What to Say?

The prosecutor in the Jena 6 case, while referring to the peaceful demonstrations on behalf of the multiple convicted batterer Mychal Bell had this to say:

"I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened," Walters said.

"The Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people and they responded accordingly," he said, without explaining exactly what he meant.

according to CNN. How do you reply to that kind of idiocy? This is the kind of stuff you get when you believe in mystical solutions instead of the reality, some 15,000-20,000 people were able to behave themselves and express themselves in peace.

In another peaceful protest with some element of religion to it, some students have been protesting the inclusion of the words "under god" in the national pledge. They have written a replacement version which they recite instead. Sadly their teachers have been lax in teaching history or they'd simply recite the original pledge (in the form recognized by Congress in 1942), written by reverend Francis Bellamy and not modified to include the two words they (and I, for the record) disagree with in 1954 by President Eisenhower. He makes his religious motivations abundantly clear.

Moving on:

Mark your calenders for November 24th. Yes, that's right, a little bit of sci-fi goodness in the form of the incredible Battlestar Gallactica. I'm definitely looking forward to that. When cash is a little less tight (sometime in 2029 according to my current budget schedule) I will own all of the BSG DVDs.

I've been tracking interesting material science developments on this blog for some time now. The latest entry is a type of aluminum composite. It reminds me of a type of armor I've been playing around with in my mind, I'd love to build some and see if it works but alas, funds are lacking.

A plan to cure global warming. It seems this might be good for the oceans, just in general, regardless of whether or not it would have an effect on CO2 (or whether or not CO2 is the chief driving force).

The Su-35 has been upgraded. I'll bet it doesn't even see the F-22 that kills it, though. Still, their thrust vectoring system is incredible.

In the "We're still learning about our not-so-fragile planet" news, the Amazon rain-forest is doing surprisingly well considering the drought according to satellite data.

An article on the ~1% of Muslim extremists who want us all to die. Some view Al Queda to be "on the run" but they are still actively fighting, and often winning, the propaganda wars. I've had people ask me, with a straight face, what anyone could possibly have against religion. Apparently they slept through history class and live under a rock currently. Not that I personally have anything against religion, mind you.

And, finally, an article on science in space and fluid dynamics. I look forward to learning more about this.