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This claim rests on the argument that an international system in which there is more than one major power is no longer acceptable. Two years ago, Condoleezza Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London that 'multi-polarity' in the past had been 'a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but did not promote the triumph of peace'. As a theory of political society, she said, it stands for rivalry and competition. 'We have tried this before. It led to the Great War ... '

This obviously is untrue. The simultaneous existence of major as well as minor powers was the political reality throughout modern history, despite efforts to overturn it, most recently by Hitler and Stalin.

A traditional diplomacy of 'balance of power', meant to keep the peace, failed in 1914, and in 1938 the existing balance of power was deliberately destroyed by a hegemony-seeking Germany - in part made possible by an isolationist United States's refusal to intervene in Europe's affairs.

Speaking in Paris last week, the Secretary of State asked, 'why should we seek to divide our capacities for good, when they can be much more effective united? Only the enemies of freedom would cheer this division.' The alternative she proposes is an American-led international system that replaces Nato's principle of equality and collegiality with hierarchy.

This American role is avowedly benevolent, and in the eyes of many Americans, certainly including President Bush, it is of divine origin (Woodrow Wilson also believed this). Within the present administration, there are those who believe cosmic forces are in play and responsible for America's emergence as the sole superpower. The American belief in a divine commission goes back to its religious origins in the 17th century, and is not open to logical refutation. Even secular interpretations of American destiny assert a moral claim, expressed thus in the 19th century: 'The United States has achieved the highest possible form of political system and that this great system can be extended to the rest of humanity ... Because America is exceptionally good, it both deserves to be exceptionally powerful and by nature cannot use its power for evil ends.'

I think it's often the case that the Soviet Union's contribution to the defeat of Hitler is overlooked or at least grossly underestimated. 3 million German troops invaded Russia in 1941 and drove hard and fast into the heart of the Soviet Motherland. By the time of the D-Day landing in June 1944, the Red Army and Soviet industry had recovered from this almost unimaginable mauling at the hands of the cream of the Third Reich's military forces, including the notoriously effective Waffen-SS Divisions.

I for one don't underestimate the Soviet contribution, but neither do I consider it a positive contribution in the sense of improving the overall situation. Tyranny is tyranny, Soviets vs. Nazis, either way bad guys win. From my perspective it washes out.

But then it begs the question - if you know all this, what leads you to the conclusion terrestrial life is only 1 billion years old?
                                               

Exploration: To boldly go where no man has gone before... oh never mind.

Exploration, to push beyond our current limits and understandings. Doing things we have never done before.

VSE seems to encompass that pretty well.

And who approved giving a White House press pass for this "pig" and "pervert" - - okay thats two questions.

Press passes are actually pretty easy to get a hold of - you merely need to be a writer for a regularly published whatever (newspaper, magazine, TV show...).

Current White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has insisted that Guckert was entitled to a so-called "day pass" just as any other 'regularly published' reporter was, and that he did not decide who merited passes and who didn't. But today, a New York Times columnist said that her press credentials were revoked in 2001 after 15 years. Maureen Dowd writes: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed... At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed... no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass — after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months."

Make no mistake, Jeff Gannon, or James Guckert, or whatever his name is, is no conservative. Anybody who publishes sexually explicit photos of himself on a website in hopes of making money as a hooker is no conservative. Not in this lifetime. Not on this planet. The person in those photos is a pig and a pervert.

After all, DNA ain't nothing but a clunky form of computer code.

LOL!

Life as "clunky" computer code? Considering... well, us, I'm inclined to believe you underestimate the situation.

Or perhaps I am overestimating it, considering... well, us.   

As I have said before, a Gaia-state seems to me to be the natural result of ANY life that evolves. Using the power of exponential reproduction, life WILL engulf its environment and diversify.

Maybe. Or life started and never quite got beyond the microbe stage. Or perhaps there are Martian microbes but they're Terran transplants that adpated.

I'd certainly like to see fossils of Martian dinosaurs turn up and a lake of Martian oil could have some applications, but I'm far from convinced that this Gaia-state model has any connection to reality. At present we have only one data point, any conclusion is purely speculative.

1. There must be a pattern involved.

    2. The pattern must be copied somehow (indeed, that which is copied may serve to define the pattern). [Together, 1 and 2 are the minimum replicable unit -- so, in a sense, we could reduce six essentials to five. But I'm splitting rather than lumping here because so many "sparse Darwinian" processes exhibit a pattern without replication.]

    3. Variant patterns must sometimes be produced by chance -- though it need not be purely random, as another process could well bias the directionality of the small sidesteps that result. Superpositions and recombinations will also suffice.

    4. The pattern and its variant must compete with one another for occupation of a limited work space. For example, bluegrass and crab grass compete for back yards. Limited means the workspace forces choices, unlike a wide-open niche with enough resources for all to survive. Observe that we're now talking about populations of a pattern, not one at a time.

    5. The competition is biased by a multifaceted environment: for example, how often the grass is watered, cut, fertilized, and frozen, giving one pattern more of the lawn than another. That's Darwin's natural selection.

    6. New variants always preferentially occur around the more successful of the current patterns. In biology, there is a skewed survival to reproductive maturity (environmental selection is mostly juvenile mortality) or a skewed distribution of those adults who successfully mate (sexual selection). This is what Darwin later called an inheritance principle. Variations are not just random jumps from some standard starting position; rather, they are usually little sidesteps from a pretty-good solution (most variants are worse than a parent, but a few may be even better, and become the preferred source of further variants).