UC Berkeley doesn’t need a task force

In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011. Photo: Thomas K. Fowler / AP

The image above is one of many showing police officers, once again strapped down like Dawg-the-Bounty Hunter, needlessly macing a handful of peaceful students. Their crime? Protesting income inequality and student debt as part of the Occupy movement by sitting down in an open mall area on campus specifically created for students and faculty to stroll, chat, and sit: [Read more…]

Europa breathes

Approximate natural color (left) and enhanced color (right) view of leading hemisphere taken by NASA/JPL's Galileo in 1997

Europa, second satellite of Jupiter, has intrigued planetary scientists since Galileo first spied it and its three siblings through his telescope in 1610. It was these four satellites that exposed the theology of the Catholic Church for the fairytale it was at the height of the Church’s political power. When two Pioneer and two Voyager spacecraft barreled through the Jovian system in the 1970s, that interest turned into one of the most exciting fields in planetary astronomy. Europa is now perhaps the best bet for ET life, it may be one of the most earth-like worlds in our solar system in some respects, and new research suggests Europa not only has a vast subsurface, salty ocean, but that that ocean “breathes”. [Read more…]

The meaning of life and then some

Great topic brought up by Ed Brayton at Dispatches, who writes in part:

The entire span of a person’s existence on earth is not even a blip on the radar in the context of the physical and temporal existence of the universe. But just because our lives have no grand, universal meaning doesn’t mean they don’t have any meaning at all. You do not matter to the universe but you certainly matter to the people around you.

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