I may have assumed too much about Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's intentions regarding Japan's twin ambitions of joining the United Nations Security Council and renouncing its pacifistic constitutional governor, Article 9. From his statements in New York recently, Koizumi wants to have his cake and eat it, too:

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, stressing Japan's peace efforts but withholding mention of its restrictive pacifist Constitution, urged the United Nations General Assembly to give Tokyo a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

"We believe that the role that Japan has played provides a solid basis for its assumption of permanent membership on the Security Council,'' Koizumi said in his speech, delivered in English, on Tuesday. As examples of Japan's international contributions, the prime minister cited the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces in peacekeeping activities to East Timor and reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Japan has been praised for its peace efforts abroad, but some say Article 9 of the Constitution, which bans the use of force to resolve international disputes, stands in the way of Japan gaining permanent membership.

While Japan contributes a yearly stipend to the United Nations only second to that of the United States — somewhat reflective of each country's standing in the global economy — the more important qualification, military capability, is critical to bridging the ritualistic, ineffectual Security Council with mutual defense and security alliances of tomorrow. As the free world needs America's leadership, America needs the free world's participation. Back in Tokyo, thankfully, the price of admission into geostrategy has not been forgotten:

Two Diet panels are set to recommend amending the Constitution in separate final reports due out in May, according to sources close to the panels. The two panels, both named the Research Commission on the Constitution — one in the House of Representatives and the other in the House of Councilors — are expected to include a statement in their reports on the need for constitutional revision, given that many members of the panels expressed views favoring an amendment, the sources said.

...The likely move by the panels to push for constitutional revision is apparently encouraged by the increase in the combined number of seats of the LDP and the Democratic Party of Japan, the country's largest opposition party, to more than 80 percent of all Diet seats. The DPJ also supports constitutional revision.

Public opinion, though broad in its specific wishes, is prepared to revisit the Daiichi Building. Koizumi should lead them in.

Hand it to Enn-Ey-Ess-Ey for building two sturdy sets of wheels:

NASA has funded another extension of [the Mars rovers'] mission — an additional six months, if they last.

Word from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is that NASA has regained reliable contact with the rovers Spirit and Opportunity after a 12-day period in which Mars passed nearly behind the sun. The project manager says the rovers are "well past warranty" but are showing few signs of wearing out.

What have the rovers brought us? A wealth of geological information, stunning photography and a discovery of methane concentrations in water vapor that lends itself to dozens of theories — not the least of them being life on the Red Planet.

Kim du Toit found a man's gun rack. Backseat passengers optional.

Cassini-Huygens says hello.

Since Microsoft decided to downgrade its next operating system, Longhorn, to a steer, its Linux competitors have been licking their chops. Has Bill Gates' juggernaut gone soft — or is the PC industry's largest software library worth more than one big R&D stumble? We'll see.

Since learning of girlie gaming troupe Frag Dolls on Saturday, I've been doing a little reading. As they explain it, they are to gamers what Olympians are to athletes — and female. Athens just finished showing us what aesthetics can do for beach volleyball, so it comes as no surprise that video game company Ubisoft would scoop up a gaggle of Nintendo-thumbed beauties, assign them uniforms and plunk them down into a gaming convention. Why not? As Bungie software — from whom I first learned of this little arrangement — more or less put it, the A-B-B-A-Select-Start bombshells turned heads, put mitts on controllers, drummed up some buzz for Ubi and Penny Arcade, and invited a long-absent market demographic to the console aisle by proving that an attractive mien and top-tier ladder skills are not mutually exclusive.

It's part Power Puff Girls, part A-Team, part Spice Girls with IQs easily busting 120. The Frag Dolls say they're sponsored by Ubisoft. Even if they really are the winners of a talent search and the makings of a collective sponsor (are we supposed to pick a favorite? Er, how about "Jinx"?), their place in gaming is earned — just ask the nebbish con-jockeys who got creamed at the Penny Arcade Exposition. It almost makes a casual XBox player want to go serious.

Anything that adds a little blush to a sport that used to be two four-eyed nerds in a rec room is worth a closer look — and a permanent link. Well done, Dolls.

AHA!: Their flame-haired organizer is an Ubisoft "Community Manager." Half coterie, half marketing. Brilliant.

The announcement was made over six days ago but the fascination should last a lifetime:

The universe looked a little more familiar and friendlier. The roll call of planets beyond the solar system swelled significantly with the announcement of a trio of newly-discovered worlds much smaller than any previously discovered around other stars.

The masses of these new planets are comparable to those of Neptune or Uranus in our solar system, ranging from about 14 to 20 times the mass of Earth.

...[T]heir discovery, astronomers said, is an encouraging sign that planets are plentiful and varied in the galaxy and that a new generation of planet-hunting space missions planned for the next decade will find planets as small as Earth.

I've always been baffled as to why these articles never make the intuitive leap and conclude that the size of planets astronomers can spot is a direct consequence of increasing monitoring precision of gravitational wobble — and that tiny, nickel-iron-core planets like Sol's innermost four planets are almost certain to be found when proper instrumentation is invented. Basic science narrates a progression of revised definitions for the smallest particle in existence, each discovered through finer and finer microscopes. Why not heavenly bodies, too?

Freeing Japan from the pacifist shackles of its Occupation constitution is an intention not only undamaged by domestic opposition and the current political troubles of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but according to one poll blazingly popular in the Diet:

Eighty-five percent of Japanese lawmakers support revision of Japan's Constitution, adopted after World War II, over the use of military force, the Kyodo News service reported, citing its own survey.

The survey found a majority in both chambers of the country's parliament favor revising the Constitution's war-renouncing Article 9, and such change is backed by 80 percent of lawmakers from ruling Liberal Democratic, the report said.

Respondents are not unified in a specific amendment to Article 9 but the certainty of substantive debate is reason enough to believe Tokyo is taking its responsibilities as a democracy in the post-Cold War world seriously. Koizumi, unfazed by the headwind of reactionism, is already planning for a Japan able to defend itself and its allies with an offense-capable military:

A permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council would give Japan more say on international security issues, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tuesday.

"We have to consider what Japan can do for world peace and stability," Koizumi told reporters. "It would be better to get a say as a permanent council member in order to reflect in the international community Japan's own ideas, which are different from other countries."

The Prime Minister has it on good authority.

We have a funny way of investing every one of our inventions with humanity shortly after creating them, correcting the Luddites, skeptics and dystopists who mark each technological innovation as the one that will finally rob us of our souls. Who would have thought that the traditionally male, often solitary pastime of video gaming would go public and coed? It was only a matter of time. Console geeks, rejoice: your ship has come in. Just lay off the button-combination pickup lines.

Iranian freedom activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi is circulating a warning that a poll recently conducted by Amnesty International is cooked:

[N]o one in the Iranian community who is actively in touch with Amnesty International was contacted or notified about this poll. Iranians on the Urgent Action List and who regularly receive e-mails from Amnesty International were not notified, therefore, this poll is considered to be a misrepresentation of the Iranian diaspora.

Misrepresentation is, tragically, modus operandi for the left: If you can't beat 'em, make things up.

AND: The American Anti-Slavery Group is heading up a demonstration outside the United Nations' East River headquarters to protest the broken world body's feckless, conflicted-interest-strewn response to Sudanese genocide. If you're in New York and would prefer to rally against a real affront to human dignity, find out more here.