"Lord G-d of hosts be with us yet, Lest we forget; lest we forget."
Rudyard Kipling
Requiem

For the paranoid among us, a diagram of the LHC-large Hadron collider at CERN. There are physicists who worry that it might create a mini-black hole which would destroy the Earth, but don't panic, it is controlled by the SWISS.

For all those who are as crazy as I am-Macrame Daleks with TARDIS and Stargate. Happy Thanksgiving!

Does this person make anyone else nervous?

God raised up Barack Obama for one purpose, to wit, to usher doomed america and the world to final destruction. You should close your big mouths for once in your worthless meaningless vain lives, and spend some time reading Danie 8 and Revelation 12, 13 and 14, and get a stinkin’ clue you bombastic bunch of brutes! Judgment Day she cometh! And this doomed unjust unmerciful nation is just the people who fully understand judgment day. You love to put people on trial; you love your rules, policies and procedures; you love your courtroom dramas; and you love to put people in prison and throw away the key. You are the very picture of the tyrant unmerciful nation that God will judge and find wanting; and you will be absolutely without excuse when you stand your mean butts before the White Throne. You gave no mercy; you get no mercy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dan3wM3rns&eurl=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html&feature=player_embedded

WOW, the Canadians have all the fun!

The mommy state in the UK banned all private ownership of guns many years ago. Even their Olympic Rifle team must practice in France or Eire. Now they are having a serious outbreak of knife murders. Goodbye cutlery! Jamie, Gordon, and Nigella will become public enemies.

This is the ninety ninth anniversary of the birth of Johnny Mercer, the third greatest lyricist and the fourth dreatest composer-lyricist of the American musical scene. His ASCAP list is simply incredible, but for those not historically minded may I say two Oscars, one for "Moon River" and one for "The Days of Wine and Roses" For the historically minded, the other two wins from his nineteen nominations were "On the Atchison-Topeka and the Santa Fe" and "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" which he wrote with Hoagy Carmichael. Mercer's "Skylark" also written with Carmichael is one of the most lyrical pieces of music written in the Twentieth Century.

I was watching a special on the Tungusku Explosion and theories of its origin. One of the scientists held that an incursion of "mirror matter" caused this event. I have never heard of mirror matter before. Is it like anti-matter? Is there dark mirror matter? If we substitute "mirror mass" in Einstein's equation, do we get "mirror energy". Would that be the same as "dark energy"?

Yes, Tungusku really happened. It is not just a joke in Ghostbusters.
Yes, Gene Rodenberry did not invent Anti-matter.

For any SGA fans out there.

I just finished rereading Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express then I watched the Albert Finney movie. They both are excellent examples of their genres, but the book is better as a mystery. The movie ignores several clues and plot points to shorten an already overlong film-from the producers' not the audience's viewpoint. The cast of the movie, however, is one of those accumulations of acting power seldom seen in modern movies-Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Martin Balsam, Sean Connery, John Gieguld, Anthony Perkins, and Richard Widmark. WOW! What a bunch. I did not include Pierre Cassel as he is French and not much known in the US.

"History does not entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Government price-fixing, once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared." --Calvin Coolidge

Michael Crichton died last Tuesday. He was 66. He was not only an author but also a director and producer. He was a SF writer in the sense that he based his novels on extrapolations of current science, i.e. The Andromeda Strain and Jurrasic Park as well as the underrated Terminal Man. He was an MD and his Five Patients is a non-fiction account of cases at Mass General where he trained after graduating from Harvard. It is probably his best book although I love The Great Train Robbery in both its book and movie forms. If you have not seen it, rent it!

Don't blame me; I voted for Sarah Palin.

Customer: "Why do they call it rump roast?"

Butcher: "Because no one would buy it if they called it cow ass."

From Larry, the Cable Guy

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." --Samuel Adams

WEDDINGS; Susanna Pueschel, Scott Stossel
Only eight years late, and yes, he is John Stossel's nephew.
Published: July 2, 2000
Susanna Joy Pueschel and Scott Hanford Stossel were married yesterday afternoon. The Rev. Leslie Smith, an Episcopal priest, performed the ceremony at the North Universalist Chapel Society in Woodstock, Vt.

Mrs. Stossel, 26, teaches the third and fourth grades at the Arthur D. Healey School in Somerville, Mass. She graduated cum laude and received a master's degree in education from Tufts University. She is a daughter of Barbara Pueschel and J. Kristian Pueschel of Lawrence, Kan. Her father is the headmaster and her mother the business director of the Bishop Seabury Academy, a preparatory high school in Lawrence.

Mr. Stossel, 30, is the executive editor of The American Prospect, a current affairs magazine in Boston. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. He is the son of Anne Hanford and Dr. Thomas P. Stossel, both of Belmont, Mass., and the stepson of Kerry Maguire and of Michael Putziger. The bridegroom's mother is a counsel to Murtha Cullina, a Boston law firm. His father is the director of the division of experimental medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

The Witch's Broom Nebula backlit by 52 Cygnus