A moment of silence please.  Paula the cat finally succumbed to her previous abuse and neglect.  She died last night.  And after I shed a tear, I got mad.  I wish someone knew who was responsible for her condition.  That person deserves the same they gave her.

Why is all the anti-gay crap such bullshit?  Well, look no further than the legal spouse of former congressman Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.).  “The federal government has refused to pay death benefits to [Dean Hara]” who Studds married in 2004 after it was legalized in Massachusetts.  He “will not be eligible to receive any portion of Studds’s estimated $114,337 annual pension because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act bars the federal government from recognizing [their] marriage.”  This is why a state-by-state approach is unacceptable, and it’s also why all this bigotry and intolerance is unacceptable.  The religious right and the socially conservative assholes who’ve inflicted this hideous crime on a widower all deserve to burn in their own hell.

Talk about smaller government and spending less…  The Heritage Foundation, a conservative group, supplied this chart of government spending per household.  Click on it for a larger version.  Very disturbing and very telling, especially in that it was on the decline while Clinton was in office and took a dramatic and disturbing upward turn once Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress (that said, Republicans controlled congress during Clinton’s years, so see what bipartisan control can accomplish?).

Gee, I wonder why insurance costs are going up and it’s harder to get reimbursed or even respectable benefits.  It’s probably because the companies are too busy stealing and breaking the law .  Backdating stock options?  Allowing directors to have blatant conflicts of interest that go unreported?  Issuing billions of dollars in stock options that are undated so that information can be added later to get the best price?  And the list goes on.  Oh, and UnitedHealth is one of the largest insurers in America.

This is horrible.  “Federal officials arrested more than 125 people Wednesday on charges of subscribing to a Web site that depicted children as young as infants engaged in sexual activities with adults.”  Is that as bad as it gets?  Nope.  “Among the suspects was a former counselor at a Bible camp and a longtime Boy Scout leader and middle-school sports coach, the officials said.”

Now we can give the Romulans a run for their money.  “An invisibility cloak that works in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum has been unveiled by researchers in the US. The device is the first practical version of a theoretical set-up first suggested in a paper published earlier in 2006. The cloak works by steering microwave light around an object, making it appear to an observer as if it were not there at all.”  I want one!  Of course, I want one when it includes the entire EM spectrum, including visible and infrared light, but we’re rapidly making progress on this technology and will eventually get to that point.

Yet another reason to keep fighting the War on Drugs™.  “New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) suggests that the widely abused club drug ‘ecstasy,’ or MDMA, can increase the survival of dopamine cells in the brain during fetal development. Because these cells are critical in the regulation of voluntary movement, the findings, the researchers say, may lead to better therapies for neurological diseases like Parkinson’s.”

Go take a look at this hi-res photo of the Antennae Galaxies/NGC 4038-4039.  They’re colliding with each other and creating billions of new stars.  The image is phenomenal.

For all the men out there: Don’t do this!  “An Austrian workman who slipped while working on a house nailed his own testicle to the roof with a nail gun.”  Need I say more?  [via Apostropher (decorative shingles indeed…)]

If you’ve not heard about it yet, here’s some science news for you: The complete works of Charles Darwin are now online and available for your perusal.

And speaking of Darwin, IDiots and those willing to admit they’re creationists will hate this discovery.  “A fossil fish discovered in the West Australian Kimberley has been identified as the missing clue in vertebrate evolution, rewriting a century-old theory on how the first land animals evolved.”  For a very good discussion of this, see PZ’s entry on it.  There’s even more here.

Put “ICE” in your cell phone.  I never knew this but am correcting that now.  “Got your cell phone handy? Take a moment right now to put ‘ICE’ by the names of the people you’d want called in case of emergency. That’s what ‘ICE’ stands for — ‘in case of emergency.’ The point is to let rescue workers, police, or doctors check your cell phone and reach the people you would want contacted if you’re in an accident or other emergency.”