A pet peeve of mine is stale news recycled as new. Take a look at this story on the NASA website, about a photograph of Jupiter taken at the end of May.

June 5, 2006: The two biggest storms in the solar system are about to go bump in the night, in plain view of backyard telescopes.

Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years.

Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as "Red Jr.," a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin...

Amateur astronomers are already monitoring the event. Christopher Go of the Philippines took the picture above using his 11-inch telescope on May 28th. "The distance between the storms is shrinking visibly every night," he says.

Now here comes CNN nearly 2 months later with some breaking news from the Reuters wire.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot -- a high-pressure storm on the big planet's surface -- has been around for centuries, but Monday astronomers released images of a new, smaller Jovian storm they call Red Spot Jr.

Using the Keck II telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the W.M. Keck Observatory captured a high-resolution picture of both spots on July 20.

What happens here is that NASA published an amateur photographer's picture back in early June. It takes 2 months for the pros to steer their telescope into place and come up with some hi-res photos. They release those and it's big news. Meanwhile the poor Filipino amatuer is kicked to the curb.

Via Taranto:

Worse Yet, He Tested Negative for Cheese

"Tour de France winner Floyd Landis denied on Thursday taking performance-enhancing drugs during the race and said he would fight to clear his name after testing positive for the male sex hormone testosterone," Reuters reports.

Only the French would consider the presence of testosterone in a man's system suspicious.

A federal judge struck down Maryland's anti-Wal-Mart law.

John Peddie submits a letter to the Indy Star titled, "Second Amendment should be repealed". This one's not even worth rebutting.

In response to Chris Henderson's on-line letter July 13: Everyone should be worried about lifetime gun permits, not just those on the left. There is no rational basis for such a permit, except to perpetuate the gun-centric culture poisoning this country. In fact, there is no rational basis for owning a gun at all, but the gun people like to hide behind the Second Amendment and try to convince people that it means we should all have guns.


The Second Amendment to the Constitution is outmoded and irrelevant and should be repealed, before more ludicrous things like lifetime gun permits become legal. This country gets more and more ridiculous by the day, from reality television to lifetime gun permits to an education system swirling at the bottom of the porcelain bowl. But by all means, let's keep our uneducated, couch potato citizenry armed for life. I feel safer already.

Virginia gets lifetime carry permits on July 1, 2007.

That could be the morning headline if you follow Virginia Game Warden Sgt. Paul Atkins advice:

He said turning lights on can often scare a black bear away. In extreme cases, he suggested, residents could buy a paint-ball gun. The non-lethal sting of a paint-ball, he said, is enough to frighten black bears into running for cover. The guns are even issued to some animal control officers, he said.

Remind me never to work for animal control.

He added that state game wardens will come to remove the bear if it becomes a nuisance.

Armed with paint ball guns I presume.

A guy at work bought a Vulcan 900 Classic this spring. It's a nice starter bike and only costs $7200. My last two guns cost that much, so getting into biking doesn't seem that unreasonable.

Other than being a cheap bastard, my biggest barrier to entry is not having a garage in which to house it. Also the SO (that's significant other) doesn't like bikes at all. But I think she'd come around once she saw me in my leather chaps and skull cap.

"The health effects of secondhand smoke exposure are more pervasive than we previously thought. The scientific evidence is now indisputable: secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults." -- U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona

Color me skeptical, but "indisputable". That's the same bullshit attitude the global warming alarmists use. As if it's proven scientific fact that secondhand smoke causes cancer. Despite the fact that after a 7 year exhaustive study, the World Health Organization could not show a conclusive link between the two.

What is almost indisputable is that the average doctor is typically anti-smoking, anti-gun, anti-fried food, anti-fun, yadda yadda yadda.