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.

It will have so many uses...

I'm sure the military and the police will think about spying, tracking, and searching, but wouldn't it be cool if we could land one of these on the moon or Mars?

*edit note.... Ole Phat Stu has kindly reminded me there is NO ATMOSPHERE on the Moon and Mars, so no flying devices that need air to move...

*My astronomy prof would be embarrassed...

Voyager 1

Sails closer to true interstellar space...

But now, after 33 years, that has changed: at 17 billion kilometers (10.6 billion miles) from the Sun, the spacecraft has reached the point where the solar wind has slowed to a stop. Literally, the wind is no longer at Voyager’s back.

There is gas between the stars, which astronomers call the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows out into it, slowing. There is a region, over a billion kilometers thick, where the solar wind plows to a halt, creating a roughly spherical shell around the solar system. That’s called the heliosheath, and it looks like Voyager 1 is now solidly inside it. In fact, it’s been there for four months or so; the scientists measuring the solar wind speed noticed it dropped to 0 back in June, but it took a while to make sure this wasn’t just some local eddy in the flow. It’s not. Voyager 1 now has calm seas ahead.

But the probe is still moving outward at 60,000 kph (38,000 mph). In a few more years it’ll leave the heliosheath behind, and when that happens it will truly be in interstellar space, the vast and nearly empty region between the stars. At that moment it will be the first human device ever to truly leave the solar system and enter the great stretches of the galaxy beyond.

To infinity and beyond!

What global warming?

I don't see no global warming!:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago.

This is easy! I can do this too!

What drought? I don't see any drought! Anyway, just think of the tan you'll get!



What flood? Now you won't have to wash your cars!



What dust storm that is blowing off all the top soil and ruining farming? It's fertilizing other areas!



What refugees that used to live on the coastline that is now under water? These are just happy tourists!



Think I'm getting the hang of this....

Update: NASA has learned the Bush language well too:

Last week, NPR asked NASA administrator Michael Griffin said that while he was “aware that global warming exists,” he wasn’t sure whether it “is a longterm concern or not.” Griffin said he is “not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

Griffin subsequently clarified his remarks, stating that protecting the earth against global warming is not in the agency’s mission statement:

The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet’s evolving systems. It is NASA’s responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA’s mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies.”

But from 2002-2006, it was. Part of NASA’s mission was to “protect our home planet“:

To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.

In Feb. 2006, the mission statement was “quietly altered” to remove the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.”

What does it feel like, Mr. Griffin, to gain a pal in the White House but help lose a planet?