Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit.

Tokyo governor and ultra-rightist loon Shintaro Ishihara calls the March 11 earthquake "punishment from heaven" for Japan's greed (source).

Other gems of Ishihara's wisdom(from wikiquote):

On the Naking Massare: "They say we made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a lie made up by the Chinese."

Speaking of the Chinese:

"The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed. That spacecraft [Shenzhou 5, which carried China's first astronaut] was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year."

"China holds no value at all for human life and can start a war without any concerns. . ."

On Terrorism:

"A bomb was planted [at the private residence of Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka]. I think it was deserved."

Asshole thinks he's hot shit because he used to hang out with Yukio Mishima.

See, Ainu He Was Gonna Do More Racial Stuff!

Reasons Why I Should Write the Sailor Moon Movie #6: Makoto Kino



I had initially planned to do the character sketches for Ami, Rei, and Makoto all in one shot. I realized by the end of my post on Ami that it would take way too long to do that, so I broke it up into three parts. While this has allowed for more detail, it's also led to me dragging out a particular theme, namely the issue of race in Japan and how that plays into my ideas for various Sailor Moon characters. Not only does this make it seem like I really only have one idea that I'm just stretching to its limit, it makes it look like my version of Sailor Moon isn't, well, fun. But, drag it out I must, at least for one more part. I mentioned in the last post that Rei Hino is one of the most inconsistently portrayed characters in Sailor Moon. Makoto Kino, on the other hand, has been fairly consistent, and I will not change that. Apart from a few details meant to further explain her situation, the Makoto Kino that appears in my movie will be essentially the same Makoto Kino we all know and love. With one really huge exception.

Pictured above is musician and activist Mina Sakai. If she were younger, and an actress, I would have wanted her to play Makoto Kino. One reason is that she bears a passing resemblance to Mew Azama, who played Makoto on PGSM. The other reason is that Sakai is Ainu. For your consideration:

The Kinos, husband and wife, travelled from Hokkaido to Tokyo in the early nineties, when they were in their twenties. They rented an apartment in the Azabujuuban neighborhood, and lived a modest lifestyle supported by the husband's employment as a junior executive at an airline company. The Kinos were both Ainu, but for the purposes of the husband's career, they were never open about this. Apart from a few artifacts-- cute trinkets from Hokkaido, they always insisted-- there was nothing to distinguish the Kinos from any other salaryman family. Their secrecy about this matter extended to the point that even after the Japanese Diet's 1998 passing of a resolution officially recognizing Ainu culture, the Kinos decided not to reveal their heritage to their only child, daughter Makoto.

Makoto was large, strong girl for her age, and assertive, but other than that she was a normal Japanese girl, interested in all of the normal Japanese girl things of the time: flowers, cooking, J-pop, and of course Sailor V, the smash hit anime about a lone sailor-suited heroine and her never-ending battle against crime! She did get into the occasional scuffle at times usually over some boy making some comment about her "bushy" eyebrows. Despite her size, Makoto typically lost these fights. Knowing that she wouldn't back down from a fight even they asked her to, her parents decided that she should learn martial arts. Makoto was enrolled in Judo classes, and later studied Tae Kwon Do as well. The number of smack-talking incidents subsequently underwent a massive decrease.

Things were looking good for Makoto by the time she was ten years old. Her father was moving up the company ranks, earning a major promotion. To celebrate, the parents decided to take a second honeymoon in Hokkaido, knowing that the promotion would lead to much less time together. They would leave Makoto to take care of herself-- they would only be gone for a few days after all. Tragically, the plane that her parents boarded-- owned by the very same company that her father worked for-- lost power during takeoff and crashed into Tokyo Bay, killing all on board. Makoto, who gone to Tokyo International to bid her parents farewell, saw everything.

Investigations into the crash led to revelations that the company that owned the crashed plane was involved in a major bribing scandal, allegedly involving members of the Japanese Diet (including the controversial Takashi Hino). Some compared the incident to the Lockheed bribing scandals of the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

The media storm that erupted around the crash and subsequent scandal mostly bypassed Makoto (she did one interview for an up-and-coming reporter from NHK's English service, but that's it). Having no extended family back in Hokkaido, Makoto faced the prospect of entering into Japan's notoriously crappy foster care system. Instead, she took the extraordinary step of seeking legal emancipation. Because she had access to a fairly substantial amount of money (consisting of her parent's savings, life insurance, and a "severance package" from the airline company-- one that came with a condition that Makoto would not sue) the courts granted her conditional emancipation-- she would have to periodically show that she is in good financial status, that her home is well kept, and that she's staying out of trouble.

Thus, Makoto continued to live on her own, maintaining her family's apartment and trying to live her life as she had before. The realities of living on her own toughened Makoto somewhat, but she remained traumatized from witnessing her parents' deaths. The trauma did little to help her temper-- often the only thing holding her back from starting a fight with someone was remembering that her emancipation was conditional. She also began to wonder about the "Hokkaido trinkets" scattered about the apartment, and whether her parents may have been hiding something from her. . .

By the time Makoto is fifteen years old, her money is running out, due to the legal fees involved in fighting for emancipation. She splits her time between school, part-time jobs (one of which involves catering), martial arts, keeping the apartment in good order. . . and a boyfriend, her senpai. Unfortunately, her senpai does not value the relationship as much as Makoto does, and often flirts with other girls. When Makoto sees this happening, she loses all restraint and coldcocks the motherfucker-- an act she regrets almost immediately afterward. The school administration says that are willing to keep things quiet, but she will have to transfer to another school. . .

LOL . .

. . . that's all I can say.

Commemorative poppy quarter sparks distrust of Canada in the U.S.

Iliad 9/11

While attending the University of Victoria, I used to send out satirical essays -- well, essays may be too grand a word-- to my friends and family via e-mail (this was from 2003 to 2005, the days before blogging became widespread). While searching through my old e-mails, I came across one of those essays, entitled "Iliad 9/11." Basically, the essay used elements of Greek mythology, particularly Homer's Iliad, to satirize the 2004 US presidential election. So, because I was sick of posting videos, I thought I'd re-post the essay here, unedited.

Hi guys. I thought you might find this bit of news interesting, in light of the upcoming presidential elections.

A parchement was recently discovered by Turkish archaeologists which dates back to the 6th century B.C., the time of the legendary war between Greece and Troy. This parchment sheds new light on what was until now thought to be a settled matter of history.

The document, written in Greek, reveals that after the sacking of Troy, Greek warriors did not find Helen, wife of Paris, nor did they find any evidence that she had ever been in Troy. Moreover, it turns out that the Greek diplomats who were charged with searching for Helen did not find any evidence that she was in Troy at all. This means that the whole basis of the Trojan War was a lie!

It gets better. After the war, which raged for ten years and resulted in countless casualties on both the Greek and Trojan sides, a massive quarrel raged between Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, and Achilles, demigod and veteran of the Trojan War. Achilles charged Agamemnon with going to war on false pretenses, and called the Trojan War "The Wrong War, in the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time." He also pointed out that, contrary to the official reports made by kings Agamemnon and Menelaus, there was no connection between King Priam, leader of the Trojans, and the kidnapping of Helen. Finally, he chargeed Agaemnon with squandering an perfect oppotunity to capture Aeneas, instead letting him flee, further adding that Aeneas could have travelled as far as Rome or Carthage.

Agamemnon contended that the war was in fact justified. While Greek diplomats did not find evidence of Helen's presence, he points out that king Priam did not allow diplomats access to his private palaces. He then stressed that he was guided by a 'higher power', ie Zeus, to fight against the Trojans, and that the Trojan people are better of now that the 'evildoer' Priam has been removed from power. He ends by questioning Achilles' war record: He has won many commendations for injury in the field, but medical records suggest that his only injury was to his heel!

Achilles, not impressed by Agamemnon's arguments, appealed to the Greeks to proclaim him as their new King. He accepted Ulysses, the handsome, well-rounded, down-to-earth country boy from Ithaca, to be his vice-king, despite his inexperience in politics (Menelaus claims that he never met Ulysses until the very debate chronicled here). He claimed to have a plan to get Greece out of Troy, as well as tackle other Greek political issues. He took a liberal stance on same-species marriages.

Agamemnon and Menelaus also appealed to the Greeks. He urged Greece to stay the course in Troy. He also stressed his belief that marriage is strictly defined as being between a Man and a God. (Women weren't considered 'people' back then. They were considered to be WMD's. Hahahahaha...). He accuses Achilles and Ulysses of being flip-floppers (First Achilles is out of the war, then he's in; First Ulysses tries to avoid the draft, then he urges warriors to keep fighting, then he tries to end the war he supposedly supported). Finally, he sicked Nestor, the aged warrior and staunch supporter of Agamemnon, onto Achilles and Ulysses. Nestors claims were quite exaggerated: "Achilles would wait for approval from Gaul before attacking another nation!", "He would make sure that the Greek army was reduced to fighting with spitballs!"

When Achilles questioned his claim, stating that he couldn't possibly believe that Achilles would reduce the Greek army to fighting with spitballs, Nestor reacted harshly: "I wish this was the age when I could challenge a man to a duel!" When Achilles replied that 6th century B.C. was, in fact, such an age, Nestor lost his nerve and struck Achilles in his heel, killing him. Ulysses, enraged, strung his bow amd, with the help of his son Telemachus, slayed Nestor, Agamemnon, Menelaus, and all the suitors of his wife, Penelope (heir to the Ithacan ketchup fortune). Ulysses then proclaimed himself King of the Greeks.

Thus democracy was born in Greece!

Historians are split on whether this document is indeed accurate, with 50% in favour of the authenticity of the document, and 50% claiming it is a hoax.

What do you think? Send in your vote to guy_on_bus@hotmail.com. Yes if it is authentic, no if it is not. Votes must be entered by November 2nd.




Mmmmmm....that's good satire!

Jeremy.

So. . . yay relevance?

And for Something Somewhat Substantial. . .

This blog is not very good.

I mean, consider my last post, a plug for a Japanese language blog written by my make-believe Japanese girlfriend, Miyuu Sawai.

Or, more generally, consider in itself my ridiculous interest Sawai, a young woman who as a teenager had to learn how to act while dressing up in a blonde wig and dancing around men in moster costumes, and who now makes her living by shilling suits.

I guess what I'm getting at is. . . I would like to be more substantive. I would like to have something to say about Canadian politics, or about life, or about science, which supposedly I'm studying right now.

To that end. . . another plug:

Terrible Depths.

I'll probably be reading this blog regularly now.

President Obama Announces End Date of Iraqi Military Operations Fail

From msn.ca:

Under the proposed timetable, Aug. 31, 2008, would mark the end of all U.S. war operations in the country, Obama said.

Thank God this long, costly war will finally end six months ago.

UPDATE: The article has been corrected to 2010. Just in time for the ulimpekzorz!!!ONE!1

I Got Your Separation of Mosque, State, and Organic Chemistry Right Here!

A scholar from Saudi Arabia -- the world's largest producer of oil-- says that biofuels are a bad idea. . . and he has Islam to prove it!

A prominent Saudi scholar warned youths studying abroad of using ethanol or other fuel that contains alcohol in their cars since they could be committing a sin, local press reported Thursday.

Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking, and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.

Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it “is basically made up of alcohol.”

I'm Starting to Notice a Theme. . .

Two nuclear-powered submarines from Britain and France, both carrying nuclear missiles, collided deep under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, authorities are now acknowledging.

It's Like. . . Some Sort of . . . Star War. . .

If you could believe such a absurd thing!

Seriously, though. . . remember when the U.S. and China got into a pissing match over who was better at blowing up their own satellites with missiles? It seems like Russia has gotten into the act as well. Their approach, however, is a bit more direct. . .

From MSNBC:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Russian and U.S. experts say the first-ever collision between two satellites has created clouds of debris that could threaten other unmanned spacecraft.

...

The smashup occured over Siberia when a derelict Russian military communications satellite crossed paths with a U.S. Iridium satellite.

The two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.

NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) over Siberia on Tuesday.

Americans? Chinese? Pussies. Leave it to the Russians have the sheer frozen balls to destroy a foreign satellite. . . with their own decommissioned satellite!

But those ex-Bolshevist bastards aren't content with taking out just one satellite:

Other Russian and U.S. officials warn that satellites in nearby orbits could be damaged.

...

The U.S. Strategic Command's Space Surveillance Network detected the two debris clouds created by Tuesday's collision. Julie Ziegenhorn, a spokeswoman for the Strategic Command, told msnbc.com that the collision left behind an estimated 600 pieces of debris, but she emphasized that the Pentagon's orbital watchdog had to do "still more characterization" of the collision's potential effect.

NASA's [Mark] Matney said the count would likely be in the thousands if pieces of debris down to the scale of microns — about the size of a grain of sand — are included.

...

Nicholas Johnson, an orbital debris expert at the Houston space center, said the risk of damage from Tuesday’s collision is [relatively high] for the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites, which are in higher orbit [than the International Space Station] and nearer the debris field.

The satellite-- the victim satellite-- was owned by telecommunications company Iridium Holdings LLC. According to the article, one of the company's biggest clients is the US Department of Defence.

Coincidence? What do you mean yes? Are you blind? As we speak, the Russians are already planning to allow satellites they decommissioned during the Cold War to follow their original orbits and eventually collide with satellites launched years later that they could never have anticipated! It's all part of the Soviet grand plan launched years ago: to destory the enemies the Soviet Union my means of the remnant's of the Soviet Union's own downfall! And to think, you people are still fooled by that little puppet show in Berlin.

Or. . . maybe Iridium just fucked up. Though the article never specifies whether he's talking about this particular collision or any collision of satellites, Mark Matney was quoted as saying “We knew this was going to happen eventually.”

UPDATE: Cool video. It freezes up for the first second or so, but if you click a couple of seconds ahead, it works fine.

On "equivocation". . .

A couple of weeks ago Naomi sent me a link to WWII era Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Great stuff. They even do the "What's Opera Doc?" parody of Wagner's Die Walküre, a decade before "What's Opera Doc?"

My enjoyment was tempered, however, upon reading one of the comments left in response to the video. First, I'll point out an earlier comment:

All U people that think that Hitler is good are the most horrible people in the planet.He killed mora than 1000 jews and homosexuals.You people wouldnt like him too kill all the people of your religon so Shut the f**k up kwgitho

Bad grammar and incorrect statistics aside, I do agree with the sentiment. Fuck Hitler, and fuck his modern-day admirers.

The comment that irritated me so much was in response to the one above:

He killed millions of Jews and thousands of Christians. Let's not equivocate the small percentile of homosexuals, which is a lifestyle preference, and though unfortunate, pales against the tragedy and degree of the Nazi's religious persecution.

That said, I miss Looney Tunes.

Hoooo-boy.

Where do I begin?

Am I to take it that if there were only a few thousand Jews murdered by the Nazi's, then the Nazi's would somehow be less evil? Supposing that Hitler was utterly incompetent and allowed millions of Jews of escape from Europe-- does inability to perform evil acts make you less evil? Is the act of genocide somehow more tolerable if your killing off a small population rather than a large one? Would wiping out every Muslim or Catholic be more atrocious than wiping out every Jew just because there are a billion Muslims and Catholics and only millions of Jews?

Of course not.

As for that "lifestlye choice" comment (a common argument made by fundamentalist homophobes), many Nazis had a somewhat different view. From Wikipedia:

Nazi leaders such as Himmler viewed homosexuals as a separate people and ensured that Nazi doctors experimented on them in an effort to locate the hereditary weakness many party members believed caused homosexuality.

I was going to point out the absurdity of dismissing homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice" while crying bloody murder over religious persecution-- as though religion isn't a lifestyle choice-- but in this particular instance, I knew it didn't apply. To the Nazis, the Jews were inherently degenerate-- conversion or apostacy solved nothing.

Anti-gay bigotry: An official member of my lifetime "Fuck Thats".

Seven Days. . .

Okay, it's really only six days until the federal election, but I came up with the title on Monday, and you gotta admit that an allusion to The Ring is gonna be a helluva lot catchier than Six Days. . .

Six days. How the hell did that happen?! I knew that there was an election going on, but. . . damn! I've been so focused on University and the American election (I was also recently rear-ended, but that's a whole other story I'd rather not get into) that I haven't had time to really consider who I will vote for.

I won't vote Conservative. I know that much. There are many reasons for this, including this one. Stephen Harper, before becoming PM, did everything he could to come across as a far-right loon-- it's only after he got elected that remodeled his image into that of a mere centrist douchebag. I worry about what he would do if he ever got a majority government. . .

But that said. . . in his latest campaign ads-- and I am truly sorry to say this, Naomi-- Stephen Harper looks surprisingly, frighteningly similar to Josh. It makes me almost able to tolerate that insipid "Stephen Harper Loves His Kids so Vote Conservative!" nonsense.

I most likely won't vote Liberal. Frankly, the only reason I would is if there was a good chance that the Liberal candidate would beat the Conservative one-- and this being Prince George, I think you know how likely it is for that little scenario to unfold.

I won't vote Bloc-- no Bloc candidate.

I'd consider voting for the Marxist-Leninist party just to make a statement! Problem is, I don't know what that statement would be.

So, in the end, I'm torn between the NDP and the Greens. The NDP have been making a lot of headway in the polls recently. There's a chance -- and, mind you, I base this on absolutely nothing other than a vague trend-- that they could beat out the Liberals to form an official opposition. Plus, my (metaphorical, I'm not British) Old Labour blood obliges me to vote for the leftist party.

On the other hand. . . all I've really heard and seen from the NDP ad's, website, and even platform are soundbites ("Man, fuck dem Eastside Boardroom table motherfuckas! I'm all about da Westside kitchen tables up in dis bitch! Ya feel me?") along with a few vague, nice-sounding ideas(Increased support for pedestrian and bicycle paths "as part of [the NDP's] commitment to sustainable transport"-- I'm not joking). To be fair, I haven't checked out the other party platforms and websites, but my feeling is that they won't be much better.

Adding to that is the fact that, well, Jack Layton seems to be a bit of a douche. I'm basing that solely on the fact that he, along with Stephane Dion, has been judged by the public to have come off a bit dickish during the English language debate (I say "appears" because I didn't watch the debate. . . Yes, I'm a terrible citizen, but I'm getting to that). Indeed, the two party leaders who came off looking the best, according to people who I have mostly never met, are Stephen Harper and Green Party leader Elizabeth May, which leads me to the other end of my conundrum. . .

The Greens. The environmentalist party. From what I've heard, they're left-leaning on social issues and environment, but right-leaning on the economy. Considering that the economic meltdown in the U.S. appears, by all accounts, to have occurred as a result of Republican emphasis on deregulation, the latter may well be a liability. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, their leader comes off as intelligent, knowledgeable, and reasonable-- from what I hear.

That, and they support a carbon tax, while the NDP support a cap and trade system. You see, carbon tax is good, and cap and trade is bad. . . from what I hear. . . somehow.

Sigh.

If you've made it this far, you've probably come to the conclusion that I really am an ignorant slut. You may have even decided that it would probably just be a better idea for this jackass (me) not to vote in the first place.

That, you see, was be design.

If you've been clicking on the links, you've probably visited my sister's blog, wherein she expresses her anger at those who choose not to vote for reason of every party sucking. Or, as she said herself:

I'm sitting on the CFUR couch listening to some guy rant about how he's exercising his democratic right by not voting. He claims hating every party as his excuse. . . . Enough people are stupid enough to either a) vote FOR [Harper] or b) NOT vote at all? No wonder North American politics are such a joke.

I know that Naomi isn't talking about this issue specifically, but her blog entry seems to suggest that compulsive voting might be the answer to some of our democratic woes.

I've always taken issue with the idea of compulsive voting. First, I do believe that if you have the right to vote, you have the right not to vote. While I do not agree with said CFUR guy's assessment of the political landscape, I could envision a circumstance wherein all the parties would screw the public with equal intensity. In that case, what good does it do to vote? "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos?"

Secondly, as this blog post has demonstrated, I really have no fucking clue as to who I should vote for. Really, I'm just stringing together a few random facts (Polls! Arts Funding! Kyoto!) along with a few gut level associations (Harper = Bush = BAD! NDP = Left = GOOD!) to form the basis of what is really an incredibly significant civic duty. I mean, really, would you want someone like me choose who your political leader should be? If I were this ignorant about anything else. . . well, I am a physics lab instructor, but that's not the point!

The point is, I'm somebody who actually gives half a shit about politics, or at least that's what I thought. Just imagine someone who really couldn't give a damn one way or the other being forced by law (or social pressure) to participate in the voting process. They don't care one way or the other, so they may as well vote for the guy who looks like Naomi's cute boyfriend.

Greatest Assignment Evarz!1!

One of my duties as a grad student is to mark undergraduate physics assignments. This is usually a pain in the ass, but every so often I get an assignment that not only sucks, but is actually entertaining.

In this case, it was a doodle in one of my Phys 111 assignments. It shows two situations, one in which two boys are writing on a chalkboard, and one in which one boy and one girl are writing on a chalkboard. In the first case, one of the boys has claimed that the indefinite integral of x^2 is Pi (it's not, just so you know). The other boy then says "Wow, you suck at math!"

In the other case, the girl has written the exact same thing. The boy in that case says "Wow, girls suck at math!"

Simple. Beautiful. And with logic perfectly applicable to many other situations.

For example:

#1

MAN HOLDING BIBLE KICKS PUPPY.

MAN #2: You're an asshole!

#2

MAN HOLDING THE GOD DELUSION KICKS PUPPY.

MAN #2: Atheists are assholes!

(Note: Replace "The God Delusion" with "The Koran", "Atheists" with "Muslims" and, if you like, "Assholes" with "Terrorists" and it works just as well)

Or how about:

#1

WHITE MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: What a horrid fellow!

#2

BLACK MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: Oh, those Negroes.

OLD WOMAN CHCUCKLES.

#3

ASIAN MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: INTERN HIM!!!

Don't you just love it when your entire worldview comes in "Fill-in-the-Blank" form?

Star Wars. . . Nothing but Star Wars . . . Give me Those Star Wars. . . Don't let them E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-end!*

I'm in my mom's office, pissing away reading break and waiting for word on our cat Cedric, who's undergoing balldectomy getting neutered at I speak. To pass the time (which I could've been spending doing marking. . . or something-- anything-- out in the open air) I thought I'd write about the lastest bit of space news I've come across.

Sometime last night, while the rest of the western hemisphere stood in the freezing air waiting for a lunar eclipse, the US Navy shot down one of its own country's spy satellites. The satellite was in a decaying orbit, and some believed that it might be able to partially survive re-entry and crash somewhere on Earth--more specifically, somewhere on Earth that's Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. There's also speculation that the spy satellite contains large amounts of unconsumed hydrazine rocket fuel, which might pose an environmental hazard (indeed, the fact that the fuel was unconsumed, and hence unable to laung the satellite to higher orbit and greater velocity, might explain why it is falling in the first place).

Naturally, the United States government is keeping mum about this whole affair. After all, government and military secrets are at stake, and besides, the whole thing is so embarrasing that. . . oh look, the Department of Defence posted a video of the Navy blowing up the satellite:



Apparently, the cloud of gas that appears after the explosion was indeed unburned hydrazine, according to a spectral analysis.

Now, I can understand the DOD posting the video in order to quell the public's worries of, how shall I put it, a KILLER FUCKING SATELLITE:



But, being the paranoid sort that I am, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something else going on here. Then I remembered that China, just one month ago, also blew up a satellite with a ground-based missile:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China last week successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.

According to a spokesman for the National Security Council, the ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile knocked an old Chinese weather satellite from its orbit about 537 miles above Earth. The missile carried a "kill vehicle" and destroyed the satellite by ramming it.

The test took place on January 11. (There was a link to a video here, but I cut it out. You can find it at the main site.)

Aviation Week and Space Technology first reported the test: "Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by an asat (anti-satellite) system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center."

A U.S. official, who would not agree to be identified, said the event was the first successful test of the missile after three failures.

The official said that U.S. "space tracking sensors" confirmed that the satellite is no longer in orbit and that the collision produced "hundreds of pieces of debris," that also are being tracked.

So. . . is all of this just an outer space pissing contest between China and the United States? Are we about to enter a new Cold War in Earth orbit? The U.S. has issued diplomatic protests, and President Bush has been waving that little of sabre of his over issues of American outer space policy for some time now:

The United States logged a formal diplomatic protest.

"We are aware of it and we are concerned, and we made it known," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Several U.S. allies, including Canada and Australia, have also registered protests, and the Japanese government said it was worrisome.

"Naturally, we are concerned about it from the viewpoint of security as well as peaceful use of space," said Yashuhisa Shiozaki, chief cabinet secretary. He said Japan has asked the Chinese government for an explanation.

Britain has complained about lack of consultation before the test and potential damage from the debris it left behind, The Associated Press reported.

The United States has been able to bring down satellites with missiles since the mid-1980s, according to a history of ASAT programs posted on the Union of Concerned Scientists Web site. In its own test, the U.S. military knocked a satellite out of orbit in 1985.

Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will "deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so."

The policy includes the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Low Earth-orbit satellites have become indispensable for U.S. military communications, GPS navigation for smart bombs and troops, and for real-time surveillance. The Chinese test highlights the satellites' vulnerability.

"If we, for instance, got into a conflict over Taiwan, one of the first things they'd probably do would be to shoot down all of our lower Earth-orbit spy satellites, putting out our eyes," said John Pike of globalsecurity.org, a Web site that compiles information on worldwide security issues.

"The thing that is surprising and disturbing is that [the Chinese] have chosen this moment to demonstrate a military capability that can only be aimed at the United States," he said.

Again, maybe I'm being paranoid, but isn't it also strange that just a month later, the U.S. destroys one of it's own satellites, for all the world to see?

But Anyway. . . as long as you're here, read My Story II and give me some input, dammit! I plan to do this for money and acclaim and girls one day!

Links:

Bad Astronomy Blog Article

BBC Online Article on Spy Satellite

CNN Online Article on Chinese Missile Launch


*The title is based on Bill Murray's "Star Wars Song" from the early years of Saturday Night Live. I couldn't find the original clip, but I did find this video by DickSharpe80 which has the song on it.

There Will Be Blood. . . IN SPACE. . . .

. . . Space . . . Space . . . Space. . . space. . .!*



It's long been known that Saturn's moon Titan has a huge amount of organic (carbon-based) chemicals, both in its dense atmosphere (twice as dense as Earth's) and in its frozen lakes of methane(recently photographed by the Huygens probe). Scientists believe that Titan's hydrocarbon content is very similar to that of Earth before the beginning of life, and thus that the moon-- which has been effectively "frozen" for billions of years-- provides a snapshot of our own world from ages past.

Big whoop.

Fortunately, Cassini-Huygens researcher has found an actual good reason to care about Titan: TAITEN HAZ TEH OILZ!!!1!1

Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from the Cassini spacecraft.

The bounty of fuels, however, is on an orange-coloured moon at least 1.2 billion kilometres from Earth, a trip that took the Cassini spacecraft seven years to make.

Researchers from the European Space Agency first reported their findings about the ringed planet's moon in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters on Jan. 28.

Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said the estimated fuel reserves are based on Cassini's surface maps of the moon, which show what appear to be lakes and seas. Researchers speculate the liquid is methane, one of the few known molecules to exist as a liquid in such extreme cold.

The scientists also believe dunes on the moon's surface are made of complex organic molecules called tholins.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material-it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz in a statement. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."

Although only 20 per cent of the moon's surface has been mapped, the researchers have already found dozens of lakes that individually could house as much energy as the 117,000 million tonnes of proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth.

"[Our] global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don't yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz.

The dense haze of Titan's mostly nitrogen atmosphere had prevented earlier attempts to view the surface of the moon before the U.S. space probe Cassini first arrived in 2004. Radar is the only way to pierce the haze surrounding Titan, which has an atmosphere 10 times denser than Earth's.

The probe's next flyby of Titan is on Feb. 22, 2008, when it will observe the landing site of the ESA's Huygens probe, which landed on the moon's surface in 2004.

The combined Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. It first launched from Earth in 1997.

Titan's dense atmosphere and presence of carbon-based material have fascinated scientists who see it as a time vault of what Earth may have looked like billions of years ago, before life formed and introduced oxygen into the atmosphere.

As the article says, Titan is over a billion kilometers away(When? On closest approach? Furthest?) so there probably won't be any attempt to extract it. However, for the sake of balance-- actually, for the sake of my contract obligates me to climb my political soapbox at least once every three blogs-- let me just point out some of the stupid things that supposedly reasonable, advanced civilizations have done to get their hands on oil:

*As I wrote this, I found myself wondering if "Space" is really spelled like that.

Having been an astronomy and space travel nut my whole life, I now suddenly wondered why I had written a word that sounded like "Spa-kay" (Latinesque pronunciation). I actually had to look up the word "space" on Google to make sure it was spelled properly. Stupid foreign languages messing up my science!

The Greatest Political Ad Your Sorry Asses Will EVAR See!

. . . which isn't saying much, I'll admit. Still, this ad from Republican Mike Huckabee beats Hillary Clinton's pathetic Sopranos parody by a long shot.

Chuck Norris' endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates cure cancer. Too bad he's. . . oh, never mind!

Meet The New Boss. . . Same as the Old Boss. . .

. . . which in this case is a good thing. Two teams of scientists have discovered a way to convert skin cells into stem cells. Scientists have been trying to conduct research on stem cells for years, in spite of opposition from the U.S. Government, which has refused to provide federal funding due to political pandering to the religious right objections over the use of human embryos, which are killed during extraction. This new method of stem cell production should hopefully overcome the ethical barriers traditionally associated with stem cell research. From msn.ca:

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It's a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

The "direct reprogramming" technique avoids the swarm of ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

Scientists familiar with the work said scientific questions remain and that it's still important to pursue the cloning strategy, but that the new work is a major coup.

"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone - the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers' first airplane," said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief science officer of Advanced Cell Technology, which has been trying to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos.

"It's a bit like learning how to turn lead into gold," said Lanza, while cautioning that the work is far from providing medical payoffs.

"It's a huge deal," agreed Rudolf Jaenisch, a prominent stem cell scientist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass. "You have the proof of principle that you can do it."

The White House lauded the papers, saying such research is what President Bush was advocating when he twice vetoed legislation to pave the way for taxpayer-funded embryo research.

There is a catch with the new technique. At this point, it requires disrupting the DNA of the skin cells, which creates the potential for developing cancer. So it would be unacceptable for the most touted use of embryonic cells: creating transplant tissue that in theory could be used to treat diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's, and spinal cord injury.

But the DNA disruption is just a byproduct of the technique, and experts said they believe it can be avoided.

The new work is being published online by two journals, Cell and Science. The Cell paper is from a team led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University; the Science paper is from a team led by Junying Yu, working in the lab of in stem-cell pioneer James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Both reported creating cells that behaved like stem cells in a series of lab tests.

Thomson, 48, made headlines in 1998 when he announced that his team had isolated human embryonic stem cells.

Yamanaka gained scientific notice in 2006 by reporting that direct reprogramming in mice had produced cells resembling embryonic stem cells, although with significant differences. In June, his group and two others announced they'd created mouse cells that were virtually indistinguishable from stem cells.

For the new work, the two men chose different cell types from a tissue supplier. Yamanaka reprogrammed skin cells from the face of an unidentified 36-year-old woman, and Thomson's team worked with foreskin cells from a newborn. Thomson, who was working his way from embryonic to fetal to adult cells, said he's still analyzing his results with adult cells.

Both labs did basically the same thing. Each used viruses to ferry four genes into the skin cells. These particular genes were known to turn other genes on and off, but just how they produced cells that mimic embryonic stem cells is a mystery.

"People didn't know it would be this easy," Thomson said. "Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow."

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which holds three patents for Thomson's work, is applying for patents involving his new research, a spokeswoman said. Two of the four genes he used were different from Yamanaka's recipe.

Scientists prize embryonic stem cells because they can turn into virtually any kind of cell in the body. The cloning approach - which has worked so far only in mice and monkeys - should be able to produce stem cells that genetically match the person who donates body cells for cloning.

That means tissue made from the cells should be transplantable into that person without fear of rejection. Scientists emphasize that any such payoff would be well in the future, and that the more immediate medical benefits would come from basic research in the lab.

In fact, many scientists say the cloning technique has proven too expensive and cumbersome in its current form to produce stem cells routinely for transplants.

The new work shows that the direct reprogramming technique can also produce versatile cells that are genetically matched to a person. But it avoids several problems that have bedevilled the cloning approach.

For one thing, it doesn't require a supply of unfertilized human eggs, which are hard to obtain for research and subjects the women donating them to a surgical procedure. Using eggs also raises the ethical questions of whether women should be paid for them.

In cloning, those eggs are used to make embryos from which stem cells are harvested. But that destroys the embryos, which has led to political opposition from U.S. President George W. Bush, the Roman Catholic church and others.

Those were "show-stopping ethical problems," said Laurie Zoloth, director of Northwestern University's Center for Bioethics, Science and Society.

The new work, she said, "redefines the ethical terrain."

Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the new work "a very significant breakthrough in finding morally unproblematic alternatives to cloning. ... I think this is something that would be readily acceptable to Catholics."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the new method does not cross what Bush considers an "ethical line." And Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a staunch opponent of publicly funded embryonic stem cell research, said it should nullify the debate.

Another advantage of direct reprogramming is that it would qualify for federal research funding, unlike projects that seek to extract stem cells from human embryos, noted Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Still, scientific questions remain about the cells produced by direct reprogramming, called "iPS" cells. One is how the cells compare to embryonic stem cells in their behaviour and potential. Yamanaka said his work detected differences in gene activity.

If they're different, iPS cells might prove better for some scientific uses and cloned stem cells preferable for other uses. Scientists want to study the roots of genetic disease and screen potential drug treatments in their laboratories, for example.

Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut, famous for his role in cloning Dolly the sheep a decade ago, told London's Daily Telegraph that he is giving up the cloning approach to produce stem cells and plans to pursue direct reprogramming instead.

Other scientists said it's too early for the field to follow Wilmut's lead. Cloning embryos to produce stem cells remains too valuable as a research tool, Jaenisch said.

Dr. George Daley of the Harvard institute, who said his own lab has also achieved direct reprogramming of human cells, said it's not clear how long it will take to get around the cancer risk problem. Nor is it clear just how direct reprogramming works, or whether that approach mimics what happens in cloning, he noted.

So the cloning approach still has much to offer, he said.

Daley, who's president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said his lab is pursuing both strategies.

"We'll see, ultimately, which one works and which one is more practical."

When I learned that one of the two teams that made the discovery was Japanese, being the lovely little cynic that I am, I started to wonder whether this was part of Japan's "scientific whaling."

I Got Yer Freedom of Religion Right Here! Part II

Police in Afghanistan-- you know, the country we saved from an Islamist dictatorship-- have just arrested a man for publishing a translation of the Koran.

Afghan police have arrested a man accused of publishing an unofficial translation of the Koran that has sparked protests in parts of the country, newspapers said on Monday.

The translation into Dari, one of Afghanistan's main languages, sparked an emergency debate in parliament and protests in at least two parts of the country as key passages were changed.

Ghaus Zalmai, the publisher of the translation, was arrested on Sunday trying to cross the border into neighbouring Pakistan. Zalmai was also a spokesman for Afghanistan's attorney general.

"This is a plot against the religion of Islam, and no one will ever accept the book as the holy Koran," daily Armaan newspaper quoted judge Abdul Salam Azimi as saying.

"The Supreme court has ordered an investigation into this matter and to bring the culprits before the court," he said.

Perceived insults to Islam, such as the cartoons of the prophet Mohammad or alleged violations of the Koran have sparked angry protests in Afghanistan.

I'll give a bit of background on why this is supposed to be such a big deal in Islam. According to Islam, the prophet Muhammad, inspired by the angel Gabriel, recited the word of God to the people of Mecca. Muhammad's inspired words, as transcribed by his followers, became what is known today as the Koran, the holy, infallible word of God. Trouble is, that particular word is in Classical Arabic, and is so infallible that any translation of the book into other languages is considered invalid and, in this case at least, unholy.

Now that I've elucidated at least some historical and theological baggage, I'll close with a rant.

I don't like the war in Afghanistan. But in spite of myself, I still do buy the moral argument that Canadian troops should stay in Afghanistan to help fend off the Taliban. Unfortunately, the trouble with that argument is the government that U.S. coalition installed to replace the Taliban-- the one that Canadian troops are fighting and dying to protect-- is now, slowly but surely, beginning to resemble the religious dictatorship it was meant to replace by eroding one of the fundamental principles necessary for democracy, the separation of church and state. I don't mean to say that, based on this, the government of Afghanistan is as bad as the Taliban, not by a long shot. It's still possible that the case may dismissed in the courts, though based on the quote by judge Azimi, that's not likely. It's also still possible that coalition governments could exert enough pressure on the Afghan government to get them to dismiss the case. . . though that certainly won't quell future protests.

For some reason, the phrase "the lesser of two evils" seems decreasingly relevant here.

To Quote Naomi. . .

Fuck Fox News.

They are kinda pricks.

I Got Yer Freedom of Religion Right Here!

I have cousins in Austria, whom I might blog about in a future post. Thus, I was saddened to learn that one of Austria's provinices is governed by a far-right party that wants to ban the construction of mosques:

The provincial parliament in the southern Austrian province Carinthia called on its provincial government to prepare legislation banning the construction of mosques or minarets. The province's governor, the populist former leader of the rightist Freedom Party, Joerg Haider, had repeatedly called for anti- Muslim measures along those lines.

The proposal was adopted with the votes of the conservative People's Party, Freedom Party, and the support of the Alliance for Austria's Future, an equally rightist breakaway party from the Freedom Party, founded by Haider.

Alliance floor leader Kurt Scheuch said his party wanted to prevent the creeping Islamization by radical forces.

"We prefer churchbells to the muezzin's chants," he said.

So much for secularism. The government of Austria displays a clear and unabashed religious preference, and wants to use state power to enforce that preference. And as for that line about "prevent(ing) the creeping Islamization by radical forces," well, I'd like to prevent abortion doctors for being murdered by terrorists and gays from being hunted down and beaten to a fine paste by rednecks, but I'd be an idiot if I thought preventing the construction of churches was the answer to that.

The article, in clear contradiction of Scheuch's quote, goes on to say:

While the conservatives stressed that it was not their intention to prevent Muslims from practicing their religion, they argued that a mosque could not be compared with a Christian church, but was rather an "institution of a cultural community."

I see, so a mosque is an "institution of a cultural community," which distinguishes it from a church. . . how? Oh, that's right: the Church is the institution of the dominant culture-- or at least, what the dominant culture used to be in Europe, before the Europeans began avoiding chruches in droves.

Carinthia's Social Democrats and Greens, who had voted against the measure, slammed the proposal as a move to "prevent integration (and) hinder religious freedom" and called it an "open attack on democracy and the rule of law."

The Social Democrats pointed out that currently there were no plans for for building mosques in the province, unmasking the proposal as an attempt to "attract the right-wing vote," Social Democrat floor leader Peter Kaiser said.

Yup, pretty much sums it up. At least Haider isn't ruling all of Austria anymore.

My God, It Actually Happened. . .

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore, who will share the $1.4 Million prize with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was awarded for his "efforts to build up disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

The prize puts Gore in the company of fellow peace prize winners/American Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, as well as scientist-turned-activists Linus Pauling and Andrei Sakharov. Unfortunately, it also puts him in the same group as Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat.

I can't wait to see how loony American conservatives react to this. They'll likely try to spin this as an example of the Nobel committee's evil left-wing bias, forgetting that right-wing heroes Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek have also won prizes (albeit for economics), and that anti-communist dissenters, like Sakharov, also won the peace prize.

UPDATE: Yup, It Happened.

UPDATE #2: Ha ha ha ha ha.

UPDATE #3: Ha ha ha ha ha, again.

UPDATE #4: Some have complained that that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to an environmental activist is stretching the definition of "peace." Personally, I think this criticism is idiotic-- climate change will, and has, affected politics and economics, including war and peace. But on the other hand, for a long time I've thought that the Nobels should give a separate environmental award. Then again, I've always though they should give a prize for mathematics as well. . .