TPM Reader MM chimes in on Mars’ new entry into the climate change culture wars …
I’ve been involved with Mars research on and off since 1973, when Carl Sagan published my first paper — on photostimulated oxidation in the Martian environment (essentially, how Mars got to be tawny or ochre-colored, to oversimplify a bit) — in the journal Icarus, of which he was then both publisher and editor. I’m not involved currently in any NASA missions, or in academic research related to Mars, but I have a pretty good understanding of what we think Mars is like now, and of the various theories that have come, gone, and stuck around to explain how we think it got to be that way.
No, the temperature on Mars is not “exactly as it is here” on Earth:
Ed Kilgore: Conservatives want African-Americans to change before they are deemed worthy of outreach.
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Infamous ‘Harding Institute’ hoaxsters try for another bite at the apple after Harding dick story emerges.
Really worth your time to catch up on who the players are in the Menendez-faux hookers-Cuban intel story so that you can fully appreciate the spectacle. You will not be disappointed.
Iowa GOP Senate nominee: “Dictator” Obama’s “impeachment” should be an option.
Back in the late 90s at The American Prospect I edited an article and became interested in the somewhat obscure but high-stakes debate over whether to destroy the last stocks of the smallpox virus, which was finally eradicated in nature in the 1980. The Russians and the US both have remaining stockpiles, under intense technical and security protection at two laboratories, one in each country. So that’s where the debate still remained – except for the vials of smallpox virus in a cardboard box a government scientist found while cleaning out a storage closet near Washington last week.
This has got to be the most transparently contrived “feud” between two politicians of the same party that I’ve ever seen. It’s Mark Begich (D-AK), running for re-election in a tight race that could tip the balance in the Senate, taking on Claire McCaskill (D-MO), whose own re-election in 2012 was fraught until the GOP nominated Todd Akin. After letting Begich knock her around for a few days on an issue of great importance to Alaskans, McCaskill really “retaliated” today in a statement to TPM: “There has consistently been one problem—Mark Begich. He single-handedly protects Alaska and the ANCs.”
How dastardly!
Dylan Scott explains the whole thing.
Hometown paper thinks Mississippi blacks are going to feel pretty stupid thinking Chris McDaniel is racist after they learn he played basketball in college.