(hat tip: digg)

PHOENIX – Arizona is preparing to ask an appeals court to lift a judge's ruling that put most of the state's immigration law on hold in a key first-round victory for the federal government in a fight that may go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gov. Jan Brewer called Wednesday's decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton "a bump in the road" and vowed to appeal.

Protesters in Phoenix went ahead with plans Thursday for a march to the state Capitol and a sit-in at the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The sheriff said if protestors were disruptive, they'd be arrested, and he vowed to go ahead with a crime sweep targeting illegal immigrants.

Paul Senseman, a spokesman for Brewer, said Arizona would ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco later Thursday to lift Bolton's preliminary injunction and to expedite its consideration of the state's appeal.

Bolton indicated the government has a good chance at succeeding in its argument that federal immigration law trumps state law. But the key sponsor of Arizona's law, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said the judge was wrong and predicted the state would ultimately win the case.

this one is definitely going to head for the Supreme Court... with over 70% of arizona supporting the bill, other states looking to implement similar laws, and the fact that the border states are practically crying for something to be done — no doubt on where this is headed.

personally, i support the bill.

p.s. Rangel wary as ethics charges to become public

on a sidenote, it's not too long now 'til the footbal season starts up... a few more weeks and the pre-season games should start coming on... thank gawd.

still find it funny so many are miffed that cheerleading isn't a recognized sport. *chuckle*

i can see me geek'n out a little and adding this poster to my collection. definitely.

p.s. Princess Leia Bikini Kitchen / BBQ Apron

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans by a large majority believe President Barack Obama has not focused enough on job creation, as economic fears threaten Democrats ahead of November 2 congressional elections, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found on Tuesday.

In a sign of trouble ahead for the Democrats, the poll found evidence of a sizable enthusiasm gap with Republicans more energized about voting in the elections.

Americans expressed deep unhappiness with the direction of the economy, which in the poll they identified overwhelmingly as the country's top problem.

The U.S. unemployment rate is at a stubbornly high 9.5 percent and Obama has spent much of the year on issues like Wall Street reform and healthcare in addition to jobs.

People were more negative about Obama's performance on the economy than on any other question surveyed. Satisfaction was dropping more sharply on the issue than on any other question.

Only 34 percent approved of Obama's handling of the economy and jobs compared to 46 percent who deemed it unsatisfactory. This is a sharp decline from early 2009, shortly after he took office, when more than half of those surveyed approved of Obama's handling of the worst financial crisis in decades.

i'd have to be a pretty diehard democrat to vote that way, and even then i think i'd seriously be on the fence -- unless they were fiscally converative, of course... but hell, i'm at the point where i think most of congress should just be fired and term limits absolutely has to be put in place. period.

More than 1,300 space shuttle workers received layoff notices this week from United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor that is cutting 15 percent of its 8,100-person workforce ahead of the shuttle fleet's retirement next year.

Layoff notices were issued to 1,394 USA employees in all, company spokesperson Kari Fluegel told SPACE.com. The layoffs take effect Oct. 1 and were announced earlier this month by USA officials.

"Our workforce has known for several years that the Space Shuttle Program has been scheduled to end, but layoffs are always difficult for everyone involved," said Virginia Barnes, USA president and chief executive, said in a July 6 statement. "We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible."

Debate on commercial spaceships

NASA is retiring its three space shuttles (Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour) to make way for a new plan that aims to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and then on to Mars. That new plan replaces the agency's previous Constellation program, which sought to return astronauts to the moon in the 2020s.

President Barack Obama proposed cancelling the Constellation program, which included new rockets and spacecraft to launch astronauts. That plan would set aside $6 billion over five years to support the development of new commercial spaceships that could ferry astronauts into space.

while not surprising i guess, since we've all known about the Space Shuttle program going bye-bye... it's still a little sad to see... got a friend that works at NASA, but he's pretty secure i think — unless they end up cutting half of their IT staff, which would really blow.

with so much getting fucked up of late, it's also sad to see us pulling back on the space front... hopefully we fire congress, get some level-headed policies in place, and get our economy rocking again so we can devote more energy towards space exploration and a new kickass efficient energy source.

Recently, ESPN collected data on the percentage of concession stands at each of North America's major professional sports' venues that were tagged hit with "critical" health violations.

However, it isn't fair to rate these stadiums and arenas simply by their overall percentage of concession stand violations, as health departments in different states and cities clearly monitor sporting venues with differing levels of scrutiny. (For example, ESPN uncovered that every major sports venue in Florida had at least a 67 percent overall rate of critical violations. Whereas, miraculously, three of the four ballparks in the city of Chicago had absolutely no critical violations!)

So, we've taken ESPN's data and formed our own list of the five grossest stadiums in North America. We've computed these rankings based on a nominally scientific formula that includes how a venue compares to the others in its area, plus ESPN's anecdotal reporting of specific, unappetizing violations seen at that particular stadium.

1. Verizon Center (Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals)
D.C.'s Verizon Center is another venue where 100 percent of food vendors garnered critical health violations. Ten of its stands were cited for preparing food amidst rodent droppings. The fact that only 25 percent of of vendors in Nationals Park, the other downtown sports venue in our nation's capital, received critical health violations makes the Verizon Center's (im)perfect score that much more unpalatable. In fact, one could call it "a national disgrace."

holy... shit... dude, i'm never eating there again.

Yesterday Oliver Stone was the center of attention because of an interview with The Sunday Times of London in which he said that Jews run the media and that people should stop blindly labeling Hitler and Stalin as evil. In fact he’s making a new documentary that he hopes will help people, "walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view".

In other words, hindsight is 20/20, so don't get all PC just because Stalin killed 20 million of his own people between 1936 and 1938. Did Hitler execute 14 million Jews, Gypsy's, gay people, handicapped people and Russian POW's for no reason, or did they provoke him by being unpure? We can play the blame game all day. If all you focus on is the time in 1933 when Stalin had 6000 of his own people rounded up and dumped on a remote island with no food or shelter, and then they started killing and eating each other because life isn't like "Lost" and that's what people do when there's no fucking food or shelter, well then of course Stalin is gonna seem like a bad leader. But do a few isolated incidents make someone a bad person? Who are we to judge? That's all Stone was trying to say.

saw a clip about this earlier and i was like "whoa... seriously? wtf?" — oliver stone is pretty far left, and sounds like a crazy bastard when he opens his mouth and says shit like this... the crazy thing is, there's plenty of people in hollywood that subscribe to this nonsense. ugh.

It may not exactly be a huge surprise at this point, but GM has finally revealed that the official base price for its Chevrolet Volt will be $41,000 (including a $720 destination charge).

That price is before the $7,500 federal tax credit, however, which will bring your eventual end cost down to a slightly more reasonable $33,500. Those looking to get on the road for even less up-front can also opt for a three-year lease, which will run you $350 a month after a $2,500 down payment. As Autoblog notes, you'll also have an option to purchase the car at the end of the lease, so GM won't be repeating its infamous EV1 scenario. Still too much for you? Then you might just want to wait a bit -- GM says it will also be offering the Volt with less features and a lower price point "within a year or two."

daaaaaaamn... $41k base price for this Volt i've been hearing about for the last couple years now? geeeeeesh, that's a bit higher than i figured it would've been... it's too damn expensive to "go green", man.

hell, if i was dropping that much for my car, i'd just buy a nice BMW.

It's not as if we haven't heard the rumors building over the last few months, but Apple's long-standing iMac line is seeing its first real update since the Fall of last year on this fine morning.

As predicted, the refreshed family now contains Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processor options, not to mention discrete ATI Radeon HD GPU options, IPS panels, an SD slot that understands the complexities of SDXC and an SSD option on the 27-inch machine. For whatever reason, Apple's not throwing in its new Magic Trackpad with any iMac; instead, it'll be a $69 accessory. One swank addition to this line, however, is the ability to order your new all-in-one with both an HDD and an SSD on the 27-inch model. Of course, it'll cost you dearly (a 1TB HDD plus a 256GB SSD is a $750 CTO option, while the 2TB HDD in that combo makes it a $900 option), but at least there's room inside for DIY adds.

i'm kind of digging the new gigantic trackpad, or at least the idea of it, but i'd have to play around with one to see if it's even worth it... i'd hate to add another thing to my already busy work desk... also dig how you can get some SSD to speed things up in your iMac now -- that's pretty slick... still hate the price though, and i figure the prices will start to drop on that shit in another year or two. hopefully.

NEW ORLEANS – The American picked to lead oil giant BP as it struggles to restore its finances and oil spill-stained reputation pledged Tuesday that his company will remain committed to the Gulf region even after the busted well is sealed.

Robert Dudley will become BP PLC's first ever non-British chief executive, the company said as it reported a record quarterly $17 billion loss and set aside $32.2 billion to cover costs from the spill.

Ending weeks of speculation, BP confirmed that gaffe-prone Tony Hayward will step down Oct. 1 as the London-based company seeks to reassure both the public and investors that it is learning lessons from the spill.

"There's no question we are going to learn things from this investigation of the incident," Dudley told reporters by phone from London after the announcement was made.

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg echoed that during a webcast presentation on the company's earnings, telling investors that BP will change as a result of the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

damn that's a lot of money... and at the end of the day, from a business perspective, a helluva lot more than some safety updates to an oil rig -- i still can't believe this shit has been going on for the last 99 days. *blink*

saw a clip in the news this morning with the crew from Jersey Shore up to ring the bell at the new york stock exchange... felt like the "end of days" was certainly near.

And now for some much-needed perspective on our place in the universe, courtesy of science and Photoshop. In this image, we see our fiery life-giving orb the Sun, represented as a single pixel. And this is the more flattering picture.

The sun, as the story goes, is a mass of incandescent gas; a gigantic nuclear furnace. With a diameter of 865,000 miles, or 109 times the diameter of our planet, it's an incredibly massive thing. A mind-bogglingly enormous ball of hydrogen and helium, powerful enough to brighten our days and provide us with warmth, yet still discreet enough to leave us alone each day long enough for us to catch a little shut-eye.

It seems big to us, but in relation to the rest of the universe? It is but a pixel.

We used to classify the Sun as a middle-sized star, but recent advances in telescopic imaging technology place us on tinier side of the spectrum. Hell, scientists have seen stars 90 times the size of our sun shooting through the universe as if launched by a slingshot. Compared to that, our Sun is nothing.

And if our sun is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, what does that make us?

it never ceases to amaze me... the sheer size and magnitude of the universe around is mind bottling.

kind of hoping i see something similar for the DC Metro lines.

p.s. i'm a sucker for the big ass image backgrounds... been awhile since i've done that around here. hmmmm.

the part at the end with the hammock and projector is pretty badass.

In Hong Kong, because of the space, apartments are small and expensive. Gary Chang, an architect, decided to design a 344 sq. ft. apartment to be able to change into 24 different designs, all by just sliding panels and walls. He calls this the "Domestic Transformer.

(hat tip: jeff)

whoa... while it's a medical marvel, for sure, i'm not quite sure what to say — seeing the photo above kind of creeped me the hell out, mang.

SAN DIEGO — Any doubts about Thor, the upcoming movie based on the Norse god comic book character, got seriously hammered Saturday when Marvel Studios showed off a ballsy new trailer at Comic-Con International.

The filmmakers set the movie in two distinctively different worlds. In the desert of the American Southwest, a banished Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) is taken for a crazy homeless guy. In his homeland, the golden realm of Asgard, the thunder god tangles with his dysfunctional royal family.

In both settings, the bulked-up Hemsworth reads like the real deal: a hero on a journey. Whether he's brawling or swinging his mighty hammer Mjolnir, the action looks convincing. And while a leaked image of The Destroyer failed to impress, rest assured that the appearance of the enchanted suit of armor at the end of the trailer makes for a blazing big-screen moment.

The trailer, shown in 3-D at Comic-Con, blows away any fears aroused by an early publicity still of Thor's Asgardian family. Director Kenneth Branagh, best known for his cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare's work, has captured on film an Asgard of sweeping scale. As with Avatar, stills from the movie look a little on the cheesy side, but the lush moving images prove impressive.

this movie looks to be shaping up to be something really cool... i'm hoping it'll be something like the first Iron Man, which was simply awesome... can't wait to see this when it finally comes out in theaters, man.

speaking of movies, i finally got around to watching The Wolfman, which i thought was merely okay... kind of disappointed to be honest.... also saw Inception last night and damn, what a great movie -- heard so much about the movie i secretly figured i'd walk out being a little "bleh" about it... not the case at all, and ditto for the storyline... didn't find it too hard to follow or anything, though it feels like one of those movies you want to watch a couple times just to catch anything you might've missed along the way — christopher nolan is right up there with peter jackson, i think.

p.s. Megan Fox to play Catwoman in Batman 3?

when the old counters were removed, this 6" band of really old ass wallpaper was left behind... i'll definitely need to clear that up, but i'm planning on getting some tile for the backsplash which i'm hoping to just cover it with... already placed an order for the tile, so that's my next project — once that's done my kitchen will be pretty much updated. fuck. yeah.