…this happened.

:)

As my dad noted below, everything appears to be on course for NASA’s big comet collision, scheduled for 12:52 AM EST tonight:

A NASA space probe was bearing down on its comet target Sunday in a suicide mission scientists hoped would provide new insight into the origins of the solar system.

The 820-pound copper probe was on course to intercept Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, and smash a hole in it so scientists could get their first peek at the heart of one of the icy celestial bodies.

The “impactor” probe, which separated from the Deep Impact spacecraft just after 11 p.m. PDT Saturday, appeared in photos taken hours later from the mothership as a bright, distinct dot as it made its 500,000-mile dive toward the sunlit section of Tempel 1.

The mothership, meanwhile, fired its thrusters to slightly change course and stake out a front-row seat 5,000 miles from the high-speed collision, expected to occur at 10:52 p.m. PDT Sunday.

A giant pillar of steam observed rising from the ocean near Iwo Jima is attributed to an undersea volcanic eruption in the region of Fukutokuoka-no-ba. We report, you pronounce. :>

The Impactor has been Fired off from the Deep Impact space probe and is scheduled to Wallop the comet Tempel 1 a few hours from now. This is good Target Practice but the Payload for The Big One (IOW the Extinctor Impactor :) will need to be a bit more Robust.

The Saudis have made a deep & permanent Impact on the local al Qaeda Bigshot. Credit where credit is due: Goodshot, House of Saud.
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PS: Here’s a good NYTimes Op-Ed piece in support of the Comet-Bashing project. :) For MY money, the Money Quote is:

…It has been said that the dinosaurs ultimately got snuffed because they lacked a space program. Sooner or later a killer comet will again cross Earth’s path, threatening all life. Only next time, armed with knowledge about comets and space engineering, life on Earth will have a fighting chance.

But the author makes note of the Other side, too :) ~

…A lawsuit has even been filed in a Russian court by a 45-year-old mother of two in Moscow, demanding that the mission be called off on the basis of its environmental and spiritual, well, impact.

Wonder if the Russkie Magistrates are in Emergency session even as we Blog…still a couple hours to go before the Boom of Doom… :)

I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, but as Chris pointed out in comments nearly 36 hours ago, Notre Dame Law School received a $21 million donation Friday from alumnus Frank Eck, the largest gift in NDLS history and the fifth-largest in Notre Dame history.

[The money will fund] the construction of a second building for the Notre Dame Law School, as well as a multipurpose facility in a neo-Gothic archway that will link the new structure to the existing building. …

Eck Hall will stand on the site of the former post office. It will be connected to the south side of the current Law School building by Eck Commons, a facility that will feature arches over an east-west walkway.

The South Bend Tribune adds:

The walkway will be in an area where the Notre Dame Marching Band traditionally marches on the way to Notre Dame Stadium on Saturdays of home football games. The design of the arched walkway will allow that tradition to continue.

So what will the new building be used for? And when will this project be completed?

The law library within the existing building will be expanded to take up most of that building, university spokesman Matthew Storin said. “They have been cramped for space for years.”

The new building will consist primarily of classrooms and faculty offices. A construction timetable has not been set, but university officials are hopeful the project will be completed by the end of this decade.

This massive expansion of the law school has been planned for at least a couple of years now (they were already talking about it when I first toured NDLS in May 2003), but until now, Dean O’Hara had only managed to raise $26 million for the effort; on Friday, she nearly doubled her total fundraising take in a single day. Way to go, Patty O!

“The new Law School building will be a powerful testament to our continuing efforts to be a premier law school, faithful to our roots in the Catholic intellectual tradition,” said Patricia O’Hara, Matson Dean of the Law School. “The dramatic arch connecting the new building to our existing facility will bridge our illustrious past with an even more promising future. Without increasing the size of our student body, the new building will resolve our current classroom and faculty office space difficulties, as well as address our needs for the future.”

O’Hara added: “As Father Jenkins said, Frank Eck has always risen to the challenge of supporting his alma mater. On behalf of the Law School faculty and students, I, too, want to thank him and his family for this extraordinary gift.”

Extraordinary, indeed! I wish I had $21 million to throw around! :)

The generous donor, Mr. Eck, is best known to Domers for the Eck Center (which houses the bookstore and the adjacent visitors’ center), the Eck Baseball Stadium, and the Eck Tennis Pavillion, all of which were funded by his previous multi-million-dollar gifts.

This $21 million gift to the law school came on Father John Jenkins’s very first day as university president, having finally taken over for Edward “Monk” Malloy. Getting a $21 million check on your first day — now that’s a real “shocker!” :)

In other, far less significant NDLS news, the pennants in the law lounge — each one representing an undergraduate institution that somebody at NDLS has come from — have been cleaned and rearranged, with one result that’s rather extraordinary:

LOL! Are you kidding me? My alma mater right next to my favorite basketball school, all alone, a good distance away from all the other schools? Either that’s a remarkable coincidence, or else whoever rearranged those pennants reads this blog, and is messing with me. :)

An update to the post below: Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, says Rove spoke to Time reporter Matt Cooper, but did not reveal Valerie Plame’s name, according to Drudge:

“Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn’t disclose Valerie Plame’s identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else,” Luskin said to the WASHINGTON POST. Luskin said the question remains unanswered: “Who outed this woman? … It wasn’t Karl.”

Is this the truth coming out, or the stage being set for plausible deniability once Cooper’s emails go public? We insinuate, you decide. :)

Seemingly supporting the notion that Lawrence O’Donnell (who says Cooper got the name from Rove) might not be a terribly reliable source, his prediction that Newsweek was “working on an ‘It’s Rove!’ story” turns out to be somewhat less than accuarte. The story’s out, all right, but the headline, “The Rove Factor?,” is considerably more ambiguous than what O’Donnell said.

The Newsweek story states:

Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove “never knowingly disclosed classified information” and that “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.” Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury “two or three times” and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. “He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else,” Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing “concern” in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove.

Stay tuned.

P.S. Mickey Kaus isn’t convinced by O’Donnell’s “It’s Rove!” scoop:

O’Donnell is a brilliant pundit because he picks a clear, intriguing, contrarian position and sticks to it. But he’s almost always wrong. Which is why I’ll believe his report that “Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source”–headlined “Rove Blew CIA Agent’s Cover”–when it’s confirmed elsewhere.

This seems too good to be true… could the Valerie Plame/CIA source really be Karl Rove?

Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source. Lawrence O’Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two sources have confirmed that the name is op White House mastermind Karl Rove. …

[I]f true, this [could] suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak [Plame’s identity] to Cooper. …

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

“The breadth of Fitzgerald’s inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame’s identity,” the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, “or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak.”

This story, which has seemed dead for months, suddenly sounds like it could get really big, really soon. Or not; maybe O’Donnell is wrong, and it’s not Rove. But we should know soon, so stay tuned, as they say.

P.S. Wasn’t there some other Republican president, a few years back, who was involved in illegal and unethical political shenanigans, and a subsequent cover-up of said shenanigans, during his first term in office, yet the shenanigans did not fully come to light until after he had won his second term? What was that president’s name again? And what happened to him, anyway? ;)

P.P.S. In all seriousness, let’s be clear about one thing: if it is true that Karl Rove perjured himself, any Republican who supported the Clinton impeachment but opposes Rove’s ouster (and a full investigation into whether those around him, including the president, obstructed justice by covering for him) is a COMPLETE AND UTTER HYPOCRITE. The Republican rebuttal to the Democrats’ argument that Clinton “only lied about sex” was that perjury and obstruction of justice are always wrong, regardless of the topic at hand, and that it is unforgiveable for someone in a position of public trust to commit those serious crimes. So if this turns out to be true (and that’s a very big “if”), I don’t want to hear ANY attempts from the Republicans to explain away the perjury as being not that a big deal for whatever reason. If anyone in the Bush Administration committed perjury or obstruction of justice, I expect principled conservatives from sea to shining sea to lead the charge demanding the ouster of all the guilty parties. After all, Republicans are the ones who care about the “rule of law,” right? Well, their big chance to prove it may be just around the corner.

More here.

One year ago today, Becky and I left Phoenix as girlfriend and boyfriend, en route to a holiday weekend in SoCal. Little did she know that I would propose the next day, and we would return to Phoenix as fiancée and fiancé. :)

Also… six months ago today was Becky’s and my last night at her house in Phoenix. The next day, we left for South Bend.

Today, Becky’s parents and brother are en route here from Arizona — or, more specifically, from Iowa, where they stayed last night. They’re driving Casey to Rochester, New York, where he is starting a Ph.D. program in the fall, but they’re stopping in South Bend tonight to visit us. We have a dinner reservation for 5:30 at Tippecanoe Place.

Hi everyone! Butter would like to kick off this slightly belated edition of Friday catblogging with an equally belated Canada Day greeting for our neighbors to the north:

Tee hee.

Sorry for the delay, BTW. I was planning to catblog just before midnight, but then I had some technical difficulties, which pushed us into the wee hours of Saturday. Anyway… here are some more cat pics from these last two weeks:

Full gallery here.

I haven’t been happy with SciFi lately. First, they cancelled Farscape. That was anathema. Then they ruined the character of Starbuck on the “reimagined” Battlestar Galactica. I like the idea of strong female characters. But create a NEW strong female character, don’t destroy an old one, especially a fan favorite. I also don’t so much like Stargate SG1, which makes only one show on SciFi Friday of any real quality.

Which is why this latest development surprises me. They, unlike Fox, are going to re-air episodes of Joss Whedon’s Firefly in order starting July 22 at 7. Joss Whedon is most famous for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both the 1992 movie and the long-running TV show. He also wrote Toy Story and Alien Resurrection, did Angel and Firefly, and will soon premiere Serenity, a movie that finishes what Firefly started, before moving on to write and direct Wonder Woman. Sort of a book end there. First he turned a failed movie into a succesful TV show, now he’s turning a failed TV show into a movie. Oh, yes, and he also writes the Astonishing X-Men comic book, wherein he brought back one of my favorite characters, Colossus. He’s well-known for his dialogue and his casts of memorable characters. Unfortunately, Fox, after horrendous scheduling decisions, decided to ax Firefly. I recommend all the sci-fi fans give it a try. Then, if you like it, go see Serenity and make the likelihood of a trilogy even more likely.

But anyway, I can finally have some faith that the execs at SciFi maybe do care about quality science fiction, and not just a quick buck.

You ever notice that any time somebody starts talking about the “greater good,” an atrocity is about to happen?

What, precisely, is a “holla back girl”? And why would one not wish to be such?

Our resident linguistic-literalism nerds will appreciate this rant (and the follow-up) from Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web, regarding the misuse of the word “literally.” Excerpt:

“For 20 years, the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps has been literally buried in the woods–small groups of young people quietly building trails, making rock steps and fixing bridges for communities around the state,” reports the Burlington Free Press. This leads to the obvious question: How can they do all these things when they’re literally buried in the woods?

Heh. Other examples of “literally” being used to describe non-literal turns of phrase are “literally a handful” (of people), “literally a shadow of his former self” (referring to a person, not to The Shadow), “literally getting warmed up for a big change,” “communities literally join[ing] at the hip,” and “tak[ing] the art of golf to a new level, literally.”

This sort of linguistic laziness makes me want to literally pull my hair out.

American Idol runner-up Bo Bice (a.k.a. “Bo Brice“) got married earlier this month.

Becky takes an in-depth — and dare I say it, fair and balanced — look at Tom Cruise’s remarks about psychiatry, over on Tidal Moods. Money quote:

First point, do drugs mask the problem? In some instances, I’d have to say yes. We all know people who actively make horrible decisions and become unhappy as a result. Instead of working on their decision-making processes, they hope that taking a little pill everyday will make everything better. Those people abuse psychiatry when therapy would help them change their lives in a more meaningful way.

That being said, it would be and is an absolute mistake to assume that just because such people exist, that all mentally ill people fall into that category. Perhaps one of the most frustrating experiences a person can have is feeling anxious, scared or paranoid and running into a well-meaning loved one asking, “why are you anxious?” Well, if I knew why I was anxious, I would take active steps to prevent anxiety in the future! Sometimes, there is no psycho-spiritual reason for unhappiness or hallucinations or whatever. They just happen.

I would be fascinated to see how Mr. Cruise would explain the well-documented changes visible in a bipolar or schizophrenic brain. Tell me, Mr. Cruise, would exercise or vitamins decrease the size of a bipolar patient’s enlarged basal ganglia? Or perhaps you would like to tell the obsessive compulsive person who has plucked one side of the scalp completely bald that taking more vitamin C would cure her?

There’s much more. Read the whole thing.

There are two things in life that you never fully appreciate until they’re gone: good health and good weather. In an attempt to reverse at least one of these trends, I’d like to take a moment to thank God, or Mother Nature, or Rick Mecklenburg, or whoever is responsible for the beautiful weather that South Bend is expected to experience this holiday weekend.