On the Red Planet, Sunsets are Blue

See for yourself, in this JPL video made up of images taken by Opportunity November 4 and 5, 2010.

HERE'S the science.

I Look Into My Glass

I Look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

 ~ Thomas Hardy

Punctuation? Spelling?

The composer of this little bit of political speech seems to have been one of those free spirits who wasn't paying attention back in remedial English Composition.  He may mean to express the view that "birtherism" is beneath the dignity or intelligence of right-thinking people.  In that case, he ought to have used "than" instead of "then."  On the other hand, he may have been attempting to communicate the view that America must first become better, and then we can get on with "birtherism."  That thought would require at least a comma, but a colon (or even a dash!) would have worked.

Obama has 19 million Twitter followers -- 13 million are fake

The New York Times reports:

It may be the worst-kept secret in the Twittersphere. That friend who brags about having 1,000, even 100,000 Twitter followers may not have earned them through hard work and social networking; he may have simply bought them on the black market.

[snip]

The practice is surprisingly easy. A Google search for “buy Twitter followers” turns up dozens of Web sites like USocial.net, InterTwitter.com, and FanMeNow.com that sell Twitter followers by the thousands (and often Facebook likes and YouTube views). At BuyTwitterFollow.com, for example, users simply enter their Twitter handle and credit card number and, with a few clicks, see the ranks of their followers swell in three to four days.

[snip]

The practice has become so widespread that StatusPeople, a social media management company in London, released a Web tool last month called the Fake Follower Check that it says can ascertain how many fake followers you and your friends have.

The tool examines Twitter relationships, said Rob Waller, a founder of StatusPeople. “Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but have few followers,” he said. “We then combine that with a few other metrics to confirm the account is fake.”

If accurate, the number of fake followers out there is surprising. According to the StatusPeople tool, 71 percent of Lady Gaga’s nearly 29 million followers are “fake” or “inactive.” So are 70 percent of President Obama’s nearly 19 million followers.

Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

Copyright Jim Kowski.

"Just because you’re an adult-film actress doesn’t mean you can’t be a terrific mom."

What more is there to say: "Stormy Daniels on Being a Porn-Star Mom."

You're a Racist

Every day, in every way . . . .

Hanna Rosin writes in The Atlantic:

To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.

Insert "freak show" jokes . . . .

. . . [HERE].

Coming in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Via Ace.

"The secret of the atomic bomb is how easy they are to make."

Truck driver, with no particular science background, reverse-engineers an atomic weapon.

Pay More: Get More

If the price of something rises, you're going to get more of it. This is neither a complicated nor an obscure proposition. And it's perhaps the tedious obviousness of this fact that makes it so hard to grasp for our sophisticated statist masters who know what's good for us.

Thus, the oh-so-smart United Nations bureaucrats, and the oh-so-sophisticated folks at the New York Times, report themselves amazed that if they subsidize the production of pollution . . . the result is more pollution.

The New York Times reports:

RANJIT NAGAR, India — When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system. Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

Because when things go right, things go right

Always funny: people falling down

Hilarious: people running into things.  You've already seen some of these, but here is that venerable institution of the InterWebs, the compilation (including the mandatory music) (like haiku, there's a form).

How Does One Measure Greatness?

Mount Sharp

Wait, what? You've not heard of "Mount Sharp"? It's on Mars, you twit.

"Two extra values meals, please."

Via Moonbattery.

"Houston, we have a problem . . . ."

[UPDATE]: Stop sending me email. I know that's not what Swigert actually said. But it IS what Tom Hanks said.

First Pictures After Curiosity Landing on Mars

Unspeakable Ignorance