The media apparently is unwilling to accept that there are a lot of Americans [and always have been] who are racist bigots, so when one of them kills a half dozen people at their house of worship, the media doesn’t simply report the facts, they create a ‘narrative’ that they are personally comfortable with.

In this case they are pushing the idea that the shooter mistook the Sikhs for Muslims.

If you are a drunken jerk, you might mistake a Sikh for a Muslim, because you are as ignorant as a brick. If you are as ignorant as a Midwestern tourist you might mistake a group of Orthodox Rabbis as Muslims and stop your plane from taking off. If you are a former member of the Army who qualified for a Psy Ops slot, you don’t make that mistake. At a minimum you check the phonebook for a Mosque.

The shooter had a ‘9/11’ tattoo, so he must have been targeting Muslims – that’s the level of critical thinking you get from the media. The guy had dozens of tattoos, and ‘9/11’ was an excuse, not a reason. He decided to murder people who were different than his concept of ‘real Americans’, because he blamed “them” for his failures. In his mind, “they” got all of the opportunities that belonged to him, and it couldn’t possibly be that they consistently showed up for work on-time and sober. No, it had to be “special treatment”.

This guy could have just as easily targeted a Synagogue, a Black church, a Catholic church, but he selected the Sikh temple because of the way they dress for services, which he viewed as totally ‘unAmerican’.

Unlike Mitt the Twit, the shooter certainly knew the difference between ‘Sikh’ and ‘Sheik’. He was in Psy Ops – he selected the target for the visuals.

[I do know what the guy’s name is, but he won’t get any free publicity from me – that was one of the things he wanted to accomplish – fame.]

Position: 18.8N 91.8W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 65 mph [105 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Minimum central pressure: 994 mb.

Currently about 15 miles [ 25 km] North of Cuidad del Carmen, Mexico.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Chilitepec.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Barra de Nautla and from Chilitepec to Campeche

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Barra de Nautla.

The storm has entered the Bay of Campeche and slowed down.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Juan Cole posted on something that really struck me when I was watching the Curiosity landing: the people in the control room.

In addition to the fact that the people in that room obviously came from every continent, and both sexes, they were also multi-generational. The young guy with the now famous ‘Mohawk’ was on the same row as a guy who looked like a middle-aged hippie. There were people who looked like they were in high school when this project started, and others who may have been in high school or college when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.

One of the comments at Dr. Cole’s said they didn’t see any blacks, but they were there and some in the shirts and ties of administrators.

It was interesting to watch the stress drain away from the individual units when their part of the mission was completed successfully and someone else was in the spotlight.

In addition to the team for Curiosity, the teams that handle the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Odyssey spacecraft were involved in this mission. The data from Curiosity was sent to the MRO, which relayed it to Odyssey, which transmitted it to Earth. The MRO also managed to snap a picture of Curiosity descending on its parachute and the ejected heat shield falling away. An amazing number of things had to go right for this to work, and it worked.

So during my usual scan of media sites today I was looking for Curiosity coverage. The “Tech” stories at CNN really stood out, and not in a good way:

• Meet ‘Mohawk Guy,’ Mars landing star
• Gaming creates fame and ‘addiction’
• 5 warning signs of gaming addiction
• Is ‘gaming addiction’ a real disorder?
• How to become a pro at ‘StarCraft II’
• The best nonhuman Twitter feeds
• Apparently This Matters: Phelps, Phish

We safely land a vehicle the size of a compact car, crammed with scientific instruments to explore another planet, and all CNN notices is a guy with an unusual haircut‽ The only other reference on the front page was a link to an opinion piece asking the burning question: “Is science ‘cool’. now?”

Fortunately the BBC, even with the Olympics going on, and even though it is primarily a US mission, has a nice long, link-rich article. Without the BBC, CBC, and ABC [Australia] I wouldn’t know we still do science in the US, because the US media doesn’t report on it.