Apollo 11's Bright Glare:

To understand how completely Apollo 11 dominates the history of the space program, consider for a moment the previous mission, Apollo 10. The astronauts on that one were . . . um . . . hold on . . . Googling as we speak . . . John Young, Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford.
All they did was get in a capsule atop a 30-story rocket, blast off the planet and fly all the freakin' way to the moon. Two of them then got into a contraption called the Lunar Module and descended toward the moon's surface. Down, down they went. But they didn't land, because this was just a practice run for lunar orbit rendezvous. The glory of the first lunar landing would be reserved for the next mission. Indeed, to ensure that no eager-beaver astronaut would say to heck with it and try to land, NASA didn't give the ascent module enough fuel to leave the moon's surface. The astronauts would have been stranded if they'd ignored orders.
And so they dutifully flew home, their mission soon lost in the glare of Apollo 11.
Forty years on, the space program is still struggling to figure out how to top the fabled moonshot of July 1969. Apollo 11 may have been the greatest achievement in space flight, but arguably it nearly killed the space program. Because what do you do after you shoot the moon?

...Keeping reading this super-nice Washington Post book review here.

Nairobi/Brussels, 17 July 2009:

Sudan must dismantle its system of impunity for atrocity crimes or there will be no peace in Darfur, and the North-South civil war could again erupt.
Sudan: Justice, Peace and the ICC,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the root cause of the country’s many crises, namely the reluctance of the long-ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to enact policies that would bring justice to the victims of its many conflicts. To end Sudan’s centralised, exploitive and unaccountable governance, the NCP must accept judicial reforms and transitional justice mechanisms as key elements of a Darfur settlement and at the same time fulfil its side of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which halted decades of civil war.
more: in the International Crisis Group's report.

[more] from the mailbox:

Barack Obama made his first visit to Africa as United States president last week and he offered some welcome thoughts in a speech before Parliament in Ghana:

America has a responsibility to work with you as a partner to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there's a genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems - they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response.
And that's why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy and technical assistance and logistical support, and we will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. And let me be clear: Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa, and the world.

This is what Enough wrote to me, and here's the LA Times take on the story.

from the mailbox:

July 13, 2009

At Sundance and in specialized theaters around North America and Europe, the film The Reckoning has been educating audiences about the quest for an international justice system that began in Nuremberg after World War II and came into being as the International Criminal Court. [...]

The Reckoning follows the first six years of the International Criminal Court, from the court's headquarters in The Hague, to the scenes of the crimes - in eastern Congo and northern Uganda - to the U.N. headquarters in New York, where the court has met some of its toughest critics. The Reckoning has a captivating way of weaving together the strong personalities of individuals into a gripping narrative, such as a young Ugandan woman who survived a rampage by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, passionate judges inspired by the work of establishing standards for global justice, outspoken critics of the Court, and a dynamic lead prosecutor who has become the face of the struggle to bring justice to victims in Darfur.

making choices for my machine:

Name

"Kubuntu", pronounced /kuːˈbuːntuː/ koo-BOON-too, means "towards humanity" in Bemba, and is derived from ubuntu "humanity"). The K at the beginning represents the K Desktop Environment, which Kubuntu runs. By coincidence, Kubuntu also means "free" (as in 'free of charge') in Kirundi.[3]

Differences from Ubuntu

A regular installation of Ubuntu will have the GNOME desktop, GNOME applications (e.g. Evolution) and GNOME/GTK+ admin tools (e.g. Synaptic Package Manager). A regular installation of Kubuntu has the KDE desktop, KDE applications (e.g. Kontact) and KDE/Qt admin tools (e.g.KPackageKit). In addition, Kubuntu is more likely to use packages from the KDE/Qt project rather than GTK+ toolkit-based applications. However, these are simply the default packages. For example, one may install Ubuntu and then add KDE, or even install the Kubuntu 'metapackage' itself. Therefore, one need not be restricted to one set of applications, but can mix and match by preference. (There is a slight disadvantage to doing so, namely the increased diskspace and memory requirements of running both Qt and GTK.)

from here.