Friday beautiful science

For the second week in a row, the Friday beautiful science comes from the Japanese moon orbiter Kaguya/Selene. They caught this beautiful photo of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon. Very pretty. They also have a short movie on their site that they've shown in HD on TV programs in Japan and Canada (hopefully soon here in the U.S. as well).

I confess, I'm a tiny bit disappointed with the Japanese Space Agency, however. Unlike NASA, they don't seem to release full resolution photos. Just these low to medium resolution jpegs, marked with the copyright. It's a pity, because I'm just nerd enough to print these types of photos, frame them and hang them in my house, and this photo is barely high enough resolution to make a decent sized print. I think NASA makes a great choice by distributing high resolution photos as a public relations tool to get folks excited about their work. JAXA should do the same.

Fox News Porn

You know, I hate to make it look like I only think Fox News isn't a credible news source (as it happens, I'm not all the fond of CNN, either). It's just Fox News is the easier target, and sometimes I feel a little lazy...

As Marge Simpson (from the future) says:

"Fox turned into a hard-core porn network so gradually, I didn't even notice!"

Well, in case you didn't notice, here's a few clips from Fox News for you:

We should be screaming.

This news is disturbing. George Bush just vetoed a bill that included a $1 billion dollar increase to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget (increasing the NIH budget from $29 to $30 billion). That's a 3.45% increase in the budget. Keep in mind, that throughout 2007, the rate of inflation has been between 2 and 3%. This is barely keeping up with inflation. In fact, the current NIH funding level is *lower* than it was in 2003 (when adjusted for inflation). That's right, the president thinks that paying for research for cancer, HIV and bird flu is unimportant.

The money quote?

In a statement released by the White House after Bush vetoed the bill, the president decried the Democrat-led Congress for engaging in what he called a "spending spree," and said that the legislative majority was "acting like a teenager with a new credit card."

Wow. Cancer research is what a teenager spends his/her money on. That's simply amazing.

I love that the work that I do is considered unimportant by George Bush.

Meanwhile? The direct costs of the Iraq war are up to $468 billion dollars. And counting.

Good work, George.

via Pharyngula

Quote of the day

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- Thomas H. Huxley

(As an aside, the most beautiful hypotheses I've had in my career have all turned out to be wrong. Pity.)

Fox News Misleads - go figure.

Fox News misleads in the title and lead of their article:

Government Report: More Military Deaths in Some Years of Peace Than War:
More active members of the military died during two years of peacetime in the early 1980s than died during a two-year period of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a government report.

But then buries the truth later in the article:

"Let's not somehow pretend or try to convey the false impression that being at war is being safer than being at peace, of course not," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.

"If we stopped these wars we would cut back our annual military fatalities by close to a thousand people, and that's just simple arithmetic."

The numbers, which outline active-duty deaths from 1980 to 2006, show a steady decline in accidents.

Demonstrating that Fox News is barely better than Red State at presenting the facts. Shame on you, Fox News.

Friday beautiful science - WOW!

Holy smokes! This image comes from the recent Japanese mission to the moon. They've put a satellite up around the moon with all kinds of crazy imaging equipment. Check out these images!



Absolutely amazing! And this is just from the first few weeks. They should have all kinds of crazy stuff in the weeks to come. They also released this movie taken of the surface of the moon. Apparently somebody on Youtube released it early, because the release date on Youtube is a week earlier than the press release date:



Fantastic!

Judgment Day - Terminator 4

This PBS documentary about the Dover Intelligent Design lawsuit will be showing on PBS next Tuesday at 8. The preview seems a little over the top (the voiceover makes it sound like we'll be seeing a giant man-eating Dembski-robot shooting flames out of his mouth all over the city of Dover). But the show should prove entertaining. Fire up your TiVo.