Sorry for not much of a post tonight. I blogging energies were expended on replying to my friend’s comments regarding my jingoism post. It was a lengthy undertaking, not surprisingly, and my creative juices have been used up. If we end up with anything worth posting, and that may be the case, I shall publish our private correspondence.

But for now you will have to be satisfied with lazy linking. Deal with it 🙂

Since that was all about war stuff, I want to link to Time’s publication of a soldier’s letter. The only comment I will offer is it’s worth reading.

Some quick science updates. I’m waaaay behind on this, sorry. One of the things I’ve been waiting for for months happened while I was busy being too freakin’ busy. But better late than never. Mars Rover Opportunity reached Victoria Crater! It actually arrived on Sept 26 after a 21 month journey. This was always hoped to be the culmination of these awesome missions. The rovers are well over 10 times their designed serviceable lifetimes. We don’t know how much longer they will last, but if it must end, Opportunity will go out in the golden land of exploration – Victoria Crater.

And if you clicked on that link you saw something amazing. Before I say what, I’ll tell you what you were looking with. The Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter completed aerobreaking on Aug 30 and, with some orbit adjustments on Sept 5, it was settled in orbit. Now that bird is gearing up perform the highest resolution study ever undertaken my NASA. How much resolution? Well here’s Victoria Crater with a football field in it. Here is a gorgeous view without the field. From the labeling, you know what’s coming up. Yes, Opportunity herself. Now THAT is a HiRES camera 🙂

Lastly, this picture doesn’t need any of my words. Enjoy. I love Cassini!

Next – a homeless person. For real or one of those scammers? All I can say is with this kind of advertising, I don’t care, I’d give him a buck!

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your rock albums would have a deathmatch among themselves? What?? You haven’t??! All right you non-imagining people with no imagination. Now you can see what the rest of us already knew:

Warning: it has naked women and bad language. But not much.

And but not least… give a big “no duh” to Jon Stewart and a Daily Show montage of their amazing series: “Evolution Schmevolution” What’s this? Fire breathing giraffes!! Hide the women, mawgs and children!

Warning: it’s 45 minutes long. Better grab a beer first!

The monkey segmet is priceless. Reminds me of the time I got to play with my friend’s … ahem… monkey. A lot of it mention’s last year’s Dover trial, which hadn’t happened at the point of filming. The trial is, of course, long over. For those of you who may not be aware, Intelligent Design was decimated as a “scientific” model, requirements for reading ID disclaimers in classrooms were struck down and, during the course of the trial, the people of Dover ousted every school board member that was up for re-election that had something to do with implementing the reading of the ID disclaimer.