Tattoo Decision Support Matrix courtesy of the US Army.

I was going to link to JD Lasica’s report from the Supernova conference, then decided also to link to his blurb about the post 9-11 Saudi flight that the Bush administration lied about – information that was out there all along. I read about it a while back in House Of Saud, House Of Bush but this info never really seemed to bubble up into the mainstream press until Michael Moore’s film. It seems to me, although I haven’t yet seen it, that Moore did a lot of shit wrong with this movie, but I think he’s brought some very important issues to the forefront of the American conversation.

This month’s High Times cover shows one of our fighting men with a lovely plant he wanted to confiscate. He even made the Post!

The Spirit Rover has stumbled across something interesting today – a rock that is “uniquely martian” that appears to be mostly made of hematite. Opportunity found a lot of this mineral as well – continuing to solidify the case for rivers and oceans of water that seems-now-certainly existed on Mars eons ago. The reason I find this particularly interesting is when I first started paying attention to astronomy, I remember that the whole discussion about astrobiology and extraterrestrial intelligence was focused on liquid water (which requires – basically needs to live between – both a solid surface and a gaseous atmosphere, excluding it from >99.99% of the space in the universe) as a basis for life and therefore intelligence. It was looked at as extra-cool magic life juice (which it is) that was very rare – yet it is one of the very few molecules that you’ll find completely permeating Gaia’s biomass. So, I guess, I’m curious why intelligent life is so rare, seemingly literally confined to one little fleck of rock in the universe. Plus, we’re seeing water everywhere.

Over just the last 5-10 years, the common view on this has shifted dramatically (along with the view about the conditions needed for life to exist). Every extraterrestrial thing we’ve come into contact with over the past few years (Mars, that weird halite meteorite that crashed into a Texas yard a few years ago, Europa (and soon, Titan)) shows hints of liquid water that may age to the earliest days of the solar system.

However, sentient extraterrestrials do not seem to exist. So, perhaps the rarity is in the leap from liquid water to liquid life? If liquid water isn’t rare, perhaps the next step is exceedingly uncommon – like the leap from hot water to extremophile bacteria?

These are the states I have visited, compliments of World66 – they’ll also let you do a global one.

Welp I’m off to Bangor, Maine in the morning to accompany Mom (whom I’ll pick up in Cape Elizabeth on the way) to a funeral for my cousin Robin Langley, who died unexpectedly late last week. I did not know Robin very well, but what I do remember was that she was much like the rest of her family – and they are all very warm and friendly people with more than enough love to go around. She and I shared an interest in genealogy, and despite our efforts to connect about our common heritage, we never got the chance to do so.

I especially feel for her parents, my dear uncle Pat and aunt Rella, who spent Father’s Day weekend grieving over the unexpected loss of their child.

As if the right wasn’t already terrified because their conservative base is likely to stay home in November, a dorky, imperfect but patriotic Michael Moore is freaking them out as the Radical Right has gone about attacking his new film before even seeing it.

Sure, this movie is oriented in making an important civic statement to the world, especially a lethargic America. But what in the hell is wrong with that? Idealogically I have (thus far) found him to be too-far-left, but the message he is sending is an important one and I applaud it.

Well I have decided to get back into doing autocross again. I used to really enjoy it, and cannot for the life of me figure out why I stopped. If anyone has any ideas of clubs in the Boston area I should check out, please let me know.

A great natural color image of Saturn from Cassini this month – while they are still about 16 million miles apart.

I also stumbled across a couple of great older pictures of Saturn. First, a 1997 image from Hubble showing auroral clouds at Saturn’s poles – trippy business; and, a real classic – a color-corrected image taken by Voyager 1 in 1980 at a distance of 27 million miles. Wow.

Source: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Rick Perlstein writes in the Voice that Bush and his team are vetting their middle eastern policy with some fringe Apocalyptic Christians and such. Scary reading.