Bush to Survey Disaster Area

This kind of falls into the "what more needs to be said" category, but... I came across this yesterday and meant to post it, but my favorite coffee shop closed early and I didn't get to it. It's shown up in several other blogs today, but WTF, if you ended up Outside the Interzone and haven't seen it, take a few minutes. Another couple of notes: I tend to zone with TV news. I just watched it again and there's some fine comments I missed the first time through. Also, two of the people I showed this to yesterday were initially confused, thinking this is real. No, it's from the Onion. Our faithful news puppies would never, ever imagine saying that the last seven and a half years have been an unmitigated freakin' disaster.

Roll Out the Blogroll, part II

I got a couple of comments from bloggers whose sites I stuck up yesterday. I think I noted previously that sometimes blogging feels weird, like talking to yourself in a dark room. When you have no sense that anyone is reading what you've written, it seems pointless and self-involved. Getting an occasional comment makes all the difference. Eventually I'll figure out a way to monitor site traffic, but I haven't yet.

So here are today's additions:

Whiskey Fire Mostly Left Blogostan news, politics and opinion. They've got a funny post right now on how those of us who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy perceive the overall story differently from those who have grown up with the second trilogy as their first exposure. The first Star Wars movie came out the summer I graduated from high school; I went and watched that movie once a week for ten weeks. So I got a good chuckle out of this post. I have to admit I don't bother reading Molly Ivors' posts on Maureen Dowd anymore. Generally I find Dowd tedious- a well off NY, youngish-middle-aged semi-attractive woman who has no idea about the lives of the rest of us peons, but enough of a gift for gab to try and fail miserably over and over. But Poor Molly! I picture her with blood pressure so high that blood cells are oozing out her pores. Molly: just quit reading Dowd. Really, you'll be happier and healthier!

A Salute to Some Stuff This is one of those blogs that is not so busy- sometimes days go by between posts. But the quality! Yesterday's post on Alt-advertising is a case in point. There are a number of recurring themes I love such as politics with critters (here's an older post). Enough stories about friends and family to make me feel at home, rather than watching a newscast. Good laughs- I enjoy the "Doodles by Splotchy for Manx." Even though I've seen them dozens of times, they still lift my spirits- e.g. "Alien talking to predator on a rotary phone," and "A night owl punching an early bird."

I Was Just Wondering I commented to a person just a bit ago (and sort of implied two posts ago) that I enjoy puns. I had been reading this blog for months before it dawned on me that the blog's name is a pun: the blogger's name is Jess Wundrun. What a great name! This is another blog that has plenty of news and politics, but manages to convey a real sense of person, and allows the stranger to feel a growing sense of familiarity and friendship, a sense of feeling at home. The mundanities, the joys and, yes, the tragedies of life shine through here, and provide a context and counterpoint for the fury and despair and hope that is politics in the US these days. I learned quite a bit about insurance issues from the posts on the Midwest flooding earlier in June.

I, Splotchy A big favorite. Less on politics, but some- Splotchy developed the "Go Away, Bush" counter that I try to hit at least a couple of times every day. It recently passed 1000, and is now in the mid 1100 range. I'm going to try to figure out how to paste it here eventually, but haven't got to it yet. He's big into music, and just got back from NYC where he saw the Feelies perform. I hadn't heard of the group, but there was an article in the NYT on them, and it sounds like a great band I will track down eventually (actually, their music- live music tends to be too crowded and noisy for me to cope with, and nearly impossible for me to actually enjoy). He regularly posts couplets that are kind of intriguing- like, I know I've never seen these lines before, but they seem familiar. Splotchy is also the creator of the doodles I mentioned under "A Salute to Some Stuff;" you can see bunches of them if you click on the doodles button under his "highlights" list.

A Tiny Revolution More Left Side Stories. As you get accustomed to reading more and more news, politics and opinion, it's interesting to see how a story reverberates- one site will opine on another's opinion. ATR is a big player in this process. I suppose the right sees this just as I see them- self reinforcing, pig-headed, blind adherence to the hive mind. I can't stomach reading righty sites very often. But IMO, left sites argue and disagree with each other, and attempt to better understand a situation thereby- as opposed to the right, which looks to FOX news and Cheney for their cues and then follow. Humor is not all-important to me, but I do tend to remember and follow sites better if they give me an occasional giggle. Check this one out.

So that's my five for today. I want to point out again that the order of putting these up is contingent simply on the order I stuck them in my favorites list, not on which ones are "most favorite."

Is it torture? Yes.

This is Surreal. Christopher Hitchens, a pro-Iraq war pundit, gets waterboarded... to the tune of some smooth synth-pop music that sounds like Enigma. I don't generally find two things in the Alternet newsletter that I want to address on a single day, but this is 1) not what I pictured, 2) completely riveting, and 3) just so wrong. Especially when you hear Hitchens describe the lingering psychological after-effects. After just a few seconds of "enhanced interrogation."

Hot Wet Punography

Gotta love this: apparently people are using their stimulus checks for something other than simple economic stimulation. If they had thought about it more, I think they could have packed more puns into the title- but that might have been gratuitous.

Roll out the Blogroll

I generally stay caught up with roughly 40 blogs each day. Some are pretty busy, some not so. But each has stuff that's interesting or engaging in some way (to me at least) on a regular basis. I've been meaning to start my Blog roll for a while, but I have to enter each URL, save, then go get each new URL. I don't remember URLs very well; I just have a lot of "favorites" files. It would be so much easier if I could just copy and paste that list, but c'est la vie.

So I'm going to try just doing five or so at a time. That will also mean that it's practical to give a short description and/or mention why I like the blog as I list them. Generally speaking they will be added in roughly the order I added them to my favorites, because that's the way they are listed on my laptop.

Electronic Cerebrectomy- like my blog, an eclectic mixture of stuff from all over the map: movies, a big fan of animation, pretty (sometimes stunning) women, teaching (elementary level), some politics, a little bit of science, and reaction to pop culture. I'm not a big fan of pop culture, but this guy has some pretty insightful responses to it- falls into the category of "he pays attention so I don't have to." Probably a lot of stuff I'm not recalling at this moment, but you get the idea.

Crooks and Liars: Left Blogostan News, Politics and Opinion. I'll warn you that before I'm done there will be an awful lot of these. I tend to start at the top and work down. C&L is often the place I hear about something first, simply because that's where I go first. This is one of those team sites, with a bunch 0f people all contributing: quite a bit of reading gets posted here every day. I started reading the internets in the mid 90's. C&L was one of the first blogs I started reading (I think around '02 or '03). I was offline for several years, but it was one of the first blogs I went back to when I got back onto the information superhighway.

Zaius Nation- Such a great sense of humor! Zauis made his first appearance in Planet of the Apes. He is somehow blogging 1700 years or so before his birth- I'm not too worried about the technology there. Film clips, visual gags, satire, some politics. I haven't really figured out who or what Germaine Gregarious is yet, but I think they were running against Dr. Monkerstein (of monkeymucker.com, to be rolled out later) for president. Not sure if it was bias from MSM or if there's a constitutional basis for orangutans and monkeys to barred from those offices, but I don't think they're running anymore (Though we have a simian and a crocodilian holding prez and VP now). I dunno... it's all so very confusing.

DistributorcapNY (AKA dCap)- History, economics, news, politics, opinion, personal anecdotes, etc. His cat George had to move along a few days back. Having just brought a cat into my life a couple of months ago, I'm feeling pretty bad for dCap right now. I left a pretty long comment on one of his posts last week, and he had the kindness to come read some of my stuff and leave a couple of nice comments. This is one of the people whose blogs really start to give you a sense of kinship, closeness and friendship. He is an antidote to much of the depersonalization culture I fear a little in netspace.

Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes- wonderfully foul-mouthed humor, criticism and commentary. I'm inferring from many of his posts that he's recently finished a graduate degree in language arts or literature, and is looking for a job at the college/university level. So a number of his posts poke fun at the useless verbosity of rejection letters. Other recurrent themes are atheism, pin-headed, hypocritical, sanctimonious religious righters, and evolution vs. anti-evolutionists and intelligent creationists, etc. There are a large number of people like this out there and they often get tedious. For example, anybody who uses the words "proof" or "proved" to defend or reinforce the scientific point of view understands neither the strengths nor weaknesses of science, and does not understand the hubris (nor how to avoid said hubris) that leads the fundies to make such collective asses of themselves on a daily basis. However, HJ's wit and unflinching willingness to type what is on his mind makes him a particularly entertaining member of this group.

So that's five for today. I look forward to the next group- this was kind of fun. As a concluding note, I've been meaning to comment for some time how difficult I find it to balance my consumption of news and blogs with composing and posting my own stuff. If you choose to read some of the blogs I have listed (and will list) here, you will see the issue: There's so much great stuff out there, it seems a waste to spend time and effort with my own.

More from Pirraro

I visit Dan Pirraro's Bizarroblog from time to time- I love his comics, and he often links some very entertaining stuff. This is a comic I saved (I think) sometime in May. It was never published be cause he felt it might be too controversial. Well, ummm, yeah.

There was a similarly heretical funny I came across a while back, "The Passion of Gummi Jesus."

I hadn't caught up with his posts since near the beginning of June, so I went through and did so last night. He had a couple of videos that I liked; one a politically funny comment:

And another that was gut-churning to me. I have had a couple of unpleasant experiences with heights; I wasn't afraid of heights when I was young, and I wouldn't describe it as a phobia now, but I do find this video very unnerving. Pirraro suggests watching this full screen; depends on what your attitude toward heights is. To watch full, click on the little rectangle in the brackets in the lower right. (Follow-up: I just went back and watched it again. I remembered it as 10-15 minutes long; it's about 6 1/2. That's suspense. And just word of reassurance: the clip does not end with the camera plummeting toward the rocks below. I'm going to try to find out more about this place, but I will never visit it.)

And finally, another political comic of his that seems just too obvious. A common defintion of genius is the ability to see obvious things that no one else has noticed. I don't want to post too much of his stuff here- it seems like plagiarism. So you should visit his blog regularly, and encourage your local rag to pick up his syndication. Our local barely has the courage to run "Family Circus;" "Bizarro" would be way too much for them. Thankfully, the Oregonian does carry it, so some of my money eventually does wend its way to his pocket. Now that I've plugged him and his work, I feel a little less guilty about swiping his posts and links, and I can point you at a great comic.

LOLCatz Skellytuns

Some blogger regularly posts LOLcat pics, and it took me a while to catch on. This style of funny is pretty new to me, but I love it. Herewith, a couple that I've really enjoyed.
From I, Splotchy, on this post:

From That's My Skull, posted in comments to the above:

RIP, A.C.C.

Criminy! I hadn't realized that Arthur C. Clarke had died. Back in March! I try to avoid pop-culture news, but I guess I just assume something of that magnitude would cross my radar a little quicker than 3 or 4 months. Bummer. Nice retrospective of his contributions to astrobiology here, the article that cued me in.

Any Fact Writers Out There?

This is just wonderful at so many levels... "must have strong writing skills..." "Excellent communication and writing skills are also required" Shucks! All my writing experience is in non-fiction. Guess I won't bother applying for this one. Via Dependable Renegade.

McCain in Flip-Flops

We're having some of our first real summer weather of the season- we got up to 100 on Saturday; today is a much more tolerable 80. A muggy 80 by Western Oregon standards, but more tolerable than 100 by any standards.

But by flip-flops, I'm definitely not talking summer footwear. Anybody of sound mind who has been watching the elections has undoubtedly witnessed McCain's "repositioning" on at least a few issues, sometimes within minutes of contrary statements. I have been thinking of compiling a list, with documenting links, but silly me! Someone already thought of it! Saves me a lot of work. Fine.

Read'em and weep. This guy is being seriously considered for the most powerful office on the planet?

Tunguska

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event- one of the largest known meteorite explosions of historical times, if not the largest. The general consensus is that it was some sort of space rock. I've always felt the hypothesis that it was a comet (a ball of dirty ice) made the most sense- the ice would completely vaporize, leaving nothing but some dust. While due to the explosion and devastation of about 800 square miles of trees this is considered an impact, no crater has ever been discovered.

Based on observations made by the first scientific investigation to travel to the area, 19 years afterwards, the blast is estimated to have been in the range of 15 megatons, nearly 1000 times more powerful than the blast over Hiroshima! Based on this figure, it is estimated that the object itself was about 120 feet in diameter and traveling 33,500 miles per hour. These figures are from an article in SpaceDaily (There's another article here). Another site that looks pretty reputable puts the estimate at closer to 60 Hiroshima-sized bombs, and the diameter of the object at 30 meters (roughly a hundred feet). The latter site has some interesting paintings based on eyewitness testimony, and a number of fascinating quotes, usefully translated into English. Wikipedia also has a good article, with some good eyewitness quotes.

So I went looking for some cool pictures to put up with this post and found myself at YouTube. None of these match the Tunguska impact well, but are worth watching. Try to imagine something much less energetic than the first, much more energetic than the second, and much less corporate than the third.

A GREAT BIG one:


A Real one:


A funny one:

Much is made over the Chicxulub impact, generally believed to have killed off the dinosaurs as well as an enormous portion of other species. But the consequences of a relatively "small" impact could be severe. From what I know, I think we would recognize and track an incoming meteorite that was "only" 30 meters in diameter. But how do you think our leadership and military would respond to the utter destruction of an American city if we missed it? This was the basis of a short SF story I read many years ago- Can anyone remind me of the author and the story's name?

Followup:
I've found a couple of pictures linked in the comments at the BadAstronomy post. This post, written by a real astronomer, is well worth reading. Observers noted that trees had been knocked down radially away from the center of the explosion; trees near the center were still standing, but were stripped of their branches and bark. Dead trees here and here. Also a couple of articles at USA Today and BBC

What Would You Name After Our Current Disaster- I mean, Preznit?

San Francisco has a petition underway to rename their sewage plant. "The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is engaged in an effort to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the 'George W. Bush Sewage Plant.'"

From Alternet. According to the article they have about 1300 more signatures than they need to get it on the ballot. Looks like it's headed to the general election. The main argument against the proposed renaming is that unlike our current disaster- I mean preznit- the sewage facility not only does its job, it does its job well.

I can't really argue with either position. But in discussing this with other folks here at my favorite coffee shop, the following have come up as alternatives:

• pretty much anything in Iraq
• our intercity bus and train system
• feedlot waste lagoons

What do you think we should rename after our outgoing dingaling-in-chief?

Gulf Coast oil

"Studies" left a comment in my last post, saying: "I am still unsure as to why we do not attempt to drill in the exploration areas we own in the gulf of mexico. I am pretty positive that there is SOME amount of oil there. " I was going to simply comment back, but realized there is enough to say to justify an extended post.

Of course, we are drilling in the Gulf- this is why gas spiked after Katrina. The storm damaged not only many of the rigs, but also the ports where the oil is unloaded and refineries where it is processed. A great deal of our domestic production comes from the Texas/Louisiana coastal area.

By International law, each country controls the first 200 miles out. The petroleum industry has developed technologies over the last decade or two that allow drilling to be feasible in deeper water. The problems are, first, drilling even on land is a tremendously expensive proposition. Deep water drilling is many times more expensive- $100 million just to drill the hole is a number I've seen. And that does not include the extraction infrastructure if oil is found. This means that (problem 2) companies want to be as certain as they can they're going to hit something that will pay back their up front investment. So there's a great deal of time invested in geophysical surveys, particularly seismic, and analysis of whatever other geologic information is available, such as correlation of the stratigraphy from other wells in the area. Furthermore (problem 3) at this particular point in time, there is a shortage of the drill ships necessary. According to the linked article, quite a few will be launched in the next few years, which should loosen that particular bottleneck, but for the time being, the existing drill ships are booked a year or more in advance.

Finally, an exploration group may finally decide to drill and end up with a dry hole. In my undergrad classes these were referred to as "scientific successes, but economic failures." There are a slew of well-logging techniques wherein instruments are lowered down the hole and a variety of rock characteristics are recorded. Schlumberger is the biggest and best-known well services provider; here is the table of contents for the various logging services they provide (77 Kb pdf). So even if the well is dry (and most are), more information is acquired allowing better targeting for the next hole. But this requires still more time for re-analysis of the available data.

So even in the best-case situation, the time from leasing to production is going to be years, and not uncommonly more than a decade. While the issue has been raised in the news that oil companies have not utilized existing leases, appropriate time has not been given to the idea that drilling for oil demands a great deal of time and capital investment. An oil company does not just go out and drill holes all aver the place- at least the ones that do go bankrupt pretty quick. After they lease an area, many millions are spent to try to get a sense of how the rocks are distributed miles underground, and where various fluids (oil, gas, brine) would reside given that distribution.

The upshot of all this is that if we opened our coastal areas for exploration and drilling at the beginning of February next year, it would likely be 2020 before any significant portion of whatever oil exists in those areas begins to flow into the market. In addition, as long as we simply burn 2/3 of our petroleum to move vehicles around, the estimated amount and extraction rate of offshore oil is not going to make any substantive difference in price at the pump. A best-case analysis of the ANWAR reserves suggested that peak production there would lower the cost of a barrel of oil by 75 cents (the price per barrel went past $140 for the first time yesterday), and no more than six cents per gallon at the pump- probably less. Estimated offshore reserves are larger than ANWAR, but are unlikely to be able to make a big dent in the prices people are paying.

I have been a little surprised at the glut of coverage on oil this past week. Bush's speech on Tuesday, advocating drilling in ANWAR and opening up the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts for exploration and drilling is probably the proximal reason for all the coverage. Still, my mindset has been that we are in the midst of an energy crisis since the mid 1970's. The low prices of petroleum through the 90's upset and scared me. The popularity of SUV's made me very nervous. I had read the figures on the potential for oil in ANWAR, and it was clear that any reserves there would make no practical difference even in the best case scenario. I found this graph at Hullabaloo a few days ago, and it drives home the insignificance of ANWAR reserves in a way no list of numbers can:

Now I am NOT opposed to oil drilling in principle; we have used most of the oil that originally existed in this country, but there is a substantial amount left. Oil is a precious resource that we need, and we should go after sources that are practical, and will not cause harm to the environment as extraction takes place. But the purpose of creating a wildlife refuge is to give, well, refuge to wildlife. A drilling rig does not qualify as a refuge. One pundit pointed out that if you mapped ANWAR to the scale of an envelope, the footprint of the drilling operation would be the size of a postage stamp. First, I would also like to know about the footprint of the exploration process, which would almost certainly involve a network of seismic lines and setting off a large number of explosives. It's possible that during the winter vibroseis trucks might be feasable, but it doesn't seem very likely to me. Second, if you were to map me to the size of an envelope, a thirty caliber bullet would have a footprint only the size of a period. That doesn't make the idea of being shot any more appealing to me.

I am much more amenable to the idea of opening up the coasts for exploration and extraction- not excited, but amenable. The proviso to keep in mind is that there will almost certainly be accidents and spills. I would prefer that didn't happen (and I'm sure everyone agrees) but it's impossible to eliminate all risks. Are we as a country willing to accept those risks to feed our addiction? I'm sorry to say that I believe the answer to that question is "yes." It utimately makes no difference to me personally: I don't own and have no interest in owning a car. My total energy usage amounts to 3-4 kilowatt hours per day, or a little less than an average of $20 per month. But again, I've been in the energy crisis mindset for more than thirty years, not just the last few months. I do not expect others to tolerate wintertime household temperatures in the mid fifties. I do not expect the typical family to be able to function without a car. I do not expect people in much of the US to do without air conditioning. I do not expect a multi-person household to turn off their water heater and plan to do all their "hot water tasks" at one time. But I'll bet almost everyone, if they thought about it, could find at least a few relatively painless ways to reduce the energy they consume. Much of that energy is not produced from petroleum, but energy usage is such a rat's-nest of intertwined causes and effects that any reduction ends up being a good thing.

I've been accumulating notes and links to point out pros and cons of various options we as a country and culture have available to us as we move forward into an era of $4.oo/gallon gasoline. I suppose this may sound (and may even be) insensitive, but I believe that current prices of oil are the best thing that could happen. Not only will it force us to find alternatives, but it will make those alternatives much more competetive.

Roving Mars

The first video is a very cool computer animation of the Mars rovers project from launch to examination of a rock on the Martian surface. I presume this was created to help explain the project and secure funding.


The second video is clearly pirated and edited from the end of the first. This was circulating by late spring after the rovers had landed, but I lost the link. Yesterday I did the google thing and found the clip on U-tube. Classic.

Boy With an Ass for a Face

Thought this was pretty damned funny. Via Monkeymucker


You know, I don't think it would be as amusing if it didn't do such a good job of representing what is actually on the tube 24/7.

Visual Semiotics

Yesterday I pointed out that I found the poster in a NYT photograph... well, odd.
Driftglass has a great post that illustrates in a most excellent manner exactly why that poster sets me on edge.

And by the way, my comment on the crazed look in Hillary's eye should be taken as a criticism of the photo editor. If you take enough photos of anybody, you'll get a few that make that person look a little strange. The photographer takes the shots, the editor chooses which will be used. If that photo of Hillary makes you uneasy, it's because the editor wants you to feel that way.

Thus Endeth the Primaries

Before I walked out my door a few minutes ago, I turned off the tube. At that time, the number of delegates Obama had clinched had brought him to within 11 of the magic number he needs to take the nomination. That was a drop from 16 less than an hour earlier. If that rate continues, he might cross the line before the ND polls close in a couple more hours. Once the ND and MT votes are tallied, I expect him to be decisively over the top. I would like to express my relief that we as a party can finally focus our energy on the real opponent: the failed (so-called) conservative policies of the last 30 years and the last seven and a half years particularly.

Unlike many that I've talked to, I had a difficult time making up my mind between the two. Both have some serious strengths and some serious weaknesses. My first choices had all been knocked off, and Hillary and Barack both seemed more establishment, more DNC, than I would have preferred. I didn't think Hillary's health care plan was perfect, but it seemed far more plausible and pragmatic than Obama's. Obama had the foresight and clarity to recognize, at the time of the fall '02 vote, where we were headed in Iraq, while I was torn and undecided until a few months later. HRC has seemingly never really resolved where she stands on the war, beyond wanting to say what people want to hear. Again, strengths and weaknesses on both sides.

Over the last few weeks particularly, Hillary's determination to fight on, and her repeated attempts to make last minute changes to the rules of the game have unnerved me; this behavior is what I associate with BushCo. This behavior is what we're trying to put behind us. The goal is not to win a political fight, but to find some way to govern this country the way it needs and deserves to be governed. As Molly Ivins (dear lord, how I miss her) pointed out repeatedly, Shrub isn't dumb. He's shrewd, cunning and very, very smart when it comes to doing the things he's interested in doing: winning political games. Unfortunately, once he wins, he has absolutely no interest in governance. John Dean has pointed out that if you put someone into office who tells you that government is the problem, you should be able to infer that that person doesn't believe that government can be useful to the citizenry. Taken together, these two insights suggest that whenever you vote for a Republican (at least in this day and age) you are voting for someone who, first, has no interest in serving We The People, and second, doesn't believe We The People can be served by wise governance.

Both Hillary and Obama believe that government can and should help its citizens. Both believe that they personally can implement wise government. Both have given evidence of the latter with compelling policy proposals, and arguments for how those proposals would be efficacious in solving the problems at which they're directed.

Why would anyone vote for a Republican?

Yesterday I wrote up a couple of posts that could be taken by some to be too critical, too insulting toward Hillary. As I tried to clarify above, there is much to be admired in Hillary, and I am supportive of many of her policy ideas. I have been uneasy with some of her recent decisions and actions, but these behaviors pale besides those of any Republican, most notably John McCain, whose off-the-cuff incorrect assertions, blunders, and miscellaneous nonsense (literally: non-sense) have been increasingly shocking and frightening to me.

The critical task now is that of bringing Democrats together in recognizing that these are the truly important issues. I have never bought into the media-blown wildfires of personality politics between the two Democratic contenders, and thus have some difficulty empathizing with the depth of commitment to either that I recognize in others. But I do recognize that depth of commitment. However, to reiterate and summarize, the central question that We The People must answer correctly, must answer wisely, for the sake of our collective future, is this: Would we rather be governed by someone who believes that knowledge and wisdom can benefit us through the process of governance, or someone who believes that governance is useless or worse, and that, therefore, knowledge and wisdom are simply irrelevant?

Many others have been saying much the same over the last couple of days. Here are a couple posts that I found very compelling

The Dean's Office

The Rude Pundit

There are lots of others out there, but these two moved me deeply and helped me see more clearly what we have at stake over the next five months. Neither will take more than a few minutes to read. Please. Go Read. People, we gots to do this, and we gots to do it right.

Martian Update

I made quite a fuss over the Phoenix lander a bit more than a week ago (See here and here), but I haven't updated at all. Things went good. Really, really good. It was a picture perfect descent:
(note: most of these pictures can be seen larger by clicking on them. Some have larger versions still on the pages linked)

This picture (from here) makes it look as if the lander is in or headed toward a crater; actually, as was intended, it landed well outside. From the perspective of the orbiting satellite that shot the image (I believe it was HiRise), Phoenix looks like it's in the crater but is well in front of it. This is one of those pictures that just dropped my jaw- it's the first time we've captured the sight of a lander from another planet. Below is an enlargement & enhancement of the inset from the picture above (from here)
This is the one that showed up on most of the news sources, though I think the first is more dramatic and stunning. The nice thing about this one is that you can clearly see the parachute, the tether and the lander below.

It was a picture-perfect landing. It was reported pretty quickly that the lander was almost perfectly level: only a half degree off horizontal. I presume the next picture was shot by the same satellite that shot the first two, but on a later pass (from here)

There was some glitch in the radio link a day or two after the landing, but they got that fixed quickly, and it ended up causing only a minor delay to the program. The operators got the arm unstowed from the protective film used to cover the arm during sterilization and transit. This is hoped to protect the planetary surface from contamination (or infection, really) by earthly microorganisms. A day or two ago, the arm performed a "practice scoop" to test its ability to scoop up soil samples and transfer them to a combined heater/gas spectrometer. By slowly heating up the sample, different gases will be driven off through time. The gas spec can for the most part identify what those gases are, giving scientists a profile of the material's composition.

Now, the Grand Finale: The whole purpose of landing near a pole is to examine ice that we know is there. Based on past radar data, it was believed that this area was an ice sheet covered with a thin (2-6 inch) mantle of soil. A couple of days ago, there was an intriguing glint of white picked up on an image of the ground near the base of the lander. They maneuvered the camera around to look under the lander and saw: (from here)

The landing rockets excavated about two to six inches of soil, and look at all that white stuff! This isn't a huge surprise- as I said, it's basically what they were expecting. But to actually see it? WOW! As of this writing, scientists are hedging their bets and saying it might be salt, but their working hypothesis is that it is ice. I expect that will be confirmed before too long.

There's an article on ScienceDaily that provides a little more info on this last pic.

So all in all, it's been a picture perfect mission so far.

Double Talk Express

McCain is Scary, Scary, Scary. Unless of course you like what you've seen happen to and in this country over the last seven and a half years. I forgot where I found these clips, but the second ends with a request to post them. So I am.

part I


part II