The University of North Carolina at Wilmington may have to shut down its underwater research lab -- the only one in the world -- because of budget cuts to a program that helps pay for it.

UNCW manages the lab, a 400-square-foot capsule moored 63 feet below the surface off of Key Largo, Fla. The federal government pays for its operation.

...the US Department of Defense (DoD) is expected to raise its annual spending to US$25 billion in 2010 according to forecasts from US Congressional Budget Office and the DoD. This is more than 40% above the 2003 level of US$17.5 billion. By the end of the decade, military space budgets may reach a similar level to those for civil programs for the first time since the end of the cold war. In 2003, total spending on civil space was US$24.3 billion (up 5.3% compared to 2002); military spending grew 11% to US$18.5 billion.

   

   

You wonder why your grandmother can't get the medicine she needs? If she's retired, she's not contributing at the GNP. In other words, she's hurting the nation's bottom line.

In the minds of our corporate driven government, if grandma isn't making dollars, it doesn't make any sense to keep her alive.

When our leaders decide to sacrifice your life or well being for the good of the nation, just remeber,"It's nothing personal, just business."

Finally, keep in mind that these are the same people who give us a color coded chart, a roll of duct tape, and a video of a bearded, homeless guy getting a free dental exam as solutions to terrorism.

Folks, we're on our own.

Traditionally, we have defined evolutionary-social fitness by looking at things like cunning, military strength, ability to dominate etc. . In this regard, many of us have come to regard the U.S. as the "fittest" nation because we have the biggest economy and most lethal military.

Our economic and military strength, however, has one major Achilles heal: it is entirely dependant on an abundance of cheap oil. When that runs out, it's over for us.

While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.

Kind of ironic when you think about it.

Eerie artork: Screenshots ''A series of drawings from an isometric perspective, in the style of a computer game. The subjec't of each drawing is the image, or images, that created a popular cultural event. Historical events (like the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel) are used interchangeably with fictionalized events (like the picnic scene from The Sound of Music).''

Never mind the rollingshite news channels and their inability to notice when EVIL IRAQI DEATH DRONES WILL RAIN HORROR ON AMERICA IN MINUTES turns seamlessly into "WMD-related programme activities". They're just really happy that Mr Bliar - in all good faith, with an open and Christian heart and not a naughty thought in his head - accepted and promoted "intelligence" that professionals were loudly finding laughable long before the first coalition cluster bomb liberated the first Iraqi child's fingers.

   

...the greed for heaven is still alive and well. That much is clear from A Travel Guide to Heaven, a new Christian inspirational book. The author, Anthony DeStefano, takes his travel-guide conceit literally, declaring that paradise is "Disney World, Hawaii, Paris, Rome and New York all rolled up into one"—the "ultimate playground, created purely for our enjoyment." The disingenuousness of DeStefano's fantasy has to be read to be believed: He looks forward to a heaven where you are your earthly self, but thinner, younger, and prettier, and where you will do nothing but race from one game, hobby, or exotic sight to the next, "having fun" for eternity. No detail is too small for DeStefano's cruise-director God to take care of: "You shouldn't be shocked," he writes, if on Judgment Day "you feel a paw anxiously poking at your leg"—yes, Rover will be there, too.

Former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave is alleged to have observed in a UN setting that the problems of the Middle East could be solved if only Jews and Arabs would "settle their differences in the true Christian spirit".

The Middle East also provided the setting for former minister Oliver J Flanagan's observation that decriminalising homosexuality could result in Ireland being "overrun by gays and Lebanese". He is also said to have observed that anti-Semitic pogroms could be expected in Limerick and other cities because Ireland was becoming "a Mecca for Jews".

Perhaps the same flavour of the eastern Mediterranean has affected our current Taoiseach. Mr Ahern told the FF parliamentary party last month that he wouldn't tolerate anyone forming "kebabs" within the party. He is also the man who once referred to a US Secretary of State as "Cyprus Vance".

If that was embarrassing, it wasn't as bad as John Bruton telling Prince Charles at a banquet in Dublin Castle that the visit of Old Jug Ears was "the happiest day of my life". Finola Bruton, sitting alongside her husband, might have been understandably perplexed.

Mind you, Mr Bruton was once called "John Unionist" by Albert Reynolds. "It would send cold spines up your back," as Bertie would say.

Just as spines tingled when Albert proudly announced that "we are steadily driving employment down, and that is thanks to Government policy". He meant unemployment, we think. He also said in 1992 that he wanted to "dehumanise the social welfare system"...

...Then there was Jimmy Tully, Minister for Local Government, who said "They were trying to kill me", when Anwar Sadat was assassinated at an army parade in Cairo and Jimmy just happened to be in the reviewing stand. Mind you, a piece of shrapnel had gone through his cheek and Jimmy was understandably in shock.

Not as bad, perhaps, as the auditory drowning of Joe Jacob, Minister of State, on the Marian Finucane radio programme after 9/11 when he was asked what people should do if terrorists crashed a plane into Sellafield and the radioactive clouds billowed this way.

Joe said people should stay indoors, "what we call taking cover", and should take their iodine tablets. "We want to minimise your exposure to levels of radiation that are, God forbid, out of doors."

He added that it was "highly unlikely that, as a small nuclear country, Ireland would be targeted in such a way . . . I beg your pardon, I've got nuclear on the brain now. A small neutral country."...

...Former Taoiseach Jack Lynch once promised not to put reform of the law on contraceptives on the long finger. But that wasn't as embarrassing as Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave voting against his own Government's proposed legislation on the subject.

And when Charlie Haughey said making condoms available on prescription to married couples was "an Irish solution to an Irish problem", it prompted a French diplomat to observe that Ireland was the only country in the world to regard sex as a problem.

Embarrassed? We should be.

If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow.

Amazing... This is a 3D model of the crater at the Opportunity Rover's landing site. It was assembled by analysing the images from the rovers two stereoscopic cameras, and converting the data into a computer model. The crater is only 20 meters in diameter, and the rover would be near the bottom if we could see it.

Freaks of the week! Christian foot soldiers battle for Bush The idea of extending marriage licences to gay couples is particularly repugnant to them. Gay men do not live for a long time. They have a lot of disease... It's a moral issue, but also a health issue," says Jim, unconcerned that in the secular world, his views reek of homophobia.