Rami Shapiro's visualization exercises on lovingkindness.
Texas Politics: Democrats now calling spending cuts "Soviet style"
White Don't Know Much 'Bout History (Or Economics)
From Michael Q. Sullivan, Empower Texas
Democratic gubernatorial candidate apparently knows as little about world history as about good economics. He's taking Texas Gov. Rick Perry to task for "Soviet-style" budget techniques. What technique is that? Well, budget cuts, of course.
Excuse me, Mr. White, the late Soviet Empire imploded for many reasons but government austerity certainly wasn't one of them. Reckless, out-of-control, unrestrained spending was high on the list. And bad economic policy. And oppression of their citizens. And an evil worldview. Spending restraint? Soviets never had a problem with it; they never did it.
At an event hosted this week by the online Texas Tribune, and reported on by the Associated Press, Houston's former mayor also said he "refused to rule out future tax increases to close the gap.”
Texas faces an $11 billion shortfall -- that is, the difference between projected spending and projected revenues. Notice the word "projected."
A budget shortfall can be managed in basically one of two ways. Spending can be cut to match available funds, or taxes can be raised to bring more cash into the treasury.
So what got Mr. White's revisionist goat? Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus staked out their position on the shortfall. They told every state agency to find ways to reduce spending by five-percent.
To Mr. White and the tax-and-spend wing of his party, cutting government spending simply not allowed.
Voters worried about their jobs, and the future of Texas' economy, would do well to let Mr. White join his economic comrades in the dustbin of history.
Editor's Note - Texas House Speaker Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio is a self-described "libertarian Republican."
Libertarian Republican candidate emerges for Colorado House; Low Taxes, Home Schooling & Health Savings Accounts
"Freedom let's us improve our lives -- government control makes that impossible" -- Donald Beezley, Republican candidate for Colorado State House
The Broomfield Enterprise reports:
Local businessman Don Beezley, a Republican, launched his campaign for the statehouse on Sunday. He`ll be running against Rep. Dianne Primavera, D-Broomfield, who has held the House District 33 seat since 2007.
Beezley lives in Broomfield with his wife, Pat, and two sons, Connor and Alexander. He is the president of Tager Enterprises.
Beezley has been active in conservative and libertarian circles. He is a guest writer for the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute and serves on the advisory board of the conservative Leadership Program of the Rockies. He also is on the board of the Tabor Foundation, which promotes the Colorado Taxpayer`s Bill of Rights.
Some highlights of Beezley's stances:
•Low taxes and no new taxes
•Oppose unreasonable regulations and oppose any additional taxes, fees and burdens where jobs are created—businesses
•Tax policy that disconnects patients from their doctors must be changed by moving tax benefits to the individual level while empowering individuals with vehicles like Health Savings Accounts.
•School choice, especially in the form of charter schools, must be protected and competition that fuels excellence, innovation and continuous improvement must be fostered.
•Home schooling must be protected as an option for families to choose.
•Stop the massive tax and fee increases imposed by the Democrats—in violation of constitutional requirements that Colorado government must ask the people first.
•Maintain the commonsense provisions of the Taxpayer's Bill of rights (TABOR). Government must ask first before it can take your money.
•Recognize that the depths of a recession when people are losing their jobs and their homes is not the time to impose billions in new taxes and fees.
“State of the Birds” Report; and Is Climate Change Shrinking Avians? | 80beats
This week the federal government released its 2010 report, “The State of the Birds,” examining the health of the United States’ native fowl. According to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the state of our union’s birds is precarious.
The 2010 report focused on climate in particular. In it, scientists reviewed data for 800 species nationwide, and ranked their sensitivity to climate change based on factors including how many young they produce each year, how able they are to move to new habitats, and how unique their food and nesting needs are [San Jose Mercury News]. Each of the 800 then received a designation of low, medium, or high vulnerability. You can see the methods for scoring here.
Birds that rely on coastal areas are in the most threatened position, Salazar says. Seabirds tend to have low reproductive potential and often nest on islands that can be inundated by rising sea levels, changes in water chemistry and other disruptions to the marine ecosystem [AP]. Hawaii birds are especially troubled, as they many are already under the gun by invasive species and disease, the report says. All 67 species of ocean-reliant seabirds ranked with a medium or high level of vulnerability. Birds native to forests or to arid regions, however, showed less climate vulnerability.
Kenneth Rosenberg of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, a contributor to the report, says, “Birds are excellent indicators of the health of our environment, and right now they are telling us an important story about climate change. Many species of conservation concern will face heightened threats, giving us an increased sense of urgency to protect and conserve vital bird habitat” [AFP]. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Forest Service, and other organizations compiled the 2010 report (the full list at the bottom of the press release).
Meanwhile, a separate study published in the journal Oikos found a different but interesting effect on American birds. In biology, there is a general rule of thumb that animals tend to become smaller in warmer climates: an idea known as Bergmann’s Rule [BBC News]. Biologists aren’t totally settled on why Bergmann’s Rule should be so, but Josh Van Buskirk and colleagues wanted to see if that was happening in the United States over the past decades, as global warming has gradually increased temperatures. Luckily, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Rector, Pennsylvania, has kept measurements of hundreds of thousands of birds, coming from more than 100 different species, that migrated through the area since 1961.
Van Buskirk found birds getting slightly smaller no matter their migratory season: 60 of 83 spring migrating species, 66 of 75 for autumn, 51 of 65 for summer, and 20 of 26 for winter. In a spot of good news, though, the study says that the populations of these birds aren’t in decline, and are perhaps adapting to their changing world. “So many of these species are apparently doing just fine, but the individual birds are becoming gradually smaller nonetheless,” says Dr Buskirk [BBC News].
Related Content:
80beats: Tiny Tern Makes World-Record 44,000-Mile Migration
80beats: The Birds’ Sixth Sense: How They See Magnetic Fields
80beats: Like a Wool Sweater, Scottish Sheep Shrink As Climate Heats Up
80beats: Will All Animals Shrink Under a Warmer Climate
DISCOVER: Works in Progress: How do migrating birds know where to go?
Image: flickr / Wili_hybrid
Sandswept world | Bad Astronomy
Hot on the heels of the post the other day about the winds on Mars blowing the sand dunes and visibly moving them across the planet’s surface comes this new satellite image of a huge sandstorm raging across the planet:
Of course, I’d forgive you if you interpret my saying "the planet" as meaning Mars. However, this picture is of Earth! Specifically, the Middle East. This March 4th image from the Terra satellite shows a plume of sand 100 km (60 miles!) across sweeping from Saudi Arabia over Kuwait and into Iran.
In some ways, Mars and Earth are very similar. Sometimes, it’s even hard to tell them apart…
Power Struggle: Solar vs Fuel Cell
In a match-up between solar technology and the recently unveiled Bloom Box solid oxide fuel cell, which one emerges the winner? Solar delivers a crushing blow in terms of versatility and capital costs. A tie is clear in terms of energy cost, considering incentives awarded Bloom Box buyers. Solar als
Lithium or Hydrogen Bike? Choose Your Steed
From CNET News.com:
More and more electric bicycles are being developed in Japan to give riders a little help when commuting or going grocery shopping. They're a common sight on the hilly streets of Tokyo, where "mamachari" bikes with baskets and kid seats over the wheels are the n
Dark Asteroids Found Near Earth
From Discovery News - Top Stories:
A new infrared telescope has found 16 to 20 previously unknown asteroids that come close to Earth. The asteroids are dark, with most reflecting less than one-tenth of the sunlight that hits them. One object is as dark as asphalt, reflecting les
Americans: Test Your Broadband Speed, Help the FCC Keep ISPs Honest
From Boing Boing:
James from the New America foundation sez, "The FCC launched a consumer broadband test on their blog broadband.gov yesterday. Internet speeds in the US are often 50% to 80% lower than advertised and its vital consumers have reliable information on the actual perf
Cassini Data Show Ice and Rock Mixture Inside Titan
This artist's illustration shows the likely interior structure of Saturn's moon Titan deduced from gravity field data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
› Full image and caption
By precisely tracking NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its low swoops over Saturn's moon Titan, scientists have determined the distribution of materials in the moon's interior. The subtle gravitational tugs they measured suggest the interior has been too cold and sluggish to split completely into separate layers of ice and rock.
The finding, to be published in the March 12 issue of the journal Science, shows how Titan evolved in a different fashion from inner planets such as Earth, or icy moons such as Jupiter's Ganymede, whose interiors have split into distinctive layers.
"These results are fundamental to understanding the history of moons of the outer solar system," said Cassini Project Scientist Bob Pappalardo, commenting on his colleagues' research. Pappalardo is with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We can now better understand Titan's place among the range of icy satellites in our solar system."
Scientists have known that Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is about half ice and half rock, but they needed the gravity data to figure out how the materials were distributed. It turns out Titan's interior is a sorbet of ice studded with rocks that probably never heated up beyond a relatively lukewarm temperature. Only in the outermost 500 kilometers (300 miles) is Titan's ice devoid of any rock, while ice and rock are mixed to various extents at greater depth.
"To avoid separating the ice and the rock, you must avoid heating the ice too much," said David J. Stevenson, one of the paper's co-authors and a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "This means that Titan was built rather slowly for a moon, in perhaps around a million years or so, back soon after the formation of the solar system."
This incomplete separation of ice and rock makes Titan less like Jupiter's moon Ganymede, where ice and rock have fully separated, and perhaps more like another Jovian moon, Callisto, which is believed to have a mixed ice and rock interior. Though the moons are all about the same size, they clearly have diverse histories.
The Cassini measurements help construct a gravity map, which may help explain why Titan has a stunted topography, since interior ice must be warm enough to flow slowly in response to the weight of heavy geologic structures, such as mountains.
Creating the gravity map required tracking minute changes in Cassini's speed along a line of sight from Earth to the spacecraft as it flew four close flybys of Titan between February 2006 and July 2008. The spacecraft took paths between about 1,300 to 1,900 kilometers (800 to 1,200 miles) above Titan.
"The ripples of Titan's gravity gently push and pull Cassini along its orbit as it passes by the moon and all these changes were accurately recorded by the ground antennas of the Deep Space Network within 5 thousandths of a millimeter per second [0.2 thousandths of an inch per second] even as the spacecraft was over a billion kilometers [more than 600 million miles] away," said Luciano Iess, a Cassini radio science team member at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, and the paper's lead author. "It was a tricky experiment."
The results don't speak to whether Titan has an ocean beneath the surface, but scientists say this hypothesis is very plausible and they intend to keep investigating. Detecting tides induced by Saturn, a goal of the radio science team, would provide the clearest evidence for such a hidden water layer.
A Cassini interdisciplinary investigator, Jonathan Lunine, said of his colleagues' findings, "Additional flybys may tell us whether the crust is thick or thin today." Lunine is with the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, Italy, and the University of Arizona, Tucson. "With that information we may have a better understanding of how methane, the ephemeral working fluid of Titan's rivers, lakes and clouds, has been resupplied over geologic time. Like the history of water on Earth, this is fundamental to a deep picture of the nature of Titan through time."
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. Cassini's radio science subsystem has been jointly developed by NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
More Cassini information is available, at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
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IPL Cheerleaders
Bursting at the Seams
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed 'tiger stripes' near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.
This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera when NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew past Enceladus and through the jets on Nov. 21, 2009. Imaging the jets over time will allow Cassini scientists to study the consistency of their activity.
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- Nasa Warns Of Super Solar Storm 2012
- Go into a NASA Clean Room Daily with the Webb Tele...
- Snapshot of the International Space Station
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Three FASTSAT Instruments Pass Tests
The outer layers of Earth's atmosphere hold many secrets yet to be uncovered and three scientific instruments will fly soon on the FASTSAT-HSV01 satellite and seek to uncover them to benefit us here on Earth. Known as MINI-ME, PISA and TTI, these instruments recently passed a series of important final tests to prove their readiness for spaceflight.These instruments were conceived and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and were integrated to the satellite and tested at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
MINI-ME, acronym for Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons, is a low energy neutral atom imager which will detect neutral atoms formed in the plasma population of the Earth's outer atmosphere to improve global space weather prediction. Low energy neutral atom imaging is a technique first pioneered at Goddard which allows scientists to observe remotely various trapped charged particle populations around Earth that we would normally only be able to observe in-situ through direct instrument contact with the particles.
Michael Collier, Principal Investigator for the MINI-ME instrument at NASA Goddard said, "The satellite has gone through vibration, thermal, and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) tests and everything looks great. The MINI-ME instrument is performing as expected."
PISA is an acronym for the Plasma Impedance Spectrum Analyzer, which will test a new measurement technique for the thermal electron populations in the ionosphere, and their density structuring, which can interfere with or scatter radio signals used for communication and navigation. PISA will tell scientists on Earth when and where the ionosphere becomes structured or turbulent. That will give us better predictions of how space weather will affect GPS signals.
Doug Rowland, PISA's Principal Investigator at NASA Goddard said, "PISA has completed the same tests that the Mini-ME endured and has just passed powered Electromagnetic Interference Test. PISA is on track for spacecraft to be packed up and delivered to the launch site." The EMI, vibration and thermal testing are critical tests for all instruments and satellites before they're loaded aboard a rocket and put into orbit.
The Thermospheric Temperature Imager, or TTI, will provide the first global-scale measurements of thermospheric temperature profiles in the 56-168 mile (90-270 km) region of the Earth's atmosphere. The temperature profile sets the scale height of the thermosphere which determines the density at orbital altitudes and therefore the aerodynamic drag experienced by military spacecraft.
John Sigwarth, TTI's Principal Investigator at NASA Goddard, said "The TTI survived the satellite launch vibration levels, being blasted with radio waves, and the TTI had a great thermal vacuum test. We were able to characterize the operation of the instrument in space-like environments and the TTI is ready for launch. We are eagerly anticipating obtaining great data from orbit."
Electromagnetic Interference or EMI testing is done to ensure that powerful ground-based communications and radar systems do not cause interference on the satellite or instrument systems.
Vibration testing is an important part of the testing process, because when the rocket carrying the satellite lifts off and travels through Earth's atmosphere it experiences intense vibrations. Successful vibration testing assures scientists and engineers that their instrument will remain intact and fully functional after launch.
Thermal testing is also critical, because of the extreme temperatures in space. Scientists need to be sure that the instruments will maintain function at extreme temperatures, from the extreme heat the rocket carrying the satellite will experience during launch and when it travels through Earth's atmosphere into the cold void of space.
"With the completion of the last phase of environmental testing of the integrated FASTSAT-HSV01 spacecraft, our team is focused on readying the satellite and its six science and technology instruments, for its near term shipment to Kodiak, Alaska, and for an on time launch no earlier than May 28, 2010," said FASTSAT Project Manager Mark Boudreaux at NASA Marshall.
"FASTSAT-HSV" means "Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, Huntsville" The development, integration, test and operations of the three instruments is a collaborative effort between NASA Goddard, NASA Marshall, and the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.
FASTSAT-HSV01 will be flying a total of six instruments approved by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Experiments Review Board multi-spacecraft/payload mission named STP-S26, which is executed by the DoD Space Test Program (STP) at the Space Development and Test Wing (SDTW), Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. which is a unit of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The mission was designated S26 to correspond to the 26th small launch vehicle mission in STP's more than 40 year history of flying DoD space experiments. The mission will launch four satellites and three cubesats into low earth orbit.
The satellite was created at NASA Marshall with the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, in partnership with Dynetics, a corporate partner.
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- Bursting at the Seams
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- Go into a NASA Clean Room Daily with the Webb Tele...
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Obama Pushes Senators on Climate Change
Oh YIKES. Kerry and the Gang hold humanity's future in their political hands.
U.S. Senators now hold a large portion of humanity’s future survival prospects in their hands.
I’m very grateful for political climate news from ClimateWire. (A subscription-only service that recently bestowed on me a trial subscription.) There is a very welcome push by the Obama administration lately to get some climate legislation passed this year, but what President Obama means by “climate legislation” is not necessarily what many people would define it as. But if it doesn’t do a lot of harm with giveaways to coal and oil (like many people fear it will) then maybe, possibly, like the health care bill, it’s best to get something passed, crack the door open and later it can be amended and strengthened. But what John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are working on reportedly has a lot of allowances in it for coal, oil and other undesirable energy. Here is some of the latest.
President Obama yesterday huddled at the White House with more than a dozen key senators in an all-out push to pass stalled legislation that would put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. (E&ENews PM, 03/09/2010)
Partisan gridlock has largely kept the Senate climate and energy bill on ice, with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) trying to find a sweet spot on a plan that would limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and other major industrial sectors. [This group is not necessarily going to do what is necessary, but at least they are pushing something forward].
The Senate trio is trying to get a draft bill out before the end of the month, but they face resistance from moderate Democrats and Republicans who are urging a slower, “energy only” approach. . . . .
Among those expected at the closed-door meeting in the Cabinet Room were Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), George LeMieux (R-Fla.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.). Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also got an invitation but said he could not go because of a meeting on health care with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Heading into the meeting, several of the Republicans showed little interest in tackling such a sweeping proposal.”
Surprise, surprise. Of course Republicans and “blue dog” conservative Democrats aren’t interested, because they take a ton of money from Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Gas, and Big Ag, and everything under the sun that pollutes a lot and is Big. When they are being bought and paid for, they won’t show much enthusiasm for biting the hands that feed them. I also question the value of input from Republicans in that group that are actively trying to kill climate legislation, like Lisa Murkowski. President Obama is taking his attempts at bi-partisanship too far. That is clear at this point.
Unfortunately, an [...]
Environmental Groups and Corporate Cash
Conservation Groups Align with World’s Worst Polluters
“Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.”
(From Democracy Now) There is money in any issue in Washington, and global warming is no exception. No wonder climate change legislation has morphed into “green jobs and energy” legislation. John Kerry and others are working hard to pass a bill that will (likely) allow coal use to thrive and new oil to be drilled and lots of natural gas to be extracted and burned, at a very toxic cost. Our Congress just doesn’t get it. There should be a moratorium on taking any money from any fossil fuel industries, given what we are facing with global warming. (Yet Nancy Pelosi herself is a big investor in natural gas, for example). Climate change and global warming are the biggest issues humanity has ever faced, and governments are dropping the ball. However, it’s not just governments being corrupted by corporate cash — it’s also the very “Green” groups we depend on for climate action and Congressional pressure!
Consider what we are facing already, according to Johann Hari, a columnist who wrote for The Nation — ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’:
“I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”
Flooding in Bangladesh
People don’t realize that flooding and other effects of climate change are already happening. That’s because the narrative, and the media, is focusing on human errors made in a few emails about some bad scientific practices at a little, obscure university that no one depends on for climate data anyway. We have other places where climate data is stored and gathered, including NASA, NOAA and places in Japan and Canada. Who needs East Anglia. The IPCC is now reviewing its practices of collecting data). The real Climategate is that big fossil fuel companies continues to foul the process of coming up with [...]
Children’s Workshop to Celebrate Depero’s Birthday (Mar. 30)
Children’s Workshop to celebrate the birthday of Fortunato Depero
March 30, 2010
4-6pm
Casa d’Arte Futurista, Rovereto
Sulla soglia di questo museo, all’interno della corte del palazzo che lo ospita, la sezione didattica organizza un laboratorio all’aperto per festeggiare l’anniversario della nascita di Depero. L’attività si propone di coinvolgere i bambini e i loro accompagnatori adulti in una festa dai colori sgargianti, a cominciare dal brindisi futurista, a base di sciroppi di frutta che ognuno potrà mescolare a piacere. Nel corso dell’attività si sperimenterà la creazione di fiori fantastici, ispirati alla “flora magica” delle scenografie progettate da Depero per i Balletti Russi, per comporre un gigantesco mazzo di fiori in ricordo dell’artista. Inoltre, ogni partecipante potrà realizzare e indossare un panciotto futurista caratterizzato da vivaci tarsie in carta colorata.
Progetto didattico a cura di Annalisa Casagranda
Età consigliata: 4-12 anni
Apple Will Replace Dead Battery iPads For $99 [Ipad]
The Battery Replacement Service FAQ on Apple's site outlines their policy for handling iPads with diminished battery capacity, and it is a surprisingly generous: for a $99 service fee, they'll send you a brand new iPad. More »
How To: Turn Your Web Apps Into Real Apps [How To]
The Planet Server Challenge
The trade show floor is open at SXSW Interactive, so The Planet Server Challenge is officially underway. We went through the basics of the competition yesterday, so today we’re diving into the details.
The Goal: Reassemble our Pentium4 server faster than your SXSW peers and win an ASUS Eee PC Netbook.
The Rules:
- You may arrange the components as you’d like* before starting.
- You may not be touching any components when time starts.
- All components must be installed for your time to be recorded.
- Components can be installed in any order.
- Components outside the server may only be touched one at a time.
- You may attempt the build twice.
- Time will be recorded by a representative from The Planet.
- The leader board in the booth will reflect the current “time to beat.”
*Fan, Heat Sink and RAM must be on the table outside of the chassis.
A Successful/Complete Installation:
- Install heat sink, latch both latches
- Plug heat sink into motherboard
- Install fan
- Plug fan into motherboard
- Install two RAM modules (in any of the 4 slots)
- Plug in Hard Drive power cable
- Plug in Hard Drive ribbon cable
- Plug in CD-ROM power cable
- Plug in CD-ROM ribbon cable
- Slide case lid into place
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’m pretty sure videos are worth a few million. With that in mind, we recorded a quick explanation and demonstration of the challenge:
Do you think you have what it takes to get the best time? Swing by our booth and prove it! We will update the top times in the comments section of this blog so you can keep an eye on the current record in absentia.
UPDATE: We just spoke with one of the representatives from the Universal Records Database, and he suggested that we submit the fastest time to their database, and they will certify the winner as a universal record holder! Forget having the fastest hands at SXSW … You’ll have the fastest hands in the universe. 
-Kevin
P.S. Don’t forget to RSVP for tonight’s Tumblr/SoundCloud/Kickstarter party!
Related Posts:
I Wish I Knew How to Quit You, Pluto | Cosmic Variance
Oh dear. Sometimes it’s so hard to let go.
And most importantly, don’t forget to join us MARCH 13, at 1pm for the PLUTO IS A PLANET PROTEST MARCH AND RALLY. The march starts at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply store (8414 Greenwood Ave N) and will end at Neptune Coffee (8415 Greenwood Ave N).
But really, Greenwood Space Travel Supply is all kinds of awesome, even if they’re weirdly co-dependent with small rocks in the outer solar system. They’re the Seattle branch of the 826 network, which is a non-profit writing center for kids.
They also have cool t-shirts.
