The shuttle launch has been rescheduled for next Tuesday evening at 5:45 Eastern after Russian flight controllers, along with NASA, opted to use a spacewalk to clear an obstruction that interfered with the Progress docking Wednesday.

England passes emergency legislation barring reproductive cloning after a court threw out the existing law. Therapeutic cloning is still allowed.

The Cloning Game: On the uproar caused by last Sunday's announcement by ACT.

Mugabe is building underground bunkers, buying armored limos, and military equipment to prepare for a possible a civil war in Zimbabwe if he loses next year's presidential election and has deployed troops in areas with strong support for the opposition party.

Enron is headed for bankruptcy after credit downgrades and a merger collapse. The 100,000 trades on the energy markets that will need to be undone is just one of the ripple effects the collapse will have. There are a large number of companies with more than $100 million of exposure to Enron.

On the ground: another warning to maintain our principles even in wartime.

Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly from the UBC Fisheries Centre has published a study claiming that the oceans' fish stock is declining faster than previously predicted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization because of over-reporting of catches by China.

In a paper being developed, scientists from UCLA studying very short gamma ray bursts discuss the possibility that they are being caused by the extremely powerful explosions of microscopic primordial black holes.

In other black hole news, researchers at the University of Warwick have applied their method of studying X-rays generated by matter falling into black holes to analyzing soccer, to find that British games are 30 times more boring than games in the rest of the world.

A gentle reminder for us viewers at home: The shuttle is set to launch tonight at 7:41 Eastern. Update: It's been scrubbed because the Progress ship that docked Wednesday isn't firmly connected.

The European Union's Parliament has rejected a human cloning ban, but individual nations can still act on their own (and some have).

AFP has reported that the Northern Alliance bans Women's freedom march in Kabul. [via Unknown News]

What Did They Know?: Make Them Accountable asks questions about 9/11 and its aftermath, with related articles. [via Unknown News]

Transcript of Michael Chertoff of the Justice Department testifying at senate hearing on preserving freedoms while defending against terrorism.

A team led by David Charbonneau is publishing results in The Astrophysical Journal on their detection of an atmosphere around an extrasolar planet for the first time. They used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine light from its sun filtered through the atmosphere to study its composition. Members of the team discovered the planet around the sun-like star HD 209458 using the STARE telescope in 1999. [via BBC News (story)]

Clonaid, the cloning lab founded by the leader of Raelians and now run by one of it's bishops, claims it has cloned human embryos. presumably in their offshore laboratory.

COPA (son of CDA) is in front of the Supreme Court after being blocked in a federal appeals court.

Dogbert Airlines: "Attention travelers! Our hub at the South Pole is experiencing permafrost..."

Dictionaraoke: Online dictionaries sing your favorite song. [via Borklog]

Risks of the space character in Unix filenames: Diomidis Spinellis explains the root cause behind Apple's iTunes bug that wiped hard drives.

Excite@Home could be shutting down on Friday. [via Metafilter]

Notes on seeing the first LOTR movie from Gandalf himself (Ian McKellen). [via linkfilter]

Reporter Basildon Peta: Mugabe will have to kill me to shut me up. Meanwhile, the U.S. has joined Britain in protesting the association of reporters with terrorism while police and students clash after a MDC supporter was killed by a soldier.

Chris McGreal describes Mugabe's version of the war on terror. [via zem]

The US move to shut down Somalian telecom companies linked to al-Qaeda has drawn protest from the UN because of the impact to the already fragile economy in Somalia.

A witness describes the underground cave complex near Tora Bora where bin Ladin is suspected to be hiding.

Thomas Friedman on The Real War: "We're not fighting to eradicate "terrorism." Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism."

Excerpts from the Justice Departments instructions on interviewing Middle Eastern men. Michigan will be sending invitations out to people in that state who are on the list to be interviewed.

Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation reminds us that we may be winning in Afghanistan, but that's doing nothing to address the root cause of the problem.

Reactions to Sunday's announcement of the first human embryo cloning: Bush, the Vatican, and the European Commission (to name a few) condemn the action. Others feel that the medical benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the negligible risks of someone actually trying to bring a cloned child to birth. Then there are the "non-extremists", like Paul Vallely, who is "excited, but deeply worried". Libby Purves points out that despite best intentions, a cloned human child is now inevitable and that in fact there are groups and scientists whose aim is just that. The Wall Street Journal's editorial agrees it's inevitable and that the most important result of the announcement is that it will get us thinking about the issue now, while we're still at the base of Mount Clone, which scientists will climb because it's there. Two scientists involved in the Dolly cloning say that ACT's research isn't close to being ground-breaking and that it's more important politically and ethically than scientifically. Gina Kolata and Andrew Pollack agree, and discuss how the announcement was managed for maximum publicity. By provoking lawmakers, the New York Times editorial states, ACT may have done more to harm the field than help it. Clive Cookson raises the same point in the Financial Times. The Washington Post editorial urges Congress to refrain from banning the techniques before adequate scientific and ethical debates, while the Economist describes how the science may be moving too fast for laws. Reason has a collection of responses, collected before ACT's announcement, from scientists to a petition to criminalize cloning.

The Messiah Violin is supposed to be the most valuable in the world, but its authenticity has been called into question using both paper trails and a 1998 analysis, initiated by Stewart Pollens and carried out by Peter Klein, of closeup photos of the tree rings, which suggested the tree was cut down after Antonio Stradivari died. A microscopic study by John Topham and Derek McCormick in 2000 compared the instrument to other verified Stradivari and found it was from the right time period. Now a second study, led by Henri Grissino-Mayer, who stepped into the rather heated controversy last year, verifies that work.

You say "Hacker", the Feds say "Terrorist": "By lumping hackers in with cyber-terrorists, the government is demonstrating a fundamental inability to understand either group."

NPR had a piece yesterday morning on the expansion of Brazil's Alcantara spaceport and its impact on surrounding villages.

Comparing two support hotlines in providing support for Microsoft Products: Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network. [via Memepool]

In the UK, Naughty children to be registered as potential criminals: children as young as three who misbehave will be registered so they can be monitored as they grow up. [via Metafilter]

On standing under a sycamore tree in autumn. [via Follow Me Here]

Note to self: it doesn't matter if the time on the coffee maker and the alarm clock is right, as long as they agree.

Terror plagues Matabeleland once again: Some background on the Mugabe vs. MDC conflict in Zimbabwe. It describes how veterans have been hired by ZANU PF, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front, as part of a campaign to harrass the opposition party. Mugabe's tactics don't seem to be working: his terrorism charges against MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai have been thrown out by the Supreme Court and Mogabe is falling behind in the polls, even among his party members, for the election to be held early next year, though it's not clear it's going to be a fair process.

Endeavour is scheduled to lift off 7:41pm Eastern this Thursday.

Next up: "Stiletto jabs" on evildoers in Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Yemen, at least, is pledging to cooperate.

Learning from Israel: restrictions on civil liberties does not make a country more safe.

The Sunday Times has a feature section on Lord of the Rings in this week's Magazine.

Yellow Submarine, the Cirqui du Soleil musical is under negotiation.

ASHI's journal Human Immunology has retroactively pulled a paper, "The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness with Other Mediterranean Populations", by Antonio Arnaiz-Villena and others on the similarity of genes between Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians from its September 2001 issue and removed the lead author from its editorial board. The paper has stirred controversy over its political language and its conclusion that the two groups are closely related genetically. [via anfin]

Advanced Cell Technology has cloned the first human embryo. Their stated intent is to be able to grow organs and tissue, not to create full humans. Part of their work is described in this paper in the online journal e-biomed: the journal of regenerative medicine. They also have a more accessible article in Scientific American.

• Reason has some background on the political debate around cloning and the related legislation.
• New Scientist has a special section with related articles.
• Yahoo! News has a collection of recent news articles and related links.

Saruman's Diary [via The Fruitlog]

Zimbabwe is accusing foreign journalists of assisting terrorists, specifically the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, by misrepresenting their acts. England has protested the threat to its journalists. President Mugabe has also recently accused Blair of terrorism for funding the organization through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

First hand accounts of special forces raid on a tanker truck convoy in Afghanistan, from the drivers.

Pakistan is reported to be evacuating Pakistani Taliban supporters from Kunduz.

On Cheney's secure and undisclosed location: a duckblind. [via Unknown News]

Taliban leader Omar has handed over power to his army commander, Mullah Akhtar Osmani.

Spain is refusing to extradite terror suspects without guarantees that they won't face the death penalty or a military tribunal.

Planning for Peace.

Pipeline Politics: Oil, gas, and the US interest in Afghanistan. [via BookNotes]

The Council of Europe's Cybercrime Convention has been signed by 30 countries. [via /.]

A University of Toronto team led by Aephraim Steinberg have created a photon level switch (paper, slides), potentially leading toward optical quantum logic gates.

Liquid Space: Paul Davies on the quantum vacuum. [via evacuate]

This morning's radio: EpiphanyRadio

A partial photo mosaic of Mercury, shot by Mariner 10.

John Dean on The problems with Bush's executive order burying presidential records. [via Interesting People]

Terror war raises fears about rights: details laws being pushed through by state and federal lawmakers reducing civil liberties in the name of fighting terror. [via The Smirking Chimp]

The U.S. is offering a $25 million reward for bin Laden. Not to be outdone, the Taliban is offering $50 million for Bush. They also claim that our fight to get bin Laden is hypocritical while we harbor the likes of Salman Rushdie. [via Unknown News]

On breaking the law or ethical codes to give information on terrorists.

From The Economist: Terrorism and Freedom [via Unknown News]

Moving Toward a Police State (Or Have We Arrived?)" [via Unknown News]

A Taliban mullah surrenders outside Kunduz - to a New Zealand reporter.

On censorship of message boards by major providers. [via Undernews]

China is planning a moon landing as part of it's plan to build a space industry.

A five lecture tutorial on Complexity Theory and Cryptography

U.S. shuts down Somalia's internet service and most of their international phone service after claiming that the companies involved, Somalia Internet Company and al-Barakaat, have terrorist links, which they deny.

Dude, you're getting a Dell!

Today's internet radio of choice: Attention Span Radio

On Magic Lantern: an FBI project to use trojans to install keylogging software on suspects' computers. [via rc3]

NPR's Morning Edition interviews Robert Sullivan, the editor a new book on the history of the Macys' parade.

An audio interview with six audio artists about Sound Art.

Transom.org: a show case & workshop for new public radio.

"In space, you can't hear yourself think." Station crewmembers complain about continual noise.

Weather Report: Chris Floyd's Global Eye column in The Moscow Times looks at how the U.S. could change post-9/11 with consolidation of power under the presidency. [via the null device]

Portland police are refusing to cooperate with the Justice Department in questioning uncharged immigrants, holding that it would violate state law. [via Interesting People]

On the rumors around Skanksville that Flight 93 was shot down and a site gathering reports on the crash.. [via Bushwacker]

Interactive maps of Afghanistan. [via lgf]

NASA will be looking for gravity waves using the Cassini and the Deep Space Network. [via bottomquark]

The All Your Tourist Are Belong To Us rock video. [via Memepool]

Hijackers in Hong Kong steal $26 million in Nokia phone parts. I'm guessing that's Hong Kong dollars, which would be about $3.3 million U.S.

Steve Bennett and his company Starchaser has a successful test launch of Nova in England: a 37 foot tall rocket launched 5,000 feet up and returned safely. After one more test flight, he'll be putting a person, likely himself, on board, all in preparation for a shot at the X Prize: $10 million for the first team to fly three people 100 miles into space twice within two weeks. Some don't have a lot of faith.

Photos of the Hawaiian Happyface Spider. [via The Fruitlog]

Is there a Good Terrorist? - more on defining terrorism, by Timothy Garton Ash. [via Red Rock Eater]

Nuna wins.

A team led by Ehud Shapiro is publishing results of a simple nanoscale DNA computer in this week's Nature. [via BBC News (story)]

The 2001 World Solar Challenge is under way in Australia. At the end of day 3, 10 of the original 38 cars have been withdrawn or "trailered". Nuna, from the Netherlands, and Australia's Aurora are neck and neck for the lead. A marathon repair effort got England's entry, Mad Dog, back in the race today after hitting a road sign and winding up in a ditch yesterday.

The Genesis spacecraft entered orbit today around the L1 Lagrange point, where gravity is perfectly balanced between the Sun and the Earth. The goal is to return samples of solar wind particles to Earth in 2004.

America will take no prisoners - Rumsfeld: "The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders, nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners." (full transcript).

The rising sea is claiming Tuvalu. Is it just the first? Or is it even true? The Washington Times ran an editorial, "Spare the tears for Tuvalu", on 11/13 based that recent research showed that the sea level was actually dropping, though some think that's a short term effect. [via Undernews]

The Economist issues a correction on their election reporting. [via genehack]

Galleries of the November 5th and 6th aurora and the Leonids. [via Honeyguide]

Some of those Leonids actually made it through our air defense. [via Metafilter]

Playboy.com has been cracked. The attacker, going under the name "martyn luther ping", has apparently contacted customers with their credit card info. [via Metafilter]

The controversy over Seahenge goes on. First there were protests over moving the tree stump and 55 surrounding oak posts, which date to 2050BC, that make up the monument from its original location in Norfolk. The monument was relocated to Flag Fen, where it was almost lost to fire early last year, for study. Now there is apparent disagreement over whether it should be put back or preserved on dry land, with English Heritage saying that to bury the momument back in the beach risks destruction by the North Sea. A hearing will be held next week to decide the issue. A similar but larger structure was found early this year less than 200 yards away, but has not yet been excavated.

The sixth, unfinished, volume of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's series, A Salmon of a Doubt, has been found and will be republished with other unreleased works on the first anniversary of his death. [via anfin]

Computing in trinary. [via /.]

The other day I linked to a great movie of Ms. Pacman singing Mame. /. today provided the answer to something I couldn't figure out: why Mame?

I found a Google search in my referrer log this morning from someone looking for stuff on the Prisoners' Dilemma in relation to the World Trade Center. That got me curious what he might have been looking for. The closest thing I could find was an 1998 essay from a University of Michigan international affairs student that applies the Prisoners' Dilemma to the choice of a response to terrorism to show that tit-for-tat is the only way to be successful. Axelrod and Hamilton showed this strategy had the best payoff in a 1981 paper in Science: The Evolution of Cooperation. Björn Brembs' article in Oikos discusses different strategies for the game, some of which can be simulated online, and gives examples of applications in nature. It's a shame that real life is not as straightforward as game theory.

The Sunday Times describes how Mohammed Atef was killed in a U.S. attack.

CIA's Toy Gone Awry: from India's Outlook and reprinted in World Press Review.

Ben Aris and Ahmed Rashid on the real goal: control of Central Asia's oil. [via Undernews]

In 1997, the Daily Telegraph reported on a Taliban visit to Texas, hosted by Unocal. [via Ethel The Blog]

cURL: command line file transfer via URLs. [via CamWorld]

Sysadmin horror stories [via CamWorld]

Europe moves closer to 'cookies' ban [via NewsTrolls]

Into Finn Air: Finn-Olaf Jones' tale of how his Discovery Channel sponsored expedition to Mount Everest was thwarted by a forwarded email and an unhappy encounter with his outfitter, who has since been barred from Nepal.

On the reading list:
Eleanor Rieffel and Wolfgang Polak published An Introduction to Quantum Computing for Non-Physicists in Computing Surveys last year.

Don't forget the Leonids shower Sunday morning. This year is predicted to be the major storm that happens every 33 years. A two hour show is predicted between 4 and 6am EST, peaking around 5. Then around 3 or 4 am Australia time on the 19th an 8 hour storm is predicted. There may be some visible between midnight and dawn tonight as well. NASA is sending up a plane to monitor it and have also supplied a Java applet that estimates the periods of activity for locations around the world. And here's what I was looking for: where to look.

Pick a satellite, look at the Earth. [via Metafilter]

The Times says that one of its reporters has found documents left by al-Qaeda members as they fled Kabul, including some related to nuclear weapons.

On the dark matter of the net: chunks of IPs normally unreachable from the rest of the known net. Some people are starting to look at these unconnected nets, called dark address space, as a source of attacks. [via Voidstar]

Executive orders going back to 1945. Clinton's and Dubya's are available in PDF. [via Ethel The Blog]

The XBox Green Screen of Death [via linkfilter]

On the Security of PHP: part 1 and 2. [via lgf]

A while back I noted Seth Lloyd's paper on the amount of computation that has been performed by the universe. Paola Zizzi takes this a bit further and describes the universe as a quantum growing network: a network of quantum logic gates and virtual black holes that make up the quantum foam and that will continue to grow until the end of the universe's inflation. This interpretation leads, of course, to the description of the universe as the ultimate Internet.

The Sunday Times reported that the U.S. has hired psychics, including TransDimensional Systems and past members of the Stargate project, to help find terrorists and identify future targets. "Our reports suggest a sports stadium could be a likely target." I'm in the wrong business. [via blogdex]

I wondered how long this would take: Al-Jazeera's Kabul bureau has apparently been taken out by a cruise missile.

The evolution of Michael Jackson. [via Bifurcated Rivets]

The other day I linked to an interview on /. with Kent Pitman on Lisp. Here's part two of that interview. [via Lambda the Ultimate]

Spillway: mix and match sound clips online. [via Metafilter]

Globalgasm: come together the first of every month. [via prehensile]

Stone - Mystery or Malaise: on the use of stone in sculpture, from Sculpture Magazine. I don't know art, but some of these sculptures look neat. [via referrer log]

King Mswati III of Swaziland violated his own age of consent law and pays fine of one cow. Based on the alternate fine of 1300 emalangeni, that's about $133. [via Metafilter, The Fruitlog, BBC News (story)]

AOL has published a book on reaction to 9/11 based on members' posts using permission defined in their terms of service. [via rc3]

Large aerial photo of WTC site. [via lgf]

In Mazar-i-Sharif, music plays for first time in years.

Gang Land: keeping up New York's mafia. [via BBC News (story)]

A new space race? The European Space Agency plans to put a man on Mars in 30 years. Mars Express is their first step.

NASA is looking at turning management of the space station to a NGO. Is this possibly a way out of the budget problems that threaten to cause cut backs on crew size, construction, and shuttle flights (a situation which has drawn complaints from other space agencies)? [via SpaceRef (story)]

Twice a year, this site surveys the top 500 most powerful supercomputer installations. This year, they've also started working on a list of the top clusters.

A review of this years Extreme Linux Development Forum

Despite previous announcements that surplus blood would be frozen, the Red Cross didn't have the facilities to handle all the blood that was donated in the wake of 9/11. So it's going to burn tens of thousands of pints. A Red Cross vice president offered a somewhat different version of the Washington Post story, saying they have a 10 day supply, have frozen half a day's worth, and has used at least the plasma from all the blood it had to destroy.

Frank Wilczek on the future of particle physics.

U.S. based Internet sites are not bound by foreign law. Of course, this was a U.S. court ruling on the applicability of a French law.

Places of Power photo gallery. [via wood s lot]

A summary of stories on the Bush/bin Laden/Carlyle Group connection. [via wood s lot]

On the renewed push behind a bill banning import of conflict diamonds now that they have been tied to al Qaeda. [via Ethel The Blog]

DOJ field guide to new terrorism legislation [via Red Rock Eater]

Microsoft created the environment for open source to thrive? Right... [via blogdex, register (story)]

The True History of the Net [via blogdex]

This is about the tackiest thing I've seen in a long time. [via blogdex]

NPR interviews Robert Wise, the director of the first Star Trek movie, on the occasion of the director's edition release.

Here's one I missed at the time: in mid-October Italian police found a man locked inside a shipping container bound for Canada. This probably isn't unusual, except that this one had a Canadian passport, airline maps and security passes, a laptop, and cell phones.

Ashcroft suspends attorney-client privilege for terrorism related detainees. Stories at CNN and FindLaw.

A chronology of significant restrictions of civil liberties by Congress or the president.

Alabama will once again label new biology textbooks with a sticker warning that evolution is a controversial theory.

A Japanese government think tank shelved a terrorism report, titled "How Asia saw the terrorist attacks", because it could be viewed as critical of the government.

Sheperd finds unexploded U.S. cluster bombs in Pakistan.

Scott Adams has a new strip out. [via Metafilter]

This is why you don't leave pressurized containers in cars.

'Mini-bins' follow Osama's footsteps: On *.bin Osama bin Laden [via intellnet]

An account of Pakistanis crossing the border to join with the Taleban.

Next summer, two guys are going to try to get to 132,000 feet in a balloon. [via /.]

7-Eleven has developed sugar-free Slurpees. What's left? Ice?

Ran across GRRL Radio this evening. I was enjoying the play list until I started typing this entry...

A /. interview with Kent Pitman, centering on Lisp. (Update: here's part two) [via Lambda the Ultimate]

The Tourist Guy comes forward. [via dangerousmeta]

A team involved in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has lowered the estimate for a planet killing asteroid hitting Earth in the next century from 1-in-1500 to 1-in-5000. The decreased risk came from a decrease in the estimate of asteroids large enough to do that kind of damage. Their paper will appear in the November 2001 issue of Astronomical Journal. Stories at CNN and BBC.

The 2001 UN report on world population. [via anfin]

OpenCores: Open source hardware [via jerrykindall]

The story of Schroedinger's cat, cast as poetry. [via jerrykindall]

It's now been proven that sheep can recognize faces. A letter to NPR's All Things Considered today pointed out the next step: showing them photos of terrorists and putting them in airports to provide security.

The Continental Drift Cam: You can now watch the continents drift in real-time. [via The Fruitlog]

Mame! Don't forget your quarters. [via Memepool]

A Stanford team has gotten the first look inside a sunspot. [via bottomquark]

A pillar of sunlight.

On Star Wars 1.1: The Phantom Edit. [via Flutterby]

We've moved to FutureQuest.

Are there tiny black holes at the center of the Earth? This paper explores that possibility.

On solving code problems with a rubber duck.

Margaret Atwood remembers a 1978 trip to Afghanistan.

The NY Times Tolkien Archive, including reviews of The Hobbit and LOTR from the 30s and 50s.

This is apparently old news, but I just read about it: Romania is building a new theme park: Dracula Park. Universal Studios wants its cut.

The NIST Dictionary of Algorithms, Data Structures, and Problems [via linkfilter]

George Soros talks with NPR on globalization (RealAudio).

Microsoft's Passport has been hacked: there is an attack which allows an evil-doer to steal somebody's credit card numbers by getting them to open a Hotmail message. [via Interesting People]

Alternative DNS roots: AlterNIC, Pacific Root, OpenNIC

Michelle: category 3 or 4 over Cuba late today or tomorrow.

New York is looking at the possibility of building a dome over Ground Zero to protect the site during winter. Meanwhile, a consultant looking at what to do with the Millenium Dome has recommended giving it to New York.

The 22 remaining U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations have been added to the list of groups whose assets will be frozen.

On the links between Globalisation and Talibanisation.

The Realtime Javascript Editor, for testing code online. [via jerrykindall]

CNN Chief Orders 'Balance' in War News: it seems there's been too much reporting of U.S. damage to Afghanistan and not enough reporting of Taliban evil-doing. [via Interesting People]

A new study on online communities. [via Interesting People]

Prehistoric fort found in England. [via The Fruitlog]

The first photo is back from Odyssey.

Time magazine is under investigation for its subscription practices. [via Undernews]

Diamonds are a terrorist's best friend. [via rc3]

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project, including full text of medieval documents. [via somewhereIforget]

George Monbiot's essay on the School of the Americas, renamed earlier this year to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. For the second year in a row, there is a House bill to shut down the school. [via anfin]

Thematic maps of Afghanistan, mainly reflecting humanitarian activities in recent years. [via Rebecca's Pocket]

How to build an authentic Dalek. [via The Fruitlog]

On reports by a French newspaper that bin Laden was treated at an American hospital in July and met with a CIA representative. The CIA denies the story.[via Ethel The Blog]

MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment looks at the future of transportation and sees chronic gridlock and pollution.

yeti@home: distributed computing in search of a legend. [via Bifurcated Rivets]