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Ten million unpublished images....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.
...
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.

____________________________________________________
More:

Mormons Stole Our Rights
Revoke LDS Tax-exempt Status

And this says it all:

I concur

A Historic Victory
David Horowitz

I went to my polling station to vote about 2:30PM. There was one person in line in front of me and my wait was about 2 seconds. So much for the paranoia about the suppression of the vote. There are always screwups at election time but it was not until Florida 2000 that these began to enter the folklore of conspiracy which is an American political religion. This year the paranoia got hot and heavy on both sides. Republicans were sure election fraud was going to rule the day and the Democrats would steal the election. Democrats were just as paranoid that racism would deny the first African American his opportunity to be president. Both were wrong.

I am glad that Obama won by a big enough margin to lay to rest any claim the election was stolen.. I am glad he won by a big enough margin so that only cranks will continue to claim that the words racism and America can ever be reasonably linked. This is a historic moment in our country's history, and reaffirms our place as the most remarkable nation on this earth. Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

I think it's important for all my fellow conservatives to take a moment in the next few days to reflect on these facts and not rush into the partisan struggles which are bound to crowd our political space in the years to come. Let us reflect on the fact that sharp as our divisions are, we are a nation that settles our differences at the ballot box and not in civil strife. Let us do the American thing and give this man the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to prove his mettle by assuming his role as the leader of our nation -- one and indivisble; let us see if he will live up to his promises to heal the country's wounds and unify its contending factions.We face a terrible economic test at home, and barbaric enemies abroad. There will be time enough to hold him to account if he does not honor his promises, and to celebrate with him if he does. In the meantime, let us celebrate this historic moment in America's progress, and do everything we can to show the generosity of spirit that has made America a land that we love.

"I Know You're Angry! I'm Angry!"

Of note, the production designer of Milk previously recreated 60's- and 70's-era San Francisco in the unforgivably ignored suspense masterpiece Zodiac.

Enriching Earth Through Mars

National Geographic will air a program entitled "Five Years on Mars" on Sunday, November 9. It will document the hugely successful and inspiring stories of America's Spirit and Opportunity droids on Mars. I imagine they will also cover the three orbiting probes that continue to provide us with invaluable data, as well as the successful mission of the Phoenix lander.

The Germs: No God

A The Germs Movie?

Nobody tells me these things! A movie has been made about the homo-fronted, Belinda Carlisle-drummed (well, briefly), breakthrough LA punk band The Germs.

I'm buying it as soon as I can get my hands on the DVD. What's next, a Big Boys movie?

Note To Republicans: Folksy = Dummy

Fox News reports that Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent, not a country. And the decision-making process behind her choice as VP running mate was actually worse than any of us imagined.

Today I briefly heard that drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh defending Palin. If any evidence is needed that the autocratic Christian nationalists just don't get it, that's it. "Fire-brand conservative" who inspires people is NOT what educated, fiscal conservatives and libertarians (or most of America) saw in her. Instead, we saw an ignorant, insular, superstitious, anti-intellectual, pro-government interventionist, anti-civil liberties, hypocritical, frozen yokel cunt.

We'll have Democrats in control until Republicans figure that out.

By the way, what's the difference between Sarah Palin's mouth and vagina?

Answer: only one of the things that came out of her vagina was retarded.

Jay Spears: Smack Dem Christians Down

The Strangers = Excellent

We watched The Strangers this week. Oh my. We posted a trailer in March and had high hopes. It is one of the best "uncomfortable" movies I've seen in years. It's really a simple story, a couple is attacked in a home. But the creepiness is excellent. I literally put down a controller and turned off the side TV and turned down the lights. It creeped me out. I've been making sure to lock the doors ever since. The theatrical trailer:

Best Election Ad This Year