From The Editor – Page 7 – BilgeBucket Gazette

Reality Check

NASA released a fantastic photo this past week depicting the Earth as a pale blue dot through the rings of Saturn. The photo was taken by the Cassini space probe that is in orbit studying the giant gas planet and it’s moons. This picture brings to mind other humbling NASA shots like the photos of the Earth and the moon together taken by numerous spacecraft(here, here and here) and the ‘family portrait’ of the Earth and the other planets in our solar system from Voyager as it left our solar system in 1990. Everything that we know and all the history of humanity and life as we know it has originated from that tiny grouping of pixels. Clone stamp it in Photoshop and suddenly, no Earth exists. However, the rest of the Universe keeps going even if we humans and our mythologies and religions disappear. Just think of how advanced our civilization would be if all children started learning about astronomy instead of religion in grade school.

godoriginearthpalebluedot — The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn sends a reality check to all religious people on the pale blue dot called Earth.

Awesome!

And to think, just a scant fifty years ago a picture like this was only a dream.

…And The Children Shall Lead

No satire in this post, just a couple of great links. This fantastic Flash app, The Scale of the Universe 2, shows the scale of the universe from the very small to the very large. The truly amazing thing about this application was that it was built by a couple of 14 year old California teens, Cary and Michael Huang. If you haven’t seen this app already(it’s been viral for awhile), click on the link and play with the slider. If more kids understood science like these kids (hell if more adults understood science this well), this planet would have a bright future. Great job guys!!

The Earth Speaks

To commemorate Earth Day, here’s a photo-toon from our July 25, 2006 issue. One can substitute the perpetual conflict in the Middle East with environmental pollution, species annihilation, excessive consumerism and human overpopulation but the conclusion is the same: humans are systematically destroying the only planet we know of that supports life, spaceship Earth. Take care of the planet.

Happy Birthday Arizona!

Today is Arizona’s centennial. A lot of things have happened in Arizona the past 100 years. In 1912 the population was just over 200,000. Today, over 6 million people call Arizona home. Though we think the politicians here leave a lot to be desired, you just can’t beat the natural beauty of this state. And the weather ain’t bad either. Happy 100th Birthday Arizona!

Remember

Picture Credit :Library of Congress, September 11 archive, image 02016v.

BilgeBucket Returns in Convenient Blog Format

The BilgeBucket Gazette has returned to the Internet in a more convenient blog format after a two year hiatus. Yes, after two years of basically sitting on our cans, we have decided to come back and entertain annoy the denizens of the Internet with our hilarious, wacky, awkward brand of humor. The new format allows us to spew out new material in bits and chunks just like Charlie Sheen on a late night bender. It’s called Winning!! We will concentrate on creating new photo-toons, photo-flashtoons, photo-ads, photo-synthesis and other photo-prefix crap. We will also create more of our exciting, sensational,and scintillating BilgeBucket Lists for you to mock, jeer and curse at. And of course, we’ll post some of our classic creations from 2003-2009, so you can reminisce and wonder how this country ever made it through the Bush years in one piece. It’s called Winning!! So sit back and keep checking in with us for more hijinx from America’s trendiest suburb, Cactus Corners, Arizona, where everything…and we mean everything(it’s a desert here folks)… is coming up cactus!