Australia is Getting So Hot the Government Was Forced to Add a Color to Its Heat Maps

New highs forecast in Australia have forced the government to add a new color to its heat maps, AFP reports:

Central Australia was shown with a purple area on the latest Bureau of Meteorology forecast map issued for next Monday, a new colour code suggesting temperatures will soar above 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The bureau's head of climate monitoring and prediction David Jones said the new scale, which also features a pink code for temperatures from 52 to 54 degrees, reflected the potential for old heat records to be smashed.

"The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau's model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees," Jones told Fairfax newspapers. Australia's all-time record temperature is 50.7 degrees, set in January 1960 at Oodnadatta in the state of South Australia.

News: Joe Manchin, Kyoto, Traveling Weave, Design

Celebrate some totally radical 90s holiday movies.

Anti-apartheid leader and former South African President Nelson Mandela, 94, has been hospitalized. "Former President Mandela will receive medical attention from time to time which is consistent with his age," read a statement from current President Jacob Zuma's office.

HRC leaders past and present discuss SCOTUS' decision to hear two gay marriage cases.

The Supreme Court's decision to hear two gay marriage cases puts more pressure on President Obama to spell out his own opinion on the matter: should this be a federal matter or, as he said before, simply left to the states? From Josh Gerstein: "When Obama announced in May that he favored same-sex marriage ... his nuanced language stopped well short of endorsing the idea that the U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to marry for same-sex couples. He said the issue was best left to the states to decide in the near term."

The New York Times' editorial board on SCOTUS: "Fifty-eight years after it banned discrimination in public education, the Supreme Court has set the stage for the defining civil rights decision of this era — agreeing to hear two cases challenging laws that define marriage to exclude couples of the same sex. To us, and a growing number of Americans, the right course seems clear: that the justices continue the march toward real equality."

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is appalled by MTV's new reality show, Buckwild. The show, which he calls a "travesty," "plays to ugly, inaccurate stereotypes about the people of West Virginia."

Lindsay Lohan gets what she wants.

Rihanna loses her undies.

If this weave could talk.

Dustin Hoffman play-kissed One Direction member Niall Horan last night.

Officials at the University of Saskatchewan sent a campus-wide note this week giving students and staff a heads up about an anti-gay pamphleteer wandering around town. "U of S officials sent out the advisory to the campus community Thursday morning after receiving complaints that day about a man distributing a leaflet titled Say No to the Homosexual Agenda. The advisory encouraged staff and students to contact the U of S discrimination and harassment prevention services if they were concerned about the material."

Almost 200 UN member countries voted today on an extension of the Kyoto Accord to combat global warming. "The extension was adopted by a U.N. climate conference after hard-fought sessions and despite objections from Russia. The package of decisions also included vague promises of financing to help poor countries cope with climate change, and an affirmation of a previous decision to adopt a new global climate pact by 2015." The United States never signed onto the Accord.

Despite the fact that scandal-plagued, tax-evading Silvio Berlusconi resigned as Italy's premier last year, he's still going to make another run for the office.

Jonathan Adler draws inspiration from his mother and the coffee cup chandelier she made and hung in their home when he was a kid.

Congratulations to Liz Carmouche, the UFC's first openly gay fighter.

Liberal lawmakers in Trinidad and Tobago are hoping to extend anti-discrimination laws to gays and lesbians.

Citing Climate Change And Equality, Bloomberg Backs Obama

Though Mike Bloomberg last month said he's "more in sync" with President Obama, the politically independent New York City mayor did not endorse the commander-in-chief for reelection. But he did today, particularly because of the President's support of science showing climate change as well as Obama's support for marriage equality.

In an op-ed called " A Vote for a President to Lead on Climate Change" and published at Bloomberg View, a site managed by the company he created before entering politics, Bloomberg writes, "The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast -- in lost lives, lost homes and lost business -- brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief."

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be -- given this week’s devastation -- should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

Mr. Romney, says Bloomberg, does not have political convictions enough to take the lead during such crises and though he once supported climate change science, the GOP presidential candidate's move to the right turned off the billionaire businessman. "[Romney] has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported," writes the mayor. "This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward."

Marriage Equality's shout-out comes toward the end of the piece, as Bloomberg lays out the presidential candidates' divergent politics:

One believes a woman’s right to choose should be protected for future generations; one does not. That difference, given the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies, weighs heavily on my decision.

One recognizes marriage equality as consistent with America’s march of freedom; one does not. I want our president to be on the right side of history.

One sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.

Bloomberg signs off by saying he's voting for Obama because the president "can fulfill the hope he inspired four years ago and lead our country toward a better future for my children and yours".

President Obama has already released a statement thanking Bloomberg for his support. In addition to praising the mayor's business record and bipartisan approach to politics, Obama also reassured New Yorkers that he's still standing by our side: "[Bloomberg] has my continued commitment that this country will stand by New York in its time of need. And New Yorkers have my word that we will recover, we will rebuild, and we will come back stronger."

Read the entire letter AFTER THE JUMP.

CNN Anchor Carol Costello Insults 'Bill Nye the Science Guy': VIDEO

CNN anchor Carol Costello's interview of 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' is startlingly rude.

Costello challenged Nye last week about his knowledge of climate change.

"If you Google your name — ‘Bill Nye' — you’re 'the kooky guy who doesn’t know what he’s talking about'. I mean, you're not a climatologist. You want to defend yourself?"

Responds Nye: "Sure. I can read graphs."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Wonder what it says when you Google Carol Costello?

NEWS: The Moon, The Earth, And Sweet Turtle Love

 Bill Clinton hits the air in NC to decry Amendment One.

 With just a little bit of Republican help, a civil unions bill squeezes through the House Finance Committee in Colorado. 

 The Connecticut legislature passes a medical marijuana bill. 

 Despite Scott Brown's claims to the contrary, Elizabeth Warren probably didn't ride her Native American cred to the upper echelons of academia. If she had, this guy would know about it.

 A rodent's secret to long life, shiny fur, and enormous testicles: Yogurt. 

 Excellent Discover interview with physicist Roger Penrose. He's gotten a little flaky in the twilight of his career, but he's still one of the most compelling interviewees in science. Plus, he dishes about his fruitful, semi-accidental collaborations with MC Escher:

... In my second year as a graduate student at Cambridge, I attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam. I remember seeing one of the lecturers there I knew quite well, and he had this catalog. On the front of it was the Escher picture Day and Night ... I remember being intrigued by this, and I asked him where he got it. He said, “Oh, well, there’s an exhibition you might be interested in of some artist called Escher.” So I went and was very taken by these very weird and wonderful things that I’d never seen anything like. I decided to try and draw some impossible scenes myself and came up with this thing that’s referred to as a tri-bar. It’s a triangle that looks like a three-dimensional object, but actually it’s impossible for it to be three-dimensional. I showed it to my father and he worked out some impossible buildings and things. Then we published an article in the British Journal of Psychology on this stuff and acknowledged Escher.

Escher saw the article and was inspired by it?

He used two things from the article. One was the tri-bar, used in his lithograph called Waterfall. Another was the impossible staircase, which my father had worked on and designed. Escher used it inAscending and Descending, with monks going round and round the stairs. I met Escher once, and I gave him some tiles that will make a repeating pattern, but not until you’ve got 12 of them fitted together. He did this, and then he wrote to me and asked me how it was done—what was it based on? So I showed him a kind of bird shape that did this, and he incorporated it into what I believe is the last picture he ever produced, called Ghosts.

 Remember to see the SuperMoon tonight. 11:34, ET.

 In East Asia, staying indoors is deforming kids' eyeballs:

Researchers have concluded that up to 90 percent of students leaving school in major South East Asian cities are suffering from myopia — the fancy term for when things look fuzzy at a distance. According to Professor Ian Morgan, who conducted the study, the average used to be between 20 and 30 percent.

That's an incredible rise, and it reflects a serious epidemic among South East Asian youth, Morgan explains ...

Morgan believes that the staggering increase in nearsightedness is the result of too much studying and homework, and not enough exposure to daylight.

 Rachel Maddow delivers a vicious smackdown to the Heartland Institute, which in its effort to deny the reality of anthropogenic global warming has contributed disastrously to anthropogenic global dumbing.

 Realizing its error, the Heartland Institute tries to make amends. 

 Courtesy of Buzzfeed: Eleven sounds you've got to hear before you die. For a sample, have a listen to a turtle making love to a shoe, AFTER THE JUMP. Ridiculously adorable, and adorably ridiculous. 

130 Years of Global Warming, Mapped: VIDEO

A new video from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies maps Earth's temperatures over the past 130 years:

The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880.The finding sustains a trend that has seen the 21st century experience nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York released an analysis of how temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience higher temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) higher than the mid-20th century baseline.

In this animation of temperature data from 1880-2011, reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.

2011 is the ninth warmest year on record.

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...