Gong

These are the guys your mom would have warned you about circa 1970. Hippy-dippy long-hairs with some weird ideas and lots of drugs. But they could really play. The only bigger circus was the Grateful Dead; but, I'm willing to bet that these guys still win any head-to-head silliness contest.

Friday Galactic Blogging

I never cease to be awed by how unbelievably beautiful these deep space images can be. This tableau contains NGC 7331 in the upper right and something else called Stephan's Quintet a "compact group" and the site of a giant intergalactic shock wave (imaged beautifully on the Wikipedia page.) It's an APOD image and as always click through for a higher res image.

Good Grief

K-Lo attempts some political analysis. Why I'm not super worried that her analyses might be actually, uh, competent:

Why I’m not super worried yet: The presidency ain’t fridges with TVs in them and I think even iPod Americans know that.

Wow, funny girl. And she has responsibility for National Review's website. Who hired her, and for what skills?

Mark Steyn!

Since I've already started abusing exclamation marks, and haven't posted a complaint about Steyn in quite a while - here is definitive proof that Charles Johnson is a fatuous loon.

Frank!

Frank died long before he should have. One of the best musicians I know of, as well as one of the most original and interesting composers there ever was. I hope his music lasts as long as J. S. Bach's has.

Friday Galactic Blogging

I'm always a sucker for a great spiral, and here is a magnificent example. Not dissimilar to our own Milky Way, M74 is a gorgeous spiral, fully face on, at a distance of 30 million light years. Clicking through the image will take you to the APOD description, clicking there will show a higher resolution version of the image.