And now, after a day of just letting it sink in, to gloat just a teensy bit

As an excuse to use my brand-new shiny userpic above...

To Karl Rove, Junior Bush, Darth Cheney, Tom DeLay, Big Jim Dobson, Newt Gingrich and all the rest of you Republican bastards who thought you were going to have a permanently conservative United States government to do whatever the bloody hell you felt like doing with it:
IN YOUR FUCKING FACES, LOSERS! YOUR SORRY ASSES JUST GOT PWNED!!!

And to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, George Will and all the rest of you right-wing blowhards who have made your fortunes dissing and demonizing people who think and believe as I do, and who thought most Americans would never again let a Democrat have the White House:
IN YOURS TOO! Suck it for the next four years, bitches! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

And thank you, Senator John McCain, for having more class than just about everyone in that ballroom with you late Tuesday night as you gave a model concession speech. Ironically, if you'd stayed that classy person through the last months since your nomination instead of panicking, pandering to your party's base and letting your supporters run amok, you might well have avoided needing to give such a speech.

And last but by no means least, thank you to each and every one of you who worked so hard for the campaign, in the Obama organization and others, for proving my darkest fears wrong and making it happen despite the misgivings of those of us for whom Obama wasn't "liberal enough" or "white enough" or "experienced enough" or "presidential enough" to win. And to all of you who joined me in voting for him, whether you worked or not. Our party and our country owe you, big-time.

In Memoriam: John Michael Crichton, MD, 1942-2008

Novelist, TV/film director/producer and physician Michael Crichton, as some of you have heard by now, passed away on Tuesday, 4 November in Los Angeles, CA after a long and unpublicized struggle with cancer at the age of 66. He is survived by one child, daughter Taylor Anne, and his current wife Sherri Alexander, as well as four ex-wives, two sisters and a brother.

I delayed posting about his death because of my own mixed feelings about the man and his work. Yes, he patented the medical/scientific thriller with undeniable classics such as The Andromeda Strain (made into movies twice, the latest just this past summer) and the Jurassic Park cycle. Yes, he directed Westworld and created ER, the NBC series that has anchored its Thursday-night schedule for 14 years (and is finally ending its run with the close of this season). And he even ventured into genuine SF with Timeline (also made into a movie); hell, one of my favorite televised SF characters (from the dear, departed Farscape) bears his first and last names.

But in his latter years, he became a right-wing media darling by being sort of an anti-Carl Sagan, attacking environmentalism and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (both causes near and dear to my heart) and pooh-poohing the dangers of nuclear winter, secondhand smoke and global warming. Wikipedia's entry on him details some of the controversies he created with his speeches, articles and public statements, and his anti-green screed disguised as a novel, State of Fear. And he was petty and vindictive enough to name a child-molester character in one of his novels after a New Republic editor who dared criticize his new brand of political science in that magazine's pages. (Personally, until I learned more details, when I first heard of Crichton's death, I figured he'd died of a heart attack when he found out that the Democrats won the elections.)

For his creative gifts and contributions to our literature and entertainment, Dr. Crichton's passing deserves note; and I suppose he has earned a small measure of credit for trying to broaden the public's awareness of science and the debate on public policy relating thereto. And my heart goes out to his family and friends with deepest sympathies on their loss. But I hope you'll forgive me if I don't shed too many tears for his untimely passing; far as I'm concerned, publishing's loss is ideology-free science's gain.