I know, it’s so soon after yesterday’s post, but I have a handful of items I thought worth sharing.  Get over it.

Go see PZ’s Friday Cephalopod: Southern Blue-Ringed Octopus.  An absolutely beautiful creature.

A significantly important fossil find in Africa is a missing link in human evolution.  Now, either God has a terrible sense of humor with hiding these bones and making them look millions of years old, not to mention designing them in such a way so as to provide proof of our own evolutionary chain, or the world really isn’t 6,000 years old and there’s something to all this solid, irrefutable science stuff.  You decide, but don’t be stupid when doing so.

DarkSyde’s Science Friday this week, A Good Science Friday, is an interview with Representative Brad Miller (D – North Carolina).  It’s excellent, especially given the blatant interference by the Republican régime in scientific affairs.  Rep. Miller is on the House Committee on Science and wants desperately to see the end of censorship and intimidation of scientists.  This is good stuff.

You’ve probably heard about the Venus Express, a probe sent from Earth that just reached the planet and is already providing fantastic images and information.  Go see Hot Discovery: Dark Vortex on Venus and First Images from Venus Express for photos and some of the new discoveries.

The White House can’t decide how best to respond to the latest Iraq WMD fiasco: that a government report had dismissed the mobile chemical weapons labs days before Bush said we had them as definitive proof and months before Cheney argued that we had them as definitive proof.  Given the evidence shows clearly that we knew before both announcements that they were NOT chemical weapons labs, Bush’s cronies are claiming that either (a) Bush et al were not in the loop on the report, or (b) Bush et al were waiting for sound confirmation of the findings.  Either case is sad and laughable, as John points out.