Tip to Friendly Atheist.

via MSNBC.

NASA’s “Blue Marble” image is one of the best-known high-resolution pictures of our planet. It’s even included as one of the default images for Apple’s iPhone. Now NASA has released a brand-new “Blue Marble 2012,” based on image data from the VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP, the most recently launched Earth-observing satellite.

The Suomi spacecraft was known as the NPOESS Preparatory Project, or NPP, when it was launched last October. This week it was renamed the Suomi NPP — or Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership — to honor the late Verner. E. Suomi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who became known as the father of satellite meteorology. The $1.5 billion mission is a partnership involving NASA as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force.

Suomi is the first of a new generation of satellites that will provide data for climate research as well as weather prediction. It carries five instruments on board, and the biggest and most important of the five is the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS. This composite image was built up from swaths of surface image data collected on Jan. 4.

To learn more about Suomi, check out the mission’s website. For a huge 8,000-by-8,000-pixel version of Blue Marble 2012, go to the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr gallery. And for a daily dose of Earth imagery, including more pictures from VIIRS, click on over to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

via The Telegraph.

It looks like most of Europe knows that the GOP is crazy and anti reality.

Over in the US, the Republican party is choosing its presidential nominee to face Barack Obama in November. But whoever wins, science may lose.

The Grand Ol’ Party (GOP), as the Republicans are known, has an uncomfortable relationship with scientific fact. Rick Santorum, a frontrunner in the nomination race, has said of a fellow candidate: “If he wants to believe he is the descendant of a monkey then he has the right to believe that, but I disagree with him on this liberal belief.” Yes: acknowledging biology’s central premise is “liberal”. His opponents Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman and Newt Gingrich have all made noises doubting either climate change, evolution or both; only Jon Huntsman, a forlorn no-hoper, acknowledges the reality of both.

Yes, the GOP has made science into a political circus.  If people come to their senses we will be fine if not the US could be thrown back 40 years.

It’s not just the candidates. Fifty-two per cent of Republican voters reject the theory of evolution, saying mankind was created in present form within the last 10,000 years; just 31 per cent think man-made climate change is happening. In Congress, Republicans fought stem cell research and the HPV vaccine. Sarah Palin, ignoramus-in-chief, mocked “fruit-fly research” as a “pet project [with] little or nothing to do with the public good,” rejecting at a stroke most advances in genetics since Gregor Mendel.

To some extent, the cause is obvious. Religious conservatives have difficulties with science, notably evolution and a lot of medical research. Fiscal conservatives are leery of the idea of global warming, because the proposed responses are seen as constricting of business.

They have trouble with science because it shows their religion is wrong.  They have made their choice and religion wins over science – at least in their minds.

The Republican party is trapped by its own anti-science tactics. Part of the culture war strategy included attacking intellectuals: describing them as weak and spineless and effete. Academics, always liberal-inclined, responded by becoming more so: “They’re so overwhelmingly liberal now it’s kind of ridiculous, and so is the scientific community. The Democratic party is drawing the votes of people with advanced degrees, and the Republican party is not,” says Mooney. So, in turn, the Republican party reacted by becoming ever more distrustful of intellectualism, and pushing wave after wave of scientists and academics from the Right to the Left. “The more the Republican party rejects nuance and attacks knowledge, the more the people who have knowledge go the other way. It shows in statistics about liberalism among professors and scientists, and distribution of PhDs across the parties: there’s a giant knowledge and expertise gap.”

And to appeal to this anti-intellectual base, the Republican elite now have to pretend to be stupider than they are.

Are they really pretending?

Gingrich, who in earlier years repeatedly acknowledged the dangers of climate change, suddenly dropped a chapter written by a climate scientist from an upcoming book after getting challenged on air by Rush Limbaugh, the hugely influential Right-wing talk radio host; Mitt Romney moved from “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that” to “We don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet” in the space of three months.

Yup!  I guess they are!

Post by Sarah Moglia

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Via “The New Civil Rights Movement” and The Des Moines Register

Rick Santorum, 2nd place finisher of the Iowa caucus and big fan of Dan Savage, apparently knows more than Harvard doctors and evolutionary biologists. In two separate occasions in Iowa, Santorum mentioned that his opinions superseded that of actual scientific evidence.

On December 9th, Santorum

said he is concerned that schools will be forced to teach that all forms of sexual activity are normal, healthy and good behavior. He said that would be “counter to the belief structure of many people who have students attending those schools” and they would have little grounds to object.

Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that “science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.” (source)

So, despite the fact that homosexuality is actually healthy and completely natural,  climate change is real, and evolution is not even questioned by any real scientists in the field, Rick Santorum still thinks they don’t belong in the classroom. Should we also start teaching phrenology to students?

While we’re on the subject of just making shit up, Santorum said on December 6th:

“The answer is not what can we do to prevent deaths because of a lack of health insurance. There’s — I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance,”

“People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to,” he said. “And it’s not the fault of the government for not providing some sort of universal benefit. (source)

Of course, that’s patently false, but who needs facts these days? Actually, Santorum can’t even keep his own ‘facts’ straight anymore. After being criticized for saying he “didn’t want to make black people’s lives better,” he claimed he never said that. He said “blah people.” Because, you know, that’s a thing.

“In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say black. What I think — I started to say a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.” (source)

Right. Blah people. Makes perfect sense.

Of course, if he did just say “blah,” that just means he actually said, “I don’t want to make people’s lives better.” And trust me, Rick, we already knew you wouldn’t.

I’ve been surrounded by a little too much Santorum today. I think I need to go take a shower.

(If you’d like more sass, please check out my twitter!)

This CD came out a couple of years ago.  I heard about it then but never realized just how cool it was.  Check out this list of songs.

1. Science Is Real
2. Meet the Elements
3. I Am a Paleontologist w/Danny Weinkauf
4. The Bloodmobile
5. Electric Car w/Robin Goldwasser
6. My Brother the Ape
7. What Is a Shooting Star?
8. How Many Planets?
9. Why Does the Sun Shine?
10. Why Does the Sun Really Shine?
11. Roy G. Biv
12. Put It to the Test
13. Photosynthesis
14. Cells
15. Speed and Velocity w/Marty Beller
16. Computer Assisted Design
17. Solid Liquid Gas
18. Here Comes Science Bonus Track
19. The Ballad of Davy Crockett (in Outer Space)

You can download all of songs for $5.  If you order the CD you also get a second disc with The videos.

Here is one – just for you!

Make sure you put it in full screen mode.

The Aurora from TSO Photography on Vimeo.