Super Volcano!

Scientists eye unusual swarm of Yellowstone quakes: "Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come."

For GateTree.... (hands off the pets, Dr. Frankenstein)

Biohacking: The Open Wetware Future
Ronald Bailey | December 26, 2008, 11:40am

Much of the infotech revolution erupted from garages (Hewlett Packard, Apple, Google), and the same thing is beginning to happen with biotech. Biohacking is in its infancy, but the tools and knowledge to make novel organisms is becoming cheaper and more widely available all the time. Open wetware is the wave of the biotech future. For example, the Associated Press reports....

Some Movies to Consider

The 19 Best Movies That You Didn't See in 2008
from FirstShowing.net.

Surprisingly Not Awful

While not really good, the Cartoon Network's Clone War series has, to date, had some gems in the rough. And it looks fantastic.

I endorse it for anyone who wants to see some Star Wars coolness sometimes.

"Defaming Milton Friedman"

Naomi Klein's disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist

Ms. Klein's lies about one of the most passionate and reasoned proponents of human freedom reveal more about her values than her spurious assertions about Mr. Friedman's.

As always, I'm left wondering why so many purportedly intelligent people become unhinged at the idea that economic freedom is a necessary component of a free people - unhinged to the point that they will distort and lie about the facts AND the people that inconveniently disprove whatever thesis ( i. e. disaster capitalism) in which they have invested. Is it so hard to put aside one's beliefs and dispassionately test a thesis? Or is it something a bit sinister: most people fear the freedom of others?

Just for fun, courtesy of Neal Boortz ...

Santa Claus: The Great Imposter

ATC-SIM: be an air traffic controller

Superstitious Idiot Makes Appeal For That Which He Works Against

Pope Panzerkraut The First asked his god for a new year of peace. As they all have asked...even as Jews were slaughtered, gypsies murdered, thinkers and libertines tortured and executed, and infidels persecuted and exiled...on the Church's instructions and with its blessings. That's some wish.

And a septuagenarian virgin in a very expensive dress; a mountebank who calls for extreme giving whilst advocating austere living as a virtue: an ornery self-indulgent mystic who allegedly has a direct line with the entire universe's creator, he has the (unused) balls to say on this day--a day actually like any other--during which thousands die of preventable disease, religious wars, and ignorance-induced famine and pestilence:

"If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart."

FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!!

"This is the best I can do. I learned it as a child."

Cylon Raider Mk 1

The Navy rolled out its first Unmanned Combat Aeriel Vehicle (UCAV): the X-47B Pegasus. I suggest we not make it angry...

But what about Robbie?

EXCLUSIVE: J. Michael Straczynski's FORBIDDEN PLANET Plot & Trilogy Details Revealed!

The harmony of gears ....

The Antikythera Mechanism

I saw the last few minutes of a documentary about this ancient Greek "computer"- fascinating.

Wikipedia
New Scientist
The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Phase II Episode is out

Episode 4 Blood and Fire is now available for download. There is an early scene that pushes the cheese factor of Star Trek to a new high. But if the response from this trek site thread (with comments from James Cawley and David Gerrold) is any indication we still need this much cheese to point out how uncomfortable some people are about others. I think I might be more open minded because I watched Star Trek growing up and this feels like something they would do (maybe a bit more subdued, but the Phase II guys don't have to placate censors) to draw attention to an issue. Remember: it's just a show, you should really just relax.

Ok, Now I'm Interested

The first trailer for the new Friday the 13th didn't impress me. This one does.

This Holiday Season, Don't Forget Your Cousins

Like the Bonobo:

Bonobo Conservation Initiative

With science as our compass, we can end crimes against sentience.

Wierder Than Squid: Siphonophorae

Siphonophorae are collections of jellyfish; the Portuguese Man O' War is an example. This one defies science fiction.

What's The Point Of Storing All That Information When The Whole World Is Stupid

Science continues to progress beyond most of its unwilling recipients as more compact, more efficient, less costly computer memory is made by smart people for--mostly--the benefit of dummies.

Hey Science! When are you going to start holding out on publishing this shit so that we future cyborgs can win the inevitable robot-human war to come? I mean really...

Deck The 5" Cannon Of Our Heavy Destroyers

The USS Russell (DDG 59) wishes you a Merry Christmas and a "Strength in Freedom!" New Year!

They're everywhere ...

Reason.tv: Do You Really Want to Live in a World Where Giant Inflatable Apes Are Banned?

Rooftop Credit Ape Goes To The G20 Meetings

Rick Warren: The New Idol Of All Morondom

From The Nation:

Warren, a creationist, believes that homosexuality disproves evolution; he told CNN's Larry King in 2005, "If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn't reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool."

I'll take "Doesn't Understand Shit About Science" for $1000 Alex.

Now Who's Going To Tell Us That The Enterprise Is About To Explode?

Majel Barrett-Rodenberry died.

So Here's The Deal: Your Son Has His Dead Sibling In His Head

Doctors thought that a Colorado newborn had a brain tumor. They were wrong. Real is usually horrible.

You know I can't resist "Crinoid of the Week"

Crinoids.com

Uh oh ....

13 upcoming remakes of Hollywood sci-fi classics
By Geoff Boucher

Hollywood has already dipped into its sci-fi vault for 21st century remakes of “The War of the Worlds,” “The Planet of the Apes” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” so what’s next on the revival list? Plenty. Here’s a list of thirteen projects at various stages in the studio pipeline....

Some extraordinary claims, but worth a look ....

No more pesky "needs" gameplay... I want it.

Real Is Usually Horrible

I freely admit I'm obsessed with Cute With Chris. My favorite episode is here.

"I find tinsel distracting."

FRANK*: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reach for the last one they had - but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way!

KRAMER: What happened to the doll?

FRANK: It was destroyed. But out of that, a new holiday was born. "A Festivus for the rest of us!"

KRAMER: That musta been some kind of doll.

FRANK: She was.

Seinfeld Sounds of Festivus

*Script of "The Strike" Episode

"Heinlein on helium"

Santa's Jolly Boots of Doom

The Secret History of the Nuclear Bomb

Lets take a look at how nukes got around..........

The Kitzmiller judge speaks @ Case Western

Video: Judge John E. Jones III

Posted using ShareThis

Almost makes me want to be back at the University

Xmas Joy

Because Carol ate him.

More Xmas Joy @ Bizarre Records.

Humanity's Stupidity Summed Up

I recently came across the following quote from the late, great Douglas Adams, and I smiled.

A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?"

Christmas Over Innsmouth

A fitting advent calendar for the Winter Solstice

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008

5 This image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), represents a small section of a larger mosaic - the sharpest view ever taken of the Orion Nebula - a picture book of star formation with massive young stars that are shaping the nebula and pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright glow at left is from M43, a small region being shaped by ultraviolet light from a massive young star. Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebula has four such stars. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. (NASA, ESA, M. Robberto - STScI) More (see this on Google Sky) #

One-stop Festivus shopping

For GateTree:

For Bromide:

For Clyde Squid:

And something for everyone!

Why A Florida Judge Overturned The Gay Adoption Ban

The plaintiffs in the case were two gay men in a long-term relationship (read: married but for the superstitions of mongrels) who already had a biological son. They had fostered several kids for many years, and these gays were asked by name to take in two VERY neglected children. From Ed Brayton:

The children arrived at the home of Petitioner and Tom Roe, Sr., domestic partners, and Tom Roe, Sr.'s then eight-year old biological son, Tom Roe, Jr., on the evening of December 11, 2004. John, the elder sibling, arrived with his four-month old brother wearing a dirty adult sized t-shirt and sneakers four sizes too small that seemed more like flip-flops than shoes. Both children were suffering from scalp ringworm. Although John was clearly suffering from a severe case of ringworm, the medication brought from John's home to treat his scalp was unopened and expired. James, too, suffered from an untreated ear infection, as evidenced by the one-month old, nearly unused, medication. John did not speak and had no affect. He had one concern: changing, feeding, and caring for his baby brother. It was clear from the children's first evening at the Petitioner-Roe home that the baby's main caretaker was John, his four year old brother.

On that December evening, John and James left a world of chronic neglect, emotional impoverishment and deprivation to enter a new world, foreign to them, that was nurturing, safe, structured and stimulating. Although Petitioner and Roe had fostered other children, caring for John was the most challenging of their foster care experiences. For the first few months, John seemed depressed and presented a void, unresponsive demeanor and appearance. Upon arriving at the Petitioner home, John did not speak a word for about one week. After two weeks, he began to mumble imperceptible utterances. After about one month, John finally began speaking. Petitioner quickly learned that John had never seen a book, could not distinguish letters from numbers, could not identify colors and could not count. He could not hold a pencil. He had never been in an early childhood program or day care. Nevertheless, John's potential for educational development was apparent. Although he had not had any formal education, John could sing and pick up lyrics very quickly. Early on, Petitioner and Roe noticed that John hoarded food by requesting additional servings at the start of dinnertime and later hiding the extra food in his room. John eventually grew out of this behavior, due in part to a tactic employed by Petitioner and Roe of showing John, in advance of mealtime, the more than sufficient amount of food on the stove prepared and available for the family.

But what will really turn your stomach is the defense experts from the state of Florida, one of the biggest, wealthiest, and most influential states in this great union. They're enough to make you spit up. And, after nearly 4 years of the 2 children growing up in the gays' home, this is what they wanted to stop:

The Court also heard testimony from Ronald Gilbert, the children's Guardian Ad Litem since June 2005. Mr. Gilbert, who has served as Guardian Ad Litem to over 100 children, visits the Petitioner-Roe household monthly to observe the children and the family. Based on Mr. Gilbert's observations, the children are in excellent health, well behaved, performing well in school and bonded to Petitioner, Roe and Tom Roe, Jr. During his visits, the Guardian regularly sees the three children playing and hugging one another like brothers. Based on his interactions and observations of other foster parents, Mr. Gilbert believes Petitioner and Roe are model parents. In fact, he testified that in all of his 100 cases as a Guardian Ad Litem, the Petitioner home is one of the most caring and nurturing placements he has encountered. He further opines that adoption is the preferred form of permanency over permanent guardianship because John and James deserve parents. According to the Guardian, the children would suffer mentally and physically if separated from Petitioner, Roe and Tom Roe, Jr. The Guardian Ad Litem's official recommendation is to allow the Petitioner to adopt the children and states it is in the manifest best interest of the children.

What century are we in again?

Ed note: The gays initially refused to take these children in because they were thinking of relocating to a different state. They agreed to take the children in because, at least, they could give two disadvantaged kids a good Christmas. The gays canceled their plans and stayed in Florida; their new sons were more important to them than to Florida Christians.

Proposition 8: The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Orion Review

"Obama's NASA transition team also asked agency officials to investigate how much it would cost and how long it would take to build a smaller version of Orion and human-rate an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 expendable rocket to serve as its launcher."

I hope Alabama is salivating at the idea of replacing Ares with Delta 4.

I Thought These People Were Supposed To Be Different From The Clintons...

Movie Review: WALL-E

"I don't want to survive, I want to live!"

Visually it is all Pixar. As for its humor, WALL-E is a cross between classic slap-stick and modern satire. The story is pretty heavy for a children's cartoon, weighed down by its sci-fi roots (that it wears on its sleeve) and dystopian setting; however, many of the depressing back-story hints and elements are so subtle that they will fly over most kids' heads. But the moral is surprisingly uplifting, and the characters are delightful. I loved it.

Look familiar?

On The Positive Side

Obama collects comics and can speak coherently. And, in the middle of an interview, he can make an impromptu Dr. Strangelove reference (at 5:20)...

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Barack Obama

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

THANK GOD FOR THE FAMILY

It looks like we've got those secular progressives on the run! Marriage and decency will win!

Coraline Trailer

Google hosts Time-Life images

Ten million unpublished images....

Gay Alabama Fascists

I was informed that a protest last weekend at Birmingham's City Hall was canceled. Otherwise, I would have gone. But here are the gay and secular fascists at work, imposing their values on the "good Christian folk" of Birmingham through violence and harassment.

Here's our opponents, protesting a brain-dead woman's heterosexual husband's decision to see her pre-stated final choice carried out.

The confluence of lies, irrationality, and superstition hurts my brain.

Best Scene: As Good As It Gets

Global Cooling Debunked

Libertarian Ed Brayton points to a survey that shows how scientists never built a consensus that human pollution would result in global cooling. The survey is a great read; it's a stunning indictment of how sensational and scientifically illiterate journalists were and are.

Mars Has Lots Of Water

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found huge glaciers buried underneath the Martian surface.

Mein Führer, I Can Talk!

Newt Gingrich, in what I can only assume is a move to re-emerge as the supreme commander of God's party, stated on Bill O'Reilly's show that we are gay and secular fascists. The whole interview is so dreadful as to seem like a parody, but the combination of losing the last election and the ever-present "Christian persecution complex" has wiped clean the reason and irony drives of the Republican machine.

Bill O'Reilly's complaining about boycotts and firings nearly gave me the vapors, but it was Kermit the Newt who took the taco:

Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment.

First of all, no one wants to make Newt get gay married, or even approve of it. That's just part of his own crypto-fascist fantasy and persecution complex. Other than doing those two things, I find it hard to fathom what "impose" might reasonably mean.

As far as violence, almost all of the anti-Prop 8 protests have been completely peaceful. However, as recently as early this month, a Syracuse man was shot for being gay. And stomping on some poor lady's styrofoam cross, while reprehensible, doesn't seem to me as violent as good Christian folk historically have been to the gays. It's hilarious that Newt can maintain a straight, pudgy face whilst insisting that a few angry gays who have physically hurt no one represent a movement's willingness "to use violence."

As far as harassment, I have two words: Terry Schiavo. The history of Christianity, even in the US, is saturated with dogmatic, childish bullying.

Make sure you're sitting for this next bit:

And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

For now on, Newt has to sit in a wheelchair and speak with a German accent. It's the only way I will ever be able to take him seriously.

The New "Star Trek" trailer

Let's not talk about it.


But Phase II episode Blood and Fire part 1 will hit the net next month.

Cleave Religion Out of Politics

Let's hope this wing of the party wins out. It'll be better for the country.

Giving Up on God
By Kathleen Parker

His Lord Jesus Rejected The Bail-Out Plea

Homophobic schyster James Dobson's Focus on the Family announced they were laying off 202 people (roughly 20% of their workers). This from an organization that just gave half a million dollars to Yes on 8 in California.

Sorry we have to let you go, but what do you want me to do?. Feeding your family isn't nearly as important as fighting gay ones.

What's In A Name?

In a BSG webisode to air soon on SciFi.com, Gaeda and his Pegasus counterpart, Lt. Hoshi, are shown to be a couple, complete with gross-out gay kissing and stuff. Hopefully no stump humping though; that's just sick.

Next Airing: Sat Nov 22 11A

SECRETS OF THE CRYSTAL CAVE
Hidden deep beneath the surface of the Earth is one of the greatest natural marvels on the planet: a giant crystal cave with crystals up to 36 feet long and weighing 55 tons. But this scorching cavern could kill humans after just 15 minutes of exposure.

-The giant crystals found in the caves at Naica are softer than a human fingernail.
-The largest crystal found at Naica is 500,000 years old.
-The stunning crystal pillars are made from the same common mineral as drywall – it's called gypsum.
-The Naica cave's deadly heat comes from the depths of the Earth. Naica sits on a set of fault lines. A magma chamber a mile and a half down warms the water that flows throughout the mountain.
-The Naica principle cave "Cueva de Los Cristales" is 45°C and 100% humidity.
-The Naica facility pumps 16,000 gallons of water per minute out of the mine and runs 24-7.
-The water pumped from the Naica mine formed a lake in the arid Chihuahua desert and is also used to irrigate a golf course.
-Naica is one of the most productive lead mines in the world, and a huge supplier of the world's silver as well.
-The Naica cave actuality footage was shot on solid-state memory HD video cameras (tape-less) wrapped in plastic bags and pre-heated for three hours prior to entering the cave.
-The Naica Project team created a stop-motion robot and fitted it with a Nikon digital still camera powered by a custom software to capture beauty-shot sequences of the cave with 10-megapixel resolution.

See also: Cavern of Crystal Giants

Muse - Take A Bow (Lowlands 2006)

Politicized science is no science at all

The world has never seen such freezing heat
By Christopher Booker
Telegraph.co.uk

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

So Much Done In So Little Time

The Phoenix lander has died. But it enriched our species, and its successes should be celebrated.

Phoenix's preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

Until we meet again, dear friend...

Your Gods Seem So Small...

Hubble got a picture of an extra-Solar planet. An alleged Jewish messiah's walking on water, a mythical dictating fiery shrubbery, and ambiguous prophesied horrors are comparatively unimpressive.

Seeing is not believing.

From Wired....

Pentagon Clears Flying-Car Project for Takeoff

Pentagon mad-science division Darpa is helping build thought-controlled robotic limbs, artificial pack mules, real-life laser guns and "kill-proof" soldiers. So it comes as no surprise, really, that the agency is now getting into the flying-car business, too.

Darpa hopes its "Personal Air Vehicle Technology" project, announced yesterday, will ultimately lead to a working prototype of a military-suitable flying car -- a two- or four-passenger vehicle that can "drive on roads" one minute and take off like a helicopter the next. The hybrid machine would be perfect for "urban scouting," casualty evacuation and commando-delivery missions, the agency believes.

Flying cars have been a just-around-the-corner promise for decades, of course. Today, several companies swear that they are just on the verge of manufacturing such machines. Terrafugia claims its folding-wing mini-plane will be ready to deliver by 2009. Pal-V has a three-wheeled gyrocopter thingy. Urban Aeronautics promises to do the whole thing without any wings or rotors at all. And let's not even get into the personal flying saucers.

Darpa says its Cessna-sized combo vehicle should be able to cruise at 60 mph on land, and 150 mph in the air. It should be able to stay aloft for two hours on a tank of fuel. "The challenge," the agency says, "is to define the major components of such a vehicle that would be suitable for military scouting and personnel transport missions, yet are small enough, inexpensive enough, and easy enough to operate that it can be widely used."

To make the flying car work, Darpa believes, makers will have to use "morphing wings" to ease the transition from road to sky; "optimized disk loading" propulsion, "for the combined fly/drive mission"; and strong flight control software. Darpa isn't making an enormous commitment to the flying car, just yet. This is a project aimed at small business; contracts of this type are typically under a million dollars per year. But maybe, with a small Pentagon push, the flying car dream could finally clear the ground.

Rufus Wainwright Unplugged Live: Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk

"So please be kind, if I'm a mess."

An Open Letter To Barney Frank

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Thomas Jefferson

Dear Barney Frank,

I heard your interview today on Sirius OutQ's liberal political talk show. You disagreed with the gay movement's protests of the LDS church. I could not disagree more with your position, which takes pragmatism to the level of inefficacy.

Protests do not fall on deaf ears; when done correctly, they bring attention to hypocrisy, injustice, and irrationality. And that's what the gays are doing. I dare say that you would not oppose such protests 35 years ago, when the Mormons were openly racist. The only difference is back then California didn't pass a proposition that would institutionalize the Mormons' definition of a religious leader, thereby preventing non-whites from being recognized as priests, reverends, etc. But they now have succeeded in making their religion's (current) definition of marriage into that of the government of California, an imposition of religious opinion that will in 35 years seem just as absurd and irrational as my hypothetical one.

When we're done with the Mormons, we'll turn our fabulous wrath to the Followers of Cathol, whose hypocrisy concerning gay issues and marriage (and just about every other modern ethical stance) is equally foie-gras rich. I celebrate the gays' channeling of their outrage by protesting these theocratic "mountebanks," metaphorically sticking their $400 Pradas up the superstitious twats' asses. My only criticism is that it is far too little, far too late, and a terrible thing to do to Italian leather.

Just be thankful I'm not organizing these protests: my ire towards these religions eclipses anything said or done to date. Do not these institutions also promote the abhorrent positions that latex is worse than HIV, that a woman's birth canal is subject to religious divinations concerning pregnancy, and that patriarchy should trump gender equality?

So please be quiet as we gays do what we always have done best: make trouble. We lost the battle on Prop 8 because no one wanted to be the pudding stick, and now is the time to take this all as seriously as we should personally. Our opponents thought nothing of our feelings or sentiments, let alone our lives and our ability to lead them as we see fit. They never once considered other religious views concerning the gays and marriage, and they dismissed our unanswered arguments while distorting our positions. Therefore, ridiculing their CHOICE of mysticism and their unreasonable insistence on making it California's de facto source of law fails to twiddle even a single sympathetic or empathetic neuron in my body. No belief is too sacred to be protested, mocked, scorned, or (the horrors) debunked intellectually.

I'm sure in Massachusetts, and in Washington DC, how far we have come and possible near-term gains hold primacy. And they may even provide us all with a measure of comfort and help ground us in our losses. But from the point of view of a gay atheist in north Alabama, no peaceful expression of outrage at the disgusting lies, celebrated ignorance, and faith-justified bigotry of religious fundamentalists is too much. That you can't relate to this position perhaps indicates the over-extension of your career in politics.

You should spend more time arguing our case to your peers in Washington (your history shows how woefully inadequate and exceedingly poor you are to that end), and less time criticizing us for taking our case to the opponents of reason and equality across America.

In short, shut your upper boy hole and go do something or someone productive.

Welcome Back P.J.

P.J. O'Rourke, as he did for so many years, says what I've been trying to get at all along:
We Blew It
A look back in remorse on the conservative opportunity that was squandered.
by P.J. O'Rourke

MST3K XX

From the New York Times---- Also, if you haven't already, check out Cinematic Titanic.......FOR THE KICKS, MAN!

The Show That Turned the Mockery Into the Message
By DAVE ITZKOFF
“ALL along,” Joel Hodgson said, “I had a real healthy disrespect for Hollywood.”
It was more than two decades ago that Mr. Hodgson walked away from a thriving stand-up comedy career, retreating to Minnesota to build sculptures of robots. There Mr. Hodgson, now 48, discovered that his eccentric hobby of building automatons, and especially his aptitude for finding the flaws in mass media, could be combined into something greater.
“There was kind of an invitation there,” he said, “that if you can see the seams in this, you can figure out how to make a TV show.” The show Mr. Hodgson and a cadre of like-minded Midwesterners came up with in 1988 was “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (“MST3K” for short), surely the only comedy series about an outer-space castaway and his robots, who provide a steady stream of quips and comebacks while watching low-budget films.
“MST3K” may have been the first television show in which the commentary was more important than what was being commented on. You tuned in not to watch schlocky features like “Fire Maidens of Outer Space” or “Manos: The Hands of Fate” but to see how Mr. Hodgson and his crew would tear them apart. (You couldn’t hear the dismal opening score of “The Unearthly” in the same way after one of Mr. Hodgson’s robots shouted out, “Music by the Edgar Allan Poe marching band!”)
Twenty years after the debut of “MST3K” (with a new DVD boxed set from Shout! Factory to celebrate the occasion), the show’s creators talk about the show as if it were a mad scientist’s experiment, one that could have been produced only under a precise set of conditions that are practically irreproducible today.
“We could never have pitched the show on paper,” said Trace Beaulieu, who portrayed Mr. Hodgson’s robot companion Crow as well as his nemesis, the evil Dr. Clayton Forrester. “You had to show people what we were doing. And even then, they go, ‘What?’ ”
Before it was broadcast nationally on Comedy Central (and later on the Sci Fi Channel), “MST3K” was first broadcast on KTMA, a UHF station covering the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. While no one was looking, Mr. Hodgson and his colleagues used KTMA’s equipment and its library of rainy-day monster movies to produce the earliest episodes of “MST3K.”
“There were no camcorders or iMovie, so if you wanted to make TV, you needed at least a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of production gear,” said Jim Mallon, a KTMA production manager of who became an “MST3K” producer.
One year later, Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Mallon were able to sell the series to a fledgling cable network called the Comedy Channel, which offered them a meager budget of $35,000 an episode but allowed them to retain ownership of the show, and to continue producing it from Minnesota, without much interference from programming executives on the coasts. In its mid-’90s heyday “MST3K” was watched by fewer viewers than Comedy Central’s reruns of “Saturday Night Live,” but its cult following prevented scheduling changes and early efforts at cancellation.
Eventually efforts to translate “MST3K” into a movie led to the show’s demise. Mr. Hodgson quit in 1993 over his dissatisfaction with the film’s lack of ambition and was replaced on air by the show’s head writer, Michael J. Nelson. When “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie” — a feature-length riff, directed by Mr. Mallon, on “This Island Earth” — was finally released in 1996, it was a short-lived flop, and the show itself was canceled three years later.
“It’s really hard to make a movie,” Mr. Beaulieu said. “My hat is off to anybody who picks up a camera. Well, not everybody, but it’s a difficult thing to do.”
Today many of the “MST3K” players are still making fun of movies for a living. Mr. Nelson runs a Web site, RiffTrax.com, which provides satirical commentaries for blockbusters like “Iron Man” and “Transformers.” And Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Beaulieu are among the members of a new team called Cinematic Titanic, who mock B-movies in direct-to-DVD releases and live performances.
Like many of his “MST3K” colleagues, Mr. Hodgson says he’s still riffing on bad movies, partly to keep the tradition of the show alive and partly to show that, really, anybody can do it.
“We’re just capitalizing on what people normally do,” he said. “When you’re presented with something insane or silly, the human reflex is to speak out.”

For you, GateTree

Solar Power Game-Changer: “Near Perfect” Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.
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An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

After a silicon surface was treated with Lin’s new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.

The Mormons Made The Gays Very, Very Angry

As LGBT people across the country consider boycotting California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas (really, isn't all of America already boycotting Arkansas though), the fabulously white-hot fury of angry lesbians and catty queens has already been turned against our favorite whack-a-doodle religious group, the Mormons. I'm keeping my ears open for a local protest against the Mormons here.

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More:

Mormons Stole Our Rights
Revoke LDS Tax-exempt Status

And this says it all: