But Nigeria is ideally sited for a space port. Its position just north of the equator means any rocket can harness maximum benefit from the Earth's rotation, which helps catapult the vehicle into space, when it makes the leap into orbit.

That is just bunk. There is a reason the US has a launch facility on the East Coast (Kennedy) and another on the West Coast (Vandenburg): Due to the rotation of the Earth, the West Coast is the best place from which to launch a polar orbiting sattilite, while the East Coast is best to launch equtoral orbiting sattilites. Most communications and weather sattilites are of the latter type.

Misfiring vehicles launched from Nigeria will fall on densely populated West Africa, not a good thing. For the record: The best place on Earth from which to launch a sattilite is in Africa however; the top of Mt Kenya.

Just refered this to Kathleen Parker. I'm also going to post at Terran BBS. May the blog revolution continue!

This is the first entry of this blog. It is dedicated to libertarian thinking and California politics.