Month: April 2009

The Milky Way galaxy: raspberries and RUM.

(Via AoSHQ) THIS IS NOT A JOKE:

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries.

This is SCIENCE. Science that is made of AWESOME. It is made of awesome because the chemical that they found – ethyl formate – is not only what gives raspberries their taste; it’s what gives rum its smell. This is important because if one chemical compound is out there, all sorts of chemical compounds must be out there. Including the one known to all of us as CH3CH2OH, or ethyl alcohol. Which we knew, yes… but we didn’t know before that recognizable flavorings also existed, due probably to non-organic processes. So, do you know what this means? This means that somewhere out there really is a planet which has a drinkable analogue of tequila for its oceans.

All we have to do is find it.

Moe Lane

PS: What? How do we do that?

Why are you asking me? Isn’t this what we have scientists and engineers for?

Balefires is coming back out in paperback.

At the end of June; Balefires is a collection of David Drake‘s fantasy short stories, and is noteworthy for having “Than Curse the Darkness,” which is probably in the top ten of most people’s short lists of Greatest Cthulhu Mythos Stories*. The collection is also available in hardback, so if you’re into instant gratification, knock yourself out.

Meanwhile, Lovecraft is Missing continues its surveys of… stuff.  Interesting stuff, but… stuff.

Moe Lane

*Including a couple written by HP Lovecraft himself, if you’ll pardon the rank heresy.

So, there’s another DC Tea Party tomorrow…

…being thrown by these folks. Decent weather being promised for tomorrow, too. I’ll be attending: it’ll be from 11 AM – 1 PM at Lafayette Square. I don’t expect the 1.5 – 3K from the last one, but… actually, I don’t know what I expect. They have a permit and speakers, so there’s obviously some planning going on there. That implies that there’ll be more than, say, 12 or so.

At any rate, I’ll be there for the thing; if people have any suggestions on what they’d like for me to cover, feel free to let me know. I figure that I’ll be doing the usual video interviews, and so forth.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATED] It has been suggested that my advertising strategy is over-subtle.

[UPDATE]: I should have thought of this first, but Constant Reader Matt was too fast on the draw for me:

This would be impressive, if true: virtually nothing else about me is. But, just on the off-chance… Amazon is doing Video on Demand here.

…OK, actually, hold up for a second. This Kings show: is it any good?  I understand that its got an entire Old Testament David/Saul vibe going, which is an argument in its favor.

Anyway: there’s the Amazon thing up there; there’s the BlogAds thing that I’m signed up for over there; and of course there’s the Laptop Drive…

…which I am sure that all of you are well tired of hearing about.

There. Now I can go back to nattering on.

And American recognition of the Armenian Genocide gets delayed. Again.

Ben Smith covers the Standard Washingtonian Weasel Statement by President Obama here, the comparable reactions to said SWWS here, and – best of all – Samantha “Monster” Power’s earnest explanation to the Armenian community back in the day about how straight a shooter that Barack Obama is*

…here. I do hope that nobody was shocked by any of this; it was pretty obvious how this was all going to go down, as both Dan Riehl (here and here) and myself kept saying. Continue reading And American recognition of the Armenian Genocide gets delayed. Again.

Rep Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D, FL-20): veterans not worth protecting?

Now, you can be for or against hate-crime legislation as you choose: whichever side of the argument you’re on, it can’t be denied that there’s an argument going on. But I think it’s just a little disingenuous to be quite this resentful when somebody like Tom Rooney uses your own logic in ways that you don’t like. Even if it does mean adding military veterans as a protected class against hate crimes.

I mean: really, Debbie. Going on the record like that?

Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, of course, has been playing the equivocator game for a while now; from the Iraq War to the Florida Three to the Clinton/Obama endorsement she’s shown no little skill in being on the right side at just the right moment. Probably what’s happening here: now that the GOP caucus is at its currently-low levels, she’s going to have to find some new friends. Which means netroots. Which, of course, means being anti-military.

Pity. Not really surprising, but still a pity.

Contact info after the fold.  Hey, you never know.

Moe Lane
Continue reading Rep Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D, FL-20): veterans not worth protecting?

Rep John Dingell: Cap and Trade is a tax.

Thanks.
For nothing.

Rep John Dingell today admitted that cap-and-trade really is an energy tax. Unfortunately, he did so in the context of telling a lie:

Contrary to Representative Dingell’s comments, quite a few people realized that cap-and-trade is a tax. And then so did quite a few people more. And then some more. And more. And more. And more. In fact, this realization is quite common among those individuals who do not have a vested emotional or, frankly, moral need to believe the absurd and contemptuous lie made by the current administration about how it wasn’t going to raise taxes on either the poor or middle class. Continue reading Rep John Dingell: Cap and Trade is a tax.