Appeasement

Chop higher.

Heh, as the Instapundit would say…

Click for a larger and much clearer view…

So Sad

Not long ago, Michael Griffin (NASA’s administrator) promised Congress and the American people that Bush’s ambitious manned space program initiative could be accomplished without sacrificing “one thin dime” of NASA’s hard science budget.

He lied.

The budget, made public a few days ago, surprised many with its drastic hard science cutbacks. Many of the most interesting, most promising science missions were delayed indefinitely — budget-speak for canceled, but hopefully without the negative PR.

From the New York Times:

The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA’s overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion.

Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists.

This is so sad. As Carl Sagan might have said, billions and billions of dollars are about to be spent on getting a few humans to the moon. There might even be a permanent settlement there (that’s the goal), which I’ll translate into a permanent weight on NASA’s budget, much as the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station have turned out to be.

And how frustrating! The “romance” of manned space missions completely trumps hard science. If you believe the politicians are accurately reflecting their constituencies (an arguable proposition, to be sure), then the majority of the American people would rather spend $40 billion to $60 billion on manned space missions that will do nothing useful whatsoever than spend $10 billion on hard science missions that will greatly expand our understanding of the universe.

I guess it’s just another of the numerous ways in which I’m out of sync with the rest of the world…

Hugo and CITGO

The image at right shows Cindy Sheehan in the friendly embrace of Hugo Chavez, the neo-commie “elected” dictator of Venezuela. If you’re not familiar with Hugo, the fact that he treats Cindy Sheehan as an ally speaks volumes — but even worse is Hugo’s buddying up to Fidel Castro, Mohammar Khadafi, and the crazy, vicious, holocaust-denying, Jew-hating President of Iran. Hugo has been running Venezuela as his personal fiefdom, using violent thugs to rig elections or to simply kill his opponents. He is in complete control of his country; in every sense a true dictator.

And Hugo owns CITGO. Lock, stock, and barrel. Because CITGO is 100% owned by Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., which is a corporation entirely owned by the country of Venezuela.

Just in case you’re not familiar with huggable Hugo, here’s a sample of this nutcase’s rantings:

“Enough already with the imperialist aggression!”, Chavez said, according to the January 31 Caracas Daily Journal, listing countries from Panama to Iraq where the US military has intervened. “Down with the US empire!”

“We need militaries that don’t trample over [us] and that don’t sell themselves to the empire”, Chavez said. “If the empire of the United States thinks to come here and invade Venezuela, you can be certain that the 100-year war will begin and we will defeat the North American empire on this land”, Chavez added, to loud applause.

Lovely. And this guy is right on our doorstep — Venezuela’s coastline is the Caribbean!

There have been calls over the past few months for a boycott of CITGO. I’m generally reluctant to promote boycotts, as it’s all too easy for them to hit unintended targets. In the case of CITGO this is also true, for most of the distributors of CITGO products (such as 7/11) are not Venezuelan companies, and a boycott of CITGO will hit them. But…those distributors have a choice about what products they carry; they can switch to another supplier. And since CITGO itself is a 100% Venezuelan state-owned company, a boycott of CITGO will score a direct hit on Hugo, where it will hurt him the most — his pocketbook ('cause I don’t think we have a good way to kick him in the balls). I couldn’t verify this on the web, but I believe it’s true that the United States is the largest customer for Petróleos de Venezuela, so a CITGO boycott would definitely have an impact.

Boycott CITGO goods! Examine those gas pumps carefully; many retailers sell CITGO products under their own name, but the pumps are usually labeled somewhere with the actual supplier’s name…

M101

I wonder if Charles Messier ever even imagined that someday his catalog of beautiful objects in the sky could be seen in such detail?

From APOD (of course!):

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse’s large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic of M101 is touted as the largest, most detailed spiral galaxy view ever released from Hubble. The sharp image shows stunning features along the galaxy’s face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.

If you’re not familiar with Charles Messier and his famous catalog of celestial objects, you might be interested to know more about him. Wikipedia has short articles on both Messier and his catalog. The photo at right is a visual catalog of all 110 “Messier Objects”.

As usual, click on the small photo for a larger view…

Puppy Pictures!

Sheila Miller arranged for a friend to scan her original photos, and somehow an additional picture (of Cosmo, the dad) snuck in. So here are the puppy pictures again, but this time in a bit higher resolution. These have all been processed to bring out as much detail as possible in the puppies, which means in some cases sacrificing the natural contrasts and colors to some extent. Enjoy!

As usual, click on the small picture for a larger view…