Go, Go, Go

Daughter of Slave votes for Obama

Worth sharing:

Amanda Jones, age 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries... She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

Please vote early

Just a reminder to vote early if you can. It's easy, and you may shorten the election day line for some poor schmuck who has trouble getting time off to vote.

Also, if you know ANY California residents, now is the time to call & ask them to vote NO on Prop 8. It's too close to call, and we need every vote for equality we can get.

And, because it's hilarious, here for your procrastination pleasure is an obama-lantern.

McCain sneers at women's health

McCain's sneering finger quotes about the "health of the mother" sure scared the willies out of me.

For your slacking pleasure

Pay a friendly visit to President Palin's office.

AstroJobs 2009

Anyone else dismayed by the small # of astro faculty jobs on the register so far this fall? Or is it too early?

The rule of thumb for corporate health care:

"There is no medical procedure so uncomfortable or humiliating that it cannot be made worse by spending three hours on hold with the insurance company."

Hubble repair mission delayed to Feb 2009

As you may have heard, a key control system on the Hubble Space Telescope failed Saturday. It may be possible, though laborious, to switch to a redundant backup that's been turned off for the past 18 years. However, switching to the backup means you don't have a backup anymore, and you know how NASA likes redundancy. As a result, NASA has delayed the Hubble repair mission from Oct 14 to mid-February 2009 at the earliest.

Some of that delay is for the engineers to figure out how to repair/replace the failed unit. (Apparently there's a spare in a closet.) Some of that delay is to train astronauts in the new repair (Go John Grunsfeld, go!) But most is because of two strange, crazy notions in which NASA, despite all the evidence, still believes. They are:

• The International Space Station is NOT a colossal boondoggle we'll dump in the ocean as soon as it's done. Rather, it is vitally important to prove that humans can build pointless space stations in space. Even if it delays fixing Hubble, the one shining achievement of manned spaceflight in the last 20 yrs.
  
• Keeping a backup shuttle ready on the launchpad makes the Space Shuttle safer. One Shuttle: one-in-fifty chance of catastrophe. Two Shuttle: safe.

Just bitter, sorry.
Links: NYT article; Steinn's wrap-up; Julianne's take

Fantasy Dinner Party

The game: think of living, real people you'd like to invite to a dinner party. (No fictional characters or dead folks in this version of the game.) You get to assume that of course, they'd come to your party.

My list so far:
Salman Rushdie. Madhur Jaffrey. Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Tina Fey. Jane Goodall. Bob Mould. Barbara Kingsolver. Larry Kramer. Adrienne Rich. Alan Bean. Jon Stewart.

Please suggest other guests -- or create your own list.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL

Non-embedded link here.



Do I need to say that Tina Fey rocks my casbah? Thanks to my sib for the link.