and I thought california 2 years ago was bad...

Highly Allochthonous : Satellite Imagery of the Australian Bush Fires:

NASA's Earth observatory has posted a couple of images of the bush fires currently devastating southwest Australia.

I predict 6 more weeks of...stupidity

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The End is Near! Again!:

The irony is that this [some wingnut using lines from Ezekiel and Danial as proof the rapture is coming] is all the same "thought" process used by those who claim that Nostradamus was a prophet, something most Christians would scoff at as superstition if not witchcraft. In both cases, references to one thing are reinterpreted over and over again by people over the centuries in order to make them fit what is going on at the time.

As for that rapture thing, sometimes I think it can't get here soon enough. If even half the people who think they're going to be whisked away to heaven actually are, the world will become a far less annoying place.

not entirely expected...

...given Katz's hatred of Disney (ever since Eisner fired him, though really that should be just a grudge with Eisner, and now a non-issue in the Iger era), but Dreamworks has signed with Disney to distribute their films for the next few years.

This is just a distribution deal, as Dreamworks is, like Pixar was years ago, an independent studio.  Shrek is not a Disney property and is unlikely to end up in a Disney park anytime soon.  The deal seems to be just for marketting and distribution, meaning Disney likely has approval rights for merchandise, but not exclusive control nor will they likely put current Dreamworks characters into the Disney stores.

However, it does open a door that had been closed between Disney and Spielberg over Roger Rabbit sequels...

And the Force is stronger than this?

Built on Facts : The Physics of the Death Star:

Now let's say you wanted to take apart the earth. Yes, the whole thing. You want to grab each bit of dirt and pull it out of the earth's gravity and move it out to deep space. How much energy in total would it take? There's some practical reasons for wanting to know. The engineers who built the Death Star would need for their superlaser to deliver at least that much energy. And what could be more practical than that?

But figuring out exactly how much energy requires some finesse - figure out how much energy it takes to remove a kilogram worth of earth, and suddenly the earth has one fewer kilogram worth of gravity. So the next kilogram won't take quite as much energy to remove, and so on. We're going to have to do some thinking about how to get around this.

Lots of fun math in there...

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Welcome back to the 17th Century:

Indulgences Return, and Heaven Moves a Step Closer for Catholics - NYTimes.com:

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

"sad preacher nailed upon the colored door of time..."

But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

“It faded away with a lot of things in the church,” said Bishop DiMarzio of Brooklyn. “But it was never given up. It was always there. We just want to people to return to the ideas they used to know.”

Did they ever stop to think that maybe the idea faded away because it was a stupid idea in the first place?

Pharyngula: Another crazy Catholic doctrine:

Oh, well, at least they aren't selling get-out-of-purgatory-free cards just yet. When that happens, we'll have to go through another 30 Years War, and once was enough.