What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

Monday, November 8, 2004

Dept. of Wonders
I was going to blog this myself, having spent an hour and a half outside last night, but dang if BB didn't do a great job! So, here's the skinny on those glorious, luminous, shimmying clouds of light in the northern sky:

Aurora Borealis light show unusually far south in USA. Xeni Jardin:
An extreme geomagnetic storm was taking place over our planet for the last 48 hours or so -- and that caused Northern Lights displays in the USA as far south as Oklahoma, Virginia, Maryland, Alabama and California. NASA's spaceweather.com site has tons of amazing user-submitted photos, and background info on what causes Aurora Borealis to occur. BoingBoing pal Q-Burns Abstract Message saw the otherworldy light display from about 30K feet above earth, while he was on a redeye flight last night -- sounds like that was a vivid vantage point.
"This image is the closest to what I was seeing in the plane," he says, "But imagine it moving like a curtain in a light wind. They MOVE ... that's what you miss in the photos. Like curtains, and then colors shoot across the sky. It's like meteors, but they are color flashes instead of meteors. It helped that the sky was totally cloudless last night too." Here's another image presented as an animated gif to approximate the way they move.

How very mysterious and wonderful our world is! The lights are caused (at least in part) by charged particles interacting with earth's magnetic field. Those particles give off extra energy in the form of colorful light. I wish I could have seen them here in Los Angeles, but we're too far south even for this unusually southern display. Plus our air's all shitty.
Link to photos of this week's display, Link to a Google news search that (for the time being) returns tons of local news reports of sightings throughout the USA. Link to a short MP3 report that comes from a phone alert service offered by spaceweather.com (bear in mind that the report was issued last week, hence the "next two days" reference).
BoingBoing reader Jesse Hamilton adds, "This very cool map will show you where they are visible: Link." [Boing Boing]
Be sure to check out the gallery at spaceweather.com!
Update: I was really hoping to get some photos tonight, but here in Lincoln we got bubkis for aurora tonight.

10:59:09 PM leave/read comments []

Dept. of Wildlife

Bloody hell! There's a spider in my koala!

Click the photo to make the horror even BiGGeR!

6:28:45 PM leave/read comments []

Dept. of Community Theatre

A picture named benhur.jpg How I love amateur theatricals!!!

US Marines of the 1st Division dressed as gladiators stage a chariot race reminiscent of the Charlton Heston movie-complete with confiscated Iraqi horses at their base outside Fallujah, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 6 , 2004. For U.S. Marines tapped to lead an expected attack on insurgent-held Fallujah, the bags have been packed, trucks have been loaded and final letters have been sent, leaving one final task - the 'Ben-Hur.' (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

And they say there aren't gays in the military! Sing out Louise! Fabulous costumes!!!

I've made up my mind! I Marines!

4:16:00 PM leave/read comments []

Dept. of Discoveries

A picture named stockinghead.jpg Study Says Mesh Stocking Can Help Weak Hearts Pump Blood. A mesh stocking pulled up over the wide bottom of a weak heart can help it pump better and even shrink back to a more normal size. By By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. [NYT > Health]

This could be a real boon for my dad, who has an enlarged and weakened heart.

See? Science IS GOOD FOR YOU.

2:53:03 AM leave/read comments []

Dept. of Pest Control

A picture named mousehole.jpg Well, I found it!

Now what?

2:25:18 AM leave/read comments []

Dept. of Dissent

A picture named turd-polish.jpg OK, so my friend James wrote a song consoling Kerry supporters and then an otherwise decent guy teed off on James with this rant:

I am looking forward to the day when the pedantic whining of liberals who feel "screwed" in this election will cease, and the pretentious attitudes of people from 19 states will stop name-calling like a horde of snooty school children. A time when words such as "stupid," "dumb," "moronic," "fools," idiots," "unfair," "hicks," and "easily deceived," will not be used to define a region of America representing 31 states and millions of our people who have struggled all their lives to make this country great. Words which are permeating the morale of our nation's proud men and women in uniform, making a horrible situation more caustic with each utterance.
It's easy to condemn another's viewpoint when it's not our own.
The votes have been cast. The election is over. Let's pull together and do what we have to do to unify this great land of ours.
Move on, people.

Um, no. My response:

A picture named kerryzoloft.jpg As someone who lives in Nebraska, I expect to "whine" about the lying sack of shit that sits in the Oval Office for as long as he's there. I will NOT stop resisting an administration that I think is a disaster for my country- it's my patriotic duty to defend the constitution, which, in my opinion, is currently under siege by an administration that has no use for republican democracy or the principles of freedom that our country was built upon.

I will not come together with people who would deny my very right to exist or who wish to take control of my or my sisters' bodies or who would dictate to me whom I may love. I'm sorry B____, but this isn't whining, this is a fight for my very survival.

I'm a proud liberal, who believes in a fact-based world and that ALL Americans deserve to be free, not just the ones with loads of money or the ones who go to the right place of worship. AND I live in the goddamned center of the U.S.A.!

The idea that all the liberals live in "blue states" and everyone in the "red states" is a conservative is utter bullshit- we're more purple than anything- blue and red all mixed up and looking like a bruise. When my neighbors tell me to "come together" or to "get over it" I tell them that it's my DUTY to DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION and to OPPOSE ITS ENEMIES and that the Bush administration is an enemy of the constitution. So, no, I will not join you. I will fight for what I believe in, tooth and nail and to the death, if need be. The election is over, but the fight continues. I am a patriot.

Oh, and nice song, James. Well done.

1:55:31 AM leave/read comments []