perfidy

... and a case of scotch. Let's go to Disneyworld! Well, not quite . But Roy Disney did lament the lack of rifles at the stockholder's convention, and expressed frustration that things will be much harder to sort out using peaceful methods. In another surprising statement, Roy compared the prospect of Eisner's departure with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Many were shocked that Roy referred to a Warner Bros. film.

John Kerry on the American Urban Radio Network:

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.

Now you know. If you need a gas mask, these people have an ill-designed website where you can acquire one. Then you need to learn the care and feeding of gas masks.

Bonus picture:

It is the centenary of the birth of Theodore Geisel, the man who made it possible for Jesse Jackson to read "Green Eggs and Ham" on SNL and permanently damage my brain. For all kinds of nonsensical activities involving crude and perversely drawn creatures and words that don't mean a thing but rhyme very well, go here, or here. 

"The Lorax speaks for the trees!" If there is anything aside from the sanctimoniousness, lies, arrogance and delusion that turned me away from the environmentalist movement, it's that phrase.

[wik] It has been pointed out that I got the quote wrong. Here is the correct quote, in context - we're all about context:

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs"

he was very upset as he shouted and puffed

"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?”

It should be noted that the Lorax' fear is overwrought. Clearcuts are, after all, only temporary meadows. Who hates meadows?

[alsø wik] While looking for the actual words the actual Lorax spoke instead of the wrong words in put in my quote, I found this:

Rejected Dr. Seuss Books:

1. One Bitch, Two Bitch, Dead Bitch, Blue Bitch
2. Herbert the Pervert Likes Sherbert
3. Fox in Detox
4. Who Shat in the Hat?
5. Horton Hires a Ho
6. The Flesh-Eating Lorax
7. How the Grinch Stole Columbus Day
8. Your Colon Can Moo---Can You?
9. Zippy the Rabid Gerbil
10. The Cat in the Blender
11. Marvin K. Mooney, Get the Fuck Out!
12. Are You My Proctologist?
13. Yentl the Lentil
14. My Pocket Rocket Needs A Socket
15. Aunts in My Pants
16. Oh, the Places You'll Scratch and Sniff!
17. Horton Fakes an Orgasm
18. The Grinch's Ten Inches

From murdoc, we hear that there is a new Heinlein movie-book-adaptation thingy in the works. Heinlein's classic juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has been given to the Oscar winning screenwriter David Reynolds (Finding Nemo) for conversion into what hopefully will be the first decent adaptation of a Heinlein book. No word on when the movie is planned to be released.

As I commented in mudoc's post, the track record for Heinlein movie adaptations is abysmal. %$#&^&#$#*ing Verhoeven crucified one of my favorite all time novels. He and his @#$%head screenwriter completely missed the point of the book. And worse, in the HBO 'making of' special, they went on and on about how this movie is a tribute to the master, and how much they admired his work. After seeing just the preview, I wondered if they had even read the blurb on the back of the book. The Puppet Masters wasn't quite as bad, but didn't go beyond mediocre.

What I would most like to see would be for some talented indie-type director to create a film noir version of Heinlein's novella "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." First, because it's a great story. It's creepy, ingenious, and has some of Heinlein's better dialog. Second, because short works make better movies. A page of a movie script is equal to about a minute of film time. And also roughly equivalent to a page in prose. So, for a two hour movie, you need about 120 pages of text. Anything more, and you have to start cutting. Get a really big novel, and you have to cut a lot. This is one reason why Dick's stories make better movies - they are the right length. And also why Dune and LoTR are so difficult.

Heinlein's early novels tended toward short, most are less than 200 pages. Better targets for adaptation. Though they can still be screwed up, as witness the two Heinlein movies we have. (And I hope they never make a movie out of Stranger in a Strange Land) There is great potential in several Heinlein books. Double Star is a great political thriller - and could even be removed from the science fiction context and still be a great movie. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a ripping yarn about a revolution, an intelligent computer who likes practical jokes, and dropping really big rocks on the Earth. Starman Jones is a great adventure, as is Red Planet. The first half of Glory Road could be better than all but three fantasy movies ever made.

And frankly, I'd still like to see a real version of either Starship Troopers or Puppet Masters.

gwiawnt wobowt sowushowns gwowp: 

[hat tip: Mapgirl]
 

The Village Voice is reporting that John Kerry did some very, very bad things when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs in the early nineties. The POW issue has been a contentious one since the end of the Vietnam War. Many people are convinced that the government in general, and the DoD in particular have acted to cover up evidence that the Vietnamese still had living American prisoners. And there is a lot of evidence to support that contention. The general apathy of a public eager to 'move on' and put painful memories behind them has contributed to an atmosphere where this is possible.

But this article makes the claim that Kerry actively participated in these activities when he was chair of the select committee.

In the committee's early days, Kerry had given encouraging indications of being a committed investigator. He said he had "leads" to the existence of P.O.W.'s still in captivity. He said the number of these likely survivors was more than 100 and that this was the minimum. But in a very short time, he stopped saying such things and morphed his role into one of full alliance with the executive branch, the Pentagon, and other Washington hierarchies, joining their long-running effort to obscure and deny that a significant number of live American prisoners had not been returned. As many as 700 withheld P.O.W.'s were cited in credible intelligence documents, including a speech by a senior North Vietnamese general that was discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar.

Here are details of a few of the specific steps Kerry took to hide evidence about these P.O.W.'s.

• He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

  Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.

• Another protest memo from the staff reported: "An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig [Kerry's staff director] as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee . . . lines of investigation have been seriously compromised by leaks" to the Pentagon and "other agencies of the executive branch." It also said the Zwenig leaks were "endangering the lives and livelihood of two witnesses."
• A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerry's close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. (Dick Cheney was then defense secretary.) It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring P.O.W. information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: "Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating."
• The Kerry investigative technique was equally soft in many other critical ways. He rejected all suggestions that the committee require former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to testify. All were in the Oval Office during the Vietnam era and its aftermath. They had information critical to the committee, for each president was carefully and regularly briefed by his national security adviser and others about P.O.W. developments. It was a huge issue at that time.
• Kerry also refused to subpoena the Nixon office tapes (yes, the Watergate tapes) from the early months of 1973 when the P.O.W.'s were an intense subject because of the peace talks and the prisoner return that followed. (Nixon had rejected committee requests to provide the tapes voluntarily.) Information had seeped out for years that during the Paris talks and afterward, Nixon had been briefed in detail by then national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and others about the existence of P.O.W.'s whom Hanoi was not admitting to. Nixon, distracted by Watergate, apparently decided it was crucial to get out of the Vietnam mess immediately, even if it cost those lives. Maybe he thought there would be other chances down the road to bring these men back. So he approved the peace treaty and on March 29, 1973, the day the last of the 591 acknowledged prisoners were released in Hanoi, Nixon announced on national television: "All of our American P.O.W.'s are on their way home."

...A year after he issued the committee report, on the night of January 26, 1994, Kerry was on the Senate floor pushing through a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. In the debate, Kerry belittled the opposition, saying that those who still believed in abandoned P.O.W.'s were perpetrating a hoax. "This process," he declaimed, "has been led by a certain number of charlatans and exploiters, and we should not allow fiction to cloud what we are trying to do here."

If this is true, and it seems plausible, then there we have another very big reason not to like Kerry. [Hat tip: Dad.]

From the New York Times:

The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world.

While this may be unsurprising to some, it will certainly come as a shock to the RIAA, should they ever read the report. The article continues:

Until recently, those who opposed strong copyright protections have been characterized by the entertainment industry as a leftist fringe with no respect for the value of intellectual property.

"The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support," said Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School. "It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace."

...The group called for a two-year moratorium on changes to copyright laws and regulations to allow for more public debate. "Our first concern should be to 'do no harm,' " the report said.

Sensible advice that.

As part of my cunning plan to become the next Donald Trump, I now have a townhouse to rent. Anyone in the DC metro area who is looking for a place to live, I have for your consideration a three bedroom, two and a half bath townhouse. It has a finished basement; washer and dyer, dishwasher, and new refrigerator; and a fenced-in brick patio. It's in Springfield, Virginia in the Newington Forest area, and is a nice brick faced townhouse located on a cul-de-sac. It's very convenient to the Metro, being right off the Fairfax County Parkway five minutes from Franconia Metro on the Blue Line. All this for $1650 per month. If you're interested, send me an email at [email]rent@perfidy.org[/email].

From the comments section of this post from Jane Galt, we find this fascinating article from the July, 1926 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

The chaos that ensued is a bit of a cautionary tale. (And yes, I am aware of the differences between the Soviet Union of the mid twenties and our current utopian paradise in America.) Read the whole thing, as they say. Some of the consequences of Communist efforts to make the New Soviet Man (and Woman) prefigure the results of the introduction of the Pill and the Sexual Revolution.

I also found interesting this bit from Jane's post:

And people who were cheering the various court decisions, and are now screaming about this, need a consistency check. Yes, we all support gay marriage -- but a majority of your fellow citizens don't. You thought you'd found a way to end run the tedious process of cultural change by getting judges or officials who lean your way to read rights you're in favor of into the constitution. You can hardly scream "foul" when they try to get legislators who don't lean your way to write those rights right back out again.

This gets to some of what I was saying - that from the conservative point of view, liberal judicial activism leaves them no recourse but quixotic attempts to pass constitutional amendments because no matter how many legislative battles they win, liberals can always find an agreeable judge.

Okay, it’s a cheesy headline. But I have been expecting a couple of the military oriented bloggers to jump in on this, and I haven’t really seen anything substantive. The RAH-66 Comanche is (or was) intended to be the next generation, double-plus lethal, stealthy/sneaky reconnaissance/attack helicopter for the Army. We have already spent $8 billion on the development, and will have to spend an additional $2 billion in contract termination fees if the project actually goes south. The rationale for canceling the project is that the money saved by not building the Comanche will be used to buy almost 800 more UH-60 Blackhawk utility transport helicopters, upgrade and modernize 1,400 helicopters already in the fleet, and invest more heavily in a variety of unmanned aircraft, such as the existing Hunter and the new Raven.

Unlike the earlier decision to cancel the Crusader artillery system (which also was very expensive) I have mixed feelings about this one. The Crusader was to be a highly advanced, highly mobile artillery system. It would have given the army a precision stand off artillery system that could keep up with the turbine powered M1 Abrams tank on the battlefield. Its computerized and networked fire control system would be integrated into the army’s battlefield tactical networks. It would be able to put massive firepower anywhere the army wanted, quickly, efficiently and accurately.

This system would have been perfect for destroying large armored opponents like the Red Army. Sadly, the Red Army no longer exists, and the Crusader was not exactly what a lighter, more deployable Army needed. So I could see the logic in canceling it. It didn’t fit the army’s new idiom of freewheeling, fast and decentralized, precision netcentric warfare.

But the Comanche does fit that idiom. It is fast, stealthy, and lethal. Our mobility is crucial to our new mode of warfare. And the Comanche is a highly mobile weapons and reconnaissance platform. Our current flock of attack helicopters is aging, and no matter how many weapons, sensor and avionics upgrades they receive, there are some capabilities they will never provide, and the Comanche was intended to address those shortfalls.
The Comanche’s stealth and noise suppression technology would have allowed it to penetrate enemy or contested airspace with much greater ease than the current models. Its greater range means easier logistical support and greater strike radius. And the fact that all the modern avionics are designed in from the start means easier maintenance and greater effectiveness. Even if we had not gone ahead with the initial plan to purchase thousands of Comanches, several hundred would increase the effectiveness of units equipped with both Comanches and older attack and reconnaissance helicopters.

To be sure, the Comanche is expensive – over $50 million each. But cost is not the only consideration when deciding whether to continue with a weapons program. These are expensive projects, whether we cancel them or not. Does the system increase the lethality of our forces? Will its presence on the battlefield reduce the likelihood of American casualties? What threat is the program meant to address? We have to think carefully about what we cancel. As the vastly increased operational tempo of our military eats into funding, we have to ensure that R&D, training and procurement budgets are not savaged as we fight the war on terror. I think, from what I have read, that the Comanche would be a worthwhile addition to our armamentarium. It will increase our ability to fight enemies on any battlefield, regardless of their technological sophistication. And that will save lives.

Other military projects are potentially on the block, waiting for the ax. The Air Force’s F-22 Raptor has narrowly averted execution several times, as has the Marine V-22 Osprey. We need to look at these and other programs in the same way.

• The Crusader designed to deal with heavy armored forces, is no longer relevant, and it made sense to cancel it.
• The F-22 is an incredible fighter – it is stealthy, agile, heavily armed and can cruise at supersonic speeds. There is no fighter in any Air Force that could defeat it. But that is also true of the fighters we already have. It would only be an incremental increase in our effectiveness against any likely opponent, who are unlikely to be any serious threat to our air superiority. Build a squadron for when it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight, and spend the money on the much cheaper (but still better than anything except the F-22) F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Which also has a real ground attack capability.
• The V-22 Osprey, the tilt-rotor troop transport, is a great idea. The Osprey takes off like a helicopter, and then its twin rotors rotate forward, allowing it to fly like an airplane. Thus, it combines the helicopter's ability to land and takeoff anywhere, with the airplane's speed, payload capacity and range. There have been four crashes in ten years, raising concerns about its safety, but many have argued that this is to be expected in a completely new type of aircraft. If accepted, the Osprey would allow the Marines to deploy faster and further than ever before, and ease logistical support as well. Adding this capability makes sense. Thumbs up.

Its all a matter of looking at where the project in question would fit into the battlefield, and determining whether its worth the money. (Including the opportunity cost - could we develop some other weapons system that is even more effective with the money?)

A jewish Rabbi writing in the National Review is making three predictions about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ:

• It will make a butload of money. [I'm paraphrasing]
• The Passion will will be the most serious and substantive Biblical movie ever.
• It will be a harbinger of a third Great Awakening.

Johno knows more about the first religious awakenings in this country than I do. But it seems to me that this is an interesting prediction, as we're long overdue for one. The secular movement has been ascendent in American cultural life for decades now, and there is always a reaction to any culturally dominant movement. It would be interesting to speculate on what effect a great awakening would have on 21st Century American politics, foriegn policy and culture.

It's also an interesting article in that it analyses the efforts of Jewish groups to attack Gibson and his movie:

"Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting The Passion, ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress The Passion rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.

In this, they have failed miserably. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, these critics have triggered anger, hurt, and resentment."

"Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps only) friends also feel resentment toward Jews who believe that The Passion reveals startling new information about the Crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews who think that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles in history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.

Christians are baffled by Jews who don't understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted, beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community."

"It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.

Indeed. It seems that much of the opposition to this movie has been overwrought, and coming from people who have not seen the movie.

Green bears?

Two polar bears at the Singapore Zoo have turned into giant chia pets. A harmless algae has grown in the hollow shafts of the bear's hair, leading to the jungle camouflage color scheme. Hydrogen peroxide has been used to bleach the fur of the mother bear back to its normal arctic white, and the son will get his dye job in a couple weeks.

Murdoc has a post up on the possible fate of the Shuttle. He links to a Jeffrey Bell article that argues that after the CAIB, there is really no way that the shuttle can return to service, given the high (40%, according to Bell) likelihood that we'd lose another shuttle just doing the limited ISS-maintenance flights that are currently imagined.

The shuttle has long been everything but what NASA has claimed it to be. It is expensive, inefficient, has impossibly long turn around times, and most important, it's lethal to its crews. The fact that we will almost certainly lose Hubble due to the problems with the shuttle is an unfortunate, though predictable fact. We have not been even remotely sensible about space travel in almost a half century. (And yes, I am aware of how old the space age is.)

It's a sad fact that China and Russia - using forty year old technology - have a more robust and capable manned space flight capability than we do with our thirty year old technology. There have been no significant advances in space transportation since the shuttle flew back in '81, and that wasn't much of an advance, as Murdoc has pointed out. There are three things we need for a decent space transportation infrastructure, and we have only one of them.

We have disposable launchers that can reliably put satellites and other moderate sized, unmanned payloads into orbit, for a fairly reasonable price. The other two things are a safe and reasonably priced manned vehicle, and a heavy lift vehicle. We have known almost from the beginning of the shuttle era that despite the smoke NASA's been blowing, the shuttle is none of these things.

I simply can't believe that with all we (and the Russkies) have learned since 1961, Lockheed or Boeing could not design a simple manned capsule, even one that could do a glider reentry - in a weekend. The design studies have been done. We have better computers, materials, and everything you need to design and build space vehicles than when we did it the first time over forty years ago. A minishuttle/X24 lookalike should not take half a decade to build. And once built, there is no reason that we couldn't launch it on one of our disposable rockets.

Similarly, for a heavy lift vehicle, we already have everything we need. If you consider that the entire mass of the shuttle orbiter is in fact payload reaching orbit, why not just get rid of the orbiter and replace it with a cargo shell with shuttle main engines at the bottom? All the components have been tested, and again the design studies already completed. If we really wanted to, we could have a full-fledged, reliable, flexible and robust space transportation system in little more than a year. And we could easily save Hubble, as we could easily have saved Skylab back in '79 had we not foolishly thrown all our eggs into the shuttle basket.

And despite much thinking about it, I really have no idea why it isn't being done - aside from a few more or less paranoid conspiracy theories I'm not confortable with. It seems impossible to me that NASA could be so completely lacking even the dimmest vision of how we can get into space, especially as all the pieces are right out in full view.

More and more, I think the only answer is an end to civilian government sponsored spaceflight. Let the military develop what they need - they have a far better track record than NASA. And let private industry meet all the other needs. If we are moderately careful about how we do it, we could have an amazing change in space travel in a very short time. To be sure, government provides money that has given us what we have so far, but I think the stultifying effects of bureaucracy and central planning has done far more harm than good. Imagine what kind of computers we'd have now if NASA had been designing them.

BTD links to the annual Gallup international beauty contest. The judges are the American public and according to them, Great Britain, Canada and Australia are dead sexy. Japan is looking pretty cute; and if we drink enough beer, even France and Germany might verge on doable.

The double bagger contingent is headed up by incurable hag North Korea, followed closely by the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Iraq. This snap judgement conceals the fact that Iraq was once last in our affections, but a little makeup and strategic plastic surgery has made her four times cuter than last year.

The Chinese have announced that next time, they're going to launch two chinkonauts into orbit. [I know I said I wouldn't use that word anymore. I lied. It makes me giggle.] The next mission, sometime in 2005, is expected to last seven to ten days. The ChiComs also reaffirmed their plans to follow up their initial manned missions with the construction of an orbital base. Which they will undoubtedly use for nefarious and inscrutable purposes. Depending on when the launch actually happens, we may or may not have a manned spaceflight program of our own.

It appears that the situation in Haiti is quickly descending into sadly typical chaos. The United States is sending fifty Marines from the Fleet Anti-Terrorist Security Team to Port-au-Prince to help guard the US Embassy there, but there is no sign that the United States has any plans for large scale intervention. US Forces have libervated Haiti several times in the over 200 years since Haiti won its independence from France. The recent rebellion follows a pattern that is a hallowed tradition in Haitian politics. The rich Haitians get tired of the current government, and hire rebels to overthrow it. The rebels get money, loot and the opportunity for youthful hijinks. The former president and cronies move away to a comfortable retirement. The rich Haitians make some windfall profits, and one fo their number is elevated to the presidency. Then, he begins his year and a half to ten years of kleptocracy - until the cycle repeats itself.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when our propensity to invade other countries was higher than currently, periods of American occupation were the only relief that Haitans had from this regular cycle of theft and violence. Later, the Duvalier regime managed to avoid the cycle through brutal repression of potential rebels. For all the hopes many had for Aristide, he seems to be more than anything a throwback to the typical Haitian leaders of the past - and the current rebellion is the traditional response.

Anyone interested in the history of America's long history of military interventions and the generally positive results thereof, I highly recommend Max Boot's excellent history, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.

Except for the President Gore bit, this is extraordinarily cool. Just read the damn thing. Discuss in the comments.

Thrill to exciting Trek combat music! Participate in epic battle! Subsume your identity into that of your favorite Trek captain!

Joe Bob says check it out!

Several interesting space tidbits:

• MSNBC is reporting that the shuttle will be grounded until at least 2005. This is both bad news and a potential opportunity. First, it means that space station personnel will need to use the Russian Soyuz to get to and from the station; and there will be no manned missions to do things like save the Hubble, or for anything else. The opportunity, which will almost certainly be passed up, is for NASA to move past the shuttle entirely, and begin a crash program to develop an efficient means of manned space flight, along several tracks:

  One, a stop gap, cheap but reliable capsule to be launched atop a disposable launcher like the Atlas - along the lines of OSP ideas. Two, restart the DCX program with exactly the same management philosophy as the original program. Build early, build often is the surest way to success. This could result in a real SSTO in a few years. And three, long range research into propulsion materials, and other technologies for new launchers in the future. Shuttle technology should be immediately converted to unmanned cargo uses, along the lines of the shuttle-c or other ideas outlined here. In my dreams.

• Also on MSNBC, this report that there's lots of debris floating around the ISS. And a good chunk of that debris might be parts of the space station. Who'd they get to build that thing anyway, Ryan homes?
• And finally, space.com informs us that the Russians are considering building a Soyuz 2.0. The new version would have twice the passenger capacity of the current, decades old design; and the crew section would be reusable. The Russian rocket company Energiya would need to design a new launcher, as the current Soyuz rocket would be insufficient to put the twice as heavy capsule into orbit. But hey, at least somebody's thinking ahead.