Great Link re: Breaking Developments in Bush's "Snoopgate"

FISA court meeting early January to discuss/get briefed. Will they be satisfied with the administration's explanation? One of them has already resigned over it, in what's turning into a full-blown Constitutional Crisis. This is going to make a great movie someday.

Some Implications of the Intelligent Design Trial

Link to Great Analysis of Split in the GOP

It's the noninterventionist conservatives vs. the neocons. But is this split as deep as the split in the democratic party, the interventionist democrats vs. the anti-war left?

Shorter National Geographic Article: Bigfoot USED to exist

...but there's NO WAY Bigfoot still exists...right?

Narwhal Tusks Are Giant Sensors

Whoa.

Bees Recognize Human Faces

...with 1/1000th of the brain size of a person, how do they do it?!?

Animal cognition continues to amaze us, and to embarrass scientists who said such things were impossible. Nyah nyah, you unimaginative bastards!

New Solar System Object Has F***ed Up Orbit

Too circular, considering it orbits well out of the plane of the ecliptic. Scientists consider that it must have had a close encounter with another large body to throw it out of the plane of the ecliptic, but then by rights its orbit would be less circular, ie more elliptical. A circular orbit is thought to be a calm, quiet one, but here we have this new object which has a calm, quiet orbit, even after it has been violently ejected from the solar system. What gives?

The answer, as all Velikovskians know, is that there MUST be a way to circularize a crazy orbit, probably involving forces other than gravity - OR, involving properties of gravity we don't yet understand.

I predict a LOT more of these objects will be found, and someday science will have to properly grapple with these weighty questions...

NASA still wedded to Plutonium powered space missions

...even as the Europeans have gone solar. Could there be industrial/military influence? Naah.