A Dump Truck of News

The GOP debate from several viewpoints.  Fact checking. Lack of presidential qualities. And how much nuking and bombing do they want?  Because fear works... or at least it did during the Bush era.  Will it work again? Because the GOP really really really wants to start WWIII because that's what they're good at.  War.  Because it's good business.

Tom Tomorrow.

Who let the fascist dogs out?  The GOP thought they could contain them....kept feeding them raw meat... encouraging them to distrust government...

(And why AREN'T we talking about the Saudi role in terrorism?)

If everyone is going to carry a gun, we need this new invention to stop bleeding to be a mandatory item too.

Homes on Mars.

This El Nino seems to be extra special.

Badass women of WWII.

Liberals live in their own bubble too.

George Bush ignored several pre-9/11 warnings to avoid a paper trail... but we knew this.

The melting of the permafrost brings all sorts of things to light.

The Bible?  Or the Koran?

Mr. Rogers was truly an excellent man.

George Takei takes on mayor who thought interment was a good idea.

British Muslims tell off Daesh.

Mars and Ikea sitting in a tree

More proof that Mars had water... LOTS of water. OCEANS of water.  And a lot of it was lost to space.  Which is where our water is going if we keep on heating it.

We're going to check out Ceres and see if those lights were somebody's car....

The dumbest and the smartest presidents.

Medieval woman buried near where Richard III was found.

Stephen Hawkings upsets some Israelis by shunning science conference because of their treatment of Palestinian academics.

Booman on the Republicans cutting defense spending.

Plastics are harming us.  And food additives are too.

Ikea furniture will soon be able to charge our phones.

Christmas contraceptives

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Excellent overview of 2014.  Best science photos for 2014.

Weird methane readings on Mars... ALIENS!!!1

Bernie Sanders takes on the Koch brothers.

Saint Ronnie couldn't get elected dog catcher in these interesting teabaggery times...

Tampons may save your life...

If you can erase the word, the action never happened.  Right?

Institutionalized racism is hard to root out.

Chipping away at contraceptives.  And women aren't choosing to have more babies, they're just wiser with their birth control methods.  Cutting through the deliberately confusing terminology used when discussing abortion.

Librarians to Gamergate

Sing the praises of librarians.

Paul Krugman sings the praises of Obama.  Really.

Mars and a comet.

Get ready to breathe more methane.

Myths about slavery.  Lots I didn't know.

Explaining white privilege.  And then some.  (Scroll down to read the letter.)

Gamergate.  And wow!  then some more!

I'm still here! Just distracted by real life...

How prisons profit.

We must move humanity to Mars.

An apple a day will actually do you a world of good.

Biking across Africa.

Saving our post offices one by one.

Cold and dry

Cold enough for ya?  It is actually global warming in action.  Science.

Curiosity making tracks on Mars.

California is dry.  I mean really dry.

To the moon, Alice!

Humans can cause earthquakes?  Does it count when the entire country eats that second helping of pie after a Thanksgiving dinner?

Beautiful timed photos of a trip in the western US.

The coldest place on earth.

The ultimate Legoland:  Rivendell.

Facts about book lovers.

China's on the Moon and there's damp spots on Mars.

Gun Nuts, Car Crashes, and Radiation--Fun For Everyone!

Personal stories of women who have had abortions.  Healthy sweaty women.  And why some women will vote Republican is beyond me.  The next generation of intelligent women.

The negatives of Governor Chris Christie.

A meeting of Mothers Against Gun Violence brings out a group of gun nuts.

What letting loose a virus into the internets can do... think space station..

A shower design that reuses water and saves money.  Do you think we'll ever see it produced in the US?

The Earth is old... older than 6,000 years.  Life on Earth is really old.  Apparently older than we ever imagined.  And here is a panorama of Mars.  (scroll down and ignore the annoying whirling gif.)

Russian car crashes from dash cams.

Fukushima residents may never go home, say Japanese officials  I thought that was a given.  They have lost that area of Japan forever.

Simply Sunday

Eden and Adam and Eve are apparently scientific enough to be in science textbooks.... in Texas.

Supervolcano ... on Mars.

Oldest alcoholic drinks on earth.

Killer hornets in China.

Senator Elizabeth Warren on the GOP shutdown.

Rep. Joe Barton thinks wind is a finite resource:

Barton has used the threat of global warming to combat something he hates even more: wind energy. In a 2009 hearing, Barton implied that wind is a "finite resource" and that harnessing it would "slow the winds down" which would "cause the temperature to go up."

Plastics, pensions and another attempt at censoring the internet

Ignoring our plastic garbage doesn't make it disappear, it kills things.

10 urban legends debunked.... I won't tell you which of these I've believed....

Insight into the workings of Ted Cruz.

Incoming water wars.   Maybe we should move to Mars.

Maybe algae will save us?

Building a Better American Male.  And the American female.

Fat cats can't leave anyone's savings alone, can they?

An American fuck-up at Fukushima.

Another attempt to censor the internet.

Curiosity killed the cat...

But satisfaction brought it back

 


Fantastic graphics of Curiosity on Mars

(Post title from a joke by Mahakal)

Tetris to torture.

Why we love Tetris.

Make your own solar system.

Clinging to their guns... so they can take down the government...

Dryer sheets are filled with toxic chemicals?

Mars mystery 'flower'.

A letter to Kathryn Bigelow on Zero Dark Thirty's apology for torture

From here to there...

The Republican War on Women continues... apparently this last election didn't mean anything.

Fix the debt?  Uh huh.

Do politicians really worry about the deficit?....



Tom Tomorrow and Cliff Notes.  More on the 'fiscal cliff'.

Garden Path Sentences

Fracking chemical used in US linked to organ damage

Organic compounds on Mars.

Science is cool...

Spray-on solar panels.

British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology:

A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity. 

The company, Air Fuel Synthesis, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol. 

Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside. 

The fuel that is produced can be used in any regular petrol tank and, if renewable energy is used to provide the electricity it could become “completely carbon neutral”. 

Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis. 

The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide. 

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

El Nino will make your state drier than usual this rainy season... or very very soggy.  (Sorry about that, Florida).  But there is no signs of global warming.  Nope nope ignore that.

Curiosity digs up Martian dirt.  Planets in perspective.

Liars and Truth-tellers

Tumbler overtaking blogging?

Bernie Sanders speaks the truth.

Counting the lies:



The entitlement of the Mormon male.  So apparently lying and ignoring his church's precepts to gain power is ok.  But it's fine, because he was a severely conservative ... no, liberal...no, conservative... governor.



Obama will come into his own?  I do hope so.

Mars panorama.

Silly brain.

The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy

Little bits

A woman travels across Antarctica alone.

Oh you Brits. Humor on the Underground. And you can tell a lot about the Brits (and everybody else) by the way they like their eggs cooked.

The world's angriest cat.

Made with a small multirotor helicopter, a video of Hammershus.

The attempt to silence a brave voice.  Malala Yousafzai seems to have survived the attack, but I don't know in what condition.  An update 10/10.

They've found something.... something weird and small... on Mars.  Update10/10:  benign plastic?  Update 10/11: Rats, benign plastic.

Cats, the Moon and everything in between

Reddit asks:  What is something your current or past employer would NOT want the world to know about their company?  The responses about banking, food service, recycling, chemical waste, crony drunks on the job... makes one want to dig a hole and hide in it....

Hell cat.

Mars had water.  But does that mean it had life?  And how about a super computer on the MoOOooon!?

Bees, birds and butterflies:



Reasons to vote Republican:



Who will stop the gun violence?

Stephen Barton survived the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. But 12 others didn’t. Watch his personal message asking President Obama and Governor Romney to offer their plans on how they will end gun violence, and join him by signing our petition.

Like... you know...



The worm from the CENTER OF THE EARRRRRRTH.....!1!!1!1!

Oh look...

We have found an interesting rock.

And so forth and so on...

Martian plate tectonics!  360 degree panorama!

She wasn't a fetus so the Republicans don't care.  But if there's a fetus involved: Kansas Doctor Under Attack For Not Forcing Ten Year Old Rape Victim To Give Birth

Ohio is afraid of letting people vote.

Good guy bank.

You can fool some of the people all of the time.  The Ryan plan, and what choosing Ryan didn't and did do for Romney.

Romney supports Tranquility Bay, a Mormon behavior reformation camp that tortures kids.... and more on this.

Mute button.

The starfish story.  Found on this thread of Reddit.

From my facebook thread

What is wrong with this picture? A flipped out nazi racist shoots up a Sikh religious group even as we land a SUV-sized rover on Mars. We are told by Fox News and the NRA that we must accept these shootings of innocent people as an expression of our freedoms and that we are to shrug off the deaths as mundane. On the other hand, we casually accept the fact we are capable of sending a huge and complex appliance to Mars millions of miles away and land it gently in a carefully chosen crater to look for intelligent life and to study geological strata. If we are capable of such fantastic science and logical thought, why do we accept acts of such heartbreaking stupidity? Why can't we fix this?

Suzie Kidnap: we can fix it. we need to get people of normal intelligence to pay attention to politics. right now, the oligarchy has a brain dead army of simpletons who will carry out their kings' every command, and vote as they are told. and that army is basically unopposed at this point.

Ellroon Gravenstone: Which is why education and science are being mocked, and faith is praised more than intelligence. I just can't get my head around how we can walk into this Era of Stupid without protest. How can the army of simpletons be greater than those of us who think?

Suzie Kidnap: i don't think they are greater in number. i think they are more motivated because they have been stirred up by wedge isssues; race, abortion, the gays. they are paying attention, and most of the normals still aren't. i fear what it might take to wake people up. the pace of these massacres in increasing in an alarming way. i am starting to be afraid to go out of the house.

Ellroon Gravenstone: Recall the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia where they killed all the doctors and other educated 'elites'... and then wonder when Fox News will incite the next moron to go kill those who dare to read books. (Fahrenheit 451 anyone?)

Ellroon Gravenstone: I remember one man entering our living room which is lined with book shelves. His first sentence was an aggressive,"Have you read all these books?".... He was mollified to hear I hadn't. Didn't show him the rest of the house ... bookshelves in every room.