20,000

A couple of minutes ago, this humble blog welcomed its 20,00th visitor! Thanks to all of you who make me feel like I have a voice in this word!

It took 10 months to get my first 10K, but less than six to get my second. I like the trend.

Interesting Rule

As many people have noted, it was a gross breach of house rules for Joe Wilson to direct his outburst at anyone, in the context of a Congressional meeting, will such a tone and vehemence. However, I hadn't seen this rule pointed out before:

To another political analyst, it's the nature of the accusation -- an elected official calling the president a liar -- that is not only a serious breach (accusations of lying are forbidden under House rules) but also extremely rare in politics.

Interesting. My first reaction was that this was sort of unreasonable in that sometimes lies need to be pointed out. Then I realized that there were alternatives that said the same thing without quite using the same words. For example:

• The respected gentleman is clearly having difficulty distinguishing his dark fantasies from reality. He may wish to take a time out and reconsider his statement.
• Facts can be difficult things, unless you choose to ignore them, as so many have in this debate.
• I had been under the impression that the use of hallucinogens was strongly frowned upon on the House floor, but I appear to be mistaken.
• I have little training in psychopathology, and it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on the roots of those previous remarks.
• There are times when the revelation of the facts in all their rawness may cause one to pause and reconsider. This is not one of those times.

And so on. I think I like that rule.

ISS Again Tonight

The International Space Station will be visible again from Corvallis tonight:In the screen capture above, ISS is the object's name, 08:59:03 PM is the time it will rise above the horizon (but not ground clutter like trees, buildings and hills), W is the direction in which it will cross the horizon, 09:01:09 is the time it will be highest and brightest (NOT, as I said to Tucker last night, the number of minutes it will be visible), 30 degrees is its maximum elevation in the sky, and -2.2 is its visual magnitude.

You can track this and other satellites from your zip or Canadian Postal code here; there is also a link to a global tracker at this page. I haven't reason to use the latter, so I can't vouch for its quality.

I Just Saw The ISS

And the observers are not lying: it's very bright! Actually I wasn't sure that was what I was seeing, but after I came back in and checked SpaceWeather's satellite tracker, my guess was confirmed. Cool!

Britain Apologizes to Alan Turing

Sorry for the sort of fluffy posting today- by which I mean I haven't added much of substance to stuff I've mostly lifted from elsewhere. I'm feeling physically and emotionally crappy. This would have been a good day to simply sleep through.

But I did find a bit of good news. Britain has decided that it is appropriate to apologize for its treatment of Alan Turing, a gay mathematician who was crucial in breaking the German code system during WW II. While the circumstances were horrific, perhaps unforgivable, the sincere statement pleases me. It gives me hope that we, even governments, can learn.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Dems Need to "Reach Out"

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama's rival for the Oval Office last year, said passing health care reform would be "good for America," but cautioned that the president needs to reach out more to Republicans in order to reach such a compromise.

Note that the key phrase is not in quotation marks, but is a paraphrase. Nevertheless, insistence that the left needs to "reach out" more to the right has been a consistent theme of this year's political theater, and one that has become more and more grating to me.

This has been the only real constant of the debate all year. President Obama showed his willingness to compromise by dropping single-payer as a possibility at the outset. He proceeded to signal possible concessions on a public option, a co-op plan, triggers, medical malpractice, reimbursement rates, eligibility rates. Last night, the president literally borrowed from the McCain/Palin platform in presenting new ideas.

And then there's the other side -- the one whining incessantly for weeks about killing reform and replacing it with a "bipartisan" approach. After six months of debate, can anyone name a single concession Republicans have been willing to make on reform? Literally, one?

Once they understand how it would work, most Americans say they want single payer... but that was off the table from the start. Now, the most sensible republican out there is "disappointed" Obama didn't take the public option off the table too. And McCain thinks the dems need to "reach out." Sure.

I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

You Can Make This S**t Up

but the republicans will always go further than your imagination: family values legislator resigns for boasting about fake sexcapades.

My mind reels.

Followup, a few minutes later: Looks like we have our own GOP creep here in Oregon. Tony Marino pleads guilty to raping his daughter. Via BlueOregon, where you can read about some of his previous shenanigans.

Counting to Four

It's pretty obvious I'm not going to find any relief from glum political news. Samurai Frog at Electronic Cerebrectomy found a cute, sweet video of Feist singing 1 2 3 4 (Counting to Four) that really cheered me up with its simple innocence and happiness. Time to hang up the computer and head home for the night, on a positive note for once.

Rational Debate

is not possible in this country. When a national representative interrupts a president's speech with "You Liar!" there is something seriously wrong. Was there ever a case where a US senator or representative ever interrupted shrub with a similar interjection? I don't recall such an instance, though clearly we might have been better off if someone had called BS on his BS.
I have not watched the speech, and I may not; I'll make up my mind as I read reports, and I'll certainly read the transcript when I find a copy. However, what is of interest to me is not so much what Obama said (I think the general outlines of that have been evident), but how he said it, and how various factions reacted. I've just seen evidence that at least one faction has decided to "just say no."

Boo!

Very cool, startling gif of a trapdoor spider capturing a cricket from Ugly Overload. I also like the author's description of what this metaphorically represents.

Unsubstantiated Rumor of the Day

For the right price, Sarah Palin has agreed to provide escort services for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's dinner parties. The agreed upon price is $25,000 a head a pop per night for each party per appointment for each dinner appearance.

In My Dreams

Inspired by a post at SVPOW, background photo from here with a bit of photoshoppery... or maybe I should say Paint.nettery. Blooger's scaling has blurred the image a bit; click for slightly bigger, but much sharper.

Hubble in the Sky With Jewelry

Click the pic for bigger, visit this page for other size options (one much larger) and technical details, and this page for the press release on the results of this summer's Hubble repair and refurbishing mission. Hat tip to Cosmic Variance for bringing this beautiful imagery to my attention.

Followup: Bad Astronomer Phil Plait offers his personal response to the news and imagery, and here is the full gallery of images released along with the announcement. WOW!

American Power

VoteVets sent me the following vidclip earlier. I can't donate, but I can help spread the message.

While all eyes seem to be on Obama's health care reform speech this evening, and the news has been focused almost entirely on that issue for the last month or more, we can't afford to forget that there are numerous other issues facing us. This shouldn't detract from the health issue, but I do believe that the climate change and energy independence issues— which are in many ways inseparable— are, over the mid to long term, even more important than health care.

The frustrating thing is that we now have a preview of the right's response to any issue that comes up: obfuscation, obstruction, and falsely inflaming passions with lies and innuendo. An article in today's NYT tries to put a happy, optimistic face on the current situation as regards health:

“At this point, there really should be no doubt where the American people stand: the status quo is not acceptable, but neither are any of the proposals we’ve seen from the White House or Democrats in Congress,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement, adding: “It should be clear by now that the problem isn’t the sales pitch. The problem is what they’re selling.”

Yet Mark McClellan, who ran the Food and Drug Administration and later Medicare under President George W. Bush, said he saw the churning in August as a part of the public’s education, a “necessary step in the process” and not a fatal blow.

With all due respect to McConnell (that would be pretty much none), the problem isn't what the dems are selling, the problem is the lies he's telling the voters. If I stood outside a restaurant and protested them for selling ground up puppies, kittens and babies in their burgers, that restaurant could sue me. Unfortunately, there is no process by which I can sue liars who defame and libel the policy recommendations of my party.

And while I find McClellan's comment interesting, I'm not sure why death panels, socialism, fascism, and pull the plug on Gramma were “necessary step in the process.” Does he honestly think that fewer people give credence to those possibilities now than did in mid-July? I'm very worried that we're going to end up with a "reform" that enriches the insurance and medical industries, provides no better, and perhaps worse, actual health care, and serves neither patients nor doctors.

There are at least a half dozen other issues that are of similar importance to health, and the energy and climate issue is probably more important.

And I'm going to have to watch this circus of freaks go through this same theater over and over in the next few years.

I can't wait.

Greatest Headline Evar?

Great tits found hunting bats

There has to be a Britney Spears punchline there some where. Actually, despite the ambiguity of the headline to American readers, the story is very interesting:

The researchers staked out the cave and spent 22 days observing over two winters. On hearing the bat calls the birds flew slowly along the roof of the cliff where the animals nestled. The birds were recorded killing bats 16 times.

So now we know that to protect yourself from vampires, all you need is a bunch of great tits.

Homes Threatened By Florida Hurricane

The Onion nails it once again:

According to meteorologists, the incoming tropical storm could leave as many as 3 million residents every bit as homeless as they've been for the past year or so.

"Those who haven't already lost everything to the housing-market crash are urged to evacuate their homes immediately," said Robert Menken, head meteorologist at the National Weather Bureau. "That should be about 10 or 12 of you. Everyone else, please stay where you are, probably on the couch of some in-law who lives near Atlanta."

President Should Not Be In the Classroom

Ya know... I was thinking about pointing this out. Did Bush ever quit visiting classrooms? Did he get parental permission slips from each student? Was he greeted by protestors carrying signs with "Stay Away From Our Kids" emblazoned across them?

Will I ever learn to quit asking pointless questions?

Slow-Motion Hummingbird Moth

A couple of Geobloggers, Silver Fox and Kim, have put up posts on the hummingbird moth over the last few months. A physics blogger I follow, who has a hobby of high-speed photography (rendering the resulting video in slow motion), has put up a lovely video of one of these fascinating insects in action. From Swans on Tea.

I Don't Know Why This Moves Me So

It has sort of a new-agey Windham-Hill sort of sound... quite lovely!

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Australopithecus Spiff-arino

Snopes sez this is false. Too bad. Click over to read the second half and the evidence that it's fake.

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull.” We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.” Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the “Malibu Barbie”. It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it’s modern origin:

# 1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

# 2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

# 3. The dentition pattern evident on the “skull” is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the “ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams” you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it.