And speaking of leaders with no respect for science or the environment…

Governor Schwarzengrabber made a big show here yesterday of driving… wait for it, this is rich… a hydrogen-powered Hummer.

Yes, let’s show the world our commitment to environmental responsibility by driving a spectacularly wasteful version of yet another fuel source.

Genius.

Incidentally, breaking an earlier promise, it wasn’t one of his own Hummers, but a ginned-up prototype presented especially for the photo op.  And the prototype was fake, too: it doesn’t actually run on hydrogen fuel cells.

Also, the nozzle he pushed into the tank wasn’t actually hooked up to anything.  And the station he was in isn’t open yet.

But, um, other than that…

Watching the lying, self-deluded buffoons who have seized power in this country is increasingly like playing one of those Highlights For Children games while killing times in the dentist’s office, the ones with baseball bats and catcher’s mitts half-hidden in the foliage of trees: How Many Lies Can You Spot In This Picture?

PS: a few years ago, I was one of the people touting hydrogen’s promise as a cleaner energy source.  I even lost a good deal of money investing in it.  Turns out, um, no, not so much.  The main source for the hydrogen fuel we’re likely to use in the next generation or two is… yep, good old fossil fuels.  As I’ve come to understand it, the main thing the technology does is merely shift the location of pollution, away from your exhaust pipe and into the hydrogen-production facility.  Which has a few benefits but in the long run doesn’t really accomplish as much as a lot of very sincere people (myself included) hope.

As to a better solution… that’s a whole other, longer post, and frankly less urgent than some other potentially crippling energy problems coming immediately down the pike.  There’s a good damn reason oil has quadrupled in price in the last few years, with no end in sight.  It ain’t coming back down, or even staying where it is, anytime soon.

Meanwhile, idiot governors playing with props for the cameras are just part of a mass delusion.  I’ll post much more about this when I have time, I promise…

NASA says a team of researchers, meticulously studying the movements of two satellites, have confirmed a key, untested prediction of the Theory of General Relativity known as "frame-dragging."

Just as the presence of mass warps the space around it (think of massively-heavy black holes causing the physical equivalent of, well, a black hole), a large, spinning body should therefore pull the nearby section space-time along for the ride.  (Think of a bowling ball spinning in molasses, of Karl Rove spinning in bullshit.)  In this case, the satellites wound up measurably shifted in location, simply from the relativistic effects of the Earth’s rotation.

Incidentally, one of the two major candidates for president would be comfortable in this conversation.  The other would be happier around medievalists speaking in tongues.

Missed this until today, but the Audubon Society this week released a study showing that almost a third of all bird populations in North America are facing significant decline.  In grassland areas, the number is over two-thirds.

Bush supporters would call this the "Healthy Bird Initiative."