Merit-bound Alley

Thoughts of military action resulting in the loss of life always tends to bring up many strong and conflicting emotions. Because of that, I will simply offer my sincerest thanks for those who have sacrificed everything for what we have.

The Mars Phoenix lander will touch down this evening. Coverage on NASA TV will begin at 6PM EDT.

You may remember my recent post on the Portland Obama rally that attracted over 70,000 people. A recent story on Newsbusters brings light to the fact that there was an extremely popular local band, the Decemberists, playing before the rally and questioned who was there to see the band rather than the charismatic candidate.

So, I did a little digging. I didn’t have to dig far (in fact, this is quoted in the Newsbusters article) to find that Obama is fairly popular with the Indie crowd.

Indie rock’s #1 candidate crush Barack Obama is sittin’ quite a bit prettier than he was a few weeks ago when the Arcade Fire and Bruce Springsteen went to bat for him, but the dashing junior Senator hasn’t quite clinched the Democratic party nomination yet. Next up on the primary agenda are Oregon and Kentucky, whose voters hit the polls Tuesday, May 20. Should Obama win a heaping majority of the delegates up for grabs that day, he’ll be within inches of securing the hotly-contested nom.

And look who’s arrived to give Obama the extra push he needs to get on the ballot in November. Why, it’s none other than those kings and queens of the month after, the Decemberists!

Shocking! An energetic young candidate who wants to fundamentally change discourse in our broken government? I can see how that would be Indie popular. However, also look at the last quoted line. It suggests that Obama was not quite following a popular rock band, but they were specifically there to play for the rally!

Can it be? Yes. From the Decemberists website:

Points of Order:
* The Decemberists to play set at Barack Obama Rally SUNDAY

For those in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon this weekend, The Decemberists will play an hour-long set at a Rally with Barack Obama

So, we have a band that was opening for Obama, and really nothing in the Newsbusters article that provides evidence that anyone was there just for the band. In fact, they provide evidence to the contrary with the “candidate crust” quote.

One other important point: should this information have been provided by the mainstream media? Of course it should have! However, there is plenty of evidence that some news venues are more than willing to skew in Obama’s favor. As this election progresses, it becomes more and more evident that we can’t count on the MSM to report the news without skew anymore. That goes for the liberal and conservative media.

I have to say that I am surprised and delighted to read that the United Methodist Church has proposed and adopted this petition on ID. Here is the text:

Submitted Text

Evolution and Intelligent Design (80839-C1-R9999)

Add a new resolution as follows:

WHEREAS, the United Methodist Church has for many years supported the separation of church and State (paragraph 164, Book of Discipline, 2004, p. 119),

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.

Rationale

Creationism and Intelligent Design are appropriate topics in public education classes such as comparative religion, literature, or philosophy since scientific method incorporates critical thinking processes. All truth is God’s truth. The promotion of religion or any particular religion in the public schools is contrary to the First Amendment.

The petition passed with a vote of 38 for, 6 against, and 1 not voting. Please allow me to applaud the UMC and extend a hearty thanks for being the first major religious organization (that I’ve heard of) to officially stand for the integrity of science in the classroom and the critical American value of separation of church and state!

(h/t to The Panda’s Thumb for the link)

I’m going to take an increasingly rare foray into the election to say HOLY SHIT!

An Obama rally in Portland, Oregon was host to 75,000 people. That’s more than two times the 2000 population of Dover, DE!

Go, Obama!

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has found the youngest supernova yet in our galaxy. Poetically named supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 was first observed by the Very Large Array back in 1985, where it was hypothesized to be ~400-1000 years old. A comparison of the VLA and the above image taken in 2007 have shown that the remnant has expanded 16% in the time between and that it is expanding at 35 million miles per hour.

This data puts the supernova at ~140 years old, about 12 younger than presidential hopeful John McCain.

I’ve taken my shots my shots at religion, and even a holy book or two. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to do it for many years to come. Of course, I use the phrase “taking shots” figuratively unlike a U.S. Army sniper who quite literally used the Koran for target practice.

The Koran in question was used as a target at a police station firing range in Radhwaniya, where it was found bullet-ridden two days later. The offending soldier was relieved of duty and shipped back to the U.S., where he issued an official apology. There are a few things about this incident that bother me:

1. That it happened in the first place. Soldiers are under a supreme amount of pressure and stress that no civilian will ever truly understand. Because of this, they can do some pretty assholish things. However, there’s a big difference between taking a photo of an Iraqi holding a derogatory sign that you’ve written and desecrating the symbol of everything the vast majority of Iraqis hold dear. Not only that, the U.S. military has lost face in the eyes of the very people we’re supposed to be out there helping.
2. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond’s quote, “The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior.” While the tribal leaders see this as a crime, Hammond does need to keep in mind that this is not criminal behavior in the U.S. Back home, that sniper could have propped that Koran up against the King James bible, shot them both full of hole, set them on fire, and pissed on them to put the fire out, and more power to him! Shooting people is criminal behavior, shooting books is certainly not!
3. Hammond presented a gift of a Koran to the offended Iraqis, but also kissed it. Unless Hammond is muslim, he has no business showing such deference to that book. Respect for the book would be to refrain from shooting it, and Hammond crossed a line in his show of humility.

Another small point, but we have to take a broader look at the state of the world when things like this happen. If you have an unused hunk of paper that holds little value, you still have to treat it correctly.

Recycle, people. Trees are a dwindling resource.

UPDATE: Check out Delaware Liberal for a different perspective on the kissing.

We in Delaware won’t see it tonight unless these clouds move away, but there are some amazing things in the night sky

Just past the first quarter, the moon casts silver light on the Earth. We were there. Humans threw people out of the atmosphere and we walked on an alien world. People stepped out of a metal ship, watched as dust flew from their footprints in a perfect parabola and settled onto the ground. We planted the Stars and Stripes, and gathering rocks for scientific inquiry, jetted those brave men back home. There are men alive today who walked on another world!

Brilliant orange, Mars creeps it’s way farther and farther from Pollux and Castor on the 2D map of the sky. If you look at that rusty dot, you are seeing robots that men and women hurled across thousands of miles to orbit or land, and send us amazing photos of that alien terrain. Soon, yet another robot will land on the ice caps and send us data about water on Mars!

Look far to the left and you will see Saturn, honey-gold and hanging in Leo, fighting the lion for brilliance and beauty! We sent another robot over one million kilometers away to orbit this ringed giant! This satellite, Cassini, landed a probe on one of the moons of Saturn, a completely different plantary system! We have video of the Huygens probe landing on the Saturnian moon of Titan, a world of thick yellow atmosphere and oceans of ammonia! If you look at that tiny golden dot in the sky, you can know that there is a human artifact out there, gathering data about other planets.

Beyond Saturn, completely out of view, our species, cousin to orangutans and bonobos, have two probes that have sailed out of the solar system and continue to send back data. Voyager has turned its eye back to the Earth from a billion miles away and has shown us who we are, invisible specks on a pale blue dot. Specks that have vicariously traveled the solar system and have seen things that no other species alive today will. A species that will one day, within the lifetime of this writer and you the reader, walk on an alien planet, our boots red with the iron rust of a foreign world.

What other race has had the blatant arrogance to fling a metal pod to another world and succeed? What other race has mined photographs of a world we will never touch? What other species has their handiwork sailing outside of our world, our orbit, our planetary system, our solar system?

You ask me how I can have wonder without a god, then I question your imagination, your sapience. Close your eyes and see the amazing things that humanity has done. See the silver speck, humanity-flung, and moving on other worlds.

That is wonder, my friends.

South Carolina state government is getting into the religion business, and hardcore, too according to this story from the Charlotte Observer.

One creates license tags with “I Believe” in front of a cross; a second makes clear prayers can be offered before public meetings and a third allows set public displays of key historical legal foundation documents that would include the Ten Commandments.

Well, that runs the gamut, doesn’t it? Promoting Christianity specifically by offering only a cross on the license plate, promotion of religion in the government with a prayer, and allowing display of religious “legal” documents on public grounds.

Offering only the cross is pretty blatant, but the other two seem pretty general and maybe all-inclusive, don’t they? Yes, until we understand where the government is coming from on religious views:

What about Wicca, commonly referred to as witchcraft? “Well, that’s not what I consider to be a religion,” McGill said. And Buddhism? “I’d have to look at the individual situation. But I’m telling you, I firmly believe in this tag.”

Interesting. So, some small-minded bureaucrat will be making the decisions as to what counts as a religion. It’s good to see that they are putting so much thought into this. It’s plainly evident that the people creating and supporting these bills will be using them to put their particular brand of Christianity into the government. Should these unconstitutional bills pass, and somewhere down the line a Buddhist or a Wiccan wants a pentagram or fat guy on their license plate, the same people purtporting this as all-inclusive will be fighting the petitioners with the standard cry, “This is a Christian Nation founded on Christian principles!”

This is why complete separation of church and state is necessary. As soon as it even cracks a little bit, the religion with the most clout will take a sledgehammer to it, and in the process destroy the rights of everyone not part of the In Crowd.

In this continuation of the Vatican’s failing bid to be socially relevant, the Catholic church now okays belief in aliens. See Steve Newton’s post on Delaware Libertarian on the Holy See’s previous reactions to one of their own for hypothesizing other worlds. Here’s a summary: torture and murder!

Well, I feel so much better about their policy of hiding and avoidance of culpability for legions of child molesters now that I know I can safely believe in the possibility of life on other planets!

Whew!