the quitta from wasilla

sarah palin's greatest gift to the world is no doubt, a baseline in human intelligence. now we know just how stupid an adult can be, and still be perceived as capable and deserving of votes and attention. her resignation has to be a dream come true for many alaskans. i find it amazing that the idiot-mill that is the media actually still consider her a viable (note they never say qualified) presidential candidate.

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another great moment here

she has always been an incoherent bubbly blow-hard, but she saved the best for last. you have to see just the intro to her final speech, listen to the merciless windingbabble sentences and let them give you the fixin' you need. (LOVE her absolute refusal to pronounce a single 'g' in a word ending with '-ing' - everythin' needs shakin')

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john stewart's take on her speech here

if this idiot actually ends up running and is not laughed out of the race, there is something dreadfully wrong...

threat level: speedo

it's about damn time... anyone who has ever been a swimmer or watched competitive swimming knows the sad decline (and growth) of the male swimsuit over the past several years. (suits thru the ages here) as one olympic swimmer said in a recent NYT article, swimming is the "the most popular boring sport in the world" so when the eye candy is removed, what fun is watching? (sorry ladies, but female swimmers could wear a potato sack for all i care) any eye candy enthusiast will tell you that the right dimensions of suits should only cover from the david to the dangle. showing here...

suits grew from this to the current craze below, full-body suits, that make you super fast and cover way too much.

after last weekend's upset at the world championships - German swimmer Paul Biedermann beat Michael Phelps in "his" event, the 200 freestyle, and set a new world record in the 400 free, suspicion and debate over the new suits has erupted. american swimmers are committed to speedo, and their LZR suit. considered "sleek, but not buoyant"

after the 2008 olympics, people accused the american team of cheating for using these suits. not surprisingly, now that other countries are using polyurethane suits (apparently even faster as they provide buoyancy) the americans are calling them cheaters. FINA, the international organization who runs swimming, will create a panel who will define what materials will be allowed in suits. they intend to ban these suits by 2010, requiring that suits only cover from waist to knee. at least it's a step in the right direction; over-covering our swimmers lets the terrorists win.

those who actually care about swimming say that these suits are ruining the sport; as records fall left and right at the championships, they say it is the suits that are getting faster, not the swimmers. supposebly (damn, i love it when people use that "word") phelps will not swim until the ban takes effect.

**note: don't get me wrong, i don't mean to encourage your fat hairy husband to wear a speedo or thong at the beach, this plea only applies to professional swimmers.

feel like somebody's watching

a gorgeous image from the spitzer space telescope was released last week. spitzer detects infrared energy (heat) and therefore allows us to see areas of the universe that optical telescopes cannot observe because they are blocked by interstellar clouds of dust & gas.

this picture is of the spiral galaxy NGC 1097 which lies about 50 million light years away. the "eye" in the center is a supermassive black hole, estimated to be 100 million times the mass of our sun. in comparison, the one at the center of the milky way is a wee 4 million solar masses. of course, the black hole above is invisible, but the very bright point of light in the center is probably gas and dust swirling around and burning up as it makes its final plunge.

this black hole is surrounded by a ring of star formation thousands of light years across, which you can see as that perfect circle of white light in the middle. material from the bar — the long lines of gas and dust stretching across the middle of the galaxy — is feeding that ring, and stars there are being born in prodigious numbers.

even if there was no life in NGC 1097 fifty million years ago, when the heat we are seeing left, with billions of stars and billions of planets, perhaps this eye now has eyes looking back at us...

jupiter's va-jayjay

new pictures of the impact site on jupiter snatched by Hubble show that its gash is growing into...well, a gash; a tremendous vag ... very likely will begin devouring our solar system. so since there isn't much time left, have that third cinnamon roll, or that 4th helping of bacon - why the F not?

the wizard's sleeve is coming for you.

thanks to k for the nerdy tip

gobs of glee

there were several fascinating events in (and related to) space recently. last week, when the shuttle docked with ISS, a record was reached because 13 humans were floating around in one place in outer space. monday was the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. thursday brought a total solar eclipse as the sun rose over india.

perhaps most interesting to me was the impact on jupiter. it seems a small comet smashed into jupiter on sunday leaving a scar the size of the pacific ocean in the planet's atmosphere. the mark was first noticed by an amateur astronomer in australia. the timing is bizarre because exactly 15 years ago, comet shoemaker-levy 9 broke into 21 pieces and slammed into jupiter.*

jupiter took another bullet for us. instead of wasting time praying to imaginary gods, humans should thank actual forces and things that exist for their lives. if jupiter were not in our solar system sucking up debris, earth would have likely been hit by many more celestial objects. all you have to do is spend a day watching the history channel to know that even a "small" (one-mile wide) object would end life as we know it. thank you, jupiter, you sweet suckass.

*exactly: shoemaker-levy 9 actually hit over a period of six days july 16-22, 1994; this event is believed to have occurred july 19, 2009

the beauty of flat

spent the last 2 weeks in ND. we spent both weekends at the cabin, perhaps my favorite place on earth (in spite of the fact that now eleven kids swarm around during our annual gathering).

also had good times at the blue rider, charlie's, and dodging wembly. i went to josh duhamel's restaurant - 10 North Main - for the first time. fully expecting my ravioli to transform into bacon wrapped bacon, i was deeply disappointed. the food was good, and it's pretty inside. downtown minot needs a place like that, so it was cool to see it busy.

another staple in minot trips - taco pizza from happy joe's, so glad i worked that into this trip.

this photo was taken in my parents' front yard; there is a group of four big wild turkeys who roam the neighborhood like thugs. they have no fear...or brain power. if they are in the street and a car comes, they will very slowly and resentfully move out of the way, and then will stand a foot away and yell at the car. wild turkeys started showing up in the city a few years ago; that year was punctuated by the idiot down the street who decided to shoot one for thanksgiving.

out of order, but i have to show the gang of fabulous who took the road trip back with me.

and lastly, i have to vent about how incredibly awful the movie Gran Torino was. weren't people all over cackling about how great it was? it was absolutely painful to watch... the only reason white people liked it was because they got to safely giggle at all the racist things clint says.