William Anders (Lunar Module Pilot)

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell (Command Module Pilot, Commander Apollo 13, pilot of Gemini 7)

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

Theology is one thing.

This - Apollo 8 - surpasses theology. If you're of a more established tradition, the above transcript isn't a new thing. If you believe that there is no God but Man, however, then at this moment - December 24, 1968 - god SAW the light.

And it was good.

(The relevant portion, 1.2 meg .WAV)

23 February 1932 – 18 December 2008.

Man must be in space - that is what we are destined for. There is nothing else that we can do.

-- Majel Barrett (Wikiquote, unsourced)

13:48 * solios just extracted approximately 1000 comment spam from DCR*
13:48 <@ejp> \o/
13:55 <@_Lasar> I invented an awesome method for warding of automatic spam. (At least I haven't seen this method mentioned anywhere else).
13:55 <@xeno> unplugging the modem?
13:55 <@solios> _Lasar: ?
13:55 <@_Lasar> I just do this: Enter your first name: <input type="text" name="email">
13:56 <@_Lasar> Then I check if the "user" entered an email address.
13:56 <@_Lasar> If so, spam.
13:56 <@_Lasar> The end.
13:56 <@_Lasar> Works like a fucking charm.
13:56 <@solios> :O
13:56 <@ejp> huh
13:56 <@_Lasar> I should probably copyright that or something.
13:56 <@solios> JEENYUS

* 470+ of which had attached themselves to a single DCR strip. The unfortunate downside of The Great Thursday Spam Purge is that I accidentally deleted the only comment my sister's ever left on my blog. Burn, spambots, burn.

From The Orlando Sentinel :

CAPE CANAVERAL – NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is “not qualified” to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.

Griffin’s resistance is part of a no-holds-barred effort to preserve the Constellation program, the delayed and over-budget moon rocket that is his signature project.

From Nature :

When one member of the team, who are meant to smooth the transition from Bush-rule to Obama-rule, told Griffin they were “just trying to look under the hood” Griffin replied:

If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar. Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood.

We don't want to look under the hood, Mike. We want your head on a pike as a warning to future pork-happy ego-ejaculating administrators that pride is only acceptable when your project works.

At a glance, the best thing that could happen is that Obama fires Griffin, cancels Constellation, and replaces it with DIRECT - an on-paper system that reuses a large amount of the STS technologies without the need to develop a second booster.

We need to get off this rock, in a meaningful way - and Mike Griffin has proven he's not the man for the job.

Williams-Sonoma moves into the sex toy market:

12:20 < mdxi> i really want to write a subversive review for the tenderizer plug
12:21 < mdxi> see if it makes it onto teh site
12:37 < mdxi> how's this?
12:37 < mdxi> Specialized tools of this sort are so hard to come by in mainstream stores, and boutiques are notoriously overpriced, so I was thrilled to find this excellent specimen in my local W-S.
12:37 < mdxi> The polished haft is cool, refreshing, and thick enough for comfort, while the tapered base provides a secure grip - always important! As you'd expect, it's heavy, so extended use can become tiring, but if you're after this bad boy then you're a pro who can take it, right?
12:37 < mdxi> Pick one up and you'll be pounding away in no time!

mdxi++

A comment on this kotaku article, which became long-winded enough to merit preservation:

The internet-as-a-newspaper has several major advantages - not just adblocking. :)

I live in Pittsburgh (a drinking town with a football problem) and if the local media isn't ejaculating Steelers or Penguins coverage all over the top front then it's Doom And Gloom about the airport or public transit. There's far too much sports coverage and the comics page hasn't been worth looking forward to since Calvin & Hobbes ended.

Enter the internet. I can get my news from sites and services that actually report on issues I'm interested in (I don't give a FLAMING SHIT about what Ben Rothenberger had for lunch - I'm more interested in Al Franken's fight for the Senate, and you're going to have to dig deep in a Pittsburgh paper to get any indication that there's a stated named Minnesota anywhere on the map), I can read comics I find amusing, articles on subjects I'm interested in written by writers whose prose is digestible... and most importantly, I can elect to NOT consume anything somebody else thinks I ought to be reading.

While there's been some praise of Gawker/Kotaku in this thread, I think the company is suffering from the same form of USA Today-itis - too many low-content gossip-blithering articles shot up for quotas, paychecks, ad revenue, trying to get the commenting base incited so the sales people have better figures to flash at potential advertisers. Not enough BBC or Guardian grade articles, by a long shot.... but the beeb and the guardian are more broad-ranging with more employees and far less targeted at highly specific demographics. They're also Old Media news services with an old media attitude and an old media attention span.

I like the Old Media attention span, and I hope they keep it - and that New Media (Gawker et al) eventually learn what this "attention span" thing is and learn to embrace it - which is possible, as this article indicates. Until that happens, Gawker continues to be a jumble of bubblegum sound bites with the occasional bit of thought-provoking prose sticking out... just like USA Today, only with comments. Just like Slashdot, only without comment moderation.

One day the news media will evolve to a point where we the reader can have what we want in the way that we want it. For those of us who need something to do in between adderall doses, the future is now. For those of us who want All Articles All The Time - those of us who'd love to declare the Death Of The Sound Bite... that time is still a ways out.