Catching my eye here and there around the web this week: the source found for one of Saturn’s rings and some interesting comments on Enron, Iran, and Americans serving in Iraq.

Enceladus

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Universe Today reports:

Instruments on board Cassini have confirmed that Saturn’s faintest ring is being created by particles emitted by its icy moon Enceladus…. Some unknown process is heating up the interior of Enceladus, especially near the southern pole, causing this plume of ejected material.

Houston’s Clear Thinkers takes a contrarion view of Enron:

Enron was engaged in mostly legitimate and beneficial financial activities, including energy trading, structured finance and other financing transactions that had literally never been attempted before, and certainly never on the scale that Enron generated them. The societal demonization of Enron contributed substantially to an enormous amount of unnecessary wealth loss as many of the markets for such beneficial and innovative financial transactions shriveled in the wake of Enron’s liquidation.

Energy Outlook is worried that Iran may be the source of a new energy crisis for 2006:

The country’s duly-elected president is a rabid nut-case, though unfortunately not without like-minded support in the region. And based on what the IAEA has reported, the chances of his having access to nuclear weapons within his term of office are uncomfortably high….
Whether as a response to serious international sanctions–which I consider unlikely to be imposed–or to a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s weapons complexes, the likelihood of Iran’s oil being withdrawn from the market at some point is very high.

Belmont Club believes that America’s next generation of political leaders will be selected from those now serving in Iraq, and invokes William Shakespeare:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.