This author cannot answer the question posed above from experience. But space sex has been a kind of final frontier for mankind (and a bonanza for headline writers: See "Houston, We Have a Problem"). And Newt Gingrich's contribution to this grand (dare we say grandiose?) quest has resurfaced in the wake of his pledge yesterday in Florida to establish an American colony on the moon by the end of his second term.

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich predicted in his book To Renew America that "space tourism will be a common fact of life during the adulthood of children born this year, that honeymoons in space will be the vogue by 2020." Then came the subtle sex allusion: "Imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attractions," Gingrich mused.

But is this really an attractive proposition? Empirical evidence is in short supply, since it's unclear whether -- beyond the fantasy worlds of Isaac Asimov and Moonraker -- anyone has actually had sex in space. Rumors of astronaut intercourse or weightless sex experiments -- fueled by hoaxes such as a fake NASA report cited in Pierre Kohler's The Final Mission -- have never been proven. In 2010, NASA commander Alan Poindexter responded to a question about space sex by saying that he and his fellow crew members were "professionals" who didn't have personal relationships. Last April, a Russian expert told the Interfax news agency that "there is no official or unofficial evidence that there were instances of sexual intercourse or the carrying out of sexual experiments" in the history of Russian space exploration.

All this hasn't stopped journalists and researchers from investigating the subject. And the consensus appears to be that space sex would be supremely difficult -- and pretty lousy -- for a variety of reasons:

• Privacy: When the United States sent the first married couple into space in 1992, they worked opposite 12-hour shifts and shared a tiny shuttle with five other astronauts. "You have cameras all over, people talking to you," astronaut Bonnie Dunbar told the Associated Press at the time. "You hope you can go into the waste-management system (toilet) and close the curtains for maybe about 10 minutes of privacy."

• Choreography: "It's a pretty messy environment," NASA physician Jim Logan explained in 2006. "And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." But, Logan added, "I can well imagine how compelling, inspiring, and quite frankly stimulating choreographed sex in zero-G might be in the hands of a skilled and talented cinematographer with appropriate lighting and music." Maybe that's what Gingrich had in mind?

• Physiological problems: Space travel can induce nausea, decrease blood pressure (and hence the size of certain body parts), and make people perspire more. "The moisture associated with sexual congress could pool as floating droplets," Alan Boyle noted at MSNBC in 2006. How romantic.   

• Procreation: Russian studies involving pregnant rats indicate that fetal skeletons may not fully develop in space (fish and frog eggs have also been launched into orbit), and scientists worry that microgravity could have deleterious effects on the formation of neural connections and immune functions. Cosmic radiation is another concern; last summer, NASA researchers concluded that proton particles would probably sterilize any female embryo conceived in space and reduce male sperm count unless scientists develop an effective shield. 

We may not know how humans would respond to these daunting challenges, but we do know how rats have. In 1979, Russian scientists placed male and female rats into a "mating chamber" separated by a partition and sent them into orbit. The rats didn't mate when the doors opened two days later, though it was never entirely clear whether it was low gravity that killed the mood.

There are potential solutions, of course. Future space travelers could create artificial gravity. Or there's the Velcro-outfitted "2Suit," which sci-fi novelist Vanna Bonta invented to facilitate weightless intimacy. For a sense of just how difficult space sex might be, check out this clip from a History Channel documentary on space sex in which Bonta and her husband struggle to kiss in their 2Suits (begins at 6:15):

But don't let these obstacles deter you, Newt! America, as you noted last night, is a country of big, bold ideas. A future of space tourism and sexless honeymoons beckons.

Things got very ugly between Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's entourage and a group of Aboriginal protesters at an Australia Day even in Canberra today. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: 

Violent scenes were seen outside the Lobby restaurant several hundred metres from Parliament House, where Julia Gillard and Mr Abbott were presenting the inaugural National Emergency Medals, after more than 100 people from the tent embassy surrounded the building for more than 20 minutes. The situation was so volatile that Ms Gillard's federal police escort decided to rush her from the event. As they did she stumbled and they dragged her from the restaurant to a car.

About 50 police, including members of the riot squad brandishing batons and carrying plastic shields, had clashed with angry protesters who were chanting ''shame'', ''racist'' and ''always was, will be, Aboriginal land'' and banging on the glass walls of the restaurant.

The protesters were reacting to comments by Australian opposition leader Tony Abbot, who was also at the event, who said it was time for Aboriginal activists to "move on" from the "tent embassy" they have occupied on the lawn of the parliament building in Canberra since 1972 to demand land rights and sovereignty. 

Activists from the tent embassy have vowed to continue protests, saying Australia will never win a seat on the U.N. Security Council unless it recognizes indigenous sovereignty.  

You'd think the French chattering classes would have learned their lesson about cherry-picking quotes from the internets after Bernard-Henri Levy's embarrassing citation of philosophe faux Jean-Baptiste Botul. But Socialist Presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande's recent attempt to quote the Bard appears to have blown up in his face: 

The "universal message" he wished to convey, Mr Hollande told the crowd, was best summed up by Shakespeare's great words: "They failed because they did not start with a dream."

But despite extensive research, British and French journalists were unable to track down the mystery quote to any play or sonnet by William Shakespeare.

This is hardly surprising, as it can now be disclosed that the true author is alive and well. He is the Telegraph's chief book reviewer.

Nicholas Shakespeare, journalist, novelist, biographer and direct descendant of William's grandfather, said: "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the French presidential candidate had quoted me."

More embarrassingly, the character who used the phrase in Shakespeare's 1989 novel The Vision of Elena Silves, is a Peruvian Maoist revolutionary who joins the notorious Shining Path terrorist group. Probably not what the famously bland Hollande had in mind.   

Politicians all over the world seem to be having trouble with citations and attribution this week. Check out this aggressively partisan speech from Australian Transportation Minister Anthony Albanese, which is lifted nearly word-for-word from the 1995 Michael Douglass movie The American President: 

As Voltaire once said, you can't get away with this stuff in the age of Google.

Newt Gingrich has been the target of a lot of mockery for his space policy speech yesterday, during which he pledged to establish a permanent U.S. lunar base by the end of his second term. The idea may seem a bit out of place in a campaign that has been overwhelmingly focused on the more terrestrial concerns of a struggling U.S. economy, but it isn't actually that novel a concept. NASA had plans for the construction of a moon base during the George W. Bush presidency which have since been scrapped. China, Japan, and Russia all have moon base plans at various stages of development. 

But beyond nationalist bravado, pure scientific research, or the fun of space tourism, is there any reason for people to be on the moon? Is there anything we want there? Gingrich himself proposed one idea in a recent presidential debate. Moon mining:

"If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles."

Are there really lunar riches waiting to be scooped up? Well, perhaps. But not as many as you might think. 

The prospect of lunar mining has been a tantalizing one since the Apollo 12 mission brought back a type of rock known as KREEP -- an acronym the chemical symbol of potassium, rare earth metalsm and phosphorous. With recent concerns over the supply of rare earth metals, used in various energy-saving technologies, and particularly China's near-monopoly over their supply, some have proposed the moon as an alternative source for these minerals. 

But while the KREEP-rich samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts led researchers to believe that rare earth metals were abundant through the moon, recent gamma-ray spectrometer analysis has indicated that there's far less rare-earth material on the moon than previously though, and that's it's concentrated in specific areas. In other words, prospective moon miners should pick their landing site carefully. 

Others, notably former Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmidt, have suggested mining the moon for Helium-3, an isotope that's relatively common on the lunar surface but extremely rare on earth. Helium is used for a variety of current purposes, including radiation detection and MRIs, but some believe it could also be used for nuclear fusion power. India and Russia have both discussed plans to mine the moon for Helium-3.

Unfortunately, mining HE-3 is not so easy. According to an analysis by the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, obtaining just one gram of He-3 from the lunar surface would require excavating 150 tons of lunar regolith. The moon also has large amounts of titanium, but this would need to be seperated from a compound also containing iron and oxygen.   

In other words, the upfront costs of lunar mining would be pretty massive and perhaps only ultimately worth it if nuclear fusion using He-3 pans out, which is still a big if. This isn't even getting into the legal difficulties -- the Outer Space Treaty prohibits countries from establishing territorial sovereignty on the moon and there's not mechanism for land titles -- or the environmental concerns. (Yes, it is possible to pollute the moon.)

So while it certainly might be possible to set up a manned lunar facility of some kind -- and recent water discoveries have raised hopes for the feasibility of permanent colonization --  it's probably going to be a while before anyone makes money there.

Look at all of those $1 and $5 (and $2?) bills! It's a bold statement from the 14-year-old daughter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. But Venezuelans aren't exactly finding Rosinés Chávez's antics cute.

This week, Rosinés posted the picture above on the photo-sharing app Instagram, drawing instant ire from Venezuelans who contrasted the message with her father's critiques of U.S. capitalism or have struggled for years to change local currency, bolívares, into dollars.

In 2003, Chávez imposed tight currency restrictions in an effort to limit capital flight. The unpopular government agency CADIVI now prevents individuals from purchasing more than $3,000 for travel and $400 for web purchases a year -- all at the fixed rate of 4.3 bolívares per dollar (of course, Rosinés could just be flaunting her annual allotment of greenbacks). According to Bloomberg, those who don't receive state approval and are essentially blacklisted from the system seek refuge in the black market, where they pay roughly 8.5 bolívares per dollar. Importers often turn to a currency market run by the central bank that offers a rate of 5.3 bolívares per dollar.

Rosinés has been in the public eye before -- posing on the arm of teen prince Justin Bieber and dutifully uploading it to her Bieber-crazed Twitter account -- but this time her father, whose approval rating is hovering around 55 percent, is running for reelection. And as Foreign Affairs explains today, the opposition, led by the 39-year-old lawyer-turned-governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, is gaining momentum.

Rosinés has her defenders -- in particular her mother Marisabel, who divorced Chávez in 2003 and recently tweeted, "I told her that her mistake wasn't to take [the picture] but rather to upload it to a medium where there are ignorant people who don't respect others." But the photo has also given birth to a Tumblr --  #Rosinesing -- featuring people mocking Rosinés with other items that are hard to find in Venezuela such as cooking oil, medicine, and, well, Rosinés:

Yes, if there's one thing that's not in short supply in Venezuela, it's satire.

With less than a week to go before the Florida primary, the battle for the state's Hispanic vote is intensifying. Romney currently has a 15-point lead over Gingrich among Latino voters in the Sunshine State, but 1 in 5 Hispanic Republicans are undecided. And Newt's not giving up on them. 

During the GOP debate on Monday night, Gingrich recommended more covert operations to overthrow the Cuban government and suggested that Fidel Castro is going straight to hell after Mitt Romney explained that he would "thanks heavens" when Castro finally "returned to his maker." (In an op-ed today, Castro retorted that the Republican race was the "greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance" in history.) On Wednesday, Gingrich ridiculed Romney's positions on immigration during an interview with the Spanish-langugage television network Univision.

Gingrich may have gone a step too far, however, in releasing a Spanish-language radio ad that called Romney "anti-immigrant" and accused him of "using Castro phrases" -- a reference to Romney mistakenly describing a Castro catchphrase -- patria o muerte, venceremos! -- as a slogan for a free Cuba in 2007. Gingrich, the ad explained, has "committed himself to the Hispanic people" by supporting the U.S. embargo on Cuba and the prosecution of the Castro brothers for shooting down planes operated by a Cuban exile group.

The ad angered Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who noted that "neither of these two men is anti-immigrant," and the Gingrich campaign decided to pull the ad today in response. When asked about the spot during his own Univision interview on Wednesday, Romney criticized Gingrich for using "terrible terms" (a video that touches on most of the themes in the radio ad and appears to be endorsed by Gingrich still exists on YouTube).

Still, the Romney campaign has been lashing out at Gingrich in Spanish as well. Earlier this month, Romney released ads in Florida in which Craig Romney affirmed his father's commitment to reinvigorating American values (in pretty decent Spanish, no less) and Cuban-American Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen praised Romney for standing up to the "despotic forces" of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.

But the Romney campaign went on the offensive today, attacking Gingrich for being soft on travel restrictions to Cuba and calling Spanish the "language of the ghetto" in 2007 (Gingrich later apologized in Spanish for the remarks, though it was never entirely clear that he had been referring to Spanish in his original comments). Gingrich, the narrator declares, is no Reagan conservative:

Gingrich said that he would not change the failed policy of Barack Obama on travel to Cuba that has served to fill the Castro regime's coffers and increase repression on the island. I don't think Reagan would agree with Gingrich.... And Reagan would never have offended Hispanics, as Gingrich did, by saying that Spanish is the language of the ghetto.

And Gingrich doesn't appear to be shrinking from the attacks, either. According to the Miami Herald, the former House Speaker began airing a Spanish-language television ad last night that emphasizes his dedication to the Hispanic community and Ronald Reagan's values:

Aren't presidential campaigns just bizarre? One week you're criticizing your opponent for speaking French, and the next you're fiercely competing to see who can speak more Spanish.

Last week, I wrote a post linking to a front-page story from the Boston Globe on links between former Liberian President, now-war crimes defendant Charles Taylor and the CIA. The piece reported that, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Globe, the U.S. government had confirmed that Taylor had worked with U.S. spy agencies while he was a rebel leader fighting to overthrow the Liberian government.

Today, the Globe has issued a near-retraction of the story: 

A front-page story on Jan. 17 drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described former Liberia president Charles Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a “sought-after source.’’ The story, based on a response by the US Defense Intelligence Agency to a long-pending records request from the Globe, described the agency’s response as having “confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.’’

But the agency offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for - records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them.

One of the grounds for that refusal was suggestive, citing the need to protect “intelligence sources and methods,’’ but that, by itself, fell well short of a sufficient basis for the published account. There has long been speculation that Taylor had such a role, speculation fueled in part by Taylor’s own suggestion in trial testimony that his 1985 escape from prison in Plymouth, Mass., may have been facilitated by CIA operatives. But Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder, and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for, or worked for, US intelligence.

The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form.

The fact that these "records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence" exist but the CIA won't release them is only going to increase the curiosity about what they contain. The correction is unlikely to stop the rumor mills in Monrovia, Washington, or The Hague.