Crunchy Inside

Last week, NASA launched a small telescope named after Johannes Kepler into space. I have my own reasons for enjoying this, but who could not like this squat little spacecraft? It looks like a cross between a Pisco bottle and a Taco Bell Burrito. It's only a third the size of that maladjusted diva, the Hubble. Its mission is to search for habitable planets circling other suns, taking pictures of them with its 95 mega-pixel camera. It has almost no moving parts. Just a few thrusters and a couple of little reaction wheels to keep it pointed at its chosen section of the Milky Way.

It also has a honeycombed mirror, a couple of starfinders, the 95 megapixel photometer, and a High Gain Antenna so it can call home once a week. All of this wrapped in a snazzy blue solar cape that James Brown might have envied. You could argue that the money could be better spent on earth, but the way the earth is heading, we might need extra planets some day. So Kepler's not just a pretty face; Kepler's practical.

Kepler also twitters, somewhat alarmingly, in the first person. But at least Kepler has enough sense not to talk to strangers:

In 1973, Nasa sent two Pioneer spacecrafts right out of our solar system, and had the bad judgement to affix plaques to them with directions on how to find us. As if that weren't enough, Man and Woman are depicted on the plaques. Man is a '70s white dude with an atrocious blow-dried do (with possible sideburns) and Woman is missing something: her vulva.

Carl Sagan, whose bright idea the plaque was, and his wife at the time, Linda, who contributed the drawings, omitted what he called "a very short line" (a few civilizations have fallen on the existence of that "very short line") to make sure that the plaque would escape earthly prudery and go on to miseducate the universe.

Carl Sagan was a brilliant man and an optimist. But cluing in advanced civilizations on our whereabouts, is that the best idea? Really?

The Envoys Arrive

that evening, at the Hay-Adams:

Cross-posted at Rumproast, America's Meatiest Blog

Driving the GOP

What better image for the GOP than that of a bloated, loud-mouthed, drug-addicted, Viagra hound multi-millionaire sitting in his ormolu encrusted Palm Beach mansion hoping the president's programs for rescuing the economy fail? And the proud parade of Republicans prostrating themselves before his Steele-reinforced throne?

2009: SUCH POSSIBLITIES!

if you have the florins, we have the fauna

I hereby resolve to post here more often.The last time I wrote, we still had a private banking system and what was good for General Motors was good for the nation. And Obama hadn't yet become a failed usurper-elect, after whom we could name the cardboard shantytowns springing up in Central Park. Darn his do-nothing policy of not taking office! But shall we call them "Obamavilles" or "Barackbergs"? http://thehive.modbee.com/?q=node/10964

Iraq-Ribbed Republicans

The Three Foreheads of the Apocalypse

Once the conservatives accept their nominee, and he accepts them, Hell will experience a hard frost. And so will cartoonists; John McCain is hard to draw. His square, All-American jaw has softened into jowelly chipmunk cheeks, which, when c0mbined with near-eyebrowlessness and expanse of overhanging, luminous forehead, drawn imprecisely, could slop over into Rush Limbauggery. That would be mid-addiction, middleweight Limbauggery; lately Rush has risen, like an unbaked bun, to new, doughy heights, his little poppy-seed eyes have all but disappeared. I'd say he's off the Oxycontin. For now.

I checked out the cartoon archive at Slate, and sure enough, all the political cartoonists are having trouble with McCain. Most, including Luckovich, (who does the funniest W I've ever seen), have to label McCain. They usually put a McCain button on him. Otherwise, he's a generic old guy with white hair.


Karl Rove is astonishingly easy to draw, for somebody who is essentially featureless. His bland Scandinavian pastiness is interrupted by surprisingly liquid blue eyes, with dark lashes. Rather like Damien. His baby-smooth brow says that persecuting Democrats and smearing war heroes doesn't interfere with his sleep any.



Employing the same group who once smeared him and his family, including his little adopted daughter (from Bangladesh, called "John McCain's black love-child" in a notorious telephone push-poll during McCain's run against Bush in 2000), may have caused McCain to lose sleep.

But I doubt it.