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To use a term a friend of mine coined, I'm suffering from a severe case of withbloggal.  It's been long hours and little sleep for the last week.  The most exiting thing I did was visit a friend at Pensacola Christian College.  Everything else has been roof, eat, sleep, roof, eat, sleep. . .

Michael Anthony Peroutka seems to be much more popular down here than in Indiana.  His running mate Chuck Baldwin is a Pensacola native and they've been running commercials on local talk radio. Think the Constitution Party stands a chance in future elections?

I hear that Comedy Central is airing a new reality TV show. . .a cartoon.  "Drawn Together" claims to bring different animated characters into one show, which from the ads and MA rating promises to be risque and not very funny.  The whole scenario is oxymoronic.  What aspect of a cartoon can be in any way be called "reality"?  If this is the way things are going, maybe all those reality shows aren't as real as we thought. 

Better go, I want to catch the lunar eclipse.

We got our license, we got our permit, our shingles are approved for Florida, the impossible has become possible and we actually started nailing down some roofing today.  The heat was broken by rain twice (this isn't good when you're roofing), but it's a start.  The owners are elated that their roof is getting done--most people haven't gotten near that far, and many houses are just now being "blue-roofed," (dried in with blue tarps) courtesy of FEMA.

I've seen a pretty even number of Bush and Kerry signs staked in local yards.  Back home in Indiana, Bush is expected to sweep.   However, the race for Indiana governer will be close.

Blogging here in Escambia County; we got the runaround yesterday and today trying to get a license and permit just to put on some roofing.  We still don't have either (and I thought they were begging for help).  The first place we went to for our permit was an office working out of a trailer off of one (1) cell phone.  No lines, no fax, nothing else.  Efficient, huh?  Most other people have had phone lines for weeks.  The worst of it, though, is that no one we talked to had any idea of what was the correct process for obtaining our license and permit.  Suffice it to say we were officially told opposite things more than once. And the web site made it sound so easy. . .

Happier news: The (big breath) National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Institute for Advanced Concepts is giving $75,000 each to 12 proposals for advanced space propulsion techniques.  One idea is to use a "magnetized beam of ionized plasma" shot from a space station:

Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam.

John McCaslin's blog has a great post at the very bottom of the page.  It's a bumper sticker sighting. . .

"I Actually Voted For John Kerry Before I Voted Against Him."

Gone to the great state of Florida for the next week or so; blogging may be infrequent, sporadic, or just plain non-existent.  We'll see.

Keep the net buzzing,
Daniel

32 percent of all known amphibians are threatened, says this report .  Scientists blame their decline on habitat loss, increasing pollution of freshwater sources, and diseases such as one called chytridiomycosis.  Some link the disease with drought years caused by global warming.

What do you think? Are we really causing these species to go extinct or have they been dying out regularly and naturally for the last few thousand years?  The reason many of the scientists who reasearched the report are so worried is because amphibians "are experiencing tens of thousands of years worth of extinctions in just a century." [ScienceDaily] 
A?} How do they know at what rate frogs and salamanders went extinct "tens of thousands" of years ago, and  B} Their view is based on an evolutionary mindset which supposes that things in nature do not (and should not) change quickly.  I believe they may be mistaken on both points.  However I do applaud the work they are putting into saving the species.

Here's a mosaic of Endurance Crater on red planet.   Spirit and Opportunity are purring away.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission / JPL / NASA


And here's our mysterious star, in ultraviolet:

TRACE project / NASA

This blog reports that the Grand Canyon park service is no longer offering "official estimates" for the age of the Grand Canyon, possibly a result of pressure from Creationist groups to allow their opinion to be heard.

Yet more evidence that NASA--funded with your taxes--is not friendly towards Creationists. More here .