Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

We still have time to mess this up!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

This really is a full service blog.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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69Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    The guy who discovered the planets lives in Yorkshire. Usually a story like this from there involves a guy lying in a ditch and looking at the stars.

  3. 3.

    El Cid

    @BGinCHI: Not only that, the discoveries had nothing to do with a telescope. At least not for him directly. Guy says he’s never owned one. All based on intense research and graphing of released data by U.Cal. He does have some ‘science’ degrees, but he was included as a co-discoverer of the 4 planets. Pretty fucking bad-ass, and I wouldn’t doubt that there were at least some around him thinking he was wasting his time.

  6. 6.

    Alex S.

    Yay, exoplanets! It fascinates me how you can bridge the distances between the stars with tiny pieces of incredibly precise data. The gas giant in the habitable zone is very interesting. If, for example, Jupiter was like that we’d have 4 moons capable of sustaining life. You might have several sentient species in just one solar system.
    And the picture is just magical.

  7. 7.

    General Stuck

    If someone could undiscover Planet Wingnut, that would be an achievement.

    “What does it mean to be qualified to be president? She is born in this country and she’s the right age. Those are the qualifications.”

    — Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), in an interview with National Journal, on whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.

    Great country, where any dingbat can grow up to be president.
    And I was talking about George Bush, btw.

  8. 8.

    Peggy

    Wow. Can you imagine how good that Yorkshireman is at spreadsheets? Get him a job on Wall Street.

  12. 12.

    pointer

    Great stuff! I feel obliged to point out, however, that there’s a world of difference between observing phenomena and contributing to the theoretical understanding underpinning those phenomena. Astronomy is unique in that the nature of the field allows amateurs to make useful contributions. Other sciences have a far higher bar to entry — although that doesn’t stop amateurs and engineers thinking they can disprove the greenhouse effect or the entire field of evolution!

  13. 13.

    General Stuck

    @kdaug:

    Why I’m not an atheist

    me neither – my brain is too small to contemplate infinity. Then there are Orchids and Opera – I just dunno

  14. 14.

    JGabriel

    Great, it looks just like a sunspot. Which means now I’m gonna worry that all those photos of sunspots are actually the spaceships of invading alien hordes waiting for the signal to attack us.

    Well, I would if I were a Republican.

    .

  16. 16.

    PurpleGirl

    @BGinCHI: Oh absolutely they are staying away. They know we’re completely nuts beyond understanding and don’t want to be infected by us.

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    BGinCHI, overheard on alien spaceship:

    Holy fuck, Ajkthlanv (pronounced “George”), you wouldn’t believe the people they let have guns down there! Why don’t we turn around and come back after they get rid of the nuclear weapons?

    .

  18. 18.

    El Cid

    @JGabriel: There is no global warming. It just snowed in Georgia. But if there were, it is caused by the aliens in the sunspots. Why doesn’t somebody get Al Gore to answer THAT!

  21. 21.

    Caren

    That’s no moon…that’s a space station!

    The ISS looks like a TIE fighter in that picture.

  23. 23.

    The Dangerman

    If this is an area of interest, consider sitting through this Astrosphysics course put up by Yale:

    http://academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-astrophysics

    It’s for nonscientists (or was it nonmajors?), so it’s fairly easy to understand even though it’s Yale level. In particular, he makes the math ridiculously simple (well, considering it IS astrosphysics). I haven’t finished it yet, but I’ve enjoyed each lecture (ok, the first kinda bogs down when he’s talking about policies and grades, but the rest I’ve seen are great). He has a particularly interesting take on Pluto and it’s being a planet (or not being a planet).

  25. 25.

    The Dangerman

    @Caren:

    The ISS looks like a TIE fighter in that picture.

    Shhhhh! Lucas’s lawyers may need some work.

    What’s the zit on the sun lower right? Or am I already + too many to see the obvious?

  27. 27.

    Redshirt

    There was a similar photo taken recently showing the ISS in front of the full moon, and it’s equally spectacular.

    Our reality is more miraculous than anything dreamed up in some ancient religion.

  31. 31.

    The Dangerman

    @Yutsano:

    I was wondering that myself. Sunspot?

    Better than my guess; I was thinking he burned a bit or two on his CCD by pointing his camera at the sun.

  34. 34.

    KG

    @General Stuck: that’s not exactly high praise… in fact, isn’t that traditionally the most damning thing someone can say when asked that question?

    “Is [potential] Candidate X qualified to be President?”

    “Well, s/he is at least 35 years old and a natural born citizen, so yeah, I guess so?”

  39. 39.

    General Stuck

    @KG:

    that’s not exactly high praise… in fact, isn’t that traditionally the most damning thing someone can say when asked that question?

    Never said it was. And I would think a profound NO would be the most damning thing for someone to say, and that goes triple for Sarah Palin, even from other republicans – legal qualifications was not what was asked of Sanitarium – which was my point.

  40. 40.

    D. Aristophanes

    The International Space Station passed in front of the sun for 9/10 of a second during today’s solar eclipse …

    Why does liberal space science have a pre-9/11 mentality?!?!

  42. 42.

    Redshirt

    @D. Aristophanes: That’s very good. Bravo. LOL.

    Here’s a great blog by Phil Plait at Discover’s surprisingly good blog site: Bad Astronomy

    You can see the sun and moon ISS pictures there, but I’d recommend the post I linked to, which shows a picture of every exoplanet seen through a telescope to date (as opposed to the many, many more exoplanets that have essentially been inferred from the gravitational wobbles of their parent stars.).

  44. 44.

    Mike in NC

    @BGinCHI:

    “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is a pretty good allegory for Republican control of government.

    RIP, Anne Francis, co-star of “Forbidden Planet”.

  50. 50.

    MikeJ

    @BGinCHI:

    “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is a pretty good allegory for Republican control of government

    Huh? It’s the most blatant christian allegory ever made. Klaatu’s alias is “Carpenter”. He dies, is resurrected. People think he’s a secret Beatles side project, and therefore more popular than Jesus. It’s all right there.

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Wiesman #28: Sorry, you got there long before I did. (I swear I scrolled through all posts in the thread before adding mine, but obviously not carefully enough.)

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    @The Dangerman:

    I think those digressions by the professors are part of the charm. I’ve been listening to the highly touted Yale Civil War course and he just diverted into scolding the guy in the 12th row who was reading the newspaper instead of paying attention in class. Made me feel young again …

  54. 54.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I finally got a guide to the stars this past summer. After watching a mindblowing meteor shower in Colorado years ago I can’t get enough of looking at the sky.

  55. 55.

    gordonsowner

    I stumbled across this guy in Bill Bryson’s _A Short History of Nearly Everything_… an amateur astronomer who holds the world record for discovering supernovae with just a telescope and memorizing the positions of the expected stars that should be in every little quadrant and can pick up a small anomaly in that quadrant — savant with a lot of hard work:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Evans_(astronomer)

  57. 57.

    The Dangerman

    @Redshirt:

    Oh right; and he traveled across the world to get each shot. I forgot that cool detail!

    Hold it; you’re saying he traveled to a calculated spot and knew exactly when to take the picture?

    (picture a Wayne’s World “I’m not worthy” series of bows here)

    Studly.

  59. 59.

    MikeJ

    @mr. whipple: Do you think Cook was out? What *do* you think about the officiating in this test? Lots of controversy.

    It’s a pity we don’t have test cricket all the time.

  64. 64.

    Yutsano

    @stuckinred: Oh I can be persuaded, I just don’t have a natural bias one way or the other. Can’t stand the arrogance of the SEC or OSU. So that leaves me at meh.

  67. 67.

    foobear

    The ISS photo is very impressive, but as pointed out takes a lot of planning using the tools and data coming from the professionals (eg, ephemeris websites from NASA data).

    The guy who co-found the planets is completely dependent on a *lot* of work by the professionals. They’ve identified the likely candidates to study, spent hours and hours at the big telescopes (after putting in many grant and observing proposals), collected the data (not a trivial job!), and done 98% of the analysis work on the data. The light- and radial-velocity curves go out to interested folks like this guy to eyeball, looking for a specific feature (which they learn about from a training set provided by the professionals). It is very hard to write a program to reliably pick up the right signatures, but it is easy to teach people what to look for. It is cheaper to enlist a bunch of volunteer amateurs to do the work than even to pay grad students or undergrads. I don’t mean to say the guy didn’t put in a lot of time and effort, but let’s keep the accomplishment in perspective.

    It is only slightly more challenging that Seti@Home (which does run automatically) and quite similar to the GalaxyZoo. Both projects are ways in which the professionals enlist the free help of people since sufficient funding is hard to come by. It has the side benefit of getting people interested.

    But the very great contributions of the professionals really should be better acknowledged (both by the poster and the author of the original article).

  68. 68.

    A Humble Lurker

    @JGabriel:

    Great, it looks just like a sunspot. Which means now I’m gonna worry that all those photos of sunspots are actually the spaceships of invading alien hordes waiting for the signal to attack us.

    You know those dead birds in Arkansas? They say they died via trauma in midair. Their ships are already here. And I for one welcome are bird-killing overlords.

  69. 69.

    Redshirt

    @The Dangerman: Yep. But it’s a rather straightforward calculation. The actual logistics of traveling are more daunting.

    You can find out where the ISS is at any time, here: ISS Wave

    And eclipses are predicted out for thousands of years from now.

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