Feel-good Story

From Bad Astronomy Blog

Kids are such a joy when it comes to science. They have a natural curiosity, and love the idea of other worlds and traveling through space. When you find kids that have an even larger dollop of that drive, it should be kindled, encouraged.

Here’s your chance to help do just that. Two fifth grade students from Indiana, Cameron Wade and Billy Shannon, both 11 years old, have an experiment that will launch onboard a suborbital NASA rocket. It’s part of a partnership between their school and NASA. The problem is, the grant they have doesn’t cover their own travel to Virginia to see the rocket launch!

Astronomer Phil Plait put up a paypal link to contribute, and within hours raised a thousand dollars.

Now the kids and their teacher will fly to Virginia to watch their rocket launch.

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This can only end badly.

Photo and terrific caption from Dependable Renegade.

International Philosophy Match

The ancient Greeks face off with modern German philosophers in this football match from Monty Python (gawd, I miss them!).

Nietzsche fouls, manager Martin Luther is sending in Karl Marx to replace Ludwig Wittgenstein for the Germans. ... Archimedes to Socrates, Socrates to Heraclitus, who dodges Fredrick Hegel, then an assist by Plato (Aristocles), goalie Liebnitz hasn't a chance, and Socrates scores!






YouTube Flash, 1' 56".

k.d. lang

... with the Jim Henson gang.

Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty
Yes, I love trash

I have here a sneaker that's tattered and worn
It's all full of holes and the laces are torn
A gift from my mother the day I was born
I love it because it's trash

YouTube Flash, 1' 45".

Today's Bible Verses

1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; 3 a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 NRSV

18 In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.

Matthew 21:18-19 NRSV

Storks Bring Baby

A pair of gay male storks are raising a chick from a donor egg in the Dutch zoo Parc Overloon.

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Rembrandt's Pirate Anatomy Lesson
eye patch anatomy

Today's Bible Verses

The prophet Elisha in 2^nd Kings:

23 He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!’ 24 When he turned round and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

2 Kings 2:23-24 NRSV

Today's Bible Verses

7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out without debt, without payment of money.

Exodus 21:7-11 NRSV

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Dracorex hogwartsia

Dracorex hogwartsia
The Hungarian Horntail

A newly discovered 66-million-year-old skull from a new dinosaur species was named after Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, made famous in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. This nearly complete skull, from a creature named Dracorex hogwartsia, now has a permanent home in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis ...

"The creature is a very special dinosaur that seems at home in a 'Harry Potter' adventure," explained Bakker. "It was a plant-eater, only about as heavy as the war horse of a medieval knight. And it carried an armor-plated head of almost magical configuration, covered with knobs and spikes, horns and crests. I was staring at the skull last summer, and the name just popped into my head, 'hogwartsia'."

(emphasis added)

Children's Museum Exhibit

Actual Hungarian Horntail

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Via Bad Astronomy comes this picture from the Cassini probe. Shown, from the foreground, is the tiny moon Epimetheus, Saturn's rings, and Saturn's moon Titan. Cool.

(Click it for big)

I imagined these scientists, gathering arcane data and immersed in celestial mechanics suddenly realizing that this alignment is coming up and ordering a picture just for the sheer beauty of it.

Blasphemy

YouTube video, Flash, 1'10.

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Robots

Found pictures.
(Credit: mostly found via BoingBoing.net)

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Vache Brune


Taureau Blond d'Aquitaine


Porc Large White


Taureau Pimpernel Simmental


Vache D'Aure et Saint-Girons



Zut alors!
(Holy shit!)

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