The Stars My Destination
Telescopes aimed at the heavens are time machines, the light by which they see the most distant objects in the cosmos began its journey toward their lenses billions of years ago. Even a glimpse at our nearest celestial neighbor, Alpha Centauri (Yes, Proxima Centauri is currently nearer to the Sun, but the jury is still out on whether Proxima Centauri is part of a triple alignment with the binary stars of Alpha Centauri; so, let's table that discussion for the nonce.), does not show Alpha Centauri as it is today, but Alpha Centauri as it was four-&-change years ago. Our faithful robotic minion, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, has become a different kind of time machine. The images it is capturing from the landing site of the Challenger, Apollo 17's Lunar Module, are contemporary, but because of the lack of atmospheric erosion & "geologic"* disruption the site remains as it was when the last Moonwalkers, Gene Cernan & Harrison Schmidt, departed aboard the ascent stage of the Challenger in 1972. The L.R.O.'s photography allows us to look back in time, metaphorically if not literally: Moon-link.

The Savage Wars of Peace
In my youth, I'd thought the days of the celebrity general, the figure of national renown like General MacArthur or President Eisenhower, were behind us. The enduring high profile of Secretary of State Powell should have taught me better, but for no coherent reason I assumed he was an exception that proved the rule. More fool me. All America needed for the reemergence of the public flag officer was a real war, such as those we've fought & are fighting in Iraq & Afghanistan, not the brief skirmishes of my formative years—DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, Somalia, & Bosnia. The John J. "Black Jack" Pershing† of our time? General David Petraeus, recently retired from the United States Army to assume the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thank you for your service, General Petraeus: B.B.C.-link & Wired-link.

Or, lest we forget, "General Betray Us" in the words of left-wing stalwarts MoveOn.org. MoveOn libeled General Petraeus over what they argued was the "failed" "Surge" in Iraq, a strategy that was in fact wildly successful. President Obama was also opposed to the Surge, yet in worked so undeniably well in Iraq that he ordered, after interminable months of paralysis, a similar surge in Afghanistan. MoveOn attempted to erase their despicable "General Betray Us" slur from public memory as soon as the president ordered Petraeus to assume command of the surge in Afghanistan, proving they have about as much credibility as, say, Dalton Trumbo & his wretch polemic Johnny Got His Gun.

A look at D.C.I. Petraeus's new job: Langley-link. Thank Mars (or Francis Walsingham) that we finally have a proper C.I.A. again, not the neutered husk that emerged from the reckless Congressional hearings of the 1970s & limped on in that hamstrung state until 9/11.

A final note on the savage wars of peace: I watched Frontline tonight, an episode titled "Top Secret America." I should have known better, should have listened to the small voice that warned me what a travesty the news division of P.B.S. has become. One of the principal commentators, & the man who had the last word except for the author of the new book, Top Secret America, on which tonight's Frontline was based, was Richard Clarke. You remember Richard Clarke, the Grand Poobah of counter-terrorism in the late Clinton Administration & early Bush '43 Administration. The Grand Poobah of a counter-terroism community & architect of a counter-terrorism strategy that allowed 9/11 to happen. That Richard Clarke. Anyway, Richard Clarke scoffed at what we as a body politic have done since 9/11 to combat terrorism, confident that everything we were doing before 9/11 worked like gangbusters. That's really all that need be said about the weight, or lack thereof, that should be given to Frontline, doesn't it? At least I got to listen to Will Lyman's narration. I could listen to that guy read the phone book.

This Week in Motorsport
Rally Monkey
On Sunday, I watched Rallye Deutschland, the most recent round of the F.I.A. World Rally Championship (W.R.C.). Rallye Deutschland, Rally Germany; whereas F1 grands prix are given as Adjective Grand Prix, e.g., the German Grand Prix, rallies are given as Rally Noun, e.g., Rally Germany. The previous rallies I'd watched had been in the form of an hour-long review of the three days of the rally, but over this holiday weekend I decided to increase my exposure. I watched an hour-long preview of the rally to come, three half-hour reviews each detailing a day of the rally, & an hour-long review of the final, gimmicky stage of the rally, the so-called Power Stage, more about which later. What was learned? The more rallying, the better!

Watching the day-by-day accounts of the rally gave me a much better understanding of the mechanics of the sport (no pun intended). This is the way I plan to watch the rest of the W.R.C. season, in all its glorious madness. There's no point in trying to convince you otherwise, rallying is mad. Tiny cars—turbocharged, rebuilt from stem-to-stern, four-wheel-drive versions of the Citroën DS3, Ford Fiesta, & Mini Cooper, et alii—are piloted across winding courses of dirt, gravel, ice & snow, or asphalt at breakneck speed by teams of two, the driver & the co-driver. Co-driver? The co-driver reads out "pace notes," information about the course gleaned from test runs in the preceding days, information such as how many yards to a turn or bend, how many degrees the turn covers, & at what speed the bend might be taken. Why a co-driver & pace notes? Because the cars are going too fast to rely solely on the driver's reactions. The driver has to anticipate the turns & bends & start correcting his machine's course before it encounters the corner. Madness. Splendid, rapturous madness.

Rallies are run in timed stages, anywhere from twenty to thirty in a given rally. The cars tackle the stages one at a time, released at some unspecified interval so that they shouldn't catch up to one another, not even a faster car to a slower car, unless the car ahead suffers some kind of repairable mechanical issue, such as a flat tire. Without understanding all the rules of how much repair work can be done by the support crew betwixt stages or overnight, the driver & co-driver seem to be responsible for repairing their own car. Each duo's times for the stages are then aggregated & the pair with the lowest cumulative time leads the standings. The distance raced over the duration of a rally is normally over a hundred miles. Peruse this handy, informative hyperlink: W.R.C.-link.

The bit I like least is the Power Stage. Only the top ten or twelve competitors qualify for the Power Stage, which awards separate points from the rest of the rally. For Rallye Deutschland, the Power Stage was held around the streets of the host city Trier. Each car makes an individual, timed run around the circuit, three times around in the case of the Trier course. I've no objection to watching cars race around a street circuit, the Grand Prix de Monaco, around the narrow, winding streets of the Principality, is the jewel in the F1 crown, but to my way of thinking the segregation of the Power Stage from all the other stages of the rally makes it seem quite unlike rallying. The Power Stage isn't what I'm looking to see when I tune in a rally (thanks, Discovery's H.D. Theater channel!). Due to its relative brevity, though, it is accorded more complete television coverage than the rest of the stages, which are spread out over both time & space. Since the highlights of the Power Stage are covered in the half-hour review of the third day, when Rally Australia is broadcast in three weeks' time I'll skip the Power Stage program.

The World Rally Championship, a madcap addition to my motorsport portfolio.

For those of you following along & keeping score at home:
{a} 24 Heures du Mans (& the late, lamented American Le Mans Series) - "By Endurance We Conquer"
{b} Formula One - "Formula Fun!"
{c} World Rally Championship - "Rally Monkey"

Indianapolis Jones or We Named the Dog "Indiana"
I also watched the last few laps of the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix, an IndyCar race on the new street circuit in the City that Reads. I've roundly poo-pooed Indy's marque event (& namesake), the Indianapolis 500, here at The Secret Base, & to anyone fool enough to listen in person I've mocked IndyCar's single-make (or spec series) format. That said, my interest was immediately increased because they were racing on a road course rather than an abominable oval track. Mayhap I should give the IndyCar Series's last remaining road course race a fighting chance?

The Queue
Having finally read The Thirty-nine Steps, a book I much abused by repeatedly jumping it in the queue, I quite enjoyed John Buchan's tale of spies & saboteurs in the summer before the Europe was set ablaze by the Great War. If I have a complaint, it is only that there's not enough of The Thirty-nine Steps; my Dover Thrift Edition was a scant eighty-eight pages long. What there is is a crackerjack yarn, but the enterprise would profit from more of the same. I shall certainly read at least the next book in the so-called "Greenmantle" series, Greenmantle.

Recently
Jeffery Deaver, Carte Blanche
Robert M. Soderstrom, The Big House: Fielding H. Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium
John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps

Currently
Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of M.I.6: 1909-1949

Presently
Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence
William F. Buckley, Jr., Saving the Queen
byeh?

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Neil Patrick Harris, "Everything You Ever" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Soundtrack from the Motion Picture (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: If not the saddest song ever written, which "Everything You Ever" might well be, it is unquestionably a song of gut-wrenching sadness. There is a terrible beauty in such desolation.

"Now the nightmare's real."

*"Geologic" because the geo- prefix refers specifically to the Earth. Just as there are no earthquakes on the Moon, only moonquakes, by definition there cannot be geology on the Moon. "Geology" continues to be used colloquially, however, & that's not necessarily a bad thing.

†How great was Black Jack Pershing? So great that the rank of General of the Armies of the United States was created for him after his leadership of the A.E.F. in the Great War. The five-star General of the Army/Fleet Admiral rank that was created during the Second World War is subordinate to Pershing's General of the Armies. Pershing's only superior? President Washington—"First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen"—who was retroactively promoted to General of the Armies of the United States in 1976, & declared the nation's senior military officer in perpetuity. Pershing is second only to George Washington, the father of the nation.

The United States Army Band is known as "Pershing's Own." Black Jack!