Hubble is having its problems again. The silver lining is that every time it does, you can be sure of at least one news story featuring unbelievable photos taken by the space-floating observatory. Here are two:
First, the Crab Nebula, then the Orion Nebula:, then the URL of the story I cribbed them from.
Crab Nebula:
You may never have heard of drumlins. I hadn’t. That’s detail. So far as I am concerned, the most important part of this story comes in the very last paragraph, in which a scientist remarks that this particular natural process “can be changed much faster than we have previously thought possible.” A friend and I exchange a sardonic comment every time we see this (and once you start looking for it, you see it in story after story). We say, “we never dreamed….”
Here again, the closer they look, the clearer they see that our view of nature is seriously warped. Current bias seems to think that nature is half-paralyzed, operating only in slow motion. It seems to be too much for a certain temperament to concede that nature operates much as we do (and we are a part of nature, remember) — sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes evolutionary, sometimes revolutionary.
This story from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6295395.stm
Antarctic hill surprises experts
For the first time, a drumlin - a mound of sediment and rock - has been observed mid-formation.
The streamlined, elongated hills form underneath ice-sheets as they scrape up material as they move.
I was a strong supporter of the creation of a European Union since the very first time I heard about the Common Market, in 1957, at the ripe old age of 11. At first blush, plans for a similar American Union of Canada, the US and Mexico would seem similarly attractive - but the European union was pursued in the open, democratically, from first to last. Even at that, it is frequently denounced as too Brussels-driven, meaning too often driven by unelected bureaucrats rather than elected representatives, but still, it was created and grown in the sunlight.
The American union, by contrast, has been planned and fostered in the dark, and there doesn’t seem to be much in it for anybody other than corporate fascists (so to speak) who want larger markets and fewer restrictions on their operations.
It’s done in the dark, so by definition anyone pointing out what is happening is called a Conspiracy Theorist (as opposed to what? A Coincidence Theorist?) But sometimes that smear tactic doesn’t stick. The following letter to a Canadian newspaper by a representative of the Canadian Action Party sheds light on the subject. Naturally, it is only through the internet that Americans even learn of the issue. The pretty useless and corrupted, or at least co-opted, mainstream media keep their silence on the issue.
This via a Canadian friend.
This article is now a month old. I had meant to reprint it much sooner, but perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t. I have noticed that timely reports often tell us more when they are no longer timely; that is, when a little time has passed and has put the report into perspective. To me, the most telling statement reported is this one from a store owner in Baghdad. “This is a day for the Persians and not for the Arabs. God have mercy on his soul.”
What that tells me (but, I realize, perhaps mostly because it confirms what I already believed) is that as Iranian influence grows, so will resistance to that influence. It is as natural as the rising sun each morning. If, when and as outside influence (namely the US military presence) is withdrawn, regional counter-balances automatically deploy and some modus vivendi is reached. THAT is why it’s a blunder to be involved over there in the first place. All we are doing is delaying the readjustment of forces. In interpersonal relationships the process is called “enablling” and it never works out well.
Reactions to Hussein’s Death Reflect Deep Divide
By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 30, 2006; 7:44 AM
BAGHDAD, Dec. 30–Reaction to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s execution reflected the deep sectarian divide that has torn the country apart since he was forced out of office in 2003.
Wesley Autrey, subway superman, on Letterman: It’s a long download, but worthwhile to see a real hero in an age where we are surrounded by pretend heroes.
http://gawker.com/news/clips/wesley-autrey-subway-superman-226390.php
I snagged and archived this interesting article from the Independent a while ago, but more urgent topics supplanted it. I still think it’s worth reading. I don’t see why we have to decide that climate change is always caused by human activity or that it is a part of the natural order of things. Why can’t it be both? And here is a view that it isn’t always a disaster when it occurs — which seems a very common-sense view of the natural order!
Climate Change Linked With Rise of World’s Earliest Civilisations
STEVE CONNOR, Science Editor - The Independent (U.K.)
Past changes to the climate that generated increasingly arid conditions for ancient peoples helped to trigger the rise of the earliest civilisations on three continents, a study has found.
The ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, south Asia, China and northern South America all owe some of their initial success to significant changes in rainfall and temperature, a climatologist said yesterday.
This news story from the British paper The Independent contains a line that expresses exactly what the problem is with that boy that a few super-rich contributors (and five Supreme Court members) put into the White House six disastrous years ago:
“I’m the decision-maker,” he said, challenging opponents to come up with an alternative to the troop increase that would still allow the US to prevail in Iraq.
Would somebody please tell him (but how? He doesn’t listen) that there not only is no way for the US to “prevail” in Iraq but there never was a way?
Even assuming we have the right to go into another country and overthrow its government, and kangaroo-court its leader (however obnoxious to us he may be), and kill hundreds of thousands of people for the offense of wanting us out of their own country - THERE NEVER WAS ANY WAY FOR US TO PREVAIL IN IRAQ and there was no shortage of people saying so, before the fact (though, not many in the truth-seeking mainstream media, and not many among our brave and incorruptible legislatures).
Earth to Bush: It’s Over. All you can do (as was done in Vietnam) is string out the casualties to delay admitting the obvious.
I remember it well.
I was a sophomore in college, doing my wash, sitting in the laundry room writing in my journal, when a friend told me that three astronauts — veterans Grissom and White and rookie Chaffee — had been killed at Cape Kennedy (as it was called in those days). I was surprised because as far as I knew there had been no launch scheduled. It took a while while for me to get the accurate story of what had happened. Had I waited to look it up on the internet I would have had to wait another 25 years or so, which would have been even slower than waiting for the next day’s Washington Post.
Grissom was known as the second astronaut in space, the only man who lost his space capsule. White was known as the first man to walk in space. Chaffee was not known, being a rookie.
As the following story makes clear, the true use of adversity is to actually learn its lessons, not just stupidly continue making the same mistakes.
40 years later, recalling the lessons of Apollo 1
By Michael Cabbage, Orlando Sentinel
January 28, 2007
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — Forty years after three Apollo astronauts died in a launch-pad training exercise, the tragedy’s pivotal role in the Space Age never has been clearer.
Doubt cast on Dire exit scenarios
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The case for adding troops in Iraq — and keeping them there — rests on one basic assumption: As bad as things are now, they would become catastrophic if the United States leaves.
President Bush in his State of the Union address Tuesday warned that an early U.S. exit would create “a nightmare scenario” for America.
In his Jan. 10 address explaining his order of 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq, Bush said a retreat would “force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal.”
Not everyone is convinced. Some analysts say the apocalyptic scenarios of U.S. withdrawal mirror arguments the administration and many others made for the U.S. invasion in 2003. The premise of the invasion — flawed as it turned out — was that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, posing a direct threat to the United States and the world.
If you don’t use the internet to find foreign news sources, you aren’t getting much variety. Here is an article from the Australian that sheds light on our situation.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21124328-2703,00.html
Notice how much easier it is to see the larger trends when the reporter hails from far away. He can see that everything has changed, and that the chickens are finally, finally, beginning to come home to roost. As Jim Webb ably pointed out, many people knew and said ahead of time that no good could come of the invasion of Iraq. The herd has finally caught up with that realization.
Earth to Bush: It’s over.
Warrior senators draw the line
A determined US President Bush this week met opposition at least as resolute, reports Washington correspondent Geoff Elliott
January 27, 2007
JOHN Warner, a celebrated war veteran, is one of the old lions of the US Senate. He’s Republican, respected by both sides of the aisle and has been a staunch ally of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq - until now.
This week Warner, from Virginia, presented a bipartisan proposal on the eve of Bush’s State of the Union speech that rejected the President’s plan to send more American troops to Baghdad.