links for 2009-07-16

The remnants of a dissolved goose was found in a chunk of it. That seems bad.

GQ's Sean Wilsey spent days with NASA, tagging along with astronauts, watching a launch, playing with their new toys, all to learn about the new Ares launch vehicle and the new Constellation program, which will replace the soon-to-be-mothballed shuttle program. The article has some nice gonzo-style touches. Wilsey concludes: "It really does stupefy me how great this agency is and how little the country appreciates it."

Welcome to Crazytown: population Catherine Crabill. The best candidate Republicans could find in the Northern Neck is threatening a violent overthrow of the U.S. government in response to President Obama's election. The Post contacted her to give her a chance to clarify her statements. She used the occasion to say that the president and congress are guilty of "domestic terrorism at its worst" (because a 2% marginal tax increase on the wealthiest Americans is worse than the Oklahoma City bombings), and seems to blame the Post for even writing about her comments.

Says Google: "Webmasters who do not wish their sites to be indexed can and do use the following two lines to deny permission: User-agent: * Disallow: /". I don't buy this complaining from media outlets about how it's not fair that Google News shows their articles. It would take—seriously—ten seconds for them to shut that down if they didn't like it.

"[N]o single member of Congress has been the subject of as much scrutiny—and political sparring—as Perriello. His district has seen a deluge of ads from all sides unmatched anywhere else in the country."