“It’s with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other substance.” Signs have pointed in that direction for awhile now, and particularly since the Phoenix landed. But now, it seems we have really, truly, definitively found ice on Mars. “The next questions to answer are what chemicals, minerals and organic compounds might be mixed in with the water. ‘Just the fact that there’s ice there doesn’t tell you if it’s habitable,’ Smith said. ‘With ice and no food it’s not a habitable zone. We don’t eat rocks — we have to have carbon chain materials that we ingest into our bodies to create new cells and give us energy. That’s what we eat and that’s what has to be there if you’re going to have a habitable zone on Mars.‘”
Author: KcM
I was so much older then.
“I was born under unusual circumstances.” The moody and mesmerizing teaser for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, from the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and youtubed in Spanish a few weeks ago, is now officially online, and in hi-def.
Drillbit McCain.
So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain’s usual m.o.
Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME’s Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: “Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?” Nope. “Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.” In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)
Take yon candle from yon oven…
By way of Supercres, the new trailer for (Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Clark Gregg’s version of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke is now online, starring Sam Rockwell, Kelly McDonald, Anjelica Huston, and Brad Henke. Palahniuk’s books tend to run together after awhile, but I did get a kick out of the Colonial Williamsburg conceit in this one. If I remember rightly, Rockwell should spend a good bit of time in the stocks.
The Early Trifecta. | Here comes the Flood?
Keeping in mind that polls five months out from Election Day are basically meaningless, some good news on the swing-state front: Sen. Obama currently leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. (What, you mean Mark Penn’s swing-state argument was bogus? Who knew?)
This would seem to hinder McCain’s likely strategy of using Florida as a safe electoral base from which to make incursions into possible Obama territory in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and elsewhere — Now, the mythical maverick will have to play serious defense in the Sunshine State. (Again, June polls say next-to-nothing about the state of play in November, but I’m glad we’re 4-10 points up rather than 10-15 down. Plus, these numbers are in keeping with my general feeling — knock on wood — that Election Day will be a trouncing.)
Update: More fuel for the fire. A new Newsweek poll has Obama up fifteen on McCain, 51%-36%. “The latest numbers on voter dissatisfaction suggest that Obama may enjoy more than one bounce. The new poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country…Obama is [also] running much stronger at this point in the race than his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore…In a July 2004 NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry led Bush by only 6 points (51 percent to 45 percent). In June 2000, Gore was in a dead heat with Bush (45 percent to 45 percent)“
Update 2: It’s not an outlier. LA Times/Bloomberg also has Obama up 15 (48%-33%) in a four-way race with Nader and Barr. Against McCain only, our man’s up 12.
Obama: No Public Financing.
“‘It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,’ Obama said in a video message to supporters, circulated by his campaign. ‘But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system.’” Sen. Obama announces he will forego public financing for the general election.
Hmm. I was originally hoping the two candidates, based on their respective campaign finance reform bona fides, might come to an agreement that would make public financing work. But it’s become painfully clear that Sen. McCain has been gaming the system thus far, and at this point I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him. The McCain campaign is calling Obama’s decision “a broken promise of staggering dimensions,” but frankly that dog’s not going to hunt. Sen. Obama has not only run a lobbyist-free campaign thus far, but has now even purged the DNC of their taint (give or take a few loopholes.) Meanwhile, the McCain bandwagon is absolutely crawling with lobbyists, and they apparently even feel free to conduct their business with impunity aboard the unfortunately-named “Straight Talk Express.”
Plus, with its enormously successful small-donor, Internet-based model of financing, the Obama campaign has brought new meaning to the term “public financing” anyway. So, while I’d ultimately like to see a public financing system that works, Sen. Obama still has enough credibility on this issue, I think, that his opting out doesn’t trouble me all that much. Put another way, Sen. Obama has a long way to go before he seems as full of it on campaign finance reform as McCain appears these days.
Friends in Low Places.
“I need to know if Stayman is a career or a political appointee…I think we can do something about it, but I’m trying to figure out what is the best way to go about it. I don’t want a firing scandal on our hands.” An e-mail trail published by the Washington Post illustrates how Casino Jack Abramoff used the Dubya White House to remove his enemies, in this case a State Department aide advocating labor reforms in the Northern Marianas. (“ Abramoff’s clients wanted to keep paying immigrants less than the federal minimum wage to work in textile factories.“)
Intelligence is Relative.
By way of Bitten Tongue (who does a nice job of highlighting its provenance), Cinematical gets its hands on the poster for the Coen Brothers’ forthcoming Burn After Reading, with John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche, and J.K. Simmons. (The trailer is here.)
Update: And, behold! An international teaser trailer for Burn hits the tubes. Update 2: And here’s a slightly different domestic version.
Rebecca Scarlett Barcelona.
No longer fighting over Christian Bale, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson get caught up in complications with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the trailer for Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, also starring Patricia Clarkson. The word from Cannes was that Allen may be back in form after the insubstantial Scoop and the atrocious Cassandra’s Dream, so here’s hoping for the best.
Celtic Pride.
Looks like the gamble paid off. In an auspicious sign for all the cellar-dwelling teams out there looking to turn it around in one year, the Boston Celtics completely eviscerate the Lakers 131-92 in Game 6, clinching their seventeenth championship (and first for likable superstars KG, Allen, and Pierce.) Congrats to the Celts and to the Boston fans (Well, some of ’em)…and New York, take a gander. The draft is a little over a week away…