This Week in Science

Planned Parenthood has a blog and they’re understandably pissed off at the Bush-Cheney-Palin-McCain axis of evil and ignorance for, well, for a shitload of reasons as you can imagine. The most recent being as the economy crumbles, families are evicted from foreclosed homes, two unresolved trillion dollar wars rage, and the ranks of the unemployed balloon, the Nutjob-in-Chief has his priorities in order: denying healthcare to women by redefining birth control as abortion.

• Two teams of astronomers have directly imaged two separate sets of exo-solar planets:
  

  For the first time, scientists have produced images of multiple planets orbiting a star other than our own sun. There have been three reports in the past two months purporting to show images of planets in solar systems around nearby stars.

• Which empty head of the GOP hydra are we to believe these days anyway? The one supposedly pondering how to make itself over to resemble something that can pass for rational, or the more traditional lunatics frantically clawing at the air like grizzly bears on acid?
• A night launch seen on TV of the STS cannot do justice to witnessing the actual event in person. It’s spatially huge: The horizon and half the sky bursts into ghostly reds, pinks, and yellows. The flickering tongue of flame rises above the tree tops, it’s bright, like an eye searing meteor in reverse, throwing wildly racing shadows across the ground and then through the clouds above as it punches through. You can watch it past SRB sep, and right into orbit. There won’t be many more, so if you get a chance to venture down south, do it while you can.
• Just in case anyone thinks this post was too pointed in its criticism of current NASA Director Michael Griffin, I received feedback from well informed sources absolutely blasting the man to bits and complaining I was way, way too ‘fair and balanced.’

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