Faith in we trust

Of course u might walk away.

You can't win.

LOL America '14

When America burns the world, future dystopian historians will hopefully, one day far, far from now, discover that it was just a small percentage of Americans who managed to destroy the world so thoroughly. 27% in fact. Americans who of course were an exceedingly small percentage of humans worldwide.

But probably not. We're all awash in the doom we bring down upon everyone. Yay!

The Future of Space Travel

Since science is boring, and no one is going to make any money in space for at least a hundred years, the future of human space travel is sex. In space. The ultimate in male fantasy.

That'll get the "Dot Com" money flowing.

The Real Doll

So many bundles of joy.

The real doll, as per title. Harry Harlow fashioned controlled Hells for baby monkeys in order to study their reactions. It's true, read here.

I leave it to you, my modern reader, to judge the morality of Harlow's work.

into the dust bin

Sigh. Communism. How I miss you. Look here at this cold hard logic. It was scientists who sent monkeys into space, not Jesus.

It is the working class who built the factories and the buildings, the tractors and trucks. It is people who build our cities and monuments, not Jesus. Not the spiritual and fiscal bourgeoisie.


Comrades!

Bustin' Jesus

Jesus having risen from the dead puts him squarely in the Ghostbustin' category, and fair game for entrapment.

But even Ghost Busters get busted, one day. RIP to Harold Ramis, one of the funniest persons ever in the history of making jokes.

In search of color in space

Not my shot - I wish. I've been looking for the Northern Lights for years, but never caught a glimpse. I'm pretty far North, but not far enough. I might have to travel to Iceland one day to remedy this - seeing colors dance across the sky is the kind of religious experience I want to try.


That's the ISS streaking overhead, with 6 people on board living and working in space. And here's what the Northern Lights look like from the ISS:

As you can see, the Northern Lights are a thin band of radiation at the edge of space. This is actual solar matter that has slammed into Earth's magnetosphere and spiraled down towards the Poles, producing the lights as the solar matter strikes the highest portions of the atmosphere.

Magic!

New Years Resolutions

2014 is the year I get a prostate exam!

You should get one too, if you have a prostate.

Reality is an Illusion

It appears the stars are spinning through the night. There's nothing your senses can detect that says otherwise. You also know the sun moves, and have built a monument to showcase this movement - every Winter and Summer the sun will shine precisely so.

But this is all illusion.

It is we who are spinning, though you could never tell - do you feel like you're spinning at a thousand miles an hour?

So here's the amusing truth of it: You must have faith that science is true, or at least is the path of truth. That it is not the stars or sun spinning, but us, goes against your common sense. It goes against all intuition. It goes against our language - we say the sun rises and sets, when in truth it does no such thing. But you can't tell, you can't feel or see or hear the Earth whirling around in space.

And so you must have faith. In Science. Amen.

Eyes of a Robot

It's cool visuals, but not realistic. There's no way we could ever smash all the cameras they'll deploy. In the sky, on the sides of buildings, on street poles, on power lines, etc. Drones flying overhead. Satellites far above. Cameras everywhere.

Curiosity, on Mars. Not sure how this photo is made, since Curiosity is all alone on Mars.

Spirit's Tale

Spirit was sent to Mars with it's twin Opportunity for a 90 day mission. This is the sad story of Spirit...

Opportunity, however, roves on, no doubt terrified, having been left on Mars so long.

Praise The Feathered Raptor Lord!

Raptor Lord is a harsh God, but fair. He only eats when He's hungry. Which, admittedly, is often. But running the Universe  - including monitoring and influencing every single sporting event in the Universe in case one player/side is more fawning over Raptor Lord - is hard work!

Praise be unto Him. ROAR!

Dinolution

Science ruins everything, right? WRONG! Science makes everything awesome. Fur example, a large percentage (not all) of dinosaurs are now thought to have had feathers. Even the mighty T-Rex:

Stylish, fashionable, warm, and not remotely related to flight. Science thinks, for now, that feathers first evolved for warmth, and later evolved for use in flight. This evolution was carried forward by dinosaurs, who ultimately became birds.

Birds are the evolution of one branch of dinosaurs. All of them. Think of that the next time you feed the ducks.

QUACK!

Pluto or Possibly (Likely) Bust

These are the Hubble gifs of the best shots we have of Pluto to date. Pluto, the demoted planet. But don't be sad!

Mankind has sent one of its precious crafts to the non-planet. New Horizons is the latest and perhaps the last deep space probe mankind has launched - since we are currently regressing, yay!

It will find rock and ice, how exciting. By the time it finds the next scientific discovery, some other Kuiper Belt object of ice and rock, we'll be in a Republican Theocracy and worshiping Ronald Reagan and the latest Republican Emperor.  We'll all agree this is the natural order of things.

Be sad - we're about to regress, zeig yay!

Star Scales

Apologies for the slow speed of this gif, but do stay till the end, where you'll visually grasp the incredible scale of star sizes. Our Sun is fairly normal size wise, but oh how much bigger do stars get! So big that the Sun is but a speck compared to the biggest.

But like with rock and/or roll, the bigger a star is, the brighter and faster it burns away. Our star will last about 10 billion years on the main cycle; the biggest stars last but a few million years then go KABLOOM, leaving behind a neutron star, or a black hole.

Behold this scale and know the glory and the rapture of our reality.

Wrath of an Angry God

Wicked cool map. I've got a thing for maps. This one shows every tornado in the USA over the past 56 years. Two things I conclude: Mountains create tornadoes, and two, mountains prevent tornadoes. Look at you, Appalachian Range, keeping them evil bastards at bay!

However, ironically, the region known as the Bible Belt is just a jam packed with twisters. Like, where's Oklahoma? Scary, and with Global Warming, far more likely and more powerful (more heat in atmosphere creating more and bigger storms).

But hey, here's what known Super Christian Pat Robertson has to say about tornadoes and storms:

“If enough people were praying He would’ve intervened, you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms.”

So you see, Christians of the Bible Belt, you're not praying hard enough, and thus the giant tornadoes of death and destruction.

Pray harder!

Or! Just an alternative theory, but maybe tornadoes are features of weather in this case created by the Rockies, the Gulf of Mexico, and the relatively flat spaces of central USA.  Given that they are only going to increase in size and frequency, be prepared.

Or move. Check out all those liberal areas, suspiciously free of tornadoes.

Free your mind

Norte Americana represent! We're all Americans over here, Adolf!

Joined in American unity. Amero's for all!

Bankers control the gay hammer smiths in communist America, yo.

This is Soviet agitprop, exploiting racial tensions in the 1930's American South - easy pickings!

Team Other

I'm on Team Other, as DHARMA was a totalitarian intrusion upon the innocence of the Island, on par with The Man in Black himself.

Who was the Smoke Monster, of course. Which was what? Magic. DHARMA, on the other hand, was all about science and control and groovy 70's symbology.

Like all the Hieroglyphs. If you watched the show, you'll recall this stretch of episodes being dark as heck. Creepy stuff - the tale of Ben Gale.

But then, if you were raised on Mystery Magic Island, you'd be pretty twisted too. Thus, count me in for Team Other, cuz the rank and file had the best intentions of the Island in mind - and if you lived on Mystery Magic Island, you'd work to placate it as well. Logically.

Floating in space

Some laughs on the ISS, floating above us right now some 230 miles straight up. There's almost always 6 people on board, who serve for several months before being replaced. Here's the current commander:

A Canadian! But then, that's really the main point of the ISS - international collaboration. And cool photos:

Here's an eclipse of the sun as viewed from the ISS:

Here comes the supply ship!

I'm not the biggest fan of the ISS in an analytical sense, since it consumed so much precious money and effort of the various world space agencies, and produces very little science. Besides cool pictures, there's not much going on there, and that will never change. We could have sent fleets of robots all over the solar system for the same money. But! I had my opinion modified slightly by this excellent tour of the station. If you have an hour to spare and are interested in the ISS, check this video out.

Also, if you want to see the ISS zooming overhead - and you should, it's wicked cool - go here and enter your location. There's a ton of cool things to track on that site, and I also highly recommend trying to see an Iridium flare.

If you do watch the video, the ISS seems like a pretty big place. But here it is to scale:

Big, but not really. Most of the size is solar panels too. Imagine living here for 3-6 months with 6 other people. Hope you passed your psych tests!

And ultimately, that's the main science being done on the ISS: Getting practice at staying in space. Let's hope we can use these lessons for worthier endeavors down the road. Until then, we float:

That's Italy's boot to the left, and Greece (SPARTA!) to the upper right.

Asteroid's got a Moon

Here's the asteroid "Ida" (31K diameter) with its very own moon, Dactyl (1.4K diameter). Coming at ya live!

That Ida has a cute little moon gives scientists reason to believe many/most larger asteroids have moons as well, since, as the idea goes, debris is scattered around the asteroids often enough, and it's more than likely some of this debris will form an orbit, at least for awhile.
Here's tiny Dactyl, cutest li'l baby moon of Sol's System!

Once again, just for perspective, there's more accessible metals and precious stuff like gold on rocks like Dactyl than ever dug up on Earth, for all of time. Just waiting for us out there. Or, conversely, on an eventual collision course. Either way, we're rich!