Great segment on Maddow last night about where Mittens is getting his save-o-murica jobs program ideas from. One of his experts is the same guy who served in the Bush WH and who reportedly 1) pushed several Bush tax cuts saying they would lower the deficit, 2) predicted Iraq would be over quickly, and 3) went on to join Goldman-Sachs as a mortgage derivative cheerleader writing at one point these deadly financial mutations would “lend stability to the banking sector.” As noted before, there is virtually no failure so great that it cannot be richly rewarded in today’s corporate arm of the Republican Party.

Now the same asswipe is pushing Romney to propose, you guessed it, tax-cuts for the wealthiest Americans and massive deregulation for all corporate sectors. More of the same awesome sauce we’ve always seen from these strangely well-funded serial fuck-ups. But then right after that block, Maddow shows a shot of Romney getting all scientific, man, and whipping out his iPhone to use in a strained analogy between landlines and Obama. An iPhone, technology, dare we say science!

From which we now safely infer there may be flavors of science acceptable to the low information right-wing sheeple who may hold the fate of the nation in their clasped, praying hands. The one which studies particles and waves moving through substances and vacuum. Quantum mechanics.

Are the fundies really OK with quantum mechanics? It’s progress, if so, and we should be all for it. But I don’t think they’ve thought it through. Because not only is the field chock-full of metaphysical implications that do not bode well for cosmic creator entities, at least those which are purportedly both omnipotent and omniscient, it happens to prove the creation story in the bible dead wrong. Wrong by many orders of magnitude, as in 99.9999999999% wrong. As in the only thing standing between 100% wrong and Genesis is a flimsy barb-wire fence.

From quasars on the event horizon of the background radiation to the local group to Super Nova 1987A right next door in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the evidence carried on waves of visible and invisible light for an ancient universe interlock like the corners of Abe Lincoln’s freshly hewn log cabin. From radio waves flying through the air at millions of cycle per second to the frenzy of electrons boiling around the doped nuclei of commercial silicon by the trillions, the evidence for an ancient planet covers that same log cabin with perfectly joined Legos. Now add in the evidence from geology, biology, paleontology, etc.

It’s a lock. The earth and universe are billions of years old.

There was no creation event a few thousand years ago as described in Genesis. Therefore there could be no original sin by Adam and Eve. Thus, there would be no need to be saved from the consequences of it. And that’s pretty much the end of the line for all flavors of Abrahamic faith.

Recent genetic analysis has suggested that early, anatomically modern humans interbred with neanders to the north and a poorly understood hominid subspecies named Denisovans further east as soon as they bolted out of Africa. Now it looks like our ancestors may have been slutting around even before they left the continent:

Scientists focused on several markers to determine if a DNA sequence qualified as archaic. For instance, a sequence that was radically different from those found in a modern human population was likely to be ancient, as well as if an unusual piece of DNA stretched over a significant portion of a chromosome. The longer these sequences — known as haplotypes — are, the more recently they have entered the population. About 2 percent of contemporary African DNA may come from this early hominid lineage.

The image is of H. heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of both neanders and us, who may resemble the as yet unknown archaic homo the article refers to, and definitely resembles the guy in the cube next to me. That hominid tree leading to anatomically modern humans is going to end up full of cladistic bastards when all is said and done.

Seen above is the final resting site of the lunar excursion module Intrepid’s descent stage as seen by the sharp eye of NASA’s LRO orbiting above. To the far right is an old Surveyor spacecraft which landed a few years before to check out potential Apollo landing sites. To the left is Head Crater. And it’s all connected by what looks like trails!

What could the trails be?

You have to hand it to those nefarious NASA eggheads. Not only did they fake a landing on the moon, they actually left behind fake equipment and rows of footprints and moon buggy tracks between all these places to backstop their conspiracy!

A coworker collected these links and locations to aid those who lost their home and other possessions in the Texas wildfires. — DS

If you would like to drop off your donations locally, here is a list of places accepting donations at this time. Check back on KXAN or other local news sources regularly for new information on the fires and as additional drop off locations are being added:

· 3434 Yogi Berra Way in Round Rock by the Dell Diamond. You can also call 512-740-6096.

· Hill Country Bible Church NW is taking donations from 8am-8pm today. Bottled water, Gatorade, eye drops, nasal spray, hand wipes and individually-packaged snacks like peanut butter crackers, power bars, protein bars, etc. Address is: 12124 Ranch Road 620 North, Austin, TX. They are the hub and distributing supplies to the area fires. Questions? 512-331-5050.

· Gilda Grace Collections is taking donations of ANY kind, 1818 West 35th Street, Austin TX 78703.

There’s also an emergency notification system for cell phones through the Capital Area Council of Governments. Please visit this site to register your location and cell phone number. If there is ever an emergency in your area, you will be notified via text message.

For a movement that likes to humor itself on bold manly militarism and its tough-guy John Wayneshness, the extremist right sure does have a thin skin. After spending months of cutting benefits for the middle class, specifically among firefighters and other first responders hailed as heroes after 9-11 when it was so politically expedient, and harping on those dastardly government employees, we have a good old-fashioned right-wing freakout in full panic mode in response to this by a union official:

Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box.

That’s right, the SoB reference hurt the Teaparty’s feefees. Now they’re desperately trying to tow the media along as they work a connection to Obama in hope of turning it into an insult made by him at them. At which point fainting couches and smelling salts will be required. From which they’ll courageously rise to refer to anyone who disagrees with their plan to steal everything the middle-class has earned in the last century on behalf of the Paris Hilton class in the most vile terms possible.

If they can’t handle being called SOBs at a political rally, kinda makes you wonder how they’d handle being, you know, actually shot at by menacing brown-skinned terrorists.

 

A radar image snapped last week by the Cassini probe of the surface of Titan revealed an unexpected result, shown above, in the form of a large crater. This one is about a dozen miles wide and appears to be quite fresh. It’s not surprising to see craters on moons in general, especially in the vicinity of Saturn. The planet’s exquisite rings attest to the violent nature of the system. But finding a large impact marker on Titan is unusual because of the unique properties of Saturn’s largest moon and that got me to think’n.

Unlike every other moon we know of, Titan has a dense atmosphere, and unlike any planets we know of in the solar system, it has a defined terrestrial surface with material cycling through all three phases, solid, liquid, and gas in the way water does here at home (It happens to be methane and other hydrocarbons at a couple of hundred degrees below zero). The surface pressure is 50% higher than earth’s, far closer than any world we know of, so in all these respects Titan is the most earth-like object in the solar system. But the little moon’s gravity is only about one-seventh earth normal and the atmosphere extends outward much farther than our own. You know what that all means?

Only large objects make it to the surface, otherwise they burn up. But more importantly, Titan would be the most fun skydive in all the solar system! I am a skydiver, or at least I used to do it a lot, and the thought of that combo of thick atmosphere and low gravity would be a dream free-fall. A human body at Titan terminal velocity could almost land safely on the surface without a parachute, especially in one of its many lakes. I actually wrote up a sci-fi short story based around the idea but I could never get it to work. Maybe I’ll post parts of it here one day.

Summer in the southwest is a dreadful time. Temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees in populated urban areas. Cars bake, tires and dashboards deform, roads buckle and sidewalks literally becomes hot enough to cook on. But this summer in my current home state of Texas was worse than usual:

For as long as people have been taking weather measurements in Texas, there has never been a summer hotter than the summer of 2011. As wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt documents in his latest blog post, seventeen major cities in Texas recorded their hottest summer on record in 2011. Most of these stations had records extending back more than 100 years, and several of the records were smashed by an amazing 3.4°F–at Lubbock and at Wichita Falls. Neighboring states also experienced unprecedented heat, with Oklahoma recording America’s hottest month by any state in recorded history during July, and Shreveport, Louisiana breaking its record for hottest month by 3°F in August. Mr. Burt commented to me: ” I do not believe I have ever seen a site with a long period of record, like Shreveport, where records go back to 1874, break its warmest single month on record by an astonishing 3°. This is unheard of. Usually when a site breaks its single month temperature record, we are talking about tenths of a degree, rarely a whole degree, let alone 3 degrees! Hard to believe, frankly.” Texas has also had its worst fire season on record, with over 3.5 million acres burned this year, and it’s driest 1-year period in recorded history.

At least we had an intervention by nature this time, an unusually early cool front came thru and knocked us out of the triple digits. None too soon, the last two weeks were the worst of the worst. Inevitably some mindless sheeple will pretend climatologists and meteorologists are saying this is an out and out example of global warming. They’ll do that in part to pave the way for their own misinformation sure to come in the winter ahead when they will intentionally conflate record snowfall with record cold. But it’s a good point to ponder: is it an example of global warming?

For climatologists, the key is the term global. If the heat in Texas and nearby counties moves the global temperature average up by an arbitrary amount, let’s say one-tenth of one degree, then I’d say by definition its global warming. But that’s not likely to happen. To have that big of an effect, we need an impact like the Russian heat wave of 2010, where temperatures regularly soared 10 to 20 degrees above the average over an area the size of the US for weeks on end.

Texas is merely a datum in a big picture. What matters is the long-term trendline and the theoretical forcing agents driving it. In this case, the trend is not your friend.

Imagine the scene after 9-11, or even during more localized disasters, if our emergency government services were run exclusively by for profit companies like America’s private healthcare system. The image above lends a comical edge to the idea (Take a hard look at the smirking sling operator if you haven’t already), but it’s deadly serious. And in the home state of anti-government zealot Rick Perry, who is currently off campaigning and not taking care of business, a full blown emergency is exactly what may be developing.

There are wildfires ravaging central Texas as I write this, some mere miles away. It started yesterday, when Tropical Storm Lee dodged Texas but dragged in stout prairie winds that are now sweeping over the dry, baked landscape. A spark from a cigarette, a coal from a Labor Day barbecue, that’s all it took. Already this morning thousands have evacuated several towns and developments just a few miles east of Austin. Here’s a recap:

The fire subsequently spread to four other subdivisions, forcing hundreds to evacuate their homes. By 11pm Sunday, the fire had hopped the Colorado river in two places and was reported to measure 16 miles long by four miles wide (more than 14,000 acres), destroying 300 homes and causing partial road closures on Highways 21 and 71.

As of this morning local news outlets are reporting the fires are still uncontained and could grow. Emergency responders are battling the blazes left and right, county and city services are engaged. I’m on unofficial call to join any of my friends or family living in the Central Texas hill country to help them water down property or dig firebreaks should the flames move closer. Rain would sure help, but if the winds would just die down the fire department could probably get a handle on it quick. The one thing I’m not hearing from anyone around here this morning are rhetorical demands for “government to stay out of it”.

Update below, sent by a friend from Lake Travis near the Perdenales, also featured on Drudge he says:

 

 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.

Maybe God just doesn’t like Rick Perry, or maybe he’s just a hopelessly ineffective prayer. Months ago Rick Perry issued a proclamationto pray for an end to the drought plaguing Texas. Nothing happened of course, no rain anyway, it simply got much worse. Perry followed this up with the great Texas prayathon and rain dance a few weeks ago. Still nothing. A mild cold front came through last night, not one drop of rain. Now, smack dab in the middle of hurricane season, while neighboring Louisiana is drenched by Tropical Storm Lee, wildfires fueled by drought and high wind grew so dangerous that an entire town near Austin had to be evacuated. An entire county may follow suit today:

An amalgam of three fires in Bastrop, dubbed the Bastrop County Complex Fire, has destroyed more than 400 homes, according to an official with the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office. Included are several homes of Sheriff’s Office employees who continue to work. The fire has spanned 16,000 acres and is around 16 miles long, according to the Texas Forest Service.

I’ve heard there are such things as prayer coaches. Maybe our governor needs one. Even if they don’t work it’s hard to imagine how Perry could do much worse. His glaring spiritual failure has become so great that, inevitably, sooner or later, we’ll be subjected to Act Two: The Rationalization.

Perhaps the always reliable revisionism and misdirection, as in “we never prayed for rain, we prayed for America!”. Or maybe Perry will play the humble card, AKA the witnessing, about he learned not to presume and beg the Almighty because … [insert Biblical parable]. A real possibility is the self-righteous projection, ‘how dare you make political hay’ out of Rick Perry’s mendacious political stunts. I might wager it’ll be some odious accusation about how the state and/or nation deserves this for not doing what some obscure kook claims Republican Jesus commands. Maybe we didn’t pray hard enough. But a smart gambler would go long on the whole suite and ride the wingnut spread to glorious victory. It can’t lose.

Rarely will your eyes behold such forthright honesty flowing from the pen of the opposition than this masterpiece by former GOP staffer Mike Lofgren. There are no punches pulled, it’s all there; the mendacity, the complicit media, the hype and hypocrisy, ugly scapegoating and faux patriotism, oodles of religious opportunism married to craven greed. The entire wingnut apparatus focused, each oily piece turning like cogs in a vast machine, to relieve the middle-class of every last benefit and dime for no other reason than further enriching the already grotesquely wealthy. It was written several weeks ago and posted yesterday, but Lofgren should be required Labor Day reading:

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be “forced” to make “hard choices” – and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

No Labor Day platitudes, no cheer-leading or warm fuzzies congratulating ourselves for the accomplishments of others. Just a concise dissection of the insidious tactics employed by the modern right with the single-minded ruthlessness of a hungry crocodile. There’s little to quibble with and much to applaud. I can only offer one refinement to this sentiment:

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what?

That’s a good point, but the GOP also has a less difficult marketing job. It’s just easier to create simplistic, jingoistic bumper-sticker-sized soundbytes when 1) you’re willing to lie your ass off anytime, anywhere, about anything, 2) you’re playing to a simplistic, jingoistic voter base, and 3) well, Kevin Drum explains:

In modern America, conservatives are largely given a pass for saying crazy things. They’re just not taken seriously, in a boys-will-be-boys kind of way. It’s almost like everyone accepts this kind of stuff as a kind of religious liturgy, repeated regularly with no real meaning behind it.