First of all, these will be posted by Kate, even though I (Pete) wrote it. Damn all WordPress upgrades, anyway.

West Helena, Arkansas is under martial law. Well, not really. But they do have a 24-hour curfew in effect to curb rampant violence in their town. Police officers are reportedly carrying all types of great murder machine hardware, including M-16s, shotguns, and night vision scopes. Is this one of those cases when I should haul out the old “those who trade security…” quote? Based on what I’ve heard of the situation here, I think not. The police are doing what they can to restore order, and I applaud the steps they’re taking to do so. Contrariwise, if this is a power play by the city council and the reports of violence are exaggerated, they should be removed from office for gross misuse of power. I suppose history (and the media) will be the judge here.

Is China cheating in the olympics? The right-leaning American Thinker blog thinks that they are. My wife, a massive fan of women’s gymnastics, pointed out that despite the age of the competitors, they did at least possess the skill set to win a gold medal. Whether the smaller size/weight of the Chinese gymnasts is a factor (particularly on the beam competition) is a fairly moot point now. Other allegations by other countries are starting to hit the mainstream media. Who can say how this end up for China?

Ain’t It Cool News recently pulled a negative review of the upcoming Clone Wars animated Star Wars movie at the demands of Lucasfilm. Say what you will about journalistic integrity (something I’ve said before in regards to reviews from AICN), the review sounds extremely passionate. I was not alone among my friends and cohorts in having high expectations for the movie. Seeing that a true fan thinks so little of it makes feel like Jar Jar Binks just punted me in the nut bag.

Last is our token space advocacy story. It appears that solar systems analogous to ours are somewhat rare, with a high incidence of gas giants in close orbit around their suns.This calls into question our current theories on planetary formation and provides interesting speculation on whether or not worlds depicted in science fiction (Yavin 4 in Star Wars or Allen Steel’s Coyote) could readily exist. I’d be interested to know if Kepler’s law still holds up in the wake of all these discoveries.