Two Shuttle launches remain. The Endeavor and the Atlantis.

It’s so fucking sad.

If there was a solution that could:

Provide 800,000 women with breast exams,

4 million Americans with testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases,

Provide 2.5 million people with contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies or abortions.

You would think this solution was a great benefit for women and men.

A decision was just made in Congress to stop that solution. Planned Parenthood provided all those services and more, and a vote was just taken to de-fund them.

This is just more another example of what believing in bullshit gets you – politicians that pander to a religious base that has great faith that Planned Parenthood is a great evil in this country.

This is a chance to reverse this decision, but only if you act.

Dead Island. It pulls at your heartstrings (while trying to tug them out and eat them).

These two holidays, falling a day apart were made for each other.

Go fall in love and procreate, creating a new combination of genes that will slowly transition us into something better (one hopes).

Carl Sagan was such an amazing writer, orator, and thinker.

I could listen to that voice for hours on end.

“What do we want?

Differential reproduction of variant alleles!

When do we want it?

Over the course of generations!”

I quite forget what comments section of whatever science blog or thread I was reading at the time that this quote came from. I read it over two weeks ago and laughed, stumbled back across it and laughed again. So here it is for posterity’s sake.

If you don’t get it read this. If that page makes your eyes gloss over then the short answer is it’s evolution.

I’m currently devouring Charles Stross’ The Laundry Files series. It begins with this book, the Atrocity Archives.

Take 1 part Computer Science, 1 part math, and 2 parts Cthulhu and you get some very interesting tales. I give it 8 tentacles up. Go get it now!

There are currently three books in the series and one ready for summoning. There are also some short stories based on the characters that pop up in other publications, so get the official reading order here.

After this I’m told I need to pick up the Dresden Files. So be it!

All of this, however, makes me yearn for some good old Hellblazer (note the qualifier of ‘good’). Ol Constantine is still probably one of the best pentagram slingers out there. I love me a right bastard.

Meanwhile George RR Martin will continue to drag on book five of A Song of Fire and Ice until he’s on ice like Robert Jordan. Fucking authors, why do they have to be mortal?

Now if only that pesky Masters coursework would stop getting in the way of the good reads. Meh!

This is straight out of the sci-fi arena… or Team Fortress 2. Researchers have developed a gun that sprays a victim’s own stem cells onto their burned skin. This process speeds the healing process from weeks to days.

Science, it works, bitches!