News update!

Quote of the Day: "If the news media would devote a tenth of the energy on fixing the financial system as they have devoted on recent weeks to this Michael Jackson thing, the world would be a better place - don't you think?" - David Brancaccio, Now on PBS

Great article on evolution. Ladies and Gentlemen, the mighty Richard Dawkins speaks!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216140

This guy is really impressive and the points he makes are good ones. An aquaintance of mine, a born again type guy, once said to me that the problem with Evolution was the evidence. That there were gaps in it and therefor it had to be wrong.

Well here is how this all pans out - we have a theory which is so close to complete, tested and measurable, with the vast preponderance of evidence supporting it. Bear in mind, of course, that theory does not mean hypothesis - it is a theory, something of very specific meaning in science. It has been tested, reviewed and stood up to intense scrutiny! "But it has holes in it" Fair enough. Sure it does but they are few and far between. So because it has holes in it, we instead say "see God had to do it" or as I would say it "ti od to dah doG ees" - cause the reasoning is backward. This is the largest lack of reasoning imaginable. The universe gives us very clear clues as to how it operates and if we use our reasoning to understand those clues then bozo Christian idiots tell us we will be damned for all eternity! Wow, using the reasoning skills that the supposed Christian God gave us.

Possible explanations - God doesn't exist, perhaps, God is cruel and is intent on damning anyone with anything about an idiot's IQ, seems likely - check out the Old Testament (particularly Job - way cool), or that the theory is right in which case what is the role of god, grand architect? Maybe...

"Elvis didn't do no drugs!"

OK. My obsessiveness with Christian stupidity even bores me from time to time. Let's talk space!

Water on the moon: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/25/2080696.aspx

Very cool but even better is coming with the LCROSS impact coming your way October 9th. You might even be able to see it in your telescope. Unfortunately mine two are in Canada and I am in Lagos but I guarantee I will be looking up anyway! We are crashing a large impactor into the moon's south pole and looking for water in the debris kicked up.

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/

Late breaking news on LCROSS includes a target shift - very cool, they are really trying find the maximum density of Hydroxyl and are aiming at it.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32487

Finally, on the space funding thing. To my American Cousins, please review and sign the referenced petition. This is important - we Canadians will be part of your future efforts and will support you but, and you know this, you are the super power, and in this you really are super!

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/09/28/can-a-letter-writing-campaign-save-florida-jobs/

We also have the third Messenger Mercury flyby coming down the pipe and the cool thing is that it happens tomorrow:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

We have discovered a lot about the inner most planet from Messenger and it hasn't even started its primary orbital mission yet - stay tuned for a lot more information and some great, really amazing pictures.

On to other things. Reading a really great book right now called The Battle For American 2008 by Johnson and Balz. Fascinating book and I would say it is not about how Obama won but instead about how Clinton lost. We all watched that election with fascination and this book takes you behind the scene to understand what was happening in the background. Truly captivating.

Paul

Just a quick update!

Hi guys,

On my way to Nigeria again - it has been an extraordinarily busy time since we got back from vacation in England/Iceland/Wales... As many of you know, I am now a resident of Toronto, having moved in with a Geophysicist of some international renown. For two packrats to merge households is both difficult and time consuming but I do believe we got there.

OK onto regular blog fodder.

First off, picked up the latest Maclean's at the airport yesterday, had a great interview with Richard Dawkin's, one of my all time heros. Can't find the interview on the Maclean's web site but the interview is worth a read, particularly on the teaching of evolution - he suggests starting at 8 and I pretty much agree. He also talks about the falicy that evolution comes somehow down to chance, which it doesn't, natural selection is a non-random process, chance is random. Natural selection drives evolving organisms to maximum use of their environment.

Anyway, pick it up and give it a read.

Next, stay tuned for some good news this week - the moon is looking like it has a lot of water. Both the LRO and India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft have found considerable evidence of south polar ice. This is very cool and very important (can anyone say "Rocket Fuel").

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1350

Watched a great show on my iPod on the flight to Frankfurt last night. The PBS show NOW had an episode called Food Inc. Very interesting - perhaps this is where we all need to start when discussing health care in either Canada or the US. Glad I gave up McDonalds just over 1 year ago...

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/523/

Well, gotta fly. Will update you all from Lagos over the weekend.

Paul

Smorsborg - the September edition

Hey bloggerets!

I am heading of to Africa again on Monday and figured I would clean out my list of blog topics a bit.

A friend of mine in Texas, Canadian girl by birth, recently commented that she "quite disliked Obama" and it made me think of the sorry state of the American political fray at this time. Now this is an intelligent young woman and one of the best people I have ever met but she may be caught up in something no one can truly understand and that opinion, in mine, is questionable. This man has been in office for 8 months, has dealt with two wars, an ongoing economic crisis not of his making, is dealing with structural debt due to poor, nay, pathetic tax policy (the United States doesn't have a spending problem, they have a taxation problem in that they don't raise enough taxes - particularly to fight two wars), is facing some long term issues that his political system is not set up to deal with (sustainability, transition away from an oil economy) and gets instead to have to put up with, take your pick, Birthers, Deathers, loaded town halls, and guys showing up with guns at meetings with the President in attendance - idiots and morons all...

With respect to health care - I give you two sets of statistics provided by our friends at the CIA from the CIA World Factbook:


United States of America

Infant mortality rate:

total: 6.26 deaths/1,000 live births - country comparison to the world: 180
male: 6.94 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.55 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:

total population: 78.11 years -country comparison to the world: 50
male: 75.65 years
female: 80.69 years (2009 est.)

Canada


Infant mortality rate:

total: 5.04 deaths/1,000 live births - country comparison to the world: 189
male: 5.37 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.69 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:

total population: 81.23 years - country comparison to the world: 8
male: 78.69 years
female: 83.91 years (2009 est.)

Funny thing, Canada has a great health care system, one that could, of course improve, and yet we spend quite a bit less on health care per person than the US does. It is a single payer system, provincially run but mandated by the federal government, has independent doctors of whom you can make your own pick and in most of the country, waiting times are not that much different from what you would see south of the border. Another funny thing, our American cousins often use Canada as an example of the kind of health care they don't want to have. Well, that confuses me and I will ponder it - good thing I have an extra three years over them to do so...

Which brings me to the lovely and talented Rachel Maddow and the problem with South Carolina:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now, not to give Rachel more air time than she deserves (no, I acknowledge that is not possible), I also saw this and wanted to pass it on. As you all know by now, I am an evangelical atheist - my job is to enlighten, educate and convert or, if nothing else, poke fun at. As said in this interview, we are talking about people who believe the impossible. They believe the world is 6000 years old and/or that life needs supernatural intervention to exist. Again, paraphrasing the interview - they distrust facts and catering to them is catering to the village idiot.



Now onto other stuff. Hey, if you don't believe the universe is 6000 years old then this is great, if you do, then here is an article about a really cool picture of the universe 12.7 billion years before it existed.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29184

Also from space the HVA was successfully docked to the ISS using Canadarm 2. Way to go guys! Here is some video from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8262085.stm


Finally then, on the subject of Kanye West - someone actually ruder than me. Here is a great article by Rex Murphy on this abomination and about someone, an entertainer, who is truly inspiring (and at the top of the UK charts)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/kanye-that-dame-has-class/article1293550/


Guess that is it for now. Next blog will be coming at you from Nigeria!

Paul

Sad day...

Hi everyone,

I just found out that Norman Borlaug passed away at the ripe old age of 95. This is someone who may have been the single greatest person of all time.

OK - time for me to make an inflammatory comment, it is what I do. Christ merely founded a religion, or more likely, had a religion fostered upon his name (which was Joshua, not Jesus), but Norman saved the lives of a billion people, wresting them from starvation.

Here is the wikipedia story on Norman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Now, I am also a fan of the Penn & Teller show Bullshit! and they do have a segment on this giant, I have shown it before in the context of a discussion on GM crops but this time it is to focus on Norman:



As to his critics, for whom I have almost universal contempt, he himself said it best:

"some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".

Rest in Peace, Norman.

Paul

P.S. Update on last week's blog - the HTV-1 cargo carrier for the ISS. Our Japanese ISS partners have pulled it off and docking commences tomorrow. Well done!

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/h2b/htv1/status.html

Hubble, Japan's Space Program and NASA

Hi everyone

As I write this, in my last night in my old house, up above my head is the ISS and the Shuttle, each slowly moving apart. Tomorrow the Shuttle returns to earth, the ISS is almost completed and will next received a visit, hopefully, from a Japanese supply ship. Here is a YouTube clip from the Japanese Space Agency:



Way to go, Japanese ISS Partners!

This latest Shuttle Mission was great but not nearly as exciting as one which today revealed the fruits of it's labours. The final Hubble Servicing Mission back a couple of months back did, indeed upgrade the world's most popular telescope:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32758727/ns/technology_and_science-picture_stories/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1

Very cool.

So, whither NASA. Well, it looks like they don't have the funds to do as they have been instructed. Here is the summary report from the Augustine Commission:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32327

Bottom line - this will take money. Second bottom line - this is important.

Mackin's solution:

1. Leverage the ISS international partners - hey let them (including Canada) contribute to the $3B shortfall - their High Tech companies will love it, it will create jobs and new technologies and is a great force for peace, democracy and, you know, moving mankind into space - not just one country.
2. Leverage the ISS as a space station for journey's to the moon. Build Ares 1 to support the station, get the ATV (ESA's answer the the HTV) human rated, develop the next generation Soyuz, involve the Chinese and get us some heavy lifting capability (Ares V, anyone). Make the ISS a beach-head for journey's beyond LEO.

Anyway, I will let you know if NASA contact's me regarding my opinions.

Keep looking up!

Paul

Back home, but home is changing... And Jack Bauer

Hi all,

The World's Greatest Geophysicist and I returned from Iceland the other day and now I have just a couple of weeks to move before I head back to Africa. Where am I moving, you ask? Well, to the home of the WGG, of course! As of this month I am officially co-habitating, living in consolidated manner or, my personal favorite, "Shacked Up".

We had a great holiday together! Visited my family in England, my best friend Harvey (see the eBook on this blog), my family in Wales and also played tourist in both London and Cardiff (the absolute centre of the universe). I haven't processed all the pictures yet but will get them into Flickr and then link this blog to that site next week.

As to the Shacked Up situation, well, we are both terribly happy and I must admit to going into my second half century with an optimistic and very content outlook on life. I have had girlfriends in my life, been married to a wonderful woman and have two fantastic children, but I must admit that Barbara is unique in my life as we have so very much in common. Don't want to get all mushy on the blog here, because this is where we discuss other things, but I do want to thank Providence or whatever else for allowing this to happen to me.

OK, onto other subjects. American Cousins to the south, take note. Jack Bauer has your number on this whole health care business:




Why should Mr. Sutherland, who plays Jack Bauer, have an opinion? Well, he may live in the US now but he is Canadian, used to go to the same school as my son, and his Grandfather was voted "The Greatest Canadian" in a recent national contest. For why? You ask oh, uninformed American Cousins? Well, he invented something. What? Our national health care system which you so often insult and condemn. Look, I am a fiscal conservative who nonetheless believes that a society takes care of certain fundamental aspects of its citizens lives, not controls, protects and safeguards. No truly great society can possibly ever consider themselves to be civilized and a world leader when 1.5 times the population of Canada exists within their boarders, uninsured.

Shame on you GOP! You, with your birthers and deathers and DICK, and Sarah, you nauseate me. Do what you want, but don't lie about my country's greatest accomplishment - our average life expectancy is greater than yours...

Back over to to the story of Tommy Douglas and Canada's Health Care System:




And part 2...



Have a nice day!

Paul