Breaking Science News

Neatly mirroring a post I wrote nearly two years ago in this very blog, there's a report from a new scientific study confirming the earlier findings. This is huge!

[Ed: For the text averse or link averse, the synopsis of this story is as follows:

• Mathematicians, Astronomers, Cosmologists, Physicists, and Poets agree on startling new findings
• Observation satellites have confirmed cosmic echo from "big bang"
• The universe is large, bowl-shaped, filled with clumpy dark matter, and slowly spiraling toward a common center
• A large, intergalactic-scale puff of Lysol Spray is sure to follow

Read the second link. The science basically confirms it. That is all.]

Health Reform Bill -- the best of times, the worst of times

Stunning. I feel defiled! The House of Representatives has passed a bill I've been waiting for and hoping for for twenty years or more, and all I can say is "yuck." Congress has passed the biggest pile of ugly that's ever been stacked up in public. There are so many standouts, I won't even name names.

Tea Party Rallies 1,000 Gasping Angry Supporters, get Washington Post photo gallery spread!

A prime bunch of Tea Partiers were rallied by a "code red" declared by one of the pompous idiots who deem themselves important enough to direct that august body, so a handful of gasping, wheezing, sputtering, and highly-exasperated patriots rallied to the lawn of the Capitol with complicated posters to scream epithets at and spit upon Congress members as they arrived at work. Unfortunately these are all voters, though they've clearly lost touch with that key component of democratic rule, which is government by majority! They just can't seem to believe they don't represent the majority.

Math for conservatives

An overwhelming majority of Americans voted to oust the Republicans in the last two elections. The Republicans believe this is the result of a mistake-- those voters were obviously duped, fooled, bait-and-switched, or deliberately miscounted-- because it's obvious to them that the good old Republican right has to be the party in power, right? Right?

Catholic Church Moribund

I hesitate to say this because it's basically divisive and risks alienating at least one or two of my few readers, but I think it's time to face up to the fact the Catholic church is a moribund institution which no longer holds any claim to moral authority in our society. In every country where the evidence is examined, we find an institution which has condoned and protected child sexual abusers, and the phenomenon has been going on for at least a century.

It's appealing to argue the numbers are very low, but that is not an excuse to protect pervert priests from prosecution, and doesn't explain the consistency of the behavior. {Ed. I wrote this post in March of this year, but left it in drafts until today. It will probably move from the top of the blog back to its place in date order once I figure out how to make Blogger do that.]

Definition of fascism

(from Wikipedia):

radical and authoritarian nationalism with a corporatist economic system

I'm just saying. Brought to you by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Another Bush Era Big Ticket Dim-Bulb Project Scrapped

With almost no fanfare, another Bush-era big-ticket dim-bulb security project has been dropped after huge cost overruns showed it to be little more than a $100 million boondoggle for Boeing. A fence in Arizona probably isn't going to make us a lot more secure, especially when it doesn't work. I'll bet they could just send Joe Arpaio out there to patrol the border hisself.

Wall Street's "Money Princes" harrumph and raise eyebrows when one of their own is caught eating from the cat box

There's a breed of Wall Street "money princes" who are particularly revered by our capitalist society. They're the ones who wear tassel loafers, travel in limousines and private jets, live in royal splendor in rarefied gated enclaves away from the noise and stench of the rest of society, and make the huge deals that keep money moving in our economy. They finance skyscrapers and wars and oil refineries and the propping up of friendly governments. They are understood to be scrupulously honest and hard working, and for their exemplary service they are paid tens of millions of dollars per year-- and some significantly more than that. They're our American royalty, these princes of money.

Nutball next door, or new reason for billions more for security infrastructure?

This story is about "Jihad Jane" the middle-aged blonde American lady from Baltimore who was determined to foment and commit "jihad" against infidels and cartoonists wherever they might live. She's been in jail since last October, though her story has just been released. She's being cited as the reason why we need a vigilant, coercive, and ever-growing internal security apparatus at home and abroad, constantly monitoring the internet and the streets, in order to ferret out and apprehend evil-doers, like this lady.

Holy cow the right is in terrified retreat

I haven't posted lately because things seemed to be going pretty well in the world. The economy is recovering, slowly. With the disastrous earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile to keep the news media busy, there's less political turmoil being stirred up in the press here at home. There was the Olympics a week ago, and the Academy Awards ceremony is tonight. The Democrats have decided that their near two-thirds majority in Congress is probably enough to slog on with passing a healthcare reform package even with no support from the increasingly neutered and nay-saying Republicans.