] The information coming in from the Mars rovers is
] exciting for NASA, but it's ending some of the action for
] bookies in Britain.
]
] The bookmaking firm Ladbrokes announced it's stopped
] taking bets on the question of whether there was ever
] life on Mars.
]
] NASA scientists said yesterday that the rover Opportunity
] found strong evidence to suggest at least part of the Red
] Planet once had a wet enough environment to sustain life.
]
] A Ladbrokes spokesman says the latest odds in favor of
] past life on Mars were 16-1. Back in the '70s, when the
] first bets were placed, the odds were 1,000-1.
]
] He says he expects that scientists will find evidence of
] past life on Mars within the coming years.

Bookies Stop Taking Bets on Life on Mars

inignoct wrote:
] ryan is the supernicety wrote:
] ] LA Times:
] ]
] ] I am a high school teacher and the daughter of
] ] Holocaust survivors. Monday morning, Period 1, a student,
] ] age 17, comes into my room. She asks me if I had seen the
] ] film "The Passion."
] ]
] ] I answer, "No."
] ]
] ] She continues, "It was so sad. I cried so much. I
] ] hate the Jews."
] ]
] ] Very, very sadly, that tells the whole story, Mr.
] ] Gibson.
] ]
] ] Anna Paikow
] ] Los Angeles
]
] *sigh*
]
] [ And i'll bet that fool calls hereself a christian too. Hint
] for the high-school chick -- Jesus wasn't so much into hate...
] if you want to hate people, you lose the right to call
] yourself a follower of Christ. End of Story. -k]

You're right. But she's just a kid. And kids do stupid things. Hell knows I did. The point is that someday, maybe she'll become enlightened. It was this teacher's chance to impart some of that enlightenment at that moment. Tactfully. Wisely. With compassion.

RE: Eschaton

] From a former professor:
]
] At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George
] Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him.
] In my class, he declared that "people are poor because
] they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social
] security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public
] schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal
] Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission
] were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition."
] To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."
] Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee,
] California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated
] the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that
] her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl
] Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain,
] Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying
] all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and
] economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate
] Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New
] Deal.

[ Yeah... as a Vanderbilt grad, i've had my own exposure to the "people are poor because they don't want to work hard". And as much as i try to be fair to people, it's usually the most intellectually lazy sons and daughters of priviledge that have this opinion. It's a bullshit argument from people who lack any perspective on what a normal human being is like. Bush is a rich kid. He's never been poor, and he's never been close enough to it to have a clue what it means. I don't think he's interested in discovering what it really means to be poor, or what it takes to help people. His policies are transparent, like every so-called fiscal conservative i've ever met. I'm convinced most fiscal conservatives are like most fundamentalist christians... going through the motions, preaching self righteously about beliefs and ideals they don't actually live by, when their true motivating factors are power and greed. You want to support a candidate because he'll hook you up with more money, and fuck the rest? Fine, say so outright. But i'm pretty sick of hearing the "i'm fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" line. Bullshit. 9 times out of 10 you're greedy and want more money... quit sugar coating it. Bush is bad for the average american. Period. -k]

The Bush Social Policy

] Now that NASA's Opportunity rover has established a
] locale on Mars where rocks were once drenched in water,
] it is in a race against time and battery life to learn
] how widespread and deep the water was.
]
] Was there a giant sea, or did less conspicuous
] groundwater percolate locally through the subsurface of
] Meridiani Planum?
]

How Much Water on Mars? Rover Road Trip Seeks Answers

] Astronomers may have found a new way to search for
] intermediate black holes, the long sought after missing
] link between stellar black holes and their supermassive
] cousins at the heart of galaxies.

New Method May Help Find Black Hole Middleweights

Opportunity's Microscopic Imager found this intriguing object, looking more like Rotini pasta. Its odd shape has stirred up Mars researchers, both inside and outside of the NASA Mars Rover Exploration team. Whether or not this object is related to biology has prompted a variety of views.

Main Story:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/opportunity_news_040302.html

Martian Pasta

] this is the bright new picture of black holes and their
] role in the evolution of the universe. Interviews with
] more than a half dozen experts presently involved in
] rewriting the slippery history of these elusive objects
] reveals black holes as galactic sculptors.
]
] In this revised view, which still contains some highly
] debated facts, fuzzy paragraphs and sketchy initial
] chapters, black holes are shown to be fundamental forces
] in the development and ultimate shapes of galaxies and
] the distribution of stars in them. The new history also
] shows that a black hole is almost surely a product of the
] galaxy in which it resides. Neither, it seems, does much
] without the other.
]
] The emerging theory has a nifty, Darwinist buzzword:
] co-evolution.

The New History of Black Holes: 'Co-evolution' Dramatically Alters Dark Reputation

] The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky
] Way Galaxy is heftier than thought and rotates at an
] amazing clip, new research shows.
]
] For years scientists said the black hole contained about
] 2.6 million times the mass of the Sun. They now believe
] the figure is somewhere between 3.2 million and 4 million
] solar masses.
]
] And a new study suggests all that mass, confined to an
] area about 10 times smaller than Earth's orbit around the
] Sun, spins around about once every 11 minutes.

New Twists on the Milky Way's Big Black Hole

] This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of
] what our universe actually looks like.

An Atlas of The Universe

Tony Blair's hopes of putting questions over Iraq behind him have suffered a fresh setback when the Conservative party withdrew support for a probe into the intelligence that sent the country to war.
Without support from the opposition, the inquiry -- set up last month to look into the quality of British intelligence on banned Iraqi weapons -- will give Blair little ammunition to silence his critics.
Blair's troubles worsened last week when prosecutors dropped a case against a spy services translator who leaked documents to try to stop the war, and when one of Blair's former cabinet members said Britain spied on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

On Monday Blair rejected calls to publish the government's secret pre-war advice on whether the war was legal.

Translator Katharine Gun, who admitted leaking documents, had said she planned to argue she was justified in breaking the law to prevent an illegal war, and would have demanded the government reveal its secret advice if her case went ahead.

Prosecutors dropped the case, saying they did not have enough evidence although she admitted breaking the law. Critics said the authorities feared putting the case before a jury.

The plot thickens.

Tories quit Iraq probe