Beam me up Scotty!

Photo credit: Khampha Bouaphanh -- Fort Worth Star-telegram.

This photo (reprinted in The Washington Post) and others like it were featured in a BAGnewsNotes post back in September. The blogger, Michael Shaw, questioned why images from inside the dome didn't reflect the reality of print accounts:

I just never came across images of the despair as so painfully described in the written accounts. ...

All I found were more of these beautiful (some might even say almost spiritual or mystical) depictions of the sun's rays piercing the dome (with most evidence of decrepitude or suffering left to the margins, usually at "ant size" scale). Beyond these remote, long angle shots, I only came upon a single close up from inside the building after Tuesday. (The picture showed a fairly clean man posing while holding up a sign for help.)

Related: New Orleans showed its tits, but all it got was ...

Now, BAGnewsNotes is up for a Webby award in the political blog category, competing with The Huffington Post and the CJR Daily.

Congratulations Michael!

The Webby awards site might be interesting to browse if you have the time and are interested in some of the best of what's out there on the internet.

Speaking of Scotty (a long bizarre aside), Canadian-born actor James Doohan's ashes were scheduled to be launched into space, along with astronaut Gordon Cooper's ashes, and the ashes of 185 other people. The launch may have already occurred (I think I read about it somewhere).

Wikipedia:

Scotty's exploits as the redoubtable Chief Engineer aboard the Enterprise inspired many students to pursue a career in engineering. Because of this the Milwaukee School of Engineering granted Doohan an honorary degree in engineering [ah, those nutty Milwaukeeans -- must be the long winters].

In Star Trek lore, Scotty was born in the town of Linlithgow, Scotland in the year 2222.

Doohan's ashes are to be sent into space at his request. Space burial firm Space Services, Inc. confirmed that he had arranged for his cremated ashes to be released into Earth orbit, and are scheduled to be on the Explorers Flight, a Falcon 1 rocket launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in 2006 (a March 2006 launch failure may delay this flight). The remains of more than 120 others will also be on the flight, including astronaut Gordon Cooper, Mareta West (the astrogeologist who determined the site of the first spaceflight landing on the moon), and Star Trek writer John Meredyth Lucas, who died in 2002.

Space Services, Inc. was selling the opportunity to send a message into space with Scotty.