Gary is heading out on a three day float trip on the beautiful Big Piney River of the Missouri Ozarks in a few days. I am jealous. That’s one thing I miss living out here on Guam. When I took my ‘sabbatical’ in 2000, I joined Gary and his friend Don on their yearly float trip and it was great. It was a good warm up for my camping expeditions into Canada and the Cascades later that summer.

More from Wired: How Ravenous Soviet Viruses Will Save the World. I actually saw something on PBS a couple years ago on this very topic. The show introduced viewers to the Eliava Institute in Georgia and the research Soviet scientists conducted on phages during the Cold War. Now a new startup called Intralytix is partnering with the Georgian scientists to bring phages research to the world. It holds great promise in this age of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

A red giant star over 20,000 light years away was caught eating three large orbiting planets, each followed by a massive eruption.

Gary, my oldest brother, is something of a libertarian and he frequently forwards links about economic policy. The latest was a speech by Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) on paper money and the fixing the dollar to the gold standard again. Interesting stuff.

Then I stumbled across a complementary story on another website Gary mentioned, the the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and it made me go ‘hmmm.’ Maybe he is onto something here.

In fact, Gary was talking about how the war on Iraq was actually a scheme to stabilize waning US economic dominance by forcing Iraq to sell oil for dollars instead of Euros. Looks like he was right about that too. Gotta keep the dollar pegged up high against all threats, especially the resurgent Euro, and the best way to do that is through the use of uncontested military might to overthrow countries that threaten the hegemony of the almighty dollar.