Linkfest

-- Further steps towards curing cancer.

-- I remember claims in 2003 that Iraq may have sent WMDs and other material to Syria, but there is apparently a new chorus suggesting there is some evidence supporting it. Via Patterico.

-- More on private business in space.

-- This is just heartbreaking. A disturbingly large number of couples who go through incredible difficulties trying to get pregnant and are eventually successful with in-vitro fertilization, end up aborting the babies for "social reasons".

-- I hadn't heard this song in years, but after listening to it again I remembered something I thought about it when it was popular: the guitar solo is one of the clearest expressions of hell I've ever heard. I don't mean that it's a bad solo at all, I mean it expresses in audible form what I think a damned soul would feel.

-- Japan is testing a solar sail to see if a spacecraft can be propelled by the sun's rays. Photos at the link. Also, Japan's spaceship that landed on an asteroid several years ago, took samples, and then had difficulty returning to Earth ... has returned to Earth. Very cool.

-- The blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Afghanistan has immense mineral resources, trillions of dollars worth. I think this is a very good thing: the Afghanistan economy is based on non-perishable crops like opium, because they lack the infrastructure to make farming perishable goods profitable. This discovery would give them the ability to be economically independent, which in turn would give them the ability to be militarily independent. Of course, it will be years before the benefits will be realized, and there will undoubtedly be the danger of corruption.

-- Bill Vallicella has some great posts on Nietzsche of late. Start here, then go here, and then here. The latter post is only incidentally about Nietzsche, as it deals with a silly misconception of the Imago Dei doctrine, and two of the posts deal with the book Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief. And if you still need some more, read this.