Lion kitty Maxx has gone out for a prowl, so in the meantime we have some "kitty in a box."
Saturday, October 14, 2006
More plush
Lion kitty Maxx has gone out for a prowl, so in the meantime we have some "kitty in a box."
Friday, October 13, 2006
extra bonus plush
"Four legs, are all republicans corrupt, greedy, thieving assholes?"
"Yes kitty, sadly, they are."
Dogs are silly
AP/David DupreyIf Brutus had proper snow shoes like Mr. Plushy, he wouldn't be in this fix.
Space News
NASAArtist’s concept of Epsilon Eridani, the nearest extrasolar planet to our solar system.
Atronomers confirm that planets form from disks around stars, the McDonald Observatory announced.
PASADENA, Calif.—Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin have gone a long way toward proving that planets are born from disks of dust and gas that swirl around their home stars, confirming a theory posed by philosopher Emmanuel Kant more than two centuries ago.
G. Fritz Benedict and Barbara E. McArthur have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, to demonstrate that Kant and scientists were correct in predicting the source of planet formation.
snip
Benedict and McArthur’s observations show for the first time that a known planet orbiting the nearby sun-like star Epsilon Eridani is aligned with the star’s circumstellar disk of dust and gas. The planet’s orbit is inclined 30 degrees to Earth, the same angle at which the star’s disk is tilted. Epsilon Eridani is 10.5 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.
The planets in our solar system share a common alignment, evidence that they were created at the same time in the Sun’s disk. But the Sun is a middle-aged star—4.5 billion years old—and its debris disk dissipated long ago. Epsilon Eridani, however, still retains its disk because it is young, only 800 million years old.
No one tell the fundies!
US Forces Killed British Reporter
Via the AP, a british coroner has ruled that US forces unlawfully killed a wounded ITN reporter in the opening days of the Iraq war. Article here:Coroner: U.S. killed British TV reporter
Will the pentagon allow those responsible to be brought to justice? somehow, I doubt it.
OXFORD, England - A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war.
Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death of Terry Lloyd, 50, a veteran reporter for the British television network ITN.
Witnesses testified during the weeklong inquest that Lloyd — who was driving with fellow ITN reporters from Kuwait toward Basra, Iraq — was shot in the back by Iraqi troops who overtook his car, then died after U.S. fire hit a civilian minivan being used as an ambulance and struck him in the head.
"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said. "There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire."
Will the pentagon allow those responsible to be brought to justice? somehow, I doubt it.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
More photography
While we're on the subject of photography, this beautiful shot of Grouse Mountain in Pikes Peak National Forest was taken by National Geographic photographer Thomas Cooper during the 2003 fire season.
It's included in National Geographic's new collection, The Best Mountain Photography.
Photo of the Month
National Geographic/Aris Messinis
Via National Geographic, this amazing photo was snapped during a thunderstorm over the Acropolis. National Geographic online has a number of free newsletters, including one of amazing photography, which includes wallpapers and other goodies from NG's incredible archive.
Also, check out this page on National Geographic News for the online archive to "Photos in the News."
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Iraq is even more broken
From today's report in the Lancet, Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000.
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
snip
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
I think it's time to stop saying that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam. Some mealy ass senator (too lazy to look up the quote) said that we (Americans) wouldn't care much about civil rights if we were dead.
The corollary to that is that dead Iraqis couldn't care less about peeance and freeance. Since they haven't got either.
And WTF is up with this? Bush: Iraqis Are Willing To ‘Tolerate’ This ‘Level Of Violence’
Today in his press conference, President Bush applauded the courage of Iraqis, stating that he is “amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”
They "tolerate" violence? Bush is flat out delusional. As ThinkProgress notes, nearly a million people have fled Iraq to escape the violence. The people that are staying have no choice in the matter. They're just trying to stay alive from one day to the next.
As a wag on ThinkProgess notes: "Mad cow is eating his brain like an hor’s d’ouvre."
Just so, just so.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Gorgeous
I love technology, and I love when people find interesting ways of using it to create art.
Via the NY Times, take a look at the amazing images scientist Thomas Eisner is creating with a common color copier. Eye-Catching Images of Nature, Made With a Common Machine
In 1952, Thomas Eisner, a graduate student at Harvard, drove around North America for two months with a fellow student, Edward O. Wilson, to see the country and its insects. For the past half century, Dr. Eisner, now an emeritus professor at Cornell, continued his travels in the fields of entomology, evolutionary biology, chemical ecology and conservation. Some of his best-known research was on the explosive chemical outburst of the bombardier beetle, which he and his colleagues analyzed and photographed.
snip
Recently, however, the limitations of Parkinson’s disease led Dr. Eisner to explore the capabilities of a new tool for capturing the natural world: the color copier. Now commonly available, the copier, he writes in an e-mail message, “can serve for the inventive generation of imagery, for composition of novel pictorial arrangements, and in that capacity find use in the expression of fantasy.”
Go read the whole thing, and take some time to look at the photo gallery on the NYTimes Website. The images are exquisite.
Oy
I am a bad, bad parent. I refilled lion kitty Maxx's prescription last night, and while reading the label, I realized that I had been giving him his antibiotics incorrectly for the past month. I wasn't giving him enough.
No wonder he tried to run off with a co-ed last night.
(I shall slink away in shame now.)
Titanic Watch!! Look out below!!
GOP Officials Brace for Loss Of Seven to 30 House Seats
Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley.
Just an observation, but if they are publicly admitting they may lose as many as 30 seats, the real number in play is probably closer to 50.
Pass the popcorn.
Meanwhile, more progress
AP/Khalid MohammedMeanwhile, back in Iraq, progress!! Another 60 Bodies Found in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Authorities found the mutilated bodies of 60 men in Baghdad in the 24 hours ending Tuesday morning, likely the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that roam the capital.
The bullet-riddled bodies all had their hands and feet bound and showed signs of torture _ hallmarks of death-squad killings, police 1st Lt. Mohamed Khayon said.
The death toll of tortured and mutilated citizens is running about 50 a day. That's 1500 people a month. This is horror beyond my imagination. These people aren't just being pulled off the street and shot, someone is abducting them and torturing them first.
Hideous. Though I'm sure Bush will tell us we're making progress in the fight to populate the afterlife with tortured souls.
In the meantime, Jane Arraf of NBC News, reports from Baghdad on the NBC Baghdad Blog. Calling Bob in Baghdad:
Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.
I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?
To be truthful, there's not much the Bush administration won't try to explain away, but it's clear the American public sees this disaster for what it is. Not that that matters, Bushco isn't listening anyway.
Monday, October 09, 2006
When it Rains, it Pours
I'm singing in the rain,
I'm singing in the rain!
What a glorious feeling...
I'm happy again!!
Via TPM, When it rains, it pours. For some, more than others.
NYT/CBS: Bush at 34%
Update: Ooof, Billmon has all the happy details!
The End of the Revolution
Karen Tumulty at TIME Magazine has a nice story on the clusterfuck that is the republican party. The End of a Revolution
Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left.
That's a powerful lede, but I think it's only partially true. I don't think the republican revolution was ever about ideas. It was always about power. It was never about governing or about making America a better place. It was never about creating "a more perfect union."
Let's hope the american public (the sane portion, anyway) has finally had enough.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Fuck you Poppy
When I was a kid in the sixties, we regularly had drills to show us what to do if the unthinkable happened. I thought about it a little more than the average kid, because my dad was in the Air Force. For a time he was a bomber pilot, flying the route up above the Bering Straight, carrying the bomb on his B-52. Just in case the soviets got out of hand, ya know. (I didn't know at the time that they carried nukes, but my father confirmed it to me many years later.)
Whenever world tensions got high, all the pilots would go on alert, and my dad would kiss my mom goodbye, and head out to the airfield for as long as it lasted. Eventually he would come home to our quarters on base, and life would go on as normal.
I can't say that I let it bother me all that much, but for any kid who grew up in the 50's or 60's, the threat of nuclear war was always a constant presence in our lives.
As I grew older it seemed like the world was coming to its collective senses. Men seemed to have come to the realization that nuclear war was not an option under any circumstances. Nations were making a serious effort to control nuclear proliferation.
So how did we come to this? N. Korea Reports 1st Nuclear Arms Test
The past six years have been a disaster. The nuclear club has expanded and the world is more dangerous than it has ever been before.
I blame Poppy. Listen up, you old fuckwit. If you had not coddled, protected and run interference for your fuckup of a son, this world might be safer. The first time some teacher came to you and said, "Ummm, excuse me Mr. Bush, but your son seems to have serious personality and behavioral problems" I'll bet you said, "I don't want to hear it. How dare you criticize my boy."
You and that harridan of a wife hatched this monster, and not content to unleash him on the oil industry, you got your friends and patrons to launch him on an unsuspecting American public.
The result? thousands of American soldiers are dead, not to mention the thousands dead on 9/11 because your twit of a kid was too incompetent to listen to the warnings the intelligence community was screaming at him. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead because your kid wanted to one-up you. And now the entire world is living under the threat of nuclear oblivion. And this time, crazy people have the bomb.
So let me take a moment to invite you and your whole worthless clan to go fuck yourselves with a rusty chainsaw. You're just as much to blame for this clusterfuck as your lazy, untalented, delusional, narcissistic fuckwit of a kid is.
I only hope you live long enough to see your "boy" humiliated and the Bush name destroyed for all time. It's what you deserve.
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