Destination Moon!

From Popular Science

Last year’s “moon bombing” proved that water ice exists beneath the lunar south pole, but new findings from a NASA instrument aboard an Indian orbiter have determined that tons of water iceis hiding on the lunar surface in permanently shadowed craters at the north pole as well. Researchers estimate 600 million metric tons of water ice could be hiding there, an amount that could potentially sustain a manned moon base.

This is very, very good news for mankind because it means we no longer have to keep all of our eggs in the single basket that is the Earth. Millions of tonnes of water on the Moon means a self-contained, self-sufficient Moon colony will be a lot easier to build someday - probably not in my lifetime unfortunately, but someday. And a base on the Moon, with water, puts us halfway to Mars already and makes exploration of the asteroid belt exponentially cheaper.
Once you have water, you have oxygen and hydrogen, putting you much closer to making breathable air and useable fuel. Once you are out of Earth's gravity well and atomosphere, a little energy can take you a long, long way.
Now if only NASA could scare up a few hundred billion dollars...hmm, I wonder where they could get that?
A couple of years ago, NASA had a plan for permanent Moon base by 2024, which most said would cost a lot less than the $104 billion it is estimated it will cost to start sending manned missions to the moon again. I don't want to get into "if onlys" but that would cost a lot less if only the U.S. government hadn't shut down the Apollo program  and had kept up with occasional manned missions.
For that matter, it would probably be possible to use the International Space Station as a staging point by sending up the equivalent of the lunar landing module in the space shuttle and launching it from the ISS - though both the shuttle and the ISS are rapidly approaching their "best before" dates. So priority one is going to have to be building a replacement for the shuttle - without something to get people back and forth to orbit, the whole thing is kind of moot. Once we have a new earth-to-orbit people mover, we can start sending up building materials on cheaper booster rockets until we have a sizable space station in orbit.
Once we have that, its simply a matter of sending up components that fit inside the cargo containers that can be assembled in orbit by the space station crew and then sent to the moon. Remember, anything sent from orbit to the moon really only needs very limited engine capability, mainly to slow it down enough to make a soft landing on the Moon. If you timed it right, an object moving the speed of a good fastball could reach the moon from the same orbit the ISS is at in a little over 100 days - that's not bad for cargo. People obviously could make the trip a whole lot faster.
Another approach would be to send robots to the Moon to find and start collecting ice, excavating building sites and even assembling components of a base. This probably isn't cost effective just yet, but a  few score refrigerator-sized robots (think Wall-E) working steadily away for a decade or two could certainly lay the groundwork for a permanent manned base.
I know, I know -- we have more pressing problems down here on earth than some scifi geek fantasy -- but when you consider the leaps in technology that occurred because of the first decade of the space program, I think it is reasonable to assume that an effort to build a sustainable moon base would lead to all kinds of technological spin offs in any number of fields from materials science to computer technology to hydroponic farming to solar  and hydrogen cell power generation. Technological breakthroughs that can help us solve some of the problems plaguing us.
Furthermore, we need to go to space precisely because of the some of the problems we have here on Earth. We need an escape plan, a lifeboat, an ark. As the global warming and environmental pollution increase, we may need a place to flee to once we've made earth completely uninhabitable. At our current rate the won't be for a few hundred years and of course, we may find technological and sociological solutions to the current problems in the meantime, but who knows what the effect of those solutions is liable to be over time. If we switch to atomic power worldwide to eliminate greenhouse gas production that may work out well for halting global warming, but it does present an unsolved problem in terms of what to do with all the spent fuel eventually.
Hell, maybe that's what we could end up using the moon for in the end, the galaxy's biggest dumpsite.
The point is, we need to keep working on getting up there and building the infrastructure that will be needed and not spending millions on bullshit like say, professional sports or fast food or weapons or shitty Michael Bay movies or brainless wars that don't need to be fought. The money spent on any of those things in a year worldwide would, I suspect, pay for a couple of moon bases and probably a space station as well.
We need to stop keeping all our eggs in just one basket, and its going to take a long time to build that second basket. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can multiply the chances of our survival as species.

Things not to do

Never eat at place called "Mom's"

Never shoot pool for money with a guy named "Fats"

Never start a land war in Asia

Never go against a Sicillian when death is on the line

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself

And most importantly...

Never, ever bet against Canada when it comes to hockey

Further suggestions: Leave the cape alone, don't piss off Clayton Moore

Pass the thorazine

Things like this make me wonder if someone has spiked my morning coffee with LSD.

Things like this  (via The Editors at the Poorman Institute) make me wonder if it wasn't LSD but adrenechrome or possibly ibogane

Friday Uke blogging - one for the missus

This one goes out to my wife, and the kids too - lately all three have been addicted to a Korean soap opera that uses this as its theme song.

our home on native land

And now for something completely different...



It seems odd at first, but it kinda grows on you after a second listen.

time travel?

You might be forgiven for thinking you'd fallen through a wormhole into Mississippi circa 1961 reading this. We Canadians sometimes get a bit smug watching the racial problems in the U.S. and forget that we have ignorant, knuckle-dragging, racist shitbirds of our own. If you want to hear seven minutes of radio that will infuriate and inspire you, check here (the interview is in part 1 of the program). The "victim" doesn't sound like she's taking having a cross burned on her front lawn in stride exactly, but sticks up for the larger community and doesn't sound like she's running scared either. The interviewer on the other hand is pretty clearly horrified that she even has to report on something this disgusting in this country in this day and age.
With all due respect to Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King:

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning.
I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land.
I'd hammer on the skulls
of all the racist assholes
All over this land

Added ironical comedic value from the Globe and Mail story: the RCMP spokeswoman said the police are "examining all possible motives, including whether to consider it a hate crime."


Update: The local Mounties have made a couple of arrests in the case on the basis of information provided by the community.

"Paging Vice Principal B. Brother, please report to room 101"

Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School Board's efforts to give every one of its high school students a laptop computer are doubleplusgood!

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."
The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

According to Philly.com, which is all over the story, this would not only be possible, but easy for the school board to do. The feds have gotten involved and felt the accusations were credible enough that they have subpoenaed school board documents and are investigating.

Setting aside the technological issues involved here, I have to wonder why the school thinks it has the right to regulate what a student does at home. Frankly, it is none of the school's business whether the student was shooting heroin, having bondage sex with goats or reading Ayn Rand aloud to his hamster while wearing nothing but swim fins and bacon grease-- he wasn't on school property, it wasn't during a school-supervised activity and there is no accusation that he was using the school-owned computer for an inappropriate activity like hacking or say, oh I dunno...spying on school board officials or his vice-principal.

Whether they were conducting completely illegal surveillance of this kid is separate matter. It doesn't really matter whether the information about the kid's activities outside school comes from a hidden camera, a nosy teacher or another student who is ratting him out - if it doesn't happen at school and it doesn't involve child abuse or a murder plot, it is none of the school's damned business what kid is doing and they have no right to discipline him for things that are not related to school.

As for the spying, where to start? If the school is doing this, it is so obviously, clearly wrong I can't imagine the kind of authoritarian protofascist numbskulls that are in charge and would sign off on this kind of program. A whole bunch of people should not only lose their jobs, but should end up in jail. Even prison inmates aren't under hidden video surveillance.

And just as an observation on the tendency of school administration not to pay much attention to things they are trying to teach in the classroom; While Orwell's "1984" was taught as part of the English curriculum and required reading for the students, clearly the officials either hadn't read it or had a sick sense of humor. The detention room at both my old high school in Ancaster, Ontario and the one attended by several friends in Sault Ste. Marie was room No. 101.

Two of the all time greats

Two of my all time favorites and kings of their own genres: Peter Gzowski meets Hunter Thompson



While Gzowski had a "great face for radio" he wasn't actually that bad on television, and Thompson actually seems sober. At 10:30 of the video, Gzowski quotes Kurt Vonnegut's perfect summation of Thompson. And no, I won't quote it for you, you'll have to watch the video.

Meanwhile, I've just discovered the blog that Thompson's widow Anita keeps from Owl Farm that regularly quotes the Master on various topics - definitely worth a look.

The politicization of everything

Kudos to Tom Oleson of the Winnipeg Free Press for hitting the nail on the head when it come to the Conservative Party of Canada's work to politicize, well, everything.

THERE is, apparently, no tragedy too heart-rending, no political situation too fraught with danger, that you can’t find a politician eager to exploit it for political advantage.

In Haiti this week for what seemed like little more than a prolonged and expensive photo-op, Prime Minister Stephen Harper regaled the Haitian army and the Haitian people with heart-warming tales of how his Conservative government had rebuilt the Canadian Armed Forces from a rag-tag embarrassment under former Liberal regimes into a slim-trim, fighting-fit military machine.

(snip)

Meanwhile, back on the home-front, junior foreign affairs minister Peter Kent was telling a Jewish magazine that any attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada and elicit an appropriate response, calling up shades of the mutual defence provisions of the NATO treaty. Canada has no such treaty with Israel, and the threat of waging war against Iran in its defence -- while noble in intent -- hardly puts Canada in the big league of negotiators it aspires to and that Iranians might listen to.

There was nothing untrue or dishonest -- usual political exceptions being allowed for -- in what the two Conservatives said. But both comments were unnecessary, untimely and unhelpful. Kent used defence policy to play to the Jewish vote; Harper played to the domestic audience rather than the Haitian one that had come to hear a message that hit closer to home. That's political, but it's not politic.

...so apparently we are going to war in the Middle East the next time Israel decides to bomb some Palestinians or finally carries through on their threat to attack Iran to keep them from getting the bomb. Oh goody. Maybe I won't apply for Canadian citizenship for my kids after all, since we seem heading for perpetual war and thus inevitably, conscription.

and also to Canadian Cynic for this video about the CPC's efforts to keep the Olympics from being tainted by partisan stupidity. This, apparently, is part of a video that was sent out to for party fundraising purposes.

Why what words mean matters

In the neatest bit of spin since some PR hack coined the term "collateral damage" for dead and wounded civilian bystanders, NATO now appears to be trying to convince us that murdering civilians is something for which no one is responsible - and most in the press seem to lazy to call them on it.



Exhibit A from AFP (emphasis mine):

Five Afghan civilians accidentally killed in airstrike: NATO
(AFP) – 20 hours ago
KABUL — Five Afghan civilians were accidentally killed and two others injured in an airstrike in southern Afghanistan, NATO said Monday, in an incident unrelated to a major US-led anti-Taliban operation.
The deaths were accidental, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, adding that the victims had been mistaken for insurgents planting improvised bombs.
"An ISAF airstrike against suspected insurgents accidentally killed five and wounded two civilians in the Zhari district of Kandahar province today," ISAF said in a statement.



An accident - as in "whoops, clumsy me, sorry about that! Could have happened to anyone. Completely unintentional, I assure you."



Bollocks.



This was not an accident. The bombs and missiles used didn't just happen to fall off the jets due to a loose bolt and happen to fall on this group of people by random chance. The pilot didn't unknowingly lean on the trigger of his guns while trying to find a dropped map or something like that. These people were targeted and killed by professional military pilots under orders to attack them. It was not an accident. If it had happened to a group of civilian workers on military firing range in the United States or Canada, the pilot would be facing murder charges.

An accident is an error involving random chance that occurs without any intent to do harm to the people involved. People don't get held responsible for accidents, because they are no one's fault and malicious intent is not a factor.

I'm not saying accidents don't happen on the battlefield, they do. Twelve people were accidently killed in an airstrike the previous day when U.S. pilots fire a pair of missiles into a house full of civilians. In this case, the pilots were trying to kill some Taliban, but missed the target. Now, admittedly they missed the target by 600m, but they didn't mean to blow up the house they hit. It was an understandable, if extremely unfortunate, accident. Oopsy!


A Canadian soldier died in a training accident just the other day on the firing range. It doesn't make his death any less horrible for his family, but he wasn't targeted for death by anyone in this case.


The aforemention airstrike was not an accident, it was a mistake. Whoever identified the target and called in the airstrike made a mistake, either through negligence or incompetence or garbled communication. Someone thought the people killed were Taliban planting a IED. They were not, and the airstrike was called in on bad information.

Mistakes happen on the battlefield, just as they do everywhere. Soldiers, despite what you may see on American television and conservative blogs, are no closer to perfection than anyone else. Friendly fire incidents have cost lives in every war and people make mistakes. Depending on the size of the mistake, sometimes people have to be held responsible. When it is a matter of people losing their lives, someone needs to be called to account - not only to figure out how the mistake occurred so that it can be prevented in the future, but to show that mistakes are taken seriously and carelessness will not be tolerated.

This applies whether you are talking about typos in a newspaper, filing errors in a medical clinic or hockey player who not playing to his potential. A minor typo in the paper isn't worth firing someone over, but if they consistently get the facts wrong or libel someone out of carelessness or negligence, they are going to cost the newspaper a lot of money and damage its credibility. A lost file in a medical clinic has the potential to be a very serious problem and a clerk who regularly loses files is not going to kept on the job for long. A hockey player who is constantly caught out of position or who takes stupid penalties or fails to execute plays properly is going to be benched at best or cut from the team.

This airstrike was not an accident, it was another in a long series of deadly mistakes that are turning the population of Afghanistan against the West. It is understandable that the military would do their best to protect their own and try to remove the blame by calling this an accident. It is unforgivable for the press to do so.

Update: Lousy intelligence, errors by forward observers or just a pilot who thought his job was to stop anything moving on the roads account for another 27 to 33 civilian lives in Afghanistan, but it's okay, because Gen. McChrystal feels really bad about it and stuff, so there is no need to do anything like halt the use of airstrikes without visual confirmation of an enemy target.

I really need to start practicing more

the official theme song of the Red Zeppelin

hat tip to Blevkog, who has evil taste in music, which is why you should read him.

Burning stick meets burning stupid

Burning stick! Burning stick!U.S. citizen Wayne Gretzky lit the torch and we television viewers were treated to a couple of hours of modern dance and extremely impressive stage effects to mark the opening of the Vancouver games. Nicely done, though neither of my kids would believe kd Lange is a woman at first. I liked Shane Koyczan's poem, but he should have started working on his beard a little earlier or shaved. And apparently Canada was settled by tattooed fiddling Celtic barbarians - who knew?

Burning stupid! Burning stupid!

And here's a newsflash for "Blayze" the masked protestor who speaks to the press at the end of the video here: "The next level" of a peaceful protest is not smashing windows and trying to provoke the cops and it isn't "the perogative" of the some self-important douchebag in a black hoodie and bandana to make the sensible people who are trying to make a point in a civilized way look bad just because he thinks he's a revolutionary who is going to bring racist exploitive capitalism to knees by throwing newspaper boxes through shopfronts. Dude, your friends are not activists, they are assholes.

These stupid self-proclaimed anarchists should be aware that The Man has 15,000 troops at his beck and call, 15,000 cops, soldiers and rent-a-cops who would probably like nothing better than to have a quiet two weeks, but who aren't above knocking the crap out of a whole bunch of people who don't deserve it because of the anti-social antics of a few shit-for-brains who think smashing windows serves the cause of social justice.

And yes, I have heard the theories about agent provocateurs that are already making the rounds. Those taking part in the legitimate protests won't be lead astray by such people. If you are at a protest and someone starts talking about "getting" the cops, or starts picking stuff to throw, the best thing to do is tell them to cut it the hell out and grow the hell up. There is not a crowd of protesting civilians anywhere in the world that is going to win a street battle against prepared, trained and well-armed cops, so there is no point at all in starting a fight. And trying to provoke a response by the police so that the news cameras can get footage of the "true nature of the fascist oppressors' brutality" is idiotic and is going to get the wrong people hurt.

There are many legitimate complaints to be made about the Vancouver games and the Olympics in general, but smashing windows and putting bystanders in danger is not the way to make the statement that needs to be made.

Friday Uke blogging - clone edition

Molly Lewis is so frickin' talented it takes two of her to perform this song

Art in Edmonton

Okay, so I'm a gazillion miles away and can't go, but those of you who are in Edmonton (and you know who you are Shini, Chunklets et al) who drop by here on occasion would make me very happy if you were to take in a couple of fabulous art shows by an old internet pal of mine from way back in the my preblogging days of hanging out on the BBC's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy site - especially on the "Should Chief Gordon Lightfoot reinstate the Saskatchewan Rhinosceros Hunt" thread.

Whatever way your tastes run, you'll have to admit the guy is very talented.

The shows will be held:

• February 18 to March 20 at the VAAA gallery 10215, 112 st 3rd floor (reception Feb 18 7-9:30)
• March 15 to April 3 at the Spruce Grove Art Gallery 420 King Street, Spruce Grove (reception March 20 1-4 pm.)

And if you go the the receptions and you meet the artist and tell him Rev.Paperboy sent you, you'll probably score a glass of wine and some cheese on a cracker or something, or a least a bewildered stare for the rest of the evening.

Inevitable

Taken from the Houston Chronicle's coverage of a Rick Perry-Sarah Palin rally on Superbowl Sunday

And the pile on commences

Really, you'd think by now that the National Post, given its plummeting circulation, would shy away from going out of its way to offend roughly half the population. But clearly that is not the case. Now, after taking a potshot at Women's Studies in particular and feminism in general, they are backing water like a sculling crew approaching Niagara Falls. And I'm not the only one who noticed. Lots of others are now having a go and putting the boot in.

What war does

This story is beyond the mere garden variety child abuse nightmare tale. This is something that would not have happened the way it did if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their gang of bloodthirsty ideologues had not decided to invade Iraq. This soldier pretty obviously has PTSD and will probably never be the same. And neither will the four-year-old daughter he waterboarded because she wouldn't say her ABCs.
And sorry to Gerard Alexander if I'm being condescending by pointing this out.
P.S. Gerard, when Obama says to a Republican congressman "That's factually just not true, and you know it's not true." That isn't condescending, it's what Driftglass so accurately described as "unsheathing three feet of Verdad" and using it to carve up the disingenuous, dissembling, mendacious, prevaricating opposition - you know, the lying douchebag Republicans.

Jesus saves, but Shutt scores on the rebound!

From the brain-dead goons who ape Christianity that brought you "God hates Fags" picket signs at military funerals, a new swan-dive into the the shallow end of the crazy pool.

Westboro Baptist, the group that puts the "mental" in "Fundementalist Christian" has decided to start picketing hockey games, because "God H8s Ur hockey!"

No, no, no. Admittedly, God hates the Toronto Maple Leafs, but that's understandable. God loves hockey and he's a Habs fan. Obviously, he's just been busy with other things lately.

I'd love to see Westboro Baptist ice a team against the Flying Fathers, or maybe just some old Flyers.

All in all, they're all just bricks in the wall

"When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could"

So many authoritarian nitwits, so little time to blog. This kid is probably lucky they didn't taser her when she started crying. Almost as disturbing is the reaction of America's least favorite conservative law professor and box-wine sommelier (as noted by Pandagon). Obviously, the teacher cannot ignore a student writing on their desk and must instill respect for the property of others blah blah blah, but I think handcuffing and arresting a12-year-old teaches another lesson - fear your teacher! Don't step out of line! fear school!


Way to put the "Pal" in "Principal" Ms. Grant! What do you do if the kids chew gum in class, waterboard them? I was a fairly well-behaved kid in school, and my high school shenannigans tended to the bizarre and comical, rather than the destructive, but if I had a principal like this running my school, there definitely would have been major problems. It may be that by completely overreacting and responding in a way that would be considered child abuse if a parent had done it, Principal Grant may have done 12-year-old Alexa a favor and taught her a lesson she won't soon forget. Not the lesson she intended, but a lesson nonetheless: The people in charge aren't here to help you. The people in charge will abuse you any chance they get. Property is more important than people to the people in charge. The people in charge are a vicious bunch of hysterical fools more intent on showing they are in charge at all costs than actually doing their jobs.
Twelve is pretty early to learn a lesson like that, but at least there is time for her sense of idealism and trust to grow back.
I don't mean to malign all teachers and school administrators, far from it. I think teaching is a noble profession and that teachers get too little respect, too little credit and too much blame in our society. The vast majority are hardworking,nurturing souls who care about the kids they are trying to educate. Hurrah for teachers.
That said, as in any profession, there are those who have gone into it for the wrong reasons, those who have been defeated by the challenges of the job and now just coast and most dangerous of all, those who abuse their authority. In teaching, as in the police, there is no one more dangerous than a petty tyrant. Bullies suck in any line of work, but one with a badge, gun and taser who has been given a licence to hassle people is dangerous, not only for the abuses of power they commit, but for the effect it has in undermining respect for the law and police.
The same is true of authoritarian principals, vice-principals, coaches and teachers who think that they are entitled to bully and abuse the children entrusted to their care. Not only do they traumatize the individual kids they "discipline," but they also destroy the trust of the other students and parents in the system. They teach kids not to ask questions, not to stand up for themselves, not to think independently. Ditto for those petty dictators who insist on enforcing ill-considered "zero-tolerance" policies to the absolute letter, even while completely ignoring the spirit of the rule. They teach kids that being tolerant, reasonable, flexible and even merciful is wrong and that the kid bringing a plastic butter knife in his lunch to spread cream cheese on his bagel has committed the same crime as a kid who brings a machine gun to class.
Principal Grant may think that by having a kid arrested and jailed for writing her desk that she is sending a message to the other kids that she and the school will not tolerate any misbehaviour, but the message the kids will take to heart is that if they are to be hung for a sheep, why not take the whole flock? If just writing on the desk gets you sent to jail, you might as well set fire to that sucker, and the classroom as well, since you are going to be treated the same way for any offense, no matter how small.

...and that is why they invented whisky

What Driftglass said.

Seriously, if you are not reading Driftglass regularly, then just what the hell are you doing on the Internet?