The Offended Offensive

Officials from a Malaysian state are officially offended that scientists have officially named a virus after that state. Officially. The virus, communicable to humans from bats, was first isolated after an official occurrence in that area.

Australian and Malaysian scientists announced last week they had discovered a new virus likely carried by bats that can cause respiratory illness in humans.

They called it the Melaka virus, using the name of the southern state where it was isolated in early 2006 in a human patient.

Chief Minister Ali Rustam said Saturday the state does not want to be associated with the virus and called the name choice "an insult" to Melaka, which is a popular tourist destination because of its historical sites.

"Melaka is a good state, beautiful and peaceful, not the birthplace of diseases," The Star daily quoted him as saying.

Ali said the state government would lodge a formal protest with Malaysia's health ministry.

A spokesman in Ali's office could not immediately be contacted. Health ministry officials declined to comment.

Meanwhile, officials in the Western Nile region of Egypt are enraged over the naming of West Nile virus and you do not even want to hear what the folks in Norway are saying about the naming of a specific species of rat.

Hint: Can we get the media to stop reporting asinine "outrage" stories for a few weeks?

Yeah, That isn't happening any time soon.

Britain Under Attack

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appears to be trying to channel Winston Churchill as his fledgling administration copes with a series of terrorist attacks and bombing attempts. Police have begun targeting a number of suspects in the latest round of terror in Britain and have made a number of arrests.

GLASGOW, Scotland - British officials intensified the hunt Sunday for what they called an al-Qaida-linked network behind three attempted terrorist attacks, announcing a fifth arrest and conducting pinpoint raids across a country on its highest level of alert.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said "it is clear that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaida." He warned Britons that the threat would be "long-term and sustained" but said the country would not cowed by the plot targeting London and Glasgow's airport.

"We will not yield, we will not be intimidated and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life," he said in a nationally televised interview.

A British government security official said a loose countrywide network appeared to be behind the attacks but investigators were struggling to pin down suspects' identities — even two arrested after they drove a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow's main airport terminal Saturday and set it ablaze.

"These are not the type of people who always carry identity documents, or who use their real identities," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the inquiries. "Very little has been gleaned so far from the biological data."

Neighbors of homes being raided by police in central England and Liverpool claimed the residents were doctors or medical students.

Britain's Sky News and The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph newspapers reported that two of the men arrested were hospital doctors. Police refused to comment on the claim.

Dark times in Britain right now. There is a backlash building, whether the islamists understand that or not right now. Reports are that some bystanders at the Glasgow airport incident were yelling to let one of the attackers, set afire by his own infernal machine, burn. Hitler kept pushing after getting Chamberlain to appease him. That didn't work out too well for him in the long run, did it?

Marking The Centenary

July 7, 2007 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Anson Heinlein. John Miller has written a pretty good short biography of the man and some of his best known books. It isn't an in-depth piece, by any means. But Heinlein was a complex man.

PRINCE WILLIAM County–When Robert A. Heinlein opened his Colorado Springs newspaper on April 5, 1958, he read a full-page ad demanding that the Eisenhower administration stop testing nuclear weapons. The science-fiction author was flabbergasted.

He called for the formation of the Patrick Henry League and spent the next several weeks writing and publishing his own polemic that lambasted "Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic-sounding nonsense" and urged Americans not to become "soft-headed."

Then Heinlein made an important professional decision. He quit writing the manuscript he had been working on–eventually it would become one of his best-known books, "Stranger in a Strange Land"–and started work on a new novel.

"Starship Troopers" was published the next year, and quickly became perhaps the most controversial sci-fi tale of all time. Critics labeled Heinlein everything from a Nazi to a racist. "The 'Patrick Henry' ad shocked 'em," he wrote many years later. "'Starship Troopers' outraged 'em."

Almost half a century later, the book continues to outrage, shock–and awe. It still has critics, but also armies of admirers. As a coming-of-age story about duty, citizenship, and the role of the military in a free society, "Starship Troopers" certainly speaks to modern concerns. The U.S. armed services frequently put it on recommended-reading lists.

There's even a grassroots campaign to have a next-generation, Zumwalt-class destroyer named the USS Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein's influence reaches far beyond a single book, of course. He was the first sci-fi author to make the bestseller lists, the winner of multiple awards, and the inspiration for a legion of proteges and imitators whose own volumes now weigh down bookstore shelves. He was not the most accomplished literary stylist in his genre, but he spun a good yarn, grappled with big questions, and left an enduring imprint on a popular field. He was arguably the preeminent sci-fi author of the 20th century.

The Heinlein difference

One of the key differences between him and the two men who might also compete for this title–Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke–is that whereas they were political liberals, Heinlein was a Man of the Right.

Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler, Mo., on July 7, 1907. (His centenary is a week from today.) Growing up, he became an avid reader of a wide range of authors, from Mark Twain to Jack London. As biographer Bill Patterson has pointed out, sci-fi pioneer H. G. Wells made a big impression–and not just because he wrote about Martian tripods in "The War of the Worlds." Young Heinlein picked up Wells' twin devotion to science and socialism.

Only he grew out of the latter, of course. But Heinlein didn't really fit into any easy political classification. He was obviously a firm believer in the individual and a strong opponent of statism. He foresaw many things that have come to pass through the years, both socially and scientifically.

Anti-Chavez Protests

Thousands of people in Venezuela began chanting "Freedom" at a soccer tournament stadium in Maracaibo in a pointed slap at (T)Hugo Chavez and his growing police state.

MARACAIBO, Venezuela: Politics penetrated a South American soccer championship when thousands of Venezuelan soccer fans rose to their feet and loudly chanted "Freedom!" in a clear affront to President Hugo Chavez.

The chants — which included "This government is going to fall!" — began shortly into the second half of Thursday's match between the U.S. and Argentina in the western city of Maracaibo, a stronghold of opposition to Chavez.

Chavez opponents are hoping the arrival of thousands of tourists for the Copa America tournament will draw attention to their protests against the president's refusal to renew the license of a popular opposition-aligned television channel.

"We want the world to know we're not all with Chavez," said Gabriel Gonzalez, a business student at the University of Zulia, who attended Thursday's match.

About half the crowd of 40,000 appeared to join in the chants, which filled the stadium for about three minutes.

(T)Hugo isn't exactly winning over the opposition these days, of course. But he is trying to build up his Castro-clone totalitarian society, complete with enormous posters of himself all over the country.

Stemming The Tide

A Swedish anti-terrorism expert, Magnus Ranstorp, who consults with the British government believes that there is a huge wave or terror strikes about to engulf Britain. That little bit of news is way down the second page of the Washington Post coverage of yesterdays attack on the Glasgow airport. There is also some detail about what the terrorists were attempting to do with the two unexploded bombs found in London: create a fuel-air bomb.

Chris Driver-Williams, a retired British army major who is a consultant to the U.S. and British governments on bombs manufactured by terrorist groups, said the two car bombs may have appeared crude but their explosive firepower could have been "catastrophic."

According to some reports, the valves on the gas cylinders were left open, which Driver-Williams said was a strong indication that the bombers intended to create a "fuel-air" explosion. "What you're effectively creating is a thermobaric device," he said, referring to an explosion that relies on oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite a blast wave more powerful than many conventional explosives.

Fuel-air explosives are difficult to ignite, and the timing is especially tricky, Driver-Williams said. A mistake might result in two separate but minor explosions — such as a burning car — if the fuel-air mixture does not ignite properly. If it does, however, the result would be a "fireball the size of a house."

Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish terrorism expert who consults closely with British officials, said the threat in the United Kingdom is the gravest in Europe.

"Without luck and without the public's help, there's no way they will be able to stem the tide that is coming toward them," said Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm. "There is no question that the United Kingdom is still facing an onslaught of [terrorist] cells that are ready and willing to launch attacks like this."

Britain is a target, he said, in part because it is seen as the closest ally of the United States and its biggest military partner in Iraq.

Which is actually meaningless. The islamist terrorists may use things like Iraq as an excuse, but that is as much a front as their use of religious trappings to justify their actions. They are out for power, pure and simple and if Iraq didn't exist at all, there would be other excuses trumped up for their actions. Like some cartoons or a knighthood for a relatively obscure author. Oh, wait, they already have used those for excuses.

Incidentally, if you are not aware of how deadly a fuel-air explosion can be, try reading this or look up grain elevator explosions on Google.