Ten pounds of blog in a five-pound sack
“I promise not to smack you if you cut up your credit cards”.
“I promise not to kill you if you give me your wallet.”
“I promise to let all the passengers go if you give me $200,000 and a parachute.”
“I promise not to destroy the country if you keep paying for the things I bought last decade and take the money out of the poor, elderly, and middle class.”
Someone remind me why there was ever any debate about who was responsible for nearly bringing about default.
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
—Alfred Lord Tennyson
A significant release of methane due to melting of the vast deposits trapped by permafrost and clathrate in the Arctic would result in massive loss of oxygen, particularly in the Arctic ocean but also in the atmosphere. Resulting hypoxic conditions would cause large extinctions, especially of water breathing animals, which is what we find at the PETM.
—Skeptical Science
Is it “alarmism” to yell fire in a crowded theatre if the building is in fact on fire? And you’ve come to realize the basement is full of gasoline tanks?
Dear Entire Country of Japan,
I know you had that whole earthquake thing, with the shaking and the breaking and the aftershocks and the tsunami and the entire towns washed away and the 13000 dead and all. And also that thing where a quarter of your power is missing and there’s radioactive iodine visiting places it really shouldn’t, and your electricity is turned off a few hours every day and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. And I do realize this was a natural disaster of a size unseen in over a century.
And sure, through it all you are keeping your international space projects on schedule, to the point of continuing meetings the moment the shaking stopped, and moving work from Tokyo to Komaki where there’s power all the time, and promising to repair your test facilities in time for the planned tests with our hardware.
Yes yes, I know all that, but it turns out that people in our country are using contraception. This is unacceptable, and as a result we are unable to continue working on our portion of your space projects.
しつれえします。
And I was so enjoying waving happily at Air Force One when it flew overhead. Looks like I’m gonna have to go back to flipping it off.
Hope? Nope. Change? Strange, looks like just another cheesy breezy politician blowin’ in the wind. Creeping up as close to that center line as he can get.
Bastard.
This Friday will mark 42 years since everyone in the U.S. got the right to marry whomever they want. Well. Not quite everyone. Not quite yet. Still, it was a massive social change, brought about by a zealous court. Talk about your judicial activism! Overturning the clearly expressed and massively supported will of the people, without any such right being explicitly spelled out in the constitution. If the constitution doesn’t grant the right, how can you overturn democratically enacted laws based on some nebulous concept of “civil rights”? (Hint: What part of the 9th amendment don’t you understand?)
Loving v. Virginia. Was there ever a better-named court case? This here’s a couple years old, but it still makes me smile:
Loving for All
By Mildred Loving
Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007, The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement
When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.
We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.
When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?
Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.
We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.
Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” a “basic civil right.”
My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
Oh, check this out!
Look what website validates as legal HTML!
Sure, it’s a tiny thing, but it’s the kind of thing that happens when you hire, y’know, experts. Who, y’know, give a damn.
Better stop it, Mr. Obama, you’re getting my hopes up.
Lotsa buzz about this Rick Warren dude giving the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Much as I dislike evangelicals, mega-churches, and gay-bashers, I’m not so sure this isn’t a clever move on Obama’s part. Here’s what I wrote over at Ed Brayton’s place (edited some for here):
Who presents the stupid invocation just doesn’t matter. If Obama continues to invite Warren to the White House regularly, I’ll be a lot more worried. If he starts taking advice from Warren, I’ll be pissed. But this is a meaningless gesture.
I’m not understanding the concern about pissing off the LGBT community. What’s the downside? Obama is officially in favor of everything we want short of marriage, and my reading of his text is that he’s really just holding back on that as a political convenience. Okay, found it. Here’s his official statement.
Barack Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples, including the right to assist their loved ones in times of emergency as well as equal health insurance, employment benefits, and property and adoption rights.
So, why not just call it marriage? Well, I would prefer that, and I will be surprised if we don’t end up there. But to get there from here we needed Obama to beat McCain as step one. (Okay, to get there as quickly as possible.) And I think omitting the word “marriage” was a good choice in a pragmatic sense. I see a pretty big nod and wink in those words.
Okay, so my point is his plan involves some pretty major, and pretty contentious legislation, with some big changes for a lot of people. (Remember when the entire state of Massachusetts exploded from teh Gay? Oh. Okay then, big-seeming changes.) He already has the support of the LGBT and friends community; what he needs is the support of the religious middle. I think Warren can help him with that.
And here’s a thought: what if it works the other way? From what I’ve read, Warren has been a little iffy on some of his anti-gay stances. What if he does get to know Obama a little, and Obama influences him? It could happen. There’s a word for that, what is it now…? I haven’t heard it in a long time, it’s kinda fuzzy. Oh yes, “leadership”. Not too likely, I know, but if I were going to try to bring some evangelicals back from the dark side, Warren would be on my list. Hey, I can hope.
And now I return to my usual cynicism.
After looking at the picture in the previous post, and watching Obama on 60 Minutes (hey, how about that; I actually watched something on TV that didn’t come off a DVD and wasn’t sports!), I realize I do have an emotional reaction to the next prez.
It’s always seemed intolerably stupid to vote for a candidate because he’s the kinda guy you’d want to have a beer with, but in my case it’s that he’s the kind of a guy I’d want to work for. (Hey, come January, I will be working for him. Modulo N levels of intervening management.) But he seems like someone I’d want as a direct boss. Organized, confident, intelligent, and cheerful. Probably (hopefully!) a sonofabitch if you screw up, but that’s okay. It’s bosses like that who can change, oh, say, the Hubble Space Telescope from a national embarrasment to the best-loved science facility ever.
Now let’s hope that reaction is correct.
Oh yeah, he’s one of us!!
Yes, America has finally elected its first Mac-using president. About time!
(I found the photo here. HT to PZ.)
John McCain, Mister straight talk:
While we were working to eliminate these pork barrel earmarks he [Senator Obama] voted for nearly $1 billion in pork barrel earmark projects. Including $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?
Overhead Projector? Overhead Projector?
This is an overhead projector, John.
An overhead projector. Not worth three million dollars
And here’s what the planetarium needs:
The Zeiss Universarium Mark IX. Worth a lot more than three million dollars.
I don’t for a minute think John McCain believes the Adler wanted to get $3M for the upper thing, so they could get one at Office Depot and spend the rest on hookers and blow. Surely he knows what a planetarium is, and what planetarium projectors are. The only reason to refer to that amazing apparatus as an overhead projector is to imply (by which I mean “lie”) that Obama will spend money just for the sake of spending.
Man, I used to think Arizona had some decent senators. I always had a soft spot for Barry Goldwater, and McCain used to at least appear honest. Maybe he was, and running for Prez has rotted his brain. Or maybe it was all an illusion to start with. But this is ridiculous.
You can make the argument that planetaria ought to be funded by, say, peer review at NSF, rather than earmarks, and I’d be right there with you. But pretending that the earmark was for an overhead projector just makes me wish Al Franken were still on the radio.
Oh, I forgot to link to Phil’s post on this, which is what got me going in the first place.