Coming at you from Prague Airport Business Lounge...

Hi everyone,

As you may know from the infamous "Prague Blog", I completed the Prague 1/2 Marathon on Saturday with a good, but not target time, of 2:18:30. Oh well, it was an amazing event and, as with last year, I loved it.

I am now off to Nigeria t0 work on a project I was involved with a couple of years ago. It seems some management changes and some focus has caused things to start moving again and so I am making an exploratory visit to see if there is enough going on to warrent my corporate reinvolvement. I will endevour to post a blog or two from Lagos and Abuja over the next week and a half.

OK. So onto fun stuff. GM is "one clown down": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29946290/ and has two months to restructure, Chrysler has 30 days to complete its merger with Fiat. You know, some of my best friends are Italian - I have this overwhelming urge to tell them be careful what you eat, automotively speaking, of course: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29944834/. The best news is that somebody, somewhere is getting a dose of reality with respect to idiot vehicle concepts: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29944975/. Personally, I can't see the Hummer surviving, hell I can't see GM surviving either, Government bailouts aside.

Of course, in Canada it looks like Chrysler will be leaving. Sorry to see you go, boys, don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Did I tell you that the ex bought a new Toyota this year?

Other fun stuff...

• The ISS now has its complete set of Solar Panels - looks very cool, I might add: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=30972
• Fox News yet again shoves its foot into its mouth - this time at the expense of America's best friend and next door neighbour: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/how-lose-friends-and-alienate-countries
• There are new trailers and a new synopsis of the upcoming Star Trek film - now only 40 days away: http://www.startrekmovie.com/upgrade_flash.html

OK gang. Got to go but now that Prague is behind me, I promise to start writing on this blog a bit more so stay tuned.

Paul

Reluctantly, I raise this issue.

Hi everyone,

On the night before I leave for Prague, and then Lagos Nigeria, my friend Barb asked me to write something on the recent comments by the Pope regarding the AIDS pandemic in Africa. OK, I can do that.

First off a bit of background for the unwashed: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509488,00.html

A second bit of background, embarrassing but necessary, I was raised in a predominately Catholic family. I myself was an agnostic at the age of 14, and an atheist by my late 30's. Only possible rational belief system, in my opinion, is a complete lack of "faith" - I have already dared God to strike me down with lightening or crash my plane as proof of his existence and given that I am on another two planes in the next 48 hours, he has ample opportunity to do so.

But I digress.

OK - so there are a few different kinds of Catholics worldwide. Let us look at them by increasing percentages:

• Devote Catholics who take the doctrine from Rome absolutely literally. These guys represent less than 1% of the church and can be found in Ireland, Chile, Argentina and, lamentably a couple of African countries. They are the object of scorn and ridicule, see Monty Python's Meaning of Life - Every Sperm is Sacred and you will know what I am talking about
• Serious Catholics, who while almost as idiotic as the above bunch, recognise that there are limitations on a church's lifestyle prescriptions on the modern world and try to find a middle way. They represent approximately 5% of the total membership of the church according to the Mackin Wild Ass Guess Polling Institute (MWAGPI Ltd). These are the clowns who protest at Life of Brian or The Last Temptation of Christ premiers.
• Cafeteria Catholics, who pick and choose from a "menu" of Church guidelines and enjoy an active sex life before and after marriage without "spreading their seed" throughout the cosmos. This 60% of Catholics are nice people who are able to completely separate the reality of the world from the unreality of their faith
• Last but not least, the remaining 34% (MWAGPI - 2009 Survey), go to mass at Christmas and Easter and don't really pay attention the rest of the time. The true future of the Church as they are a growing percentage (MWAGPI - 2008 Study - look it up, the author really gets to the heart of the matter) of Catholics worldwide

As to the Pope's comments, he is an old guy who has probably never been in an intimate personal situation. I respect the worldwide political role of the pontiff and respect any individual who is willing to take on a very difficult job and pretty thankless job, quite late in life. Further, it is a job with some real worldwide influence and the last incumbent wielded it well. Still the current guy, knows nothing about sexuality or human behaviour and is serving as a front man for an organization that has been cloistered since the dark ages, but is a very loving man who cares about the world. Still, from him, you expect something rational with respect to any kind of reproductive issues?

End of rant - wear condoms, all you Africans. Remember the World Health Organization guidelines - ABC:

• Abstinence
• Between (single partners)
• Condoms

Live a long time, everyone. We need you all.

Paul

Birthdays and the interesting dynamics of social networking tools

Hi everyone,

I recently joined Facebook, after years of friends encouraging me to do so. I was always reluctant, I am actually a bit of a late adopter when it comes to technology, surprising though that may seem. One friend contacted me here through this blog, many of you may remember it, but after establishing contact with my dear old friend Karen, I did in fact join Facebook at her urging and then met up with a number of other friends and have greatly enjoyed it.

I wonder about the role of social network tools such as Facebook in terms of how we as a society interact. I am skeptical of tools such as second life as I believe the can lead to addictive or otherwise harmful behaviour but I must say that Facebook has opened my eyes to how people can interact and find each other on the net.

Fascinating.

Anyway, before I go much further I want to shout out three people with the same last name who had birthday's recently. Well one of them is a bit dated but only a bit and I have missed a few birthday's here, so indulge me.

Andrew turned 12 on the 7th of March
Jade turned 17 on the 4th of March
JoLaura turned 19 on the 31st of December.

Hope I got those all right. Happy birthday guys!

One blog administration point - chapter three of my eBook, So Fatso, Do you want to run a Marathon with me? will be online before I fly to Prague on the 22nd of March. Thanks for your enquiries on the matter.

OK, boys and girls, so, let's get onto the space shuttle. Those birds need to retire, my friends. The shuttle launch was scrubbed this evening after a possible fuel tank leak was found. These birds were designed in the 70's and built in the 80's - they are old. Older than me and I am feeling particularly old this week in spite of completing a 23 km run on Sunday. But I digress!

The shuttles will have to be nursemaided through their last flights in Q3 or Q4 of 2010 which is why I included the status update on the Ares system in my last blog. Go team Ares!!!

Now, onto Kepler. This is exciting, space cadets! Kepler is a telescope which will look for minute changes in the brightness of 100,000 or so stars simultaneously over a three year period. Those fluctuations are related to possible occaltations by small planets in orbit around those stars. If we can estimate the number of the right kind of planets in the right kind of orbits around the right kind of stars, we may have a view on how many potentially habitable planets there are in the galaxy. Way cool!

You can read about Kepler at: http://kepler.nasa.gov/

One last thing on habitable planets - well, not really. New Star Trek Trailer is out. May 8th is coming fast (unfortunately I am likely to be in Nigeria that day and will have to wait a week for the premier but...). Here is the new trailer:




No need to thank me, it is just the kind of guy that I am.

Later!

Paul

A sad story...

Hi everyone,

I referenced this sad tale some time ago and now it has panned out lamentably but correctly. This is so sad.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090305.wli0305/BNStory/National/home

There is just no upside to this. The poor young man who died and his family. What suffering.

I also feel for the perpetrator here - this is clearly a very sick man. Both the prosecution and the defense recommended this outcome. He will very likely be hospitalized for the rest of his life, as it should be.

Fortunately, in this case, the system worked. Justice needs to be emotionally neutral - and in this case it was. It is very easy to be outraged and demand justice - sorry, but that is just revenge and revenge is specifically not what justice is about. This is not a happy story but it is ending as best it can.

Other sad news, sad but very predictable: http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090305.wgmauditors0305/BNStory/Business/home

This company needs to die. I am sorry, really sorry but they are not sustainable. It seems to me that one North American automotive manufacturer may be all we can have! I am no friend to any of the "big three" but anyone who defends GM at this point is really not particularly connected to reality. These guys will for ever be defined by flying in private jets to defend themselves after no manufacturing cars that people want to buy and then begging for help because, as businesses, they don't have clients.

Enough! Barack, Stephen - let them die.

What else, you ask? Well, came across a really good podcast on the Ares Shuttle replacement. A really good watch. Here is the first part, the second can be found referenced therein:



There, that should help us end on a more positive note...

Paul