You Need to Read This

  You. Yes, you. I don't care how little (or how much) you know or care about politics. I don't care how much you know or care about the Supreme Court, or the law in general. If you're a citizen of the United States, or you know someone who is, you need to read The Supreme Court: A User's Guide, by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Why? Ms. Lithwick sums it up:

While the justices cannot bring down gas prices or bring home the troops, their decisions in the coming years will affect just about everything else: your rights regarding privacy, reproduction, speech and religion; how to count your vote and where your kids go to school; as well as your occupational and environmental protections. You name it, they'll decide it. Or they'll decide not to decide it (which may be even worse).

  You need to know what's happening in the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary in general. You need to know that the Supreme Court is the only thing standing between you and the total abolition of your civil rights. If the Court abdicates its role of reviewing laws for constitutionality, Congress and the President will have free reign. (Free "reign." Get it?) If they agree that it's okay to start disenfranchising old people who don't have a favorite bible verse and college students who've ever discussed having an abortion, shipping them abroad to be waterboarded with crude oil drilled in your local park, and paying female torturers half as much as male torturers, while tapping the phones of their relatives, nobody will be able to stop them.

  I know this sounds alarmist, but sometimes a little bit of alarm is really goddam necessary. This is one of those times.

 WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?

I Have Seen The Face Of The Mantis God

  The most recent picture in NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day clearly shows the face of the Mantis God. His compound eyes gaze benevolently down upon us, his holy mandibles touch lightly as he showers his insecty love upon us.

Click for full size.

Of course, "Big Astronomy" has some half-assed nattering about a possible explanation.

Now known popularly as Hanny's Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny's Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.

  Fear not, brothers and sisters. The Mantis God loves us all. When he returns to us, he will eat all the flies from every backyard, even of those soulless astronomers who gaze upon his holy carapace and see only a "mysterious green blob."

  I have seen the bright green face of the Mantis God. All hail pareidolia.

On A Lighter Note

  I went to the Popped! Festival Saturday lineup at Drexel University. Thanks are due to Y-Rock On XPN, and the woman who emailed their contest before me, and then couldn't attend.

  I give the performers a score of 64 out of 73. Crystal Castles wasn't my cup of tea, but the acts were uniformly energetic and engaged with the crowd. They were mostly well-mixed too, with a minimum of vocals drowned out by instruments.

  I have to give the festival itself a less-impressive 18 out of 25. Although the stage set-up (taking over 33rd Street north of Market) was interesting and well thought-out, there were other details that were wanting.

  My biggest complaint was the policy barring re-entry. I understand that concession sales are necessary, but forcing us to stay in a two-square block radius for the planned eight-hour show, with three dollar water and eight dollar wraps as sustenance, was a tad frustrating. It was compounded by the fact that there was no notice of the policy. I didn't find out until after I'd gone in, and I was a little cheesed. After a few other people were similarly caught, they finally broke out the markers and scrap paper to make some handwritten signs, which would have been handier if they'd not been put up two hours after the gates opened.

  There also seemed to be some disconnect between the yellow-shirted event staff and the grey-clad volunteers. Questions asked sometimes got different answers depending on the color of shirt worn by the answer-giver. That kind of lack of uniformity always grates on me.

  Since I was there for free, I maintained a civil tongue. Through some clever wrangling, I managed to stay in the shade all day, whilst still being able to see the stage. All in all, it was a pretty good day, and I learned something valuable about myself.

  I should never go to concerts.

  I'm too self-conscious to dance, too spindly to mosh, and too concerned about hearing loss to get close enough to the stage to really connect with the performers. I wind up isolated in a crowd of people, feeling like I'm wearing the world's biggest pair of headphones. Instead of getting engaged by the music, I become hyper-aware of bumping into people, or sweating too much, or unexpectedly running into someone I know, and having to exchange awkward greetings over the din.

  So the takeaway message is this. The Popped! Festival was fun. I am not so fun. From now on, I think I'll stick to my public radio podcasts. Somehow, I doubt the scene kids will notice I'm gone.