Skyline

A not so great photo of the Austin skyline taken from the Crenshaw Bridge at Townlake.

Saturday afternoon kitty blogging

Maxx will keep you company while I'm out today.

Retro Plush

Have we ever had black and white plushy? I think not.

Space News

This Image shows the central region of the Trifid Nebula (M20) taken by the Gemini North 8-meter Telescope on Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two US astronomers have discovered huge quantities of carbon gas mixed with a cloud of dust surrounding a young, yellow star that could resemble our own solar system at its inception, NASA said.(AFP/Gemini Observatory/File)

More here: Primeval solar system discovered

Tiger babies!!

AP/Jesse Cohen

Little baby plushy striped guys. Just in time for friday kitty blogging.

Buh bye, Bugman

The Texas Democratic Party has concocted a wonderful going away gift for the poster boy for bad government. The Texas Democratic Party filed suit against the republicans to keep them from replacing Delay on the ballot. Here's the language from the lawsuit:

The Texas Election Code permits a candidate to withdraw. However, the Legislature attached a cost to withdraw after a primary. If a candidate withdraws after his party’s primary, the party cannot substitute another candidate for the withdrawing candidate. The reason for this rule is simple – the Legislature did not want the candidates duping voters into contributing money and energy to the candidate in the primary, only to watch the candidate take the money and run, not in the general election, but to the bank. So the law places the burden on the party in whose primary the candidate ran – in this instance the Republican party – to make sure that candidates in the party’s primary intend to and will run in the general election. If the Party fails to impose this discipline, the penalty is that the Party cannot insert another candidate into the race for District 22.

And guess what? today Judge Darlene Byrne granted a temporary restraining order. The money shot is in her order:

"Plaintiffs are entitled to a Temporary Restraining Order because it is probable they will prevail against Defendant and obtain a permanent injunction . If the Temporary Restraining Order is not granted, irreparable harm is imminent, as the meeting (the local District Executive Committee) is expected to be called at any moment. My emphasis added.

Let the gnashing of teeth and wailing commence!!

Delay is a hideous, odious little fuck. No one in the world is going to miss him when he's gone.

Some more plush

Mr. Plushy!!

An alternative to the sun

AP/Dita Alankara

And it's a lot closer. Just saying.

Blogger returns!!

I shall celebrate by giving everyone some random plushiness.

This Violent Man

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Bombing iraqis agrees with him.

Shot into the Sun!!!!

Via Buphonia comes this amazing photograph of the surface of the sun, which coincidentally, looks EXACTLY like I imagine it would if a conservative were shot into it.

The surface of the sun as observed by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) in high temporal and spatial resolution. From coronal filaments, loops and mass ejections, magnetic arcades, ultraviolet and X-ray storms, and escaping prominences, earth-bound to create spectacular auroral displays or to wreak havoc on power grids and satellite telecommunication systems -- all archived in one giant database.

Excellent!!

Thanks, Phila.

Evening plush

Lion kitty Maxx is wondering when a pretty atriette or two is going to come by to scritch his chin.

Iraq

Peeance and freeance march on. Cartoon by Ben Sargent, the pulitzer winning cartoonist from the Austin American Statesman.

Reform this, MOFO

AP/Charles Dharapak


Chimpy wants to require immigrants to learn english and to study history. Perhaps he should set an example and do that himself.

Just wondering, but is it even remotely possible for chimpy to appear in public without looking like an ass?

random flower blogging

A hibiscus blossom from my porch. Very festive.

Happy Birthday Eli!!

Everyone should go to Mulitmedium and congratulate him on surviving the apocolypse.

Oh, wait? that didn't happen yesterday? Happy birthday anyhoo!! Mr. Plushy sends you a hairball.

A extra dose of Maxx

Just cause I feel like it.

He blinded me with SCIENCE!!

Maxx has decided that if no one in the Bush administration will get serious about science, he will.

Andromeda Revealed!!

This color-coded Chandra image (red/low energy, green/medium energy, and blue/high energy X-rays) shows the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy, where a diffuse, X-ray emitting cloud of hot gas was discovered in the midst of a collection of point-like sources. Credit: NASA/UMass/Z.Li/Q.D.Wang

Via Space.com:

A flurry of new images from ground and space telescopes is refining astronomers' ideas about the Milky Way's galactic neighbor Andromeda.

The images were taken with NASA's Spitzer and Chandra Space Telescopes and at the Gemini North Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The pictures reveal new details about Andromeda's central bulge and inner disk, while also peering into its very heart to uncover the source of mysterious pinpricks of light. Meanwhile, a mosaic made from thousands of individual images captures the total amount of infrared light emitted by the galaxy, allowing astronomers to calculate Andromeda's "weight" and determine how many stars form in the galaxy per year.

The new images were presented Monday at the 208th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Calgary, Canada.

More here: Andromeda Revealed: New Closeups of a Galactic Neighbor.

Gobsmacked (cause the AP really sucks ass)

Via Talking Points Memo I see that John Solomon has won a $500 weekly prize for his seriously flawed reporting on Harry Reid.

Unbelievable. Apparently his editors are clinging to the premise that all publicity is good publicity. They cite the fact that it was "the most talked about political story of the week- twice" but fail to note that it was talked about because the story was dead wrong and most sensible people were flummoxed by the AP's refusal to acknowledge the facts or to correct the record.

This is the Associated Press we're speaking of.

I'm kind of speechless here. Watching journalism die a slow death is proving to be quite painful.