Donation

As many of you know, Missy, Charlotte, and I will be moving to California on July 7. This trip, however will not be too cheap (totaling over $1000) . All I'm asking for is one dollar ($1) from you. If half of my facebook friends alone donated just a single dollar that would cut our moving costs down by about 10%.

I know many of you have already helped my new family SO much over the last few months, and if you don't want to donate then that is perfectly fine. I don't want anyone to feel pressured to donate anything at all. I just thought I would post this up here as a possibility.

Thanks so much for even taking the time to read this!

Deneb

For all two of you who follow my blog, I apologize. I haven't had much to blog about, mostly because I have finally started working. However, seeing as how it is 3:30 AM and I can't sleep (mostly thanks to said work) I will blog.

I went stargazing for the first time since starting my astronomy class tonight. I only had to go out to my 'front yard' (which is a parking lot...how poor am I?) but I was able to see a triangular portion of the 'northern cross' constellation, and most notably Deneb. Modern estimates put Deneb at approximately 1,550 light years from Earth. That means the light I am getting in my eye at this moment in time was created when the following was happening on earth.

410: Rome sacked by Visigoths

c. 440: Anglo-Saxons settle in Britain

453: Death of Attila the Hun

476: Traditional date of the fall of the Western Roman Empire

Also in the 5th century: The founder of Zen Buddhism was born, the horse collar was first used in China, and metal horseshoes became common in Gaul.

Imagine where the human race will be 1,550 years from now, when the light that Deneb is producing now reaches our descendants. Will they be speaking of how 2009 was the point of no return for the American Empire, or will the history books instead read about how a world united itself under the banner of peace and understanding in the 21st century. Either way, the stars will continue to shine, providing distant generations a common link to the past.

Couldn't Say it Better

START EATING REAL FOOD!

Americans Split 50-50 on Abortion

This is unacceptable. I can and can't believe that America is regressing after we had been showing such positive upticks in the area of personal freedoms. What a woman does with her body is her choice. It is not the choice of the government, the husband, the doctor, and definitely not the choice of a priest who is supposed to never have known a woman's touch.

So let's be honest here. Do we really want the fundamentalists telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies?

WOW

I can't believe I'm saying this, but researchers have released fossils today that not only resemble human beings, but are 4.4 million years old, a million years older than Lucy, linking us back even further to our cousins in the Animal Kingdom! What an exciting find!

I just wanted to say to the Creationists: you guys had a good run, you guys had a lot of people on your side, but can we just call it a day now? I mean...you can only fight fact for so long.

Can't do anything but nod my head solmenly (STOLEN)

The story of Cameron Todd Willingham ought to be read by everyone. Willingham seems to have been a kind of Texan dumbass, an uneducated, wife-beating piece of work, but he was also the father of three children, who he, by all accounts, loved. Those kids died in a house fire. Forensic 'experts' declared the fire an arson, Willingham was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, and was executed.

Only problem: he didn't do it. The fire experts were good ol' boys who were operating on folklore and fairy tales about how fires propagated; real experts have looked at the scene and since declared that it was an accidental fire. Nobody killed those little girls, but their father was killed for their deaths.

That's not the most disturbing part of the story to me. You have to watch these videos of Judge John Jackson (he was prosecutor in the case, and is now a judge). He openly admits that the evidence for arson was weak, and that he looked at the circumstances to determine Willingham's guilt. Those circumstances? Willingham was a low-class ruffian with tattoos of skulls who like heavy metal music. Therefore, he was probably a satanist. Therefore, he probably killed his children.

I'm not joking. That was the basis for this smug cracker's determination of guilt, that led directly to his execution. Why not just criminalize tattoos and Metallica? It would make it easy to round up the riff-raff and exterminate them.

The state of Texas murdered an innocent man, and we can see the whole chain of incompetence, bigotry, and cowardice that led to the tragedy, from this ass of a prosecutor to Governor Perry, who refused to heed the evidence of malfeasance. Why aren't all of them being impeached or fired, and facing criminal charges in a court of law? Is it because they don't have any tattoos and listen to patriotic tripe from Lee Greenwood, Brooks & Dunn, and Tim McGraw?

End the death penalty everywhere. Drum the red-necked blundering boobs out of office, at the very least.

This story was stolen from Pharyngula because I was too lazy to write my own.

A Medical Tragedy

A 14 year-old girl has died after being given the first shot in a series of three shots for a vaccination from cervical cancer. My thoughts go out to the family of the girl and I hope they can get some answers as to why she died.

Sadly, however, I can already hear conservatives saying that she died because of socialized medicine, so let me say it first: anyone who will turn this political (I'm looking at you Michelle Malkin) should have their mouth sewn shut. This is a time for grief, not politics.