Oh, what a world. MSNBC notes:

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth’s southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

As the democrats spend their time bashing each others’ brains in, and McCain slowly loses his, the planet is literally falling apart. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the actual consequences of events like this, but it seems like two results are obvious. 1) A short term drop in the price of a bag of ice at your local convenience store, and 2) rising sea levels.

One is a joke, the other is a harbinger of global economic and human disaster. Guess ‘em! more »

Thanks to tipster Adam for letting us know about truckspills.com, which, as should be evident, covers all things related to truck spills. The spill of the week: a 50 foot Sperm Whale, beached in Taiwan, was being taken on the back of a semi to a research center for autopsy when the gasses trapped the behemoth’s stomach exploded across a thoroughfare, covering motorbikes in foul-smelling whale offal and half-ingested giant squid.

I wonder if that kind of stuff happened in our whaling days of yore. After all, Rhode Island’s Royal Charter did note that:

And ffurther, for the encouragement of the inhabitants of our sayd Collony of Providence Plantations to sett vpon the businesse of takeing whales, itt shall bee lawefull For them, or any of them, having struck whale, dubertus, or other greate ffish, itt or them, to pursue unto any parte of that coaste, and into any bay, river, cove, creeke or shoare, belonging thereto, and itt or them, vpon sayd coaste, or in the sand bay, river, cove, creeke or shoare, belonging thereto, to kill and order for the best advantage, without molestation, they makeing noe wilfull waste or spoyle, any thinge in these presents conteyned, or any other matter or thing, to the contrary notwithstanding.

All of which is of course now hella illegal.

You NEED to see the pics after the jump. more »

Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8]

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

If you’ve ever felt like doing a little exploratory surgery on your video IPod, here’s where to go. I have only one question for you Ryan, how did your IPod fall into the toilet?

The technology is now in place for me to go ahead and start a family. As reported this morning on NBC news, scientists in California have finally produced human embryo clones. All I have to do is provide the nucleus of a skin cell. But here’s where you come in! I will still be needing; an egg donor, a surrogate mom, several nannies and the name of a good boarding school. (And sperm donors are still required for my various side projects.)

Tonight at the Providence Geek Dinner AS220 was treated to an update on the progress of the mostly Rhode Island based Rentomatic (formerly iiProperty). Rentomatic.com is a website for both landlords and tenants which allows for online rent payment, maintenance requests and other landlord communication for tenants, and accounting, property and tenant tracking, etc. for landlords.

The new site rolled out just last week and they have grand plans for the future including connecting landlords with service providers and allowing tenants to communicate with each other. The company also runs rentometer.com which is a service that attempts to bring more transparency to the world of housing rentals, letting you view average rents for neighborhoods and even particular streets. Enter your address and see whether you are getting a great deal for your place or whether you should be demanding free laundry from your landlord for the dough you dole out every month.

Other news from around the webosphere:

• Google goes political: Google Checkout for Political Contributions allows candidates to easily and cheaply accept online donations. Even better it can be tied to a candidate’s YouTube page, meaning we may all get to see even more of our candidates favorite recipes!
• France says that Amazon’s free shipping is illegal, amazon says f*uck you and decides to pay a €1,000 fine per day instead.
• FDA sys cloned meat A-OK. Thank Dolly next time you next time you enjoy your lamb kabobs.
• “Phraselator” lets cops take down perps in their own language. No, I didn’t make that name up.

I was getting all inspired and scared by this article, on the crazy stuff that we’re finding as astronomers peer further and further into deep space. And then the awe was sucked right out of me, as our science guys tried to describe their discoveries in more human terms:

—A spiral galaxy with two pairs of arms spinning in opposite directions, like a double pinwheel. It defies what astronomers believe should happen. It is akin to one of those spinning-armed flamingo lawn ornaments, said astronomer Gene Byrd of the University of Alabama.

—The equivalent of post-menopausal stars giving unlikely birth to new planets….

And then,

“Intellectually and spiritually, if I can use that word with a lower case ’s,’ it’s awe-inspiring,” Wheeler said. “It’s a great universe.”

It always was awe inspiring — and will be once I exorcise those metaphors from my brain in a few minutes. But nothing that can be described in terms of products I can buy at OOP! is gonna have me gushing.

Bury Your Problems was one of the best releases of last year, so go see The Wrong Reasons tonight at Jake’s along with Samuel James and Route .44
Jake’s Bar and Grille, 10pm, 21+, small cover

One of the advantages of being young and stupid in such a go, Go, GO! world is that you can pretend that by the time you’re all old and craggly, the wizards will have cured all the scary degenerative ickies that await on the other end — cancer, Alzheimer’s, baldness, etc.

And then, one day, you’re in your late twenties, and not much seems to have changed over the previous couple of decades. (Except that a few of your contemporaries have been stricken by cancer and/or baldness.)

But as somebody who saw 1 or 2 grandparents succumb to Alzheimer’s, this is pleasant news:

Drug “can reverse Alzheimer’s symptoms in minutes”

A drug used for arthritis can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s “in minutes”.  It appears to tackle one of the main features of the disease - inflammation in the brain.

From Wired, a story that seems ripped out of amemorable part of Carl Sagan’s Dragons of Eden:

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.

Everybody wants to perform like well-rested monkey, right?

It is commonplace to spend the month of December reflecting on the year that has passed. This year (at least when it comes to reflecting on the liberal/independent media) Alternet has done that reflection for you. Check out their Top 10 Best Environment Stories, Top 10 Rights & Liberties Stories, Top 10 Sex & Relationship Stories, and Top 10 Reasons Why I broke up with God of 2007.

More after the jump.

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 Remember how I ranted about the excessive emphasis on religion in the presidential primary process? I’ve got allies. Check out Eduardo Porter in the New York Times. He writes:

I’m an atheist. When people trot out the well-worn John Adams quote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” I can’t help feeling squeezed out of the polity. [...] Any atheist with political ambitions would have to drop the atheism first. Atheists have solid reasons not to believe. We don’t need a divine being to explain the natural world, and don’t know why we should trust claims about humankind’s divine origins because they are in religious texts. Give “2001: A Space Odyssey” a thousand years and who knows what might happen.

The truth is that I’m not even ready to accept the label of Atheism. I don’t know what I believe. But I do know this: it sucks that candidates have to fake belief in a higher power in order to be taken seriously. Are we Americans that insecure in our own beliefs that we refuse to support anyone who doesn’t share them? Oy vey.