What Caught My Eye Today

Cuba - The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, an annual ritual that highlights global opposition to the policy. This year's vote was 187-3 in opposition to the embargo, up from 185-3 last year, with only Israel and the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau supporting the United States. It was the 18th year in a row that the General Assembly has taken up the symbolic measure, with Washington steadily losing what little support it once had. I'm reminded of the old saying, "if a tree falls down in the forest and there is no one there to see it, did the tree make a sound?" Not that the United States has cared much about what the United Nations says--and why should we? We have Israel and Palau on our side. I think we're set--, but honestly, this is starting to get embarrassing. I'm pretty sure the ship has sailed on any hopes we had for what these embargoes were supposed to accomplish. Cuba is a communist state. Perhaps we should contemplate acknowledging that reality and move on.

Russia - Russia's space agency is planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine. The preliminary design could be ready by 2012 and then it is expected to take nine more years and 17 billion rubles ($600 million, 400 million euros) to build the ship. Compared to what we spend on our rockets, $600 million sounds like a bargain to me. The proposal sounded more like a plea for extra government funds than a detailed proposal. Russia is using 40-year old Soyuz booster rockets and capsules to send crews to the International Space Station. The Russian space agency also has mulled over prospective future missions to the moon and Mars, but hasn't yet set a specific time frame yet. You know, you could swap out the Russian Space Agency with NASA, and this story would pretty much read the same.

Which gives us a nice transition into this next story...

Rockets - NASA's newest rocket successfully completed a brief test flight Wednesday, the first step in a back-to-the-moon program that could yet be shelved by the White House. Nearly twice the height of the spaceship it's supposed to replace — the shuttle — the skinny experimental rocket carried no passengers or payload, only throwaway ballast and hundreds of sensors. The flight cost $445 million. Remember that is the cost of a two minute trial flight. The Russians claim they can build a production ready rocket for just $600 million. NASA said the flight was a tremendous success, based on early indications. You don't say? I'm thinking, short of the rocket blowing up on the launchpad, NASA officials were going to claim victory no matter what happened. They need all the positive PR they can muster to convince the White House not to kill the program altogether. NASA contends the Ares I will be ready to carry astronauts to the International Space Station in 2015, four to five years after the shuttles are retired. But a panel of experts said in a report to President Barack Obama last week that it will be more like 2017, and stressed that the entire effort is underfunded. The first Ares moon trip would be years beyond that under the current plan. Mind you that this plan has been ripped to shreds by the aforementioned expert panel assembled by the Obama Administration to plot a future course for NASA.

Tennis - Eight-times grand slam winner Andre Agassi left the tennis world in a state of shock when he admitted using the recreational drug crystal meth and lying to men's governing body the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) to escape a ban. In his autobiography, Agassi candidly describes being introduced to the drug in 1997 when his career was in freefall. Agassi, remembers receiving a phone call from a doctor working for the ATP who informed him that he had failed a drugs test. He said the ATP threw out the case against him after he concocted a story that he had accidentally drunk a soda spiked with crystal meth belonging to Slim. Agassi's admission that he took drugs casts a shadow over a player widely regarded as one of the greatest ever while it also exposes the ATP's lack of strict doping controls at the time. Don't take this as justification of Agassi's actions, but perhaps we should look at the bigger picture here. Agassi did not set out to be a role model; the dude wanted to win. It was the fans that gave him that mantle. Agassi entertained the fans not unlike Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in their epic home run battle of 1998. And after he retired, Agassi used his fame to promote the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation which helps disadvantage children in Las Vegas. My point is that Agassi made a poor choice during a rather dark period in his life (who among us hasn't?). Now that Agassi is coming clean about his past, does that undo all the things that he's done right?

Baseball - The World Series starts today with defending champions, the Philadelphia Phillies taking on the New York Yankees in a best of seven series. I pretty much hate baseball (yes, I know, how un-American of me), but I feel compelled to pick a winner, just to keep things interesting. I'm going with the Phillies in 6 games, mostly because I hate the Yankees, but also because they've already bought themselves--I mean won--26 championships (out of the 40 they've played in). The next closest team is the St. Louis Cardinals with 10 (out of 17). Go Philly.