Only George could spend 80% of his speech talking about the State of everyone's union except ours. (Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Africa, Columbia and a few others I can't remember)

Only George could put his foot down ¹ about limiting earmarks when less then a month ago he signed off on HR 2764 which included 9,800 earmarks totaling $10 Billion dollars. (I heard there was one in there dishing out like $500,000 for fruit fly research in England or some shit)

Only George could bring up future spending of $30 billion on aids research in Africa when his country is on the verge of a recession.

Only George would be naive enough to talk about peace between Pakistan and Israel over the next year. ²

As I sit and reminisce over this speech. ³ I got to thinking about the mentality it takes to let a man like that sit ^{4 5} in office for 8 years. I think if any of us had a record like he does at work, we would be looking for another job. ⁶

I sit and think about democrats and republicans, conservatives and liberals, feces and urine. Seriously, have we become so lazy that we vote via the donkey or elephant? None of us should be any of the above. If there is a candidate that you totally agree with on all issues then I can't help but think there is something totally wrong with you. You are what I like to call a follower. May most of your views be conservative? Yes. Same goes with liberals, but to let your vote be manipulated by titles is completely ludacrous. The only reason we think in these narrow minded views is because that is how 'they' want you to think. Take for example, registering to vote. The first thing they ask you is what party you represent. Why? It's irrelevant. I represent the lesser shitbag running for office. I vote for the smaller agenda. I vote for the guy that doesn't promote fear. I vote for the guy who governs via the constitution. ⁷ I vote for the guy who wants to put the power back in our hands. I vote for the guy who represents the people. ^{8 9} I dont care if he rides in on an elephant, Donkey or a hermaphroditic midget. I guess my point is read, research, listen, and most of all, use your judgement of character when picking someone. If you aren't doing those things then stay the fuck out of the polling place or we will be responsible for wasting another 4 years, maybe 8.

And let us all congratulate George on having the lowest approval rate since Nixon during Watergate. Well done. =]

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Source of Mysterious Antimatter Found

Antimatter, which annihilates matter upon contact, seems to be rare in the universe. Still, for decades, scientists had clues that a vast cloud of antimatter lurked in space, but they did not know where it came from.

The mysterious source of this antimatter has now been discovered — stars getting ripped apart by neutron stars and black holes.

While antimatter propulsion systems are so far the stuff of science fiction, antimatter is very real.

What it is

All elementary particles, such as protons and electrons, have antimatter counterparts with the same mass but the opposite charge. For instance, the antimatter opposite of an electron, known as a positron, is positively charged.

When a particle meets its antiparticle, they destroy each other, releasing a burst of energy such as gamma rays. In 1978, gamma ray detectors flown on balloons detected a type of gamma ray emerging from space that is known to be emitted when electrons collide with positrons — meaning there was antimatter in space.

"It was quite a surprise back then to discover part of the universe was made of antimatter," researcher Gerry Skinner, an astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

These gamma rays apparently came from a cloud of antimatter roughly 10,000 light-years across surrounding our galaxy's core. This giant cloud shines brightly with gamma rays, with about the energy of 10,000 suns.

What exactly generated the antimatter was a mystery for the following decades. Suspects have included everything from exploding stars to dark matter.

Now, an international research team looking over four years of data from the European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite has pinpointed the apparent culprits. Their new findings suggest these positrons originate mainly from stars getting devoured by black holes and neutron stars.

As a black hole or neutron star destroys a star, tremendous amounts of radiation are released. Just as electrons and positrons emit the tell-tale gamma rays upon annihilation, so too can gamma rays combine to form electrons and positrons, providing the mechanism for the creation of the antimatter cloud, scientists think.

Billions and billions

The researchers calculate that a relatively ordinary star getting torn apart by a black hole or neutron star orbiting around it — a so-called "low mass X-ray binary" — could spew on the order of one hundred thousand billion billion billion billion positrons (a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) per second. These could account for a great deal of the antimatter that scientists have inferred, reducing or potentially eliminating the need for exotic explanations such as ones involving dark matter.

"Simple estimates suggest that about half and possibly all the antimatter is coming from X-ray binaries," said researcher Georg Weidenspointner of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.

Now that they have witnessed the death of antimatter, the scientists hope to see its birth.

"It would be interesting if black holes produced more matter than neutron stars, or vice versa, although it's too early to say one way or the other right now," Skinner explained. "It can be surprisingly hard to tell the difference between an X-ray binaries that hold black holes and neutron stars."

Love that old school house piano!
Mistabishi - No Matter What

Out of the Blue
Into the Black

One more thing before I go
One more thing I'll ask you Lord
You may need a murderer
Someone to do your dirty work

Don't act so innocent
I've seen you pound your fist into the earth
And I've read your book
It seems that you could use another fool
Well I'm cruel
And I look right through

You must have more important things to do
So if you need a murderer
Someone to do your dirty work

More from Low
Breaker
Hatchet
Belarus
Shame

Part 1
Part 2

Evil 1
Evil 2

here I go backstroking through the fire again
the flesh burns and mends as souls drift up in smoke
this is our world and we'll burn it together
and play in the ash of what we tore down.

cross the street from your storefront cemetary
hear me hailing from inside and realize

i am the conscience clear
in pain or ecstacy
and we were all weaned my dear
upon the same fatigue

staring at the sun
oh my own voice
cannot save me now
standing in the sea
it's just
one more breath
and then
down i go

your mouth is open wide
the lover is inside
and all the tumults done
collided with the sign
you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your body's over me

note the trees because
the dirt is temporary
more to mine than fact face
name and monetary

be what you will
and then thrown down your life
oh it's a damned fine game
and we can play all night

beat the skins and let the
loose lips kiss you clean
quietly pour out like light
like light, like answering the sun

you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide
you're trying hard to breathe
the water's at your neck
there's lightning in your teeth
your body's over me

Warning signs that suggest deception. Based on the book by Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World. The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:
A lot can be learned from the following in science and life

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").

Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.

Quantify, wherever possible.

If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.

Occam's razor - if there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.

Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are:

Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.

Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric

Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.

Argument from "authority".

Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavorable" decision).

Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).

Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).

Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).

Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)

Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").

Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.

Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).

Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).

Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").

Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).

Confusion of correlation and causation.

Caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack.

Suppressed evidence or half-truths.

Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

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