Image of Halley's Comet from far off shows why travel to other solar systems may be out of the question for now

Here's something from 2003 that is a bit interesting - it's an image of Halley's Comet taken that year, at a distance of 28 AU (Neptune is at 30 AU for comparison). Though Halley's Comet is still moving outward and will eventually be 2.5 times fainter than even that when it reaches 35 AU, imaging the comet will still be possible at that distance, effectively making it visible to us 100% of the time.

What does this have to do with other solar systems? Well, we are now able to observe Halley's Comet at any position now thanks to more powerful telescopes, while at the same time rocket technology hasn't really advanced all that much during that period other than beginning to use ion drives and first tests of VASIMR. Even at a tenth of the speed of light a journey to even the closest solar system to ours (Alpha Centauri) would take nearly 50 years, and during that time it's very likely that observational technology would develop to the point that we would be able to observe the system in greater detail than even the craft on its way there. That in a nutshell is the problem with missions with durations that extend into decades.

In fact, it's even possible that a mission sent to a destination like that could be surpassed by another later mission if there happens to be a technological breakthrough. It would be a bit like setting out on a journey to walk from the tip of Alaska to the bottom of South America, and then a year later be surpassed by a friend of yours from home that learned how to invent a bicycle. Clearly, without the ability to reach other solar systems within a similar length of time it takes to conduct a mission now (that means probably no more than 25 years) it won't be worth it to send missions there.

This is actually quite a good thing though, since observatories can be constructed by even some of the poorest of nations, so it's not only a field that is rapidly developing, but also one that isn't limited to nations with the ability to launch their own craft into space. It would be nice to see some sort of international initiative of nations at a mid-level of development (or just small) that would work on something like this (pooling funds to construct observatories for example). Nations like Bangladesh, Ghana, Mauritius, Azerbaijan, Ukraine etc. are a few off the top of my head.

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Maro-chan, the Japanese eyebrow cat

A few days ago this video was uploaded to YouTube. It's a two-month old kitten that has suddenly become the well-known eyebrow cat (眉毛猫 or mayugeneko). My translation of most the video is below.



Title: Cat with worried-looking eyebrows

So what could it be?
0:20 A cat with eyebrows. Yes, it looks like it's worried about something.
0:28 Try touching the cat and yes, they're definitely real.
0:35 Shizuoka prefecture's submission for Chinhyakukei (the name of the show): a cat with eyebrows that looks worried about something.
(Name: Maro-chan. Female, 2 months old.) This cat is Maro-chan, just two months old....doesn't seem to know how her eyebrows got to look this way...
1:00 Interview with dad: I was really opposed to getting the cat when we got it.
Q: Ah, you were opposed to it in the beginning?
A: Yeah, because I really hate cats.
Q: You hate...
A: Yeah, and when I saw this cat I just loved her. Right that moment my hate turned to love. It felt more like destiny than the first meeting with my mom.

Then a final comment saying the same thing, and then the people on the panel joke about how the cat always looks like she's running around saying she's sorry for everything, and how important these eyebrows are if they can change a person that hates cats into one that loves them.


And just in case you're at a workplace that doesn't allow YouTube on the job, here's a screenshot of Maro-chan.

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Discovery docks with the International Space Station, 13 people in space at the same time again

Great, 13 people in space all at the same time again. As I've written before, part of the reason why many lack an emotional attachment to space is because there simply have not been enough people there at the same time to create an interesting dynamic between them, and though nobody knows what the minimum number would be, 13 is still a pretty full house compared to the ISS before. For most of its history it got by with a crew of three, and since being upgraded to six each Shuttle flight has brought it temporarily up to 13.

Quite a few astronauts are using Twitter on this flight as well, and one of them is writing in both English and Spanish. The Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang is also part of the crew, making this his second mission.

This mission is also bringing aboard quite a bit of new equipment, including the COLBERT treadmill.

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What Russia really looks like

The Canadian historian Pierre Burton always used to describe Canada not as the world's second-largest country, but rather a long and thin country located right next to the border with the United States, shaped kind of like Chile but running east and west instead of north and south. And in terms of the Canada that most Canadians know, this is very true. Take a look at this population density map from Stats Canada.

Canada is basically a densely populated area in the east, a fairly populated area in the west, and a bit of space in between them when you hit western Ontario. Very few have actually been to the north. When you look at the map in this way it makes sense that Canada has a population so much smaller than that of the US, which has large populated centres in every corner of the country in spite of its slightly smaller size.

Russia is the same way, except that it lines up against the eastern border of Europe to the north and south instead of east and west. It's important to have an idea of how population in Russia works, because without it it tends to look like this:

Europe before reaching Russia is generally quite easy to understand, as each country is fairly small and they all fit together quite nicely like pieces of a puzzle. The only part where there is some confusion would be in the former Yugoslavia where new countries have been emerging left and right with varying degrees of international acceptance, and these new shapes have yet to make a strong impression. But overall it's quite easy.

Once you get to Russia though, everything gets thrown out the window. All of a sudden the borders are gone and you have now reached a country that is larger than the continent it borders upon, and everything goes out the window. When you take a look at Russia as a whole it can be easy to remember as it looks a bit like some sort of mythical auroch-like creature lying on top of Central Asia, with its head stretching out towards Alaska, front paws hanging over northeastern China and rear legs standing on Georgia and Azerbaijan.

But like the somewhat inaccurate image of Canada, this isn't really the Russia people usually mean when they think of the country - most visit major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, and its this heavily populated area in the west that Europe interacts with the most as well. So if Canada is to be compared to Chile, Russia would also end up looking something like this (very rough approximation):

That still doesn't look like any other country, but it's still easier to picture compared to Europe than the monstrous mythical auroch over Central Asia.

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Yes, there's actually a language called Elfdalian

Just a quick FYI for those interested in Scandinavian languages - there's a language located near central Sweden called Elfdalian, spoken by about 3000 and thus extremely endangered. It's also quite conservative, retaining many features seen in Old Norse that have since been lost in other Scandinavian languages. An article here in Swedish can be read about Elfdalian being a language and not a Swedish dialect, and another one here is of the opinion that Swedish is a threat to Elfdalian. Just about any language would be, when you're dealing with a language with such a small population.

Quick note: beware when using Google Translate to read articles on languages, as it always gets names of languages confused and more often than not will call them all English. I see it also calls Elfdalian "river's wife" in the second article.

Just how unknown is Elfdalian? Google News turns up exactly 0 articles on the language. YouTube, however, has a bit of content. Here's a song in Elfdalian.

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Do people in Quebec approve or disapprove of Jacques Demers being made a senator?

Short explanation: Jacques Demers is the coach that last brought the Stanley Cup to Montreal, since then he has been a commentator and also an advocate for literacy after he revealed a few years ago that he had been functionally illiterate most of his life.

I haven't seen any scientific polls on this, but on La Presse they have a daily poll where the most recent question is about the nomination. To the question: "Do you approve of the nomination of Jacques Demers as a senator?" to 7480 people, at the moment 31% say yes, 49% say no, and 21% are indifferent. About half a day ago at 4000+ people the results were more or less the same too, so I don't expect much change in these numbers over the next few hours as the online poll finalizes.

The next thing to do is compare these raw numbers with voting trends, to see if the approval/disapproval is greater or lesser than those. A recent poll here gives us some numbers: right now 17% of Quebecers would vote for the Conservatives, an increase of 4 points since mid June. Also, 61% of Quebecers are unsatisfied with the current government. Though once again this poll is unscientific, it would seem to show that even though a majority of Quebecers are a bit distrustful of the move and probably find it to be a cynical ploy to garner support in Quebec, it's still a beloved figure of theirs and thus the approval rating is quite a bit higher than Conservative support in the province, and disapproval lower than the overall dissatisfaction with the government. In other words, there is a non-insignificant number of people that are of the opinion that they don't like this government, but maybe they got it right on this one.

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Asteroid mining: on purposely moving a near-Earth asteroid into Earth orbit

There's a pretty interesting discussion going on right now on Reddit about mining asteroids, and specifically about moving an asteroid into Earth's orbit in order to do so. The idea of giving the Earth a second moon (however small) has always been an appealing idea, and even though the asteroid proposed here is extremely tiny, it would still be a pretty impressive feat.

The idea is quite simple: there is a certain size of asteroid that is still fairly large in terms of resources, but small enough that Earth's atmosphere would cause it to break up before hitting the ground. A near-Earth asteroid like this would be the ideal candidate, since even in a worst-case scenario it would simply burn up in the atmosphere.

So how much material would be inside an asteroid of this type? Luckily the poster there (Lucretius, a poster with some pretty interesting ideas and one that first got me thinking about colonizing Cruithne 3753) has done some of the calculations for us.

First, asteroid 2008 TC3 is given as an example, since it broke up on its way down when it hit Earth last year. It was 2-5 metres in diameter. A solid asteroid with a diameter of 5 metres gives a mass of 73,000 kg, which is the equivalent of 4.9 launches of SpaceX's Falcon-9 Heavy, which is the most massive rocket of theirs they are planning to make, and at best (since SpaceX is much cheaper than other methods of launching payload to space and they still haven't developed that rocket either) that would still cost a minimum of $382 million.

But let's also remember that asteroid 2004 FH (diameter 30 metres) would likely have burnt up in the atmosphere too if it had hit, so there should be no problem in going with an asteroid some half its diameter. 2004 FH is some 28,000 tons, so let's be really safe and say an asteroid with some 10,000 tons of mass should be doable, which works out to the amount of mass that could be carried up with some 660 launches or so.

So just how big would an asteroid like this be? Here's what a 15-metre asteroid would look like next to the ISS.

Looks quite small. Don't forget, however, that the ISS is very thin and composed mostly of space, whereas the asteroid next to it is completely solid. Also, the ISS has taken over 11 years to reach its present state. The ISS has a mass of 300 tons, so no comparison to the mass of the asteroid next to it there.

One other potential use for an asteroid like this mentioned in the thread is a possible steady surface for telescopes that would otherwise have to use gyroscopes to remain steady.

Also note that a 15-metre asteroid really is quite large when you compare it to the size of a human. Here's a stick man standing on the surface to show you what it looks like.

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Epic cat rolls watermelon from the sea

Note the cat's Jedi-like intensity as he does it. For some reason it reminds me of this song.

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Why are French people so bad at English?

That's the title of an article here (Pourquoi parlons-nous si mal anglais?), referencing some recent TOEFL numbers placing France in 69th place out of 109, well behind many other countries, particularly Germany, Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. In Europe, only Cyprus, Italy and Monaco did worse. A few articles on the subject in French are complete with quite a bit of hand wringing and discussion on why the French are so bad at learning other languages.

An article here addresses the question quite well though, and points out a few things.

- It's natural that speakers of international languages are less motivated to learn other languages. France's marks in TOEFL were compared with Germany and the Scandinavian countries, but of those countries only those from France are able to go to certain countries in other continents without having to learn another language. Quebec, many countries in Northern Africa, vacation areas in the Pacific, etc. etc. In other words, out of all these languages it's possible to be a lazy tourist in one's native language alone only with French.

- The previous Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos, wanted to see students become bilingual once they had completed school. But note that this doesn't necessarily mean French+English, simply French+another language.


I would add one other important note: when considering the learning of languages, regional concerns very often trump international ones. That is, learning the language of one's neighbour is more appealing and effective than English. Many examples of this have been documented here, such as Zambia (official language: English) adding Portuguese to the school curriculum, Mpumalanga in South Africa offering bursaries to learn Portuguese, expansion of Portuguese in parts of Spain bordering on Portugal, Portugal needs more Spanish teachers to keep up with increasing demand, and many more. It's natural that learning the language of the country next door is a good thing, and an appealing prospect for many wanting to get ahead.

France is in a similar situation. Germany is right next door, with the largest economy in the EU, or some 30% larger than that in France. The UK, on the other hand, is a bit smaller. Switzerland also has the world's best wages, and Luxembourg the highest GDP per capita. Both of these countries also use French but not knowing German puts one at a disadvantage there.

Also keep in mind that German is spoken by 2% of the population within the country too, located in the east.

In short, English hasn't really sealed the deal with France. English is certainly nice to have, but it's not really a career booster for most, nor is it necessary to travel to other countries, even those outside Europe.

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Understanding countries through maps

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. - Sherlock Holmes to Watson

Active or deep interpretation of maps is a subject that isn't taught nearly enough in schools, which is a bit of a pity as recognizing maps as clues to a country's character can give students an interest in geography they've never had before. Simply taking a good look at a map of a country compared to the other areas nearby is often enough to give one a good idea of what sort of geopolitical situation it happens to be in, and in many cases a good enough understanding of this can aid in even predicting the future between two or more countries.

Here are a few examples of some simple ways to read maps.

First of all, a perfectly straight border between countries. Sometimes that can denote friendship between two countries, where a certain latitude or longitude is set as a common border, after which there is no fighting over it.

It can also mean that the land between two countries simply isn't worth fighting over or too hard to manage. Here are a few examples from countries that border each other right in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Compare those borders to the much less straight ones up north - Tunisia, and Morocco. And after the Sahara ends in the south the borders become curvy again.

A generally straight border that nevertheless keeps twisting back and forth will usually mean a mountain range:


or a river (border of Mexico and Guatemala):

You can also tell quite a bit about a country's situation by geographical oddities. Take a look at this map:

Democratic Republic of the Congo is located mostly in the centre of the continent, but for some reason suddenly juts out to the west all the way to the ocean. Nations with access to the sea generally have it in a way not all that different from their other borders (a natural result of a nation's position), but when a large nation has a particularly tiny piece of access to the sea it usually means some sort of diplomatic resolution, without which it could have been landlocked. In Dem Rep Congo's case it was given this strip of land in 1885 by the Berlin Conference.

Exclaves are also oddities. Kaliningrad is an obvious example.

Kaliningrad is part of Russia, but since the fall of the Soviet Union it has been an exclave completely surrounded by other countries, now the European Union. Supplies sent to Kaliningrad from Russia have to cross two borders - Latvia and Lithuania, Belarus and Lithuania, or Belarus and Poland.

The existence of an exclave can sometimes mean political instability if the host country is lacking in influence, as the geographic isolation alone can lead those living there to conclude that it would be better to separate.

The area enclosed by the red circle is an exclave of Angola called Cabinda, where there was a conflict between the government and a secessionist movement there until a ceasefire was signed in 2006.

The same can be seen in areas of land that aren't technically exclaves but still a bit odd compared to the rest of the geography of a country. Looking a bit south you can see a strip of land stretching eastward from Namibia where you wouldn't normally expect its borders to extend.

That place is called Caprivi and unsurprisingly there's a conflict there too between the country and a secessionist group.

The presence of a landlocked country where you wouldn't expect one will usually imply resentment or bad blood between one country and another. Take a look at Ethiopia:

You'll notice that Ethiopia one of the only countries in the area without access to the sea. Somalia has it, Kenya has it, Sudan has it...Ethiopia doesn't. The reason for that is the country located just to the north: Eritrea, which used to be a part of Ethiopia until it became independent in 1993 after 31 years of war with each other. Not surprisingly, the two countries do not get along with each other.

Bolivia has a bit of a similar situation, though the conflict that caused it was much less recent (19th century). Nevertheless, access to the sea is still blamed for a lot of problems in Bolivia and there is a Day of the Sea celebrated each year in the country to remember the former coastline the country had.



There are dozens and dozens more ways to guess the geopolitical situation of a country through maps alone, but the above should suffice for now since the post has gotten a bit long (feel free to add your own in the comments below though). I'll end off with one more interesting one. Here's Indonesia:

Then Vanuatu:

And the Philippines.


What do they all have in common? They are all island countries, with a huge number of regional languages, but with one language that more or less unifies the country. Well, with the Philippines it's two (Tagalog and English). The reason for this is that it's simply impossible to manage a country of this type without a unifying language. Countries like Spain are usually able to get by with a number of languages with regional autonomy, but Vanuatu has 200 languages over a population of only a bit over 200,000, and administering this in the same manner would simply be impossible.

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Canadian scientist Hans Larsson intends to reproduce dinosaur anatomy using chicken embryos

Or if you prefer a more sensationalist headline: Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into dinosaurs. Well, not exactly - the plan is to reproduce dinosaur anatomy by making certain modifications during the development of a chicken embryo, in order to show that the two are indeed directly genetically related. Larsson says that he doesn't intend to actually create a dinosaur due to ethical and practical reasons. An Archaeopteryx though isn't all that large, and in a situation where scientists were to succeed at creating one again it wouldn't be that difficult to allow it to live a full and happy life.

This story seems to have attracted quite a bit of international interest. A search on Google News for the name of the scientist turned up an article in Spanish, Polish, Dutch, and many others.

On a related note, it's interesting how blockbuster movies can raise public interest in such stories even long after they've left the box office. Stories like this are clearly amplified by Jurassic Park and its sequels, and Armageddon and Deep Impact are often cited when stories about near-Earth asteroids are mentioned. The plot for Armageddon was ridiculous of course, but whatever does the trick.

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New poll on the right: your experience with constructed languages

I just added a new poll that you can see just on the right. This one is about your experience with constructed languages - Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Occidental, etc.... since there are dozens and dozens of constructed languages there could be a nearly infinite number of responses, so I simplified it a bit in accordance with the experience of most people, who have relatively little experience with them.

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Why is our view of space so affected by nothing?

Anyone following the debate over the past 15 years or so on which locations in the inner Solar System humans should be sent to could be forgiven for ending up with the impression that the inner Solar System is comprised of the Moon, Mars, and...and a bunch of other places that don't matter. The debate almost always seems to be Moon and Mars, Moon and Mars. The narrowing of the debate to these two locations though simply isn't based in reality. Here are a few examples.

Take the cloudtops of Venus as an example. 50 km or so above the surface of the planet you find yourself in an area more like Earth than any other part of the Solar System - temperature and atmospheric pressure are just about the same as they are at sea level here. The air is not breathable, however, the clouds are fairly acidic, and wind speed is extremely high, but none of these factors make a manned mission there impossible. In fact, since the atmosphere on Venus is denser than that on Earth, it also means that simply taking enough breathable air along with you will cause your habitat to float. You can see a detailed description of how this would work here. Also here.

Try bringing this subject up on a forum though and you will end up with a thread full of irrelevant arguments against the idea (I know, I've done it a number of times myself).

But the surface is so hot! - But it's not a mission to the surface.
But what if it leaks air and crashes to the ground? - What if your habitat leaks air in any other location in the Solar System? Is there anything particularly deadly about a mission to Venus compared to any other place where a single problem could result in the instant death of the entire crew? Didn't think so.
But who would want to spend all their time in the clouds above a dead planet? - I would. So would many others. The idea of being that close to Earth's sister planet is a phenomenal one.

Add to that the more frequent launch windows and less travel time than to Mars, and the idea of exploring Venus in this way (first we should send robotic flyers to check out the area of course) is just as worthwhile as a mission to Mars. But for some reason this is dismissed as a crackpot idea.


Next subject: sending humans to Ceres instead of Mars. I've written in detail about this here. In short, Ceres has more frequent launch windows, much less gravity (=easier to come back), no sandstorms or seasonal variation to worry about, and apparently has more fresh water in the form of water ice than all that on Earth. So why hasn't Ceres been given more consideration? Ah, that's right, because it hasn't been thought of as being a true planet. There really isn't any other reason than this one. If Ceres had been thought of as a true planet alongside all the others then we would have learned about it at school (mvemjsunp would be mvemcjsunp), and a few billion more people would have known about it. But in spite of its having hydrostatic equilibrium (=a spherical shape) and the same surface area as Alaska plus Texas plus California (or the same area as Kazakhstan or Argentina), it simple hasn't been thought of as a serious destination, truly for no reason at all. Here's hoping that Dawn will change that when it arrives in 2015 and we get to see Ceres close up for the first time.

One other issue based on nothing is thankfully beginning to receive some attention - the idea of a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid, which I've written about quite a bit here. For a good forum post on the subject see here. A manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid really is a no-brainer, considering that it needs no landing (just a kind of docking) nor any special equipment to make the return trip, and also due to the fact that asteroids could possibly wipe out entire cities so it's probably a good idea to know as much about them as possible. Luckily the recent discussion on the lack of funding for a successful return to the Moon has turned up a silver lining in giving the idea of a manned mission to an asteroid more attention than before. To really get this idea out to the public it would probably be best to make a short film on the idea so that it can be more easily visualized - something that shows 1) just how close these asteroids can be, showing their distance compared to that of the Moon and Mars; 2) what it would look like for a spacecraft to approach, land, and for astronauts to walk on the surface; 3) why it's important for us as a planet to know as much about asteroids as possible.

I do remember a video on the subject being made before but the CGI was a bit sketchy and it didn't draw any comparisons between a mission to an asteroid and one to the Moon or Mars, which is necessary in order to show that the debate need not be between those two bodies alone.

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Having access to more than one language speeds up comprehension

Interesting study here, where it turns out that cognates between languages are read at greater speed by bilinguals than others. Apparently when bilinguals read a sentence that contains cognates in the two languages they know, the cognates take less time to process than other words, despite the reading material all being in their native tongue.

There's an example of one sentence in Dutch there - Ben heeft een oude oven/lade gevonden tussen de rommel op zolder - where bilingual students read oven faster than lade, presumably because of it being a word in both Dutch and English.

Bilinguals then reading this sentence:

Hij is vooral bekend door zijn surrealistische werk, bizarre ‘handgeschilderde droomfoto’s’, zoals hij het zelf noemde.

would presumably take less time to read parts like surrealistische werk, bizarre, etc.

One remaining issue: are bilinguals ever slowed down by false friends? Door in this sentence doesn't mean door, it means through, by, etc. (German: durch).

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Newly discovered hot Jupiter planet Wasp-18b may (or may not) be on the verge of plunging into its star

Another extrasolar planet. This one is one of only two we've discovered so far that take less than a day to orbit their host star, and this proximity along with its hefty mass means there's quite the tug of war going on between it and its star. Astronomers aren't certain yet whether it's destined to perish from being pulled in or not. Also note that "soon" in astronomical terms means a few thousand / million years. Even sooner than that will probably be the (relatively) close approach of Barnard's Star to the Sun, which will happen in about 9000 years. In the long term (3 billion years) the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy will collide.

Back to the planet: a fairly interesting discovery that will make the news for about a day, but hot Jupiters are impossible to explore so the interest in them is academic. As always, I await the news of the discovery of an earth-sized planet. The bar graph showing the number of planets discovered in a given year has been updated, and this is what it looks like with 2009 showing the number discovered as of 14 August:

For a while 2009 looked like it was lagging behind but now it seems to have caught up, and I expect a swath of announcements from Kepler quite soon, certainly before the year is out.

Edit: found an article en français here on the planet if you prefer.

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How even the "neutral point of view" (NPOV) varies from Wikipedia to Wikipedia

Considering there is no true neutral point of view (only a kind of mostly neutral grey area that is mostly neutral but never entirely) it doesn't come as a surprise that Wikipedias in different languages treat political subjects in different ways, but it can be hard to verify this unless you happen to be particularly adept at languages. Google Translate can help, but it's certainly not perfect.

An article here from Radio Free Europe though has done all the work for us on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, comparing the point of view of the English Wikipedia compared with that in the Russian Wikipedia. Check it out to see just how one ends up with quite a different perspective on the exact same event through just a slight variation in emphasis here and there.

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Seeing / missing the Volkswagen

This is a term I use myself sometimes to denote a dislike of something so intense that it borders on irrationality and can interfere with judgment. I'll explain in a bit what a Volkswagen has to do with it.

First, let's think back to March 10th, 2003. Yes, just ten days before the Iraq War began, the largest strategic blunder the US has made in decades. It was a time when the Bush administration was preparing for a war they had decided to embark upon long before that, and the public was debating over whether this was a good idea or not. There was 64% approval for military action against Iraq, though 63% wanted the president to find a diplomatic solution instead if possible, and 62% believed the threat of terrorism would increase if a war were to start. All in all, a fairly divided populace. And though the Bush administration had already made the decision to go to war, the media at the time was especially lax regarding the claims regarding WMD, Al-Qaeda connections and the rest. Many countries in Europe though, especially the Vatican, were strongly opposed.

On that same day an article by Christopher Hitchens here came out on Slate, and rarely has an op-ed been more wrong than that one. Christopher Hitchens describes himself as more of an anti-theist than an atheist, and very much dislikes the Catholic Church. In this article he gets just about everything wrong, going after the Vatican with the following:

Cardinal Solano, secretary of state to the Vatican, who recently bleated: "We want to say to America: Is it worth it to you? Won't you have, afterwards, decades of hostility in the Islamic world?" This solicitude for the feelings of pro-Saddam Muslims—of whom the leading faction is constituted by al-Qaida—is new for Holy Mother Church.

After a bit more ranting on this subject he then turns on Jimmy Carter for his opposition, including calling him a "Baptist big mouth". You can read the article for yourself so I don't need to go into any detail, but suffice to say it's about as relevant a criticism as calling out Bill Clinton for something he did in 2009 by referencing his incident with Monica Lewinsky. The issue at the moment was whether it was right to invade Iraq, and Hitchens' op-ed that day was an utter failure.

There's a saying whenever one finds oneself agreeing with one's enemy every once in a blue moon - even a broken clock is right twice a day. That is, even those that are in complete disagreement with you / always wrong can still be right every once in a while. Being able to recognize when one's opponent is right is extremely important, as a knee-jerk opposition to everything one's opponent does is simply too simple a philosophy to be valid. Even if we were to assume the very worst about the Catholic Church and attribute every single criticism its opponents make to it (anti-science, anti-progress, peddling dangerous superstition, fans of child molestation, you name it), the fact is that the Vatican was right on the Iraq War.

Of course, a more consistently anti-religious person would have seen the war as being supported by a large number from one sect of a religion (Protestants/Evangelicals), opposed by another (European Catholics in particular), and waged on another group of religious people (Muslims), so the "atheists are right and theists are wrong" argument doesn't even apply here. But I digress.

Back to the subject: my personal term for this is missing the Volkswagen. Seeing the Volkswagen would be a recognition that one's opponent can be right from time to time or in some areas. That's a reference to Nazi Germany, which committed some of the worst atrocities in history, but after its defeat at least nobody tried to make the argument that the Volkswagen factories needed to be destroyed along with it, or the Autobahn, or anything else the Nazis happened to do well, just because of who made them. I'm certain that there's a better / more official way to express this (note to self: check this list), but because I've never bothered to look it up, missing the Volkswagen has always been my preferred term.

Edit: an association fallacy is pretty close to this term.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger still has his Conan sword, keeps it in his office

He uploaded the picture of it here just a few hours ago.


Three other recent pics I like: this, this, und dieses Bild.

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Resources on the Moon: oxygen, hydrogen, helium three...

This is the subject of a video here from space.com some five minutes in length that is worth watching for an overview of resources available on the Moon. Ilmenite for example is a name not often seen in articles mentioning the Moon.

In spite of the renewed attention on the Moon recently, every mission sent there during this period has been orbital, and thus doesn't give the same sense of wonder to the average person that a surface mission (that is, a rover) will. Since the Apollo missions we haven't had any images of the surface of the Moon, and even those didn't involve all that much exploration, certainly nothing compared to what the Mars rovers have been doing over the past few years. A surface mission where people can watch a rover's daily progress will be something quite different. Japan's Kaguya mission garnered quite a bit of attention due to its multiple hi-res videos of the Moon from above, and a mission with images from the ground would dwarf even that.



On that note, India has recently finalized the design of the Chandrayaan 2, which will have a rover to explore the surface. The planned launch date for this is 2013 though, and before then it's possible that a company like Odyssey Moon or Astrobiotic Technology will have already done so. Plus a few other missions like Luna-Glob 2.

There is something very important in all of this: note that all these missions are being sent to the Moon, not Mars. Mars is simply too difficult at the moment for countries like India and China to send dedicated probes to, and the same goes with private companies. There is a lot of discussion over whether the Moon or Mars should be colonized first but it would seem that the sheer mass of missions that can and are being sent to the Moon compared to Mars settles the argument for the time being. With the Moon just about anybody can chip in - nations both large and small, and private companies.

See a comparison of the distance between the two here.

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Why Michael Ignatieff may be in trouble

(Edit 5 October: here's the sequel to this. Turns out the Liberals did everything wrong since then and now they are in a bit of trouble.)

Every once in a while I find an op-ed that agrees with my opinion so much that it's as if I had written it myself, and the Globe and Mail had one today that pretty much sums up the way I see the current political situation in Canada. In short, there really isn't a reason for an election in the fall and the Liberals don't have enough support to win anything more than a bare minority (if that), so any attempt to call an election right now by the opposition would simply let the Conservatives make the argument throughout the campaign that this is exactly why the country needs a majority, minority governments are unstable and the Conservatives need to be given a chance to run the government without the threat of an election every few months, etc.

I don't think this is specifically Ignatieff's fault though. The bigger problem here is that the Liberals since 2004 have continued to act as if they were on the threshold of becoming the ruling party again, acting as if all they need is just the right moment, the right leader, the right issue etc. to swing right back into power where they belong. It's a very jittery position for a party to be in because it takes away the ability for it to act in the long term. Did we pick the right leader? Is this one a dud too? Should we have called an election for the summer? Should we call one for the fall? Are we up in the polls, can we get a majority from our current support? This sort of nervous and excited outlook tends to make a party look unserious.

My advice for the Liberals is to:

1) Begin enjoying being in the opposition. The Liberals since 2004 have been extremely uncomfortable and unused to this position, whereas the NDP and the Bloc are having as much fun as they always do. Being a good opposition is a kind of performance for the voting public that shows that you have better ideas than the party in power. That means talking about issues alone without always letting off trial balloons about how this issue just might end up bringing about the next election.

2) Stop concentrating on the leader so much. Ignatieff would probably make a capable prime minister, but he's not a miracle worker. The Liberal Party has lost a lot of former prominent MPs and ministers, to the extent that it's not so easy to rattle off a list of Liberals as many could before and just after the 2004 election. A lot of former prominent ministers seem to have dropped off the map too - Ralph Goodale is still an MP but barely makes the news now, for example - 12 mentions on Google News compared to 1,199 for Ignatieff. Personally I'm always a bit miffed at Marc Garneau almost never making the news. He's admittedly not the most exciting politician but he was still an astronaut and the first Canadian in space, and the Liberals don't do enough to give people like him the attention he should be getting.

So in short - chill, diversify, and enjoy being in the opposition. Oh, and devise a strategy to funnel Green Party votes as well. Perhaps somewhat through environmental policy but more through formulating an argument that an argument for the Greens or the NDP is a vote for another Conservative government.

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Liveblogging the launch of the first flight of Korea's Naro rocket, 25 August 2009

Last week Korea attempted to launch its first rocket (the Naro or KSLV-1) but the launch was cancelled a bit after 8 minutes before launch. I liveblogged the events then and will be doing so today as well when they attempt to launch it again.

Update: the launch was a success! I'm continuing to watch reactions to the launch so the area below will continue to be updated.

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8:00 pm: Uh oh, looks like the satellite wasn't sent into the correct orbit as they had suspected before. The launch and separation was a success but the orbit seems to be too high, at 342 km instead of the planned 306 km. We still have to wait ten more hours before communication with the satellite is established as well.

6:20 pm: We have YouTube! Here's the launch. Note that this is a different channel from the one I was watching (SBS), so no Yi So-Yeon talking here.



6:00 pm: I mentioned that this makes Korea the 10th country to have its own launching capability. The others are: Russia, United States, France, England, China, Japan, India, Israel, and Iran.

5:45 pm: Three more images of the launch can be seen here, here, and here. Edit: and an especially nice one here. One more here.

5:35 pm: Still waiting for an embeddable video but if you don't mind Windows Media Player format you can see the launch here.

5:30 pm: Naver (Korea's Google or Yahoo!) has changed its logo to the one on the right. You can see a picture of some people watching the launch from an article here.

T+24:00: Since there are no cameras attached to the rocket they're just watching the launch over and over again and talking about what the success will mean for Korea. Until 13 hours from now when the satellite makes contact there shouldn't be any more updates, but hopefully a video of the launch will be uploaded soon. With nothing left to talk about the broadcast has just ended. I'll continue to keep an eye on reaction to the launch though.

T+17:15: Talking about the seven years it has taken to get to this point. This first rocket is a smaller one than later versions they have planned.

T+13:35: Yi So-Yeon is wiping away tears.

T+10:30: The announcers seem a bit surprised by the speed of the launch and the separation of the satellite. They're also talking about the implications of the orbit possibly being too high. First communications with the ground from the satellite will take place in 13 hours from now, which is when we will be completely sure that everything has been a success.

T+9:45: The satellite has separated from the rocket.

T+9:00: The rocket launch is now officially a success.

T+8:50: Altitude 360 km.

T+7:50: Apparently has just entered into its desired orbit...I think. Might be a bit higher than expected.

T+7:20: Altitude 310 km.

T+6:40: Second stage has just begun to fire.

T+5:30: Heh, they got the VIPs to clap again so that they could take a picture. They missed the photo of the spontaneous clapping.

T+4:35: Fairing has been successful and everybody's clapping. The TV subtitles are announcing it as a success but we still have to wait.

T+3:45: Altitude 200 km.

T+3:00: Fairing to happen soon.

T+2:00: This rocket doesn't have a camera on the side like the Falcon-1 does, so not quite as interesting.

T+1:00: Smoke cloud behind the rocket is quite small, very unlike a shuttle launch.

T+0:55: Just passed Mach 1, altitude 10 km.

T+0:30: Up it goes....nobody is talking.

Launch!

T-0:30: Time to be nervous.

4:58 pm: All the cables have been removed from the rocket, charging the first (bottom) stage of the rocket now. If this launch succeeds Korea will be the 10th nation to have its own launching capability.

4:57 pm: Everyone's nervous and optimistic. No problems at all so far...announcements in Korean and Russian.

4:55 pm: Five minutes left, the top stage of the rocket is now being charged.

4:54 pm: No more oxygen plume from the side of the rocket.

4:52 pm: We just passed the time where the launch was shut down last week (T-7:56). Now T-7:30.

4:51 pm: A radius of 25 km around the site has been completely closed off to sea, air traffic etc. Lots of people on the beach like last week gathered to watch the launch, waving flags.

4:50 pm: Ten minutes left. Not a cloud in the sky, by the way.

4:48 pm: Talking about the Russian engineering team also working on the launch - apparently they've been in Korea for over a year straight for this launch. The Russian side was much less nervous about the launch cancellation last week, whereas the Korean engineers were understandably more nervous. It's their first time, after all.

4:47 pm: A lot of the VIPs are leaving the room now because they want to see it with their own eyes instead of from the seats given to them inside where the view is little different from what anyone can see on TV.

4:45 pm: Automatic launching sequence has just begun. As we saw last week it is capable of shutting itself off if a problem is detected, though manually shutting it off takes a bit of time.

4:43 pm: Announcement that all systems are go, and they're just about ready to start the automatic launching sequence.

4:42 pm: By the way, Yi So-Yeon (the first Korean in space) is here today as well, same as last week. Cellphone service in the area has been cut off.

4:40 pm: Twenty minutes left, and in four minutes they will five the final launch time confirmation and start the automatic launching sequence, which takes 15 minutes.

4:35 pm: Now showing the control centre with the nine screens and some two dozen or so staff members and VIP seats just behind them, separated by a glass screen. The white screen in front of the TV screens just went up and they're now explaining to the VIPs how the launch is going to work.

4:30 pm: Going over the facts again, such as how ignition will start 3.8 seconds before launch, what will constitute a successful launch, etc.

4:28 pm: The erector has been removed from the launch pad. 30 minutes left so everybody watching the launch is starting to feel nervous again.

4:23 pm: Just got home after feeding the cats and turned on the TV, no problems so far. More in a bit.

1:40 pm: Launch time confirmed for 5 pm today, no problems detected so far.

11:35 am: An article here says that launch time will be finalized at 1:30 pm. If there are no problems then countdown will begin 15 minutes before launch as before. We'll know whether the launch has succeeded about nine minutes after liftoff. While we wait, here's a map of the area again.


View Larger Map

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Podcasts for learning Turkish available for pretty much everyone but English speakers

Looking around TRT's site today for the first time in a while I noticed that since the beginning of this year they have had a podcast for learning Turkish, available in quite a few languages. Not just languages like German and French, but also much smaller ones like Tatar. You can see the French one here for example, and to find another one in a language you speak just change the language selection in the bar, then click the podcast button on the top left and see if it's there. Interestingly enough though, it doesn't seem to be available in English.

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Online population to reach 2.2 billion by 2013

Noticed this in Turkish here, an article that says that the online population is expected to rise from its current 1.5 billion to 2.2 billion by 2013. This is according to a study done by a company called Forrester Research in Paris. This would be a 45% increase over the 5 years. In 2013, 43% of internet users will be in Asia, 13% in North America, 22% in Europe, and 11% in Latin America. China is increasing its internet access at a rate of 11% increase per year, and will reach 337.1 million online users by that year, surpassing the United States with its 260.5 million.

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Iranians making less trips to Turkey for vacations

As an article here in Turkish states. Note, however, that this is due to financial and political reasons alone, not because of any bad blood between the two countries; in fact, the article is mostly about why Iranians like visiting Turkey so much. Reasons given for liking Turkey as a tourist destination are: having the same religion and similar culture, not needing a visa to visit (this is the biggest reason), and having lots of places to shop.

A lot of shared history between the two countries is also a major reason to visit Turkey, as many Iranians that visit Anatolia will visit not just the sea but also spend quite a bit of time in tourist and historical areas.

Usually there are 200,000 Iranians a year visiting Turkey, but this year the number has been reduced. The total number so far has not been given but apparently last year there were 12 airplanes a week from Iran carrying Iranian tourists whereas this year that has dropped to 4 or 5. The financial crisis is the reason given in the article but there are certainly also political reasons - the runup to the election was over a month, then the protests afterward and developments until now; there's simply too much going on at home for most to take off for a jaunt in Turkey or another country.

The average Iranian tourist stays in Turkey for 7 days according to the article.

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Linguistic policy by country throughout the world

I've yet to see a page that includes each and every country throughout the world but this page from Today's Zaman (English version of a Turkish newspaper) has some information on linguistic policy in the United States, Germany, Algeria, Armenia, Estonia, Finland, France, India, Ireland, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia, so it might be worth bookmarking. One interesting country there is Latvia, as apparently as a result of their linguistic policy the language is now spoken by a large population as a second language, much larger than one would expect from a language with such a small population. Ireland might be able to do that with Irish though of course that would be different in that Latvian has been learned by a lot of Russians since independence whereas Ireland would be a relearning of the language by the ethnic group that historically used it as a mother tongue.

You can tell that this list was taken from one written in Turkish given the alphabetical order: USA is ABD (Amerika Birleşik Devletleri), Germany is Almanya, and Canada is Kanada.

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On Africa's potential as a player in space exploration

One subject I often write about here is how developing countries can contribute to astronomy and space exploration, and a post here from June has some good information on just how far along certain countries are. An article here from spaceref.com today also goes into the subject a bit, though with a focus on space exploration instead of astronomy.

The African countries that are most into space exploration at the moment are South Africa and Nigeria. South Africa as a country though is outshined by two of its citizens in private enterprise: Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk. Elon Musk by himself probably contributes as much to space exploration as the rest of the continent.

Back to Nigeria: they are planning to send a man to space by 2016. Countries spending money on sending their first people to space is usually not all that wise an expenditure compared to using the money for something else like constructing observatories and educating the next generation of astronomers, but Nigeria is probably an exception there given its huge population (150 million) and lack of national unity. Countries with smaller populations and good national unity certainly enjoy seeing their people go into space, but they are unified and stable enough without it, and any effects of seeing one of their citizens in space is spread out among a much smaller population. Nigeria is the opposite of this.

The danger in this of course is that if government is too corrupt and/or unpopular, a move like this just gets seen as a frivolous expenditure and could easily backfire, if the government is seen as being too involved in all the fanfare. Nobody in Iran at the moment for example would be impressed by Iran sending a man into space (an Iranian woman has already been to space BTW) if it involved a lot of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei next to the astronaut and a bunch of bluster about making a strong Iran to scare its enemies, but if they kept their distance and the astronaut was allowed to simply talk about space and science and bringing up a new generation of citizens interested in space then the people wouldn't mind. That's a pro-tip for those of you working in the government in Nigeria. Bookmark this page if that's you.

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Results of the poll on the discovery of extrasolar Earth-like planets on the effect on our view of and funding for space

The poll closed today with a total of 46 votes. The results were a bit less cynical than I had expected, with not as many people as I had thought there would be of the opinion that the discovery of extrasolar Earth-like planets would bring about little or no change to both our view on space and our funding of it.

The most selected option was that it would change our view of space but that funding would be about the same, and while the first option (that it would positively affect both our view and funding of space) was voted on almost as much, option #2 was almost always in the lead.

The exact results are below. I'll probably have a new poll later today or tomorrow.

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Will the discovery of Earth-like planets in other solar systems change the way we see and explore space?

Yes, it will change everything for the better. We will see space in a different way and will explore it at a more rapid pace.	16 (34%)
It will change the way we see space but funding and exploration will proceed at pretty much the same rate.	19 (41%)
No, we'll see and explore space in pretty much the same way.	8 (17%)
Not sure	2 (4%)
Other	1 (2%)

Votes: 46

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In which universities worldwide is Lithuanian taught?

I found a list here on the Lithuanian Wikipedia of universities around the world where Lithuanian is taught, so I thought I'd give them here. I'm not certain that each of these are the official names of said universities; they could be University of X instead of X University or the other way around, but that's not a big deal.

Here they are:


Estonia

Tartu University

Italy

University of Florence
University of Milano
University of Piza

United States

Illinois University, Chicago
Pennsylvania State University
Washington University, Seattle

Latvia

Latvia University, Riga

Poland

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Jogaila University, Krakow
Warsaw University

Norway

Oslo University

France

National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris

Russia

Lomonosov State University, Moscow
Saint Petersburg State University

Slovakia

Komensky University, Bratislava

Finland

Helsinki University

Sweden

Lund University
Stockholm University

Switzerland

University of Bern

Hungary

Central European University, Budapest

Germany

Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University of Greifswald
Humboldt University, Berlin
University of Munster (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität)

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Sam Harris on Real Time with Bill Maher: simple logic is too simple

Sam Harris was on Real Time recently (last night?), the first time he's ever been on the show. The interview was a tad short which was a pity, because at the very end he began to touch on one aspect that makes him a bit different from most in the so-called New Atheism, but first he talked a bit about his opposition to Barack Obama's nominating of a religious scientist (Francis Collins) to head the NIH, which is something he mentioned in an editorial in the New York Times a few weeks ago. That part starts at about 4:50 into the video.



The idea behind that is that any scientist with a religious persuasion will eventually allow him or herself to be swayed by religion and will end up with erroneous science, and if this sounds too simplistic to be true, it's because it is. Following the same logic, Sam Harris would have been opposed to one of George Lemaître's positions throughout his life (let's say his election as a member to the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium). So who was George Lemaître? He was the Belgian priest that proposed the idea of the Big Bang (then called the Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom), and spent almost a decade convincing Einstein and other physicists that it was the most logical model to explain the expansion of the universe and its original creation. Would it have made any sense to oppose the work of the scientist who proposed the idea of the Big Bang, or a nomination of his to a post of influence?

Near the end of the interview Sam Harris mentions a bit about his views on mysticism and why the non-religious need their own type of mysticism, but there wasn't enough time left in the interview to go over that. Luckily I know where the video is where he is able to talk at length on the subject. When he talks on this subject he becomes much more interesting, and you should definitely have a look at the video if up till now all you've heard from him are short interviews on the news on "let's not hold back from criticizing religion" and "religion and science can't coexist". Most people are at their most interesting when they are given a certain length in their own element to talk on subjects that concern them, and Sam Harris is no exception.

If you're a bit strained for time then skip ahead to 23 minutes into the video.

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22 August 2009 (31 Mordad 1388): two very different speeches during Friday prayer in the cities of Tehran and Qom

Today was Friday prayer and NIAC (National Iranian-American Council) shows us just how different the tone was between the two cities of Tehran, the capital, and Qom, the religious centre of the country.

The one in Tehran was given by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who asked why opposition leaders were not arrested along with everyone else - that is, Mousavi, Karroubi, and former president Khatami.

The one in Qom was given by Ayatollah Ali Amini, who condemned the government's use of violence and called for innocent prisoners to be released.

In short: there is no end in sight to the rift that started June 12th after the election. Ahmadinejad has also selected the cabinet he would like to see and the reaction is not good: many see it as a nomination of inexperienced cronies, and some conservatives are not comfortable with the idea of female ministers.

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Spanish children learn to read and write their native tongue before English children can

An article here in Spanish tells us of a most unsurprising study, one that confirms that children take less time to read and write a language like Spanish with its simple orthography, compared to the etymologically rich and varied clusterf*&k of an orthography that English has. Here's part of the article.

Spanish children learn to read and write before English children thanks to the fact that the writing system is simpler and that the relation between graphemes and phonemes is a very transparent one, according to a study from a group of experts from the University of Granada.

The work was coordinated by the psychologist and pedagogue Silvia Defior and is integrated into the European project ELDEL, which studies the processes of learning in the reading and writing of different languages. Defior explained that graphical representation is "much easier" in Spanish compared to English, which helps early learning, but still includes some inconsistencies with the difficulty in distinguishing between b and v, g and j, and c and z. (Note: one good example of the last one is casa - house vs. caza - hunt, pronounced the same)

The group from Granada is working with children in between 5 and 8 years of age and collaborates with various others in the province in order to learn about the acquisition of language in people with dyslexia or dysgraphia, as well as with those with Down syndrome or other specific language disorders.

The EDEL project aims to study the psycholinguistic and cognitive factors that affect the learning of the reading and writing of a language, that is, the relationship between memory, visual attention, morphological and syntactical aspects, but also the environment in which children learn.

The study includes five languages, which are English (Germanic), Spanish and French (Romance), and Czech and Slovak (Slavic), and has the participation of universities in different parts of Europe.

The language in which children have the easiest time learning to read and write would definitely be Finnish, and in terms of not only reading and writing but also grammar Turkish has been cited as the language most easily mastered as a mother tongue.

If you can read Spanish and want to read a few comments of discussion on the topic on Meneame (like Reddit or Digg in Spanish), see here.

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