(Happy Birthday to me)

"Bizarre" Hexagon on Saturn

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 took similar pictures of Saturn over two decades ago, but the images were assumed by some to be either the byproduct of auroral activities or a malfunctioning lens. Recently, Cassini sent home pics of the same atmospheric feature that was seen there almost a quarter century ago, so apparently it's no anamoly. As of right now, there is no conclusive explanation for it. Pretty cool though...

REDORBIT:

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

Read more here

Fair? or Balanced?

Democrats Are Hitler?

I try my darndest to read and take seriously the opinions of people on the right. Everyone deserves a chance to be heard, but it's when "conservatives" like the Ann Coulter's, Rush Limbaugh's, Michael Savage's and Tom Delay's of the world say things like this, that I just stop listening. I can't take a raving lunatic seriously, as hard as I try. When true moderate conservatives refuse to denounce the insane things their colleagues on the right say, they're all tarred with the same 'crazy' brush in my mind.

Tom (in his book that he didn't write) has compared Democrats to Adolf Hitler... classy, huh?

From Eat The Press:

Wow — nice catch by The Forward's Ami Eden, who actually seems to have read Tom DeLay's new book, No Retreat, No Surrender (which may actually be more than he's done). This is what he finds: Apparently, at one point DeLay actually compares the Democrats to Hitler. Yes, he does. The excerpt:

"I believe it was Adolf Hitler who first acknowledged that the big lie is more effective than the little lie, because the big lie is so audacious, such an astonishing immorality, that people have a hard time believing anyone would say it if it wasn't true. You know, the big lie — like the Holocaust never happened or dark-skinned people are less intelligent than light-skinned people. Well, by charging this big lie" — that DeLay violated campaign-finance laws in Texas — "liberals have finally joined the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler."

Never mind the invocation of Godwin's Law, never mind the fact that, where big lies are concerned, the Republicans seem to have that covered — DeLay can't even be bothered to fact-check his own book! "I believe it was Adolf Hitler, but I can't be sure, because I haven't bothered typing the phrase "Hitler"and "big lie" into Google. Buy my book!" Seriously. What a bozo.

There are some "loons", as O'Reilly would say, on the left. But they're not anywhere near as loopy as these people, and they've got our side's loons outnumbered 10 to 1.

The Big Story

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I'd just like to thank George Bush for sending our troops into a war of choice in a hostile region, with a culture and religion we don't understand and a language we don't speak, with inadequate equipment, horrible pre-war intelligence and grossly underestimated costs in human blood and tax dollars. I'd also like to thank the vast majority of the media for not showing the american people the reality of the war on the ground. It's been four years. Thanks a lot.

It'd be interesting to compare the frequency and sheer number of political scandals that this poor, bullied administration has had to go through over the last 6 years, to the number and frequency of scandals of administrations of the past. I didn't really get into politics until George II stole the White House in 2000... so I have to ask myself, "was it ALWAYS this bad?!??" I don't think there's been a day (since Cheney assumed absolute power of the government) thats passed in which some sort of gross incompetence or misconduct hasn't been uncovered by the press. The only thing this administration has proved to be competent at is twisting the facts and perpetuating an illusion of competence in the minds of the remaining 30% of american people that still actually support his policies. But maybe that's why they're so incompetent... they have to spend so much of their precious time covering up stupid decisions, that they have no time left to make informed ones.

The newest, biggest, shiniest scandal of the week is the firing of eight US attorneys by Alberto Gonzalez's office because they didn't prosecute "at the pleasure of the president", and weren't "loyal" enough to republicans in their indictments.

The firings were clearly political, but were technically legal thanks to a provision slipped into the Patriot Act by the Bush Administration, allowing the Justice Department to fire US attorneys in the middle of a presidential term and hire new ones without senate confirmation. (What that has anything to do with protecting us against terrorists, I have no idea) But there were at least 2 or 3 cases in which the administration undeniably stepped over the line. As the new issue of Newsweek points out:

In New Mexico the administration canned David Iglesias, a clean-cut former Navy lawyer who had been the model for the Tom Cruise character in the movie "A Few Good Men." Iglesias has told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was getting political pressure from lawmakers to indict Democrats in a local corruption case before the November elections.

(The department's internal evaluations had given Iglesias glowing marks.)

Yet another example of political retribution. Alberto claimed responsibility for the firings, but in the same sentence claimed that he had no knowledge of them and was "out of the loop". Yet another example of incompetence at every level.

But Clinton did the same thing!... you might be saying if you're an avid Fox News viewer. Yes it is typical for presidents to fire ALL of the old US attorneys at the beginning of a term and hire new ones. Gonzalez has defended his department's actions by stating that he believes the Attorney General not only legally, but ethically has the right to fire US attorneys for any reason at any time, even in the middle of a term. Funny, because Republicans were saying the exact opposite in 1993.

The difference here is that the Justice Department was clearly attempting to replace these specific attorneys without senate approval over purely political reasons, simply because they were either not prosecuting democrats enough over bogus evidence, or were too tough on Republicans. Then there's the tiny issue of them trying to cover it up and claim that these attorneys were in the "bottom tier" and just weren't good enough. Yet another lie.

Looks like Gonzalez is feeling the heat. He'll be the next to bite the dust. I don't know and I don't care enough to know about the boring details of this whole mess, but I decided to summarize it here only because I'm just totally disillusioned by how this cycle of scandals NEVER ENDS.

Damn Liberal Penguins...

(click on the pic if you can't read it)

The Power of Intention

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.- William James

[edited for cheesiness]
I was watching a PBS fundraiser today featuring Dr. Wayne Dyer, talking about his latest book, The Power of Intention. I don't usually watch PBS fundraisers, but I kind of got stuck on the channel when he mentioned that he had drawn most of the inspiration for his latest book from Carlos Castaneda, one of my favorite authors. The doctor told a story that I felt was worth posting:

Victor Frankl, pictured above, was a prominent neurologist and holocaust survivor who wrote a book called Man's Search For Meaning, describing how he survived the horrors of WWII in Germany.

During the war, Victor was in several camps, including Auschwitz. His mother, father, and wife had died in concentration camps and his only living relative left was his sister. His only meal a day as a prisoner, when he was lucky to receive it, was hot water, flavored with fish-heads.

In the book he explains how he forced himself to learn how to genuinely look at the world around him and see only beauty and perfection. Somehow, he taught himself how to see perfection in the fish-heads floating in his dirt filled water of daily soup. Later on in his life, Victor developed a school of psychotherapy called logo-therapy, which stressed the act of detecting and applying some kind of underlying meaning to the events that take place in a person's life. Simple idea, not so easy to practice.

Okay, so your attitude impacts your perspective on life. Your perspective on life affects every single seemingly insignificant decision that you make, thereby influencing the world around you. In other words, reality doesn't affect you, you affect reality. I would go so far as to say that the universe, or God, or [fill in blank], has a tricky way of indirectly cooperating with you're personal attitude. Dr. Dyer calls this force "intention", which is drawn from Castaneda's description of reality, or God.

What you expect to happen, and what you think about what is happening right now, will continue to happen to you over again in cycles, as long as your attitude and "intention" stays the same. Scary idea, but if nothing has meaning, save for your interpretation, what does that say about God? To me, all it means is that the word "God" is defined a little differently. Instead of God being the sole creator of reality, He's the main collaborator, He's the "producer" of your vision of your life and your surroundings.

Many of today's religions preach both openly and subtly that an all-knowing personal deity has a very specific plan laid out for your life. It's a comforting idea, but I don't think it positively serves society as a whole, at least in the long-term. I have a problem with it because it takes all or at least part of the responsibility for the state of the world off of our shoulders. We don't have to think about the horrible things that happen, because we subconsciously think that somehow they'll just work themselves out.

We're all products of our environment, but the first step to actually changing our external environment is acknowledging the fact that we can change the way we interpret the events that take place in our lives. It seems obvious and simple, but when you stop, and critically think about it, it's a pretty complex concept. Victor owed his survival in large part to his positive outlook on life, and his intent on finding something meaningful in the world around him, even under the worst conditions.

This of course is based on an assumption that beauty and meaning can even be found in things like death, war, starvation, disease, catastrophe, etc. But I guess that's the beautiful thing about beauty... it's in the eye of the beholder. I like to think that meaning can be found in anything, but placing meaning on something like war or starvation almost feels like justifying it.

Somehow Victor Frankl saw beauty in the fish-heads he was choking down everyday, because he chose to. He somehow accepted the suffering around him and found meaning in the utter destruction of his life and family. I envy his courageousness and perseverance. But is his logo-therapy merely an exercise of denial... or is it really possible to just 'alter your attitude', and thereby alter the course of your life? I'd sure like to think so. Victor survived to tell his story and went on to live a happy and fulfilling life.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-Victor Frankl