Picture of the day

What is this? It's the first photo of an alien planet ever taken! Ok, it's the "the first direct image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star taken using a ground-based telescope" if you want to be a killjoy about it. But still, pretty cool, no?

No? It's too blurry for you? You, with your precious fetish for pretty Hubble photos. "Show me a photo of this planet when you can get a cool close up, like with Saturn or something" I bet you're saying. Fuck you, learn to appreciate other mysteries of the universe.

Fine fine, you complete baby. Here's the pretty.


It's a boring old nebula. God I hate you.

Things you don't want to hear the smartest man in the world say

We all have dreams about aliens and space travel. Most of them involve aliens landing, telling you you're the ultimate special human, and then whisking you far away to fight in an intergalactic battle where you're the key to defeating evil, and your reward will be all the space bucks and alien princess 'tang you can carry. Or it involves aliens invading Earth and you coming up with the key to defeat them that was so simple that the aliens, with their superior intelligence and weaponry, really should have had a contingency plan for it, but OH THEIR ALIEN HUBRIS AND ARROGANCE, YOU CANNOT DEFEAT THE HUMAN SPIRIT!

Or maybe you just want to be Han Solo or fuck around and have a family type adventure with a stranded, but friendly, alien. Whatever. The point is, you don't think of the aliens coming down, fucking our shit up royally, and then exterminating or enslaving us for all eternity. Well, Stephen Hawking really wants you to start considering that notion. Like, right now.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”
...
Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Bleak enough for you? That's just the beginning stages of the Discovery Channel's new series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Hell, part four is called "Aliens: Did I mention the part where they rape you and eat you at the same time? No? Trust me, it'll be awful."

But, the smartest man on earth isn't just trying to scare you about aliens and sell a spec script to Steven Spielberg where a man in a wheelchair beats back the evil Columbus aliens with knowledge, quantum theory, and a chair mounted Gatling gun, no, he's trying to educate about other things as well.

Aside from aliens, Hawking's program discusses the nature of life, space travel, time travel, black holes, and the wonders of the cosmos in an attempt to entertain and teach. Largely about how we're all doomed, but also about things that we won't be able to see or fully comprehend... because hostile forces from other planets will have wiped our civilization out before we become smart enough. The four part miniseries already aired its first two parts on the 25th, with the second two to come in subsequent weeks. Watch, learn, and be afraid.

PSA: Alien Abduction Edition

Because I fear, truly and deeply, for the continuation of our species should one of you be the first human being to make contact with extraterrestrials, it would be irresponsible of me to not pass along this handy reference.

[EDIT: Original link didn't work but I found a mirror. Enjoy.]

To summarize, brush up on basic high school math, remember to explain that we operate most comfortably in base-10, don't attempt to tell intergalactic explorers that the entire universe was created by a bearded man in the sky just for humans, and prepare to be assassinated not long after revealing your experience to the world.

Any further questions should be directed to Professor Hicks:

One more go around

As the baby Jesus plans to bury most of the mid-Atlantic in another ice age (is it bad when the daily forecast icon is a laughing Satan wielding a dagger made of ice?), our elected betters have decided to make one last stab at health reform before our world is encased in another 20 feet of snow, permanently freezing our society for study by future alien archaeologists.

Is that plan actually passing a bill? No. God no. The plan is one more bullshit "bipartisanship" summit where the President hopes to take televised questions from the GOP and Democrats in order to negotiate a supposed way forward. .....Great. Can someone remind me again how that all worked out last time? Ah yes, numerous Republicans involved themselves in the process, slowed things down dramatically, got hundreds of amendments and concessions made, comprised half the group of six that essentially wrote the Senate bill, and then unanimously opposed it as they spent months completely lying about the content of the bill while spinning horror stories of death panels, socialism, government takeovers, and Bolshevik plots. I'm sure their plans and contributions will be equally constructive this time.

Eric Cantor’s office responds to Obama’s announcement of a bipartisan summit on health care with the most explicit and direct assertion I’ve seen yet that the only way Dems can win bipartisan cooperation is to fully embrace the GOP health care plan and nothing more:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Completely scrap health care and do what we want. Sounds great. Of course that's even if they bother to show up for all the "bipartisanship", as they're already complaining about being expected to negotiate in good faith.

I know Democrats think that if they just ask "pretty please" enough and reserve the right to add "sugar on top" at a later date that the GOP, contra to the last two decade's of worth of examples, will finally make an attempt to govern without naked political calculations in mind. Here's a helpful hint: Republicans don't want a health care reform bill, nothing you say will get them to contribute constructively as their goal is to completely kill what you are trying to do.

So, can you at least get that point through your thick Democrat skulls and just move forward, the House passing the Senate bill and then the Senate passing the conference committee changes through reconciliation, before we're all frozen to death? Not for the sake of this country. No, as I've said: most of us will be encased in ice by tomorrow. I'd just prefer it if the aliens that will be defrosting us in a thousand years won't be observing us at the pinnacle of our circle jerk government failing us yet again. It's probably probably too late to avoid that, but I'd like for us to try. Just so the aliens aren't totally embarrassed for us.

Broken News: America concludes, decade best forgotten

AMERICA—Today it was announced that, pending a final count vote tally, that exit polling had revealed this last weekend’s nationwide referendum on whether to remember, not talk about, or forget the previous decade had concluded with “not remembering” winning with a 74% share of the vote.

While the full scope and design of the willful forgetfulness America has elected to conjure on January 1st remains unclear, a preliminary panel has been convened to create both a plausible backstory for the memory loss as well as credible explanations for technological advancements and changes the country has undergone over the past 10 years.

Until some of the preliminary details are sketched out, Americans have been advised that when they awake of Friday morning, they are to act as if they were awaking from a long slumber, without any recollection of any of the events that happened over the past decade. Given that most of the country will have gotten black out drunk the previous night, this is expected to be rather easily initially.

Citizens are to keep from discussing history or make any references to the past 10 years until such a time as the Historical Revision Committee has issued an explanation for what happened.

“Look, it is essential that we as a country stick with this lie, I cannot stress this enough,” explained Dr. Samuel Seward, one of the newly announced members of the hastily assembled committee. “The longer we stick to it and the more forcefully we assert that it must be true, the easier it will be to convince ourselves that it is true. Just shut up, keep your head down, and when anyone mentions they can’t remember the last decade, just nod and say ‘Me too.’ Do not fuck this up for us.”

While no official explanation has yet been decided upon, sources say that the HRC currently is considering two ideas.

In the first, all manner of trees, plants, and various flora will have turned on mankind, releasing a memory altering neurotoxin that blocked out the past 10 years, much like the plot of The Happening.

One scientist on the project was overheard to remark, “People loved The Happening, right?”

The second and more popular idea floating around is that America was invaded and conquered by an alien race, who forced us to build them some great weapon for some nebulous intergalactic purpose that we couldn’t ever possibly comprehend. Once work was completed, the aliens left and wiped our memories.

“Personally I think this is the perfect explanation,” observed Adam Weiss, a historian tasked with eliminating a 10 years worth of news archives from the internet.

“First, it can explain so much. The high unemployment is from all the people left jobless now that the aliens no longer need us to build their weapon. It also explains our decaying infrastructure as the aliens would have moved all of our resources and efforts into building this space gun. It explains the shitty economy because the only thing that had been fueling our economy for a decade is now off to fight an intergalactic war. Plus it also explains why we haven’t made any progress on the environment or anything of note; because we were building a giant laser! It’s perfect!”

Following that logic, things like hybrid cars, increased internet speeds, HDTV, and the iPod would be explained away as technology we were able to steal from the aliens, which, at this stage, are being envisioned as some sort of giant space dogs that dressed like highly advanced Vikings.

When asked how this project was going to explain major events like 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, group members were admittedly unsure. But, they did say that while they were working on solutions to those questions, they were not deeming them a necessary priority.

“It’s not like Americans even remember or discuss them now, so why should we try to come up with an explanation,” observed one panel member. “We’ll just classify it under the subheading of ‘unexplainable magic’.”

For now, American’s are being advised to “just go with it” and are being told that the only alternative is to not only remember what happened over the past decade, but to take responsibility for it.

“Who wants that,” asked Dr. Seward. “I have hopes that we’ll be able to use this collective lie we’re entering into to actually move us forward without any of the diversions of the past 10 years, but I’m not hopeful. At the very least this will allow me to pretend that Dick Cheney, the Black Eyed Peas, that guy with the puppets who is always on TV now, the American auto industry, and my lying whore of a wife not only didn’t occur, but also didn’t sleep with any of my lab assistants.”

He concluded, “Fuck you, Judith!”

For now, the country is expected to spend the next few days walking around confused, rubbing their eyes, and asking “What happened’ a lot. Soon after they are advised to marvel at the “new” technologies they find they have and remark with astonishment that a black guy is now running the country.

As the days move on, the Historical Revision Committee will issue findings and explanations which are then to be accepted and repeated as fact. After an appropriate cover story and whitewash of contrary evidence has been performed, society will be expected to move on with a new purpose. Those on the committee expect this whole process will take upwards of a month.

“Seriously,” Dr. Seward repeated forcefully. “Do not fuck this up for us.”