As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock
myspace: The AccoLade

When I visited their myspace this morning, they had 14 friends. Now they’re up to 584 after being in the NY Times all day. 585, actually, now that I friended them. I’ll be curious to see if some myspace exposure offers them any protection. There should be an Amnesty International campaign devoted to defending the right to rock in oppressive countries.

• Concealed Glaciers Discovered On Mars At Mid-latitudes
• Nuclear Moon Bases: NASA weighs its options for lighting up moon bases
• Astronaut Invents Zero-G Coffee Cup
• Imagine reconnecting NASA

Such new initiatives should include dramatically amplifying our capability to monitor the changing Earth in every form, from climate change to land use to the mitigation of natural disasters. Such an effort should also accelerate much needed innovation in aircraft and airspace system technologies that would save fuel, save travelers time, and regain American leadership in the commercial aerospace sector. And it should take greater responsibility for mitigating the potential hazards associated with solar storms and asteroid impacts.

So, too, a more relevant NASA should be charged to ignite the entrepreneurial human suborbital and orbital spaceflight industry. This nascent commercial enterprise promises to revolutionize how humans use spaceflight and how spaceflight benefits the private sector economy as fundamentally as the advent of satellites affected the communications industry.

With the pick of Bill Richardson for Secretary of Commerce, this article suddenly becomes very relevant. Commerce has a lot to say about the development of a non-governmental space industry.

• Obama Vetting Bill Richardson, Space Enthusiast

And rounding it out with a fresh assortment of enviro stories:

• Shoshone tribe files suit to stop gold mine
• Mob attacks offices over Brazil logging crackdown
• Get a job! New report from Duke University pinpoints where green policies will create jobs

Obama said that will “start” with a federal cap and trade system to reduce global warming pollution, an approach that could create millions of jobs in the U.S.

If you’re wondering what those jobs are, how will they be created, and who will get them, check out a just-released report from Duke University that for the first time pinpoints the direct link between climate change solutions and U.S. workers.

There are plenty of criticisms of emission trading, by the way, but I plan to read up on it before I start pontificating. Half the criticisms I can think of are ideological in nature, and therefore suspect. Most of the rest are practical, meaning they may be answered empirically.

• Wikipedia: Emissions trading