North Korea shoots off three short-range missiles.
Group finds use of torture in Syria.
Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, says accusations that he smoked crack are “ridiculous.”
A huge asteroid will just miss hitting Earth this month.
Judge blocks Arkansas abortion law.
The Tigers beat the Rangers 2-1.
Everybody else is posting this, so why not?
This is Commander Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station, doing his version of David Bowie’s classic “Space Oddity” from the space station.
Nerdgasms all around, Ensign.
Britain and France tell the U.N. that Syria has used chemical weapons.
Death toll at the Texas fertilizer plant explosion is believed to be 15.
Gun bill is basically toast.
Among other things, the man who mailed the ricin to President Obama is an Elvis impersonator.
Telescopes spot planets that are in the “Goldilocks” zone.
The Tigers lost to the Mariners 2-0.
Cardinals meet; no pope yet.
NRA signals it might agree to background checks.
Colorado approves bill for civil unions.
FAA approves plan to fix 787 batteries.
Mars once had water.
The meteor that exploded over Siberia yesterday was caught on camera by a lot of people.
There are more here.
It’s over — hostage drama in Alabama ends with child rescued, kidnapper dead.
President Obama talks tough on guns in Minneapolis.
Sen. McCain says he won’t support filibuster against Hagel.
Gas build-up blamed for explosion in Mexico City.
Justice Department plans to sue S & P over financial crisis.
Whew — Earth safe from asteroid flyby next week.
Gun Shots — Hendrik Herzberg on getting reasonable people to talk about guns.
It was hard, in the massacre’s immediate aftermath, to find a presentable advocate for the view that the No. 1 cause of gun violence is a shortage of guns. (The No. 2 cause, presumably, is a surplus of people, since people, not guns, kill people.) “Fox News Sunday” and its host, Chris Wallace, had to settle for Representative Louie Gohmert, of Texas. Representative Gohmert, a birther and a climate-change denier, is normally dismissible as an amusing eccentric, a self-lampooning clown. Not this time. His chilling advice for Sandy Hook’s murdered principal—“I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up, so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off, before he can kill those precious kids”—has been widely quoted and widely deplored. What Gohmert said next has received less notice. Wallace pressed him further on why he thinks civilians should possess weapons like the M-4 (the Congressman’s choice) and the AR-15 (the school shooter’s choice and the top-selling rifle in the nation, notably in the past two weeks). “Well,” Gohmert replied,
for the reason George Washington said: a free people should be an armed people. It insures against the tyranny of the government. If they know that the biggest army is the American people, then you don’t have the tyranny that came from King George. That is why it was put in there. That’s why, once you start drawing the line, where do you stop?
After Sandy Hook, as after the Columbine horror, in 1999, and the dozens of mass shootings since, many Americans, gun owners among them, wondered why any sane person would require a rapid-fire killing machine with a foot-long banana clip to feel safe in his or her home or person, let alone to take target practice, shoot skeet, or hunt rabbits. But, for Hobbesian gun nuts of Gohmert’s ilk, the essence of the Second Amendment, when all is said and done, is not about any of that. Its real, irreducible purpose is to enable some self-designated fraction of the American people, in a pinch, to make war against the American government—to overthrow it by force and violence, if that is deemed necessary. If that’s the line you draw, then where, logically, do you stop? In Georgian times, when the amendment was ratified, the most fearsome weapon anyone, soldier or civilian, could carry was a single-shot musket. And today? “Shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles don’t shoot down black helicopters, people with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles shoot down black helicopters”? Gohmert is a fringe figure, but the fringe is as long as an AR-15’s barrel. His seditious fantasies of freelance insurrection are shared by a nontrivial portion of the N.R.A. membership and board, by the N.R.A.’s feral kid brother, the Gun Owners of America, and by a gaggle of locked-and-loaded politicians who, not long ago, were threatening “Second Amendment remedies” for policy offenses like the Affordable Care Act.
Second Acts — Actor Reed Birney comes back to Broadway in the revival of Picnic.
Winning a Tony was a childhood dream of Mr. Birney’s ever since he began fantasizing about Broadway from his rural hometown, Seaford, Del. But at 58, after landing his second job on Broadway, he is quick to say that he’d be getting ahead of himself to imagine winning Tonys.
“Right now I just feel like I’m the poster boy for perseverance,” Mr. Birney said during a recent interview in the shabby-chic living room of his boxy Upper West Side apartment, where the bookcases hold part of his 7,000-film collection and board games like Life and Battleship that he plays with his wife, the actress Constance Shulman, and their two teenagers.
“When I was young and cute, I thought I had to really get rich and famous,” he continued. “And I was getting older and my looks were going, and I wasn’t getting famous, or even a little bit famous, I thought — oh dear, what a sad thing. I was just wildly frustrated. I felt like I had something more to give, but no one was buying for the longest time.”
Now, it seems, no one can get enough of Mr. Birney, at least among downtown theater artists, many of whom are half his age. “Blasted” hit at the same time that a new crowd of cool kids was emerging Off Broadway, which included the ubiquitous director Sam Gold and his frequent muse, the playwright Annie Baker. The two recruited Mr. Birney and other actors to develop Ms. Baker’s play “Circle Mirror Transformation,” which became a major critical and audience hit Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2009.
Mr. Birney’s character, the heartbroken carpenter Schultz, became his stock in trade: Charles Isherwood began his review in The New York Times of a later production, David West Read’s “Dream of the Burning Boy,” by writing, “Reed Birney is quickly becoming New York’s foremost actor in a particular subspecialty, communicating the grief of average men facing extraordinary loss.”
Yard Sale — Want some slightly used rocket launching equipment?
On July 20, 2011, at 5:57 a.m. EDT, the space shuttle Atlantis made its final touchdown on the runway of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s storied shuttle program wasn’t the only thing that came to its official end that day; the intervening year-and-a-half has also seen the slow obsolescence of the tools that allowed the program to be what it was: the rocket launch pads and the equipment hangers and the buildings of Cape Canaveral.
Now, it seems, those items — those relics of a program past — will be slowly sold off. Or, perhaps, rented off. NASA, the Orlando Sentinel reports, has been advertising — quietly — a long inventory of the facilities and equipment at the Kennedy Space Center, “listing them as available for use, lease or, in some cases, outright purchase by the right business.”
Among the items in that inventory:
• launchpad 39A, where shuttles were launched;
• space in the Vehicle Assembly Building, the 526-foot-tall structure first used to assemble Saturn V-Apollo rockets;
• Orbiter Processing Facilities — essentially large garages where shuttles were once maintained;
• Hangar N (including its high-tech test equipment);
• the launch-control center;
• a 15,000-foot landing strip;
• a parachute-packing plant;
• an array of aerospace tracking antennas;
• and various other buildings and sections of undeveloped property.NASA’s little enormous yard sale, if it does take place, may also be something of a fire sale — no rocket-fuel pun intended. The equipment in question requires careful (and expensive) maintenance; and federal funding for that maintenance is scheduled to expire by the end of 2013. The swampy environment of Cape Canaveral’s particular stretch of Florida coast is harsh on metal and other materials; if the transferrable equipment isn’t transferred within that timeframe — and if buildings aren’t used and maintained — they’ll start to rust and otherwise deteriorate in their inhospitable environment.
Doonesbury — One size fits none.
Via TPM:
The Milky Way contains at least 100 billion planets, or enough to have one for each of its stars, and many of them are likely to be capable of supporting conditions favorable to life, according to a new estimate from scientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (Caltech).
That specific figure of 100 billion planets has been suggested by earlier, separate studies, but the new analysis corroborates the earlier numbers and may even add to them, as it was conducted on a single star system — Kepler 32 — which contains five planets and is located some 1,000 light years away from Earth in between the patch of sky found between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, where NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope is pointed.
I just hope none of them are watching us. How embarrassing.
Forty years ago today Apollo 17 was launched. The liftoff was delayed until after midnight by a minor technical glitch. I was living here in Miami, so a few seconds after the launch I went out to the balcony of my apartment and looked to the northeast. A moment later I saw the flames of the Saturn rocket streaking into the night sky like a huge meteor, except it was going up, not down. It was the last planned mission to the moon, and so far, it still is.
Via TPM:
The most ancient and distant galaxy yet observed — the light from which traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth — has been pinpointed by scientists taking an unprecedentedly deep look through the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA announced on Thursday.
The galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, is tiny by comparison to most of the galaxies we’re more familiar with, including our own Milky Way.
“It’s less than a percent of the Milky Way in terms of its diameter and its mass,” said Dan Coe, the astronomer at the multi-institution Space Telescope Science Institute, who first discovered the galaxy back in February 2012, in a phone interview with TPM on Thursday.
In fact, as NASA notes in its press release on the news, MACS0647-JD is just 600 light years wide, while the Milky Way is 150,000 light years across. The ancient galaxy is small even by the standards of other dwarf galaxies, which are typically on the order of 2,000 light years across.
The ancient galaxy appears to have been spawned just 420 million years after the Big Bang is theorized to have occurred or earlier, an incredibly short period in cosmic time.
In the time it has taken the light from that galaxy to get here — 13.3 billion years — that cluster of stars could have expanded to be the size of our own galaxy, planets could have formed, life could have begun, evolved, become sentient; civilizations could have begun, flourished, faded, and died away; all in the time it took for those photons to reach the Hubble telescope. And we’ll never know.
But what an amazing journey nonetheless.
Another number 2 leader of Al-Qaeda has been killed.
The Taliban threatens to kill Prince Harry.
Syria — Russia says Assad would leave if he was voted out. (I think the people have spoken…)
The Chicago teachers’ strike takes on political overtones.
Anonymous claims credit for hacking GoDaddy.
Flash spotted on Jupiter. (That’s how War of the Worlds started….)
Tropical Update: TS Leslie is far north, heading for the Maritimes. Hurricane Michael is also heading northeast, and the newest disturbance is going that way, too.
Andy Murray won the mens’ title at the U.S. Open.
The Tigers’ slump continues with a loss to the White Sox.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the delicate balance of racial tension in America and equal opportunity as framed by the first black president.
The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear, by being “clean” (as Joe Biden once labeled him)—and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches. This irony is rooted in the greater ironies of the country he leads. For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government. In warring against that paradox, African Americans have historically been restricted to the realm of protest and agitation. But when President Barack Obama pledged to “get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” he was not protesting or agitating. He was not appealing to federal power—he was employing it. The power was black—and, in certain quarters, was received as such.No amount of rhetorical moderation could change this. It did not matter that the president addressed himself to “every parent in America.” His insistence that “everybody [pull] together” was irrelevant. It meant nothing that he declined to cast aspersions on the investigating authorities, or to speculate on events. Even the fact that Obama expressed his own connection to Martin in the quietest way imaginable—“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”—would not mollify his opposition. It is, after all, one thing to hear “I am Trayvon Martin” from the usual placard-waving rabble-rousers. Hearing it from the commander of the greatest military machine in human history is another.
By virtue of his background—the son of a black man and a white woman, someone who grew up in multiethnic communities around the world—Obama has enjoyed a distinctive vantage point on race relations in America. Beyond that, he has displayed enviable dexterity at navigating between black and white America, and at finding a language that speaks to a critical mass in both communities. He emerged into national view at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, with a speech heralding a nation uncolored by old prejudices and shameful history. There was no talk of the effects of racism. Instead Obama stressed the power of parenting, and condemned those who would say that a black child carrying a book was “acting white.” He cast himself as the child of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas and asserted, “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” When, as a senator, he was asked if the response to Hurricane Katrina evidenced racism, Obama responded by calling the “ineptitude” of the response “color-blind.”
E.B. White — In remembrance of Neil Armstrong, a note from the July 26, 1969 edition of The New Yorker.
The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.
Carl Hiaasen on keeping your distance.
As the Republican delegates this week struggle to stay six feet from the strippers, Romney is trying to put about 600,000 light years between himself and Todd Akin. However, the presidential nominee has a big problem, and that problem is his running mate, Paul Ryan.The Wisconsin congressman, another “social conservative,” joined with Akin to co-sponsor anti-choice legislation in the House. The bill would ban all abortions “unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of forcible rape or incest.”
Last week, during the Akin fiasco, Ryan clammed up when he was asked to explain the term “forcible” rape in relation to other rapes.
“Rape is rape,” he said over and over in the tone of a constipated macaw.
Like Akin, Ryan doesn’t really believe rape is rape. He and many anti-abortionists favor a narrow definition of the crime. For example, they think statutory rape involving teens is different, and that pregnancies resulting from those acts should not be terminated.
The philosophy is pure Akin and Ryan. They want to be in your bedroom, in your doctor’s office, in your church. Forget privacy. Forget personal decisions.
A 14-year-old girl who gets pressured into having sex with her boyfriend must have the baby. Same goes for a wife forced by threat to have sex with a violent husband. Same goes for any woman with a medical condition that makes pregnancy dangerous.
Meet your new Republican Party, hijacked by reactionaries.
Doonesbury — Take me to your leader.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the delicate balance of racial tension in America and equal opportunity as framed by the first black president.
The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear, by being “clean” (as Joe Biden once labeled him)—and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches. This irony is rooted in the greater ironies of the country he leads. For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government. In warring against that paradox, African Americans have historically been restricted to the realm of protest and agitation. But when President Barack Obama pledged to “get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” he was not protesting or agitating. He was not appealing to federal power—he was employing it. The power was black—and, in certain quarters, was received as such.No amount of rhetorical moderation could change this. It did not matter that the president addressed himself to “every parent in America.” His insistence that “everybody [pull] together” was irrelevant. It meant nothing that he declined to cast aspersions on the investigating authorities, or to speculate on events. Even the fact that Obama expressed his own connection to Martin in the quietest way imaginable—“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”—would not mollify his opposition. It is, after all, one thing to hear “I am Trayvon Martin” from the usual placard-waving rabble-rousers. Hearing it from the commander of the greatest military machine in human history is another.
By virtue of his background—the son of a black man and a white woman, someone who grew up in multiethnic communities around the world—Obama has enjoyed a distinctive vantage point on race relations in America. Beyond that, he has displayed enviable dexterity at navigating between black and white America, and at finding a language that speaks to a critical mass in both communities. He emerged into national view at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, with a speech heralding a nation uncolored by old prejudices and shameful history. There was no talk of the effects of racism. Instead Obama stressed the power of parenting, and condemned those who would say that a black child carrying a book was “acting white.” He cast himself as the child of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas and asserted, “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” When, as a senator, he was asked if the response to Hurricane Katrina evidenced racism, Obama responded by calling the “ineptitude” of the response “color-blind.”
E.B. White — In remembrance of Neil Armstrong, a note from the July 26, 1969 edition of The New Yorker.
The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.
Carl Hiaasen on keeping your distance.
As the Republican delegates this week struggle to stay six feet from the strippers, Romney is trying to put about 600,000 light years between himself and Todd Akin. However, the presidential nominee has a big problem, and that problem is his running mate, Paul Ryan.The Wisconsin congressman, another “social conservative,” joined with Akin to co-sponsor anti-choice legislation in the House. The bill would ban all abortions “unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of forcible rape or incest.”
Last week, during the Akin fiasco, Ryan clammed up when he was asked to explain the term “forcible” rape in relation to other rapes.
“Rape is rape,” he said over and over in the tone of a constipated macaw.
Like Akin, Ryan doesn’t really believe rape is rape. He and many anti-abortionists favor a narrow definition of the crime. For example, they think statutory rape involving teens is different, and that pregnancies resulting from those acts should not be terminated.
The philosophy is pure Akin and Ryan. They want to be in your bedroom, in your doctor’s office, in your church. Forget privacy. Forget personal decisions.
A 14-year-old girl who gets pressured into having sex with her boyfriend must have the baby. Same goes for a wife forced by threat to have sex with a violent husband. Same goes for any woman with a medical condition that makes pregnancy dangerous.
Meet your new Republican Party, hijacked by reactionaries.
Doonesbury — Take me to your leader.
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake hits northern Japan; no tsunami warning issued.
Syrian rebels claim to have shot down a Syrian fighter jet.
Four members of the Congo Olympic team have gone missing.
It’s Primary Day in Florida.
The death toll now stands at three in the shooting in Texas.
President Obama calls NASA to congratulate them on Curiosity and to keep an eye out for Martians.
R.I.P. Helen Gurley Brown, 90, the original Cosmopolitan.
Tropical Update: Invest 93L will make the circuit and stay away from land.
The Tigers drop one to the Twins.
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake hits northern Japan; no tsunami warning issued.
Syrian rebels claim to have shot down a Syrian fighter jet.
Four members of the Congo Olympic team have gone missing.
It’s Primary Day in Florida.
The death toll now stands at three in the shooting in Texas.
President Obama calls NASA to congratulate them on Curiosity and to keep an eye out for Martians.
R.I.P. Helen Gurley Brown, 90, the original Cosmopolitan.
Tropical Update: Invest 93L will make the circuit and stay away from land.
The Tigers drop one to the Twins.
Ryan’s Party — Jonathan Chait says that by choosing Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney turns the GOP over to the hard-core.
Romney has made the risky but defensible calculation that, if he is to concur with most of his party’s ideological baggage, he might as well bring aboard its best salesman. And Ryan is that. During his rise to power he has displayed an awesome political talent. He is ambitious but constantly described by others as foreswearing ambition. He comes from a wealthy background but has defined himself as “blue collar,” because he comes from a place that is predominantly blue collar. He spent the entire Bush administration either supporting the administration’s deficit-increasing policies, or proposing alternative policies that would have created much higher deficits than even Bush could stomach, but came away from it with a reputation as the ultimate champion of fiscal responsibility.
What makes Ryan so extraordinary is that he is not just a handsome slickster skilled at conveying sincerity with a winsome heartland affect. Pols like that come along every year. He is also (as Rich Yeselson put it) the chief party theoretician. Far more than even Ronald Reagan, he is deeply grounded is the ideological precepts of the conservative movement — a longtime Ayn Rand devotee who imbibed deeply from the lunatic supply-side tracts of Jude Wanniski and George Gilder. He has not merely formed an alliance with the movement, he is a product of it.
In this sense, Ryan’s nomination represents an important historical marker and the completion of a 50-year struggle. Starting in the early sixties, conservative activists set out to seize control of the Republican Party. At the time the party was firmly in the hands of Establishmentarians who had made their peace with the New Deal, but the activists regarded the entire development of the modern regulatory and welfare states as a horrific assault on freedom bound to lead to imminent societal collapse. In fits and starts, the conservatives slowly advanced – nominating Goldwater, retreating under Nixon, nominating Reagan, retreating as Reagan sought to govern, and on and on through Gingrich, Bush, and his successors.
Over time the movement and the party have grown synonymous, and Ryan’s nominations represents a moment when the conservative movement ceased to control the politicians from behind the scenes and openly assumed the mantle of power.
Telling Time on Mars — Rebecca J. Rosen on how to make a watch to run on Martian time.
Time on Mars isn’t just a conversion the way that we add or subtract hours to change time zones here on Earth. Mars actually spins a bit slower than our own planet, and as a result, its whole day is a bit longer — 24 Earth hours and 39 Earth minutes. (This means that the 3037 Sols — Martian days — that Opportunity has been on the planet is something close to 3119 Earth days.) But the convention is to still use a 24-hour day with a 60-minute hour, meaning that each minute on Mars last longer than each minute on Earth.
For scientists who work on the Mars missions, this can mean that the schedule of their work shifts by 39 minutes every day. A wonderful little story about this came out of the 2004 Opportunity landing. As Julie Townsend, a Mars rover team member explained at the time, “Everything on this mission is based on local solar time on Mars. From home, during the mission practice tests, it was very difficult to constantly translate Earth time to Mars time.” So the team turned to master watchmaker Garo Anserlian to craft special Martian-time watches.
“Since I was a young child I’ve put my heart into making very precise time pieces, now I was being asked to create a watch that was slow on purpose,” Anserlian mused. He spent two months designing and building his Martian clock, attaching tiny lead weights to slow the wheels and hands. His first effort was only off by 10 seconds, and from there, he fine-tuned it to get it exactly right. Once he had his working model, he could replicate it pretty easily for anyone on the rover team who wanted one. Anserlian told NASA that when he watched Opportunity land, “I felt proud; I got goosebumps. I saw that some of them had two watches on and I thought, one of them was mine! I was proud as an American that it landed and secondly that my watches will be used.”
Leaving Hate Behind — A former skinhead tells how he escaped the hate.
I first found true love through violence. I was 10, hanging out with my cousin, who was pushing and antagonizing me. Finally, I snapped and started using my karate moves against him. By the time we were done fighting, I had dislocated three of his fingers and his shoulder. My aunt was furious, yelling at my father over what I had done. But my father couldn’t have been prouder. He gave me a hug and a kiss, the most meaningful embrace and words of love I’d ever received from him.I chased that euphoric high for years, beating up neighborhood bullies and later getting into punk-rock music. At one show, I befriended some older, tough kids who were skinheads. I was drawn into their world pretty quickly as they took me under their wing and encouraged my violent tendencies. For the first time, I had older brothers who looked out for me; their camaraderie felt like an extension of my father’s love.
I’ve since climbed out of that world of hate and have spent 15 years atoning for my past. But the tragedy of this past week, when Wade Michael Page killed six people at a Wisconsin Sikh temple, pulls me back into the memories of those years. I’ve met a lot of people who could easily do what Page, who had ties to white supremacist groups, did. Such atrocities make me wonder: Could my former self have committed a similar act? Could I have been Wade Michael Page? It makes me sick to say that I don’t know.
Since leaving the skinheads, I’ve been working with troubled kids, counseling them on how to escape the seductive grip of violence and hate. I’ve gotten 86 kids out of the white-supremacist movement across the country, almost as many as I helped draw into that culture when I was younger. I have a lot more work to do.
Doonesbury — Back bar.
Ryan’s Party — Jonathan Chait says that by choosing Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney turns the GOP over to the hard-core.
Romney has made the risky but defensible calculation that, if he is to concur with most of his party’s ideological baggage, he might as well bring aboard its best salesman. And Ryan is that. During his rise to power he has displayed an awesome political talent. He is ambitious but constantly described by others as foreswearing ambition. He comes from a wealthy background but has defined himself as “blue collar,” because he comes from a place that is predominantly blue collar. He spent the entire Bush administration either supporting the administration’s deficit-increasing policies, or proposing alternative policies that would have created much higher deficits than even Bush could stomach, but came away from it with a reputation as the ultimate champion of fiscal responsibility.
What makes Ryan so extraordinary is that he is not just a handsome slickster skilled at conveying sincerity with a winsome heartland affect. Pols like that come along every year. He is also (as Rich Yeselson put it) the chief party theoretician. Far more than even Ronald Reagan, he is deeply grounded is the ideological precepts of the conservative movement — a longtime Ayn Rand devotee who imbibed deeply from the lunatic supply-side tracts of Jude Wanniski and George Gilder. He has not merely formed an alliance with the movement, he is a product of it.
In this sense, Ryan’s nomination represents an important historical marker and the completion of a 50-year struggle. Starting in the early sixties, conservative activists set out to seize control of the Republican Party. At the time the party was firmly in the hands of Establishmentarians who had made their peace with the New Deal, but the activists regarded the entire development of the modern regulatory and welfare states as a horrific assault on freedom bound to lead to imminent societal collapse. In fits and starts, the conservatives slowly advanced – nominating Goldwater, retreating under Nixon, nominating Reagan, retreating as Reagan sought to govern, and on and on through Gingrich, Bush, and his successors.
Over time the movement and the party have grown synonymous, and Ryan’s nominations represents a moment when the conservative movement ceased to control the politicians from behind the scenes and openly assumed the mantle of power.
Telling Time on Mars — Rebecca J. Rosen on how to make a watch to run on Martian time.
Time on Mars isn’t just a conversion the way that we add or subtract hours to change time zones here on Earth. Mars actually spins a bit slower than our own planet, and as a result, its whole day is a bit longer — 24 Earth hours and 39 Earth minutes. (This means that the 3037 Sols — Martian days — that Opportunity has been on the planet is something close to 3119 Earth days.) But the convention is to still use a 24-hour day with a 60-minute hour, meaning that each minute on Mars last longer than each minute on Earth.
For scientists who work on the Mars missions, this can mean that the schedule of their work shifts by 39 minutes every day. A wonderful little story about this came out of the 2004 Opportunity landing. As Julie Townsend, a Mars rover team member explained at the time, “Everything on this mission is based on local solar time on Mars. From home, during the mission practice tests, it was very difficult to constantly translate Earth time to Mars time.” So the team turned to master watchmaker Garo Anserlian to craft special Martian-time watches.
“Since I was a young child I’ve put my heart into making very precise time pieces, now I was being asked to create a watch that was slow on purpose,” Anserlian mused. He spent two months designing and building his Martian clock, attaching tiny lead weights to slow the wheels and hands. His first effort was only off by 10 seconds, and from there, he fine-tuned it to get it exactly right. Once he had his working model, he could replicate it pretty easily for anyone on the rover team who wanted one. Anserlian told NASA that when he watched Opportunity land, “I felt proud; I got goosebumps. I saw that some of them had two watches on and I thought, one of them was mine! I was proud as an American that it landed and secondly that my watches will be used.”
Leaving Hate Behind — A former skinhead tells how he escaped the hate.
I first found true love through violence. I was 10, hanging out with my cousin, who was pushing and antagonizing me. Finally, I snapped and started using my karate moves against him. By the time we were done fighting, I had dislocated three of his fingers and his shoulder. My aunt was furious, yelling at my father over what I had done. But my father couldn’t have been prouder. He gave me a hug and a kiss, the most meaningful embrace and words of love I’d ever received from him.I chased that euphoric high for years, beating up neighborhood bullies and later getting into punk-rock music. At one show, I befriended some older, tough kids who were skinheads. I was drawn into their world pretty quickly as they took me under their wing and encouraged my violent tendencies. For the first time, I had older brothers who looked out for me; their camaraderie felt like an extension of my father’s love.
I’ve since climbed out of that world of hate and have spent 15 years atoning for my past. But the tragedy of this past week, when Wade Michael Page killed six people at a Wisconsin Sikh temple, pulls me back into the memories of those years. I’ve met a lot of people who could easily do what Page, who had ties to white supremacist groups, did. Such atrocities make me wonder: Could my former self have committed a similar act? Could I have been Wade Michael Page? It makes me sick to say that I don’t know.
Since leaving the skinheads, I’ve been working with troubled kids, counseling them on how to escape the seductive grip of violence and hate. I’ve gotten 86 kids out of the white-supremacist movement across the country, almost as many as I helped draw into that culture when I was younger. I have a lot more work to do.
Doonesbury — Back bar.
Syria — The prime minister has bugged out.
Egypt pledges a swift response to the killing of its border guards.
The Sikh temple gunman, Wade Michael Page, has been linked to several hate groups.
Curiosity begins to unpack on the Martian surface.
R.I.P. Playwright Mark O’Donnell, 58, co-author of Hairspray.
Tropical Update: Ernesto may be a hurricane by the time it hits the Yucatan; Florence is now a post-tropical cyclone; there’s another disturbance off the Cape Verde Islands headed west.
The Tigers, behind Justin Verlander, beat the Yankees.
Syria — The prime minister has bugged out.
Egypt pledges a swift response to the killing of its border guards.
The Sikh temple gunman, Wade Michael Page, has been linked to several hate groups.
Curiosity begins to unpack on the Martian surface.
R.I.P. Playwright Mark O’Donnell, 58, co-author of Hairspray.
Tropical Update: Ernesto may be a hurricane by the time it hits the Yucatan; Florence is now a post-tropical cyclone; there’s another disturbance off the Cape Verde Islands headed west.
The Tigers, behind Justin Verlander, beat the Yankees.
Syria — Assad is losing out in the country.
Blackout leaves half of India in the dark.
NASA’s Curiosity nears Mars.
NBC steps on its own coverage with a gold medal promo on “Today.”
R.I.P. Tony Martin, 98, crooner.
Tropical Update: Something to keep an eye on…
The Tigers lose again to the Red Sox.
