Amazing hi-res image of the Sun

Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image of a huge, handle-shaped prominence. Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures.

Bernadette (Bernie) Vella

It was a sad day yesterday, to hear about the passing of a very dear family friend, Bernie Vella. I was fortunate to have had many happy memories and fond recollections of Bernie and Louie - Vella Family. My warmest sympathies and love to Linda, Teresa, Sandie, Louisa and family.

I think of you often...

- John Malloy


It is with great sadness that the family announce the passing of a wonderful mother and friend, on Thursday April 20th, 2006 at the Toronto General Hospital, at 69 years of age. Beloved wife of the late Luigi. Cherished mother of Linda (Grant), Teresa (Robin), Sandie (Matt) and Luisa (Mark). Devoted Nana of Kyle, Carly, Liam, Julia, Mitchell, Steven, Owen and Jordan. Dear sister of Anna (Paul), Thomas (Bernadine), Freddy (Irene) all of Dublin Ireland, Luciano (Wendy) of Montreal, Rocco (Concetta) of Birmingham England. Bernie will be lovingly remembered by her many nieces, nephews, family and friends.

'Micro' wind turbines are coming to town

A handful of start-ups are floating an idea that could change the face of the wind power industry. Rather than build farms of towering wind turbines in rural areas, some companies are designing "micro," or small-scale, turbines that fit on top of buildings. The idea is to generate electricity from wind in urban or suburban settings. "We want to integrate these small wind turbines on buildings in plain sight," said Paul Glenney, director of energy initiatives at Monrovia, Calif.-based AeroVironment. "We think this can really communicate the generation of clean electricity." In their pitch for the technology, the companies are going beyond satisfying the growing interest in clean forms of energy ...news.com

Scientists Urge Canada To Act Now To
Halt Global Warming

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismisses talks of climate change. Ninety top scientists in Canada pressed Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is hostile to the Kyoto Protocol, to tackle climate change now or risk devastating consequences for the country. "We urge you and your government to develop an effective national strategy to deal with the many important aspects of climate that will affect both Canada and the world in the near future," they said in an open letter to the prime minister. The letter was posted on the website of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. Harper said earlier this month his Conservative government would roll out its "own approaches" that will address both greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, but offered no details. He lamented Canada had spent "billions of dollars on so-called climate change programs" yet remains far behind other countries in global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions...

www.terradaily.com

A Rooftop Windmill Of Your Very Own

As projects to build "wind farms" of massive, electricity-generating wind turbines continue to multiply, so do the ranks of "not in my backyard" protesters. The turbines, some with blades that sweep as high as a 20-story building, are increasingly seen as unsightly and dangerous manifestations of the industrialization of the countryside. "The volume is going up higher on opposition to wind farms," says Kathy Belyeu, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Wind Energy Association. Although protests have generally failed to nix many farms, they frequently translate into costly delays or relocation to sites with less favorable winds. Wind advocates thus have high hopes for less obtrusive wind technology: specifically, high-performance, nonpolluting rooftop microturbines. Generally not much bigger than a dish antenna, they hardly mar the skyline. And if wind conditions are optimal, they can satisfy a typical household's appetite for electricity. Although a microturbine produces less than one thousandth the power of a 20-story turbine, the electricity need only be piped a short distance into the house rather than sent over long distances. The microturbine can also contribute to the energy grid via a short power line that connects to utility lines running along the street. Various models of the turbines, which generally range in price from $1,000 to $8,000, have started springing up on top of houses and buildings in Europe and North America ...

www.msnbc.msn.com

Scientists unveil
world's oldest ice block

TOKYO (Reuters) - A million-year-old ice sample drilled from 3 kilometres under the Antarctic and unveiled in Tokyo on Tuesday could yield vital clues on climate change, Japanese scientists said. Researchers, showing off the cylindrical samples of what they said was the oldest ice ever to be retrieved, said studying air trapped inside "core" samples taken from various depths under ground could also help predict how the Earth's weather patterns will change in the future.

"The ice core is made up of snow that fell in the distant past," said project leader Hideaki Motoyama of the National Institute of Polar Research, dressed snugly in a parka after unveiling the gleaming ice in a room kept at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit). "You can use it to examine changes in temperature, levels of carbon dioxide and methane over time, information that is only available from the core," he said...

today.reuters.com

The Hidden Side of Happiness

Hurricanes, house fires, cancer, white-water rafting accidents, plane crashes, vicious attacks in dark alleyways. Nobody asks for any of it. But to their surprise, many people find that enduring such a harrowing ordeal ultimately changes them for the better. Their refrain might go something like this: "I wish it hadn't happened, but I'm a better person for it."

We love to hear the stories of people who have been transformed by their tribulations, perhaps because they testify to a bona fide psychological truth, one that sometimes gets lost amid endless reports of disaster: There is a built-in human capacity to flourish under the most difficult circumstances. Positive reactions to profoundly disturbing experiences are not limited to the toughest or the bravest. In fact, roughly half the people who struggle with adversity say that their lives have in some ways improved...

www.psychologytoday.com

Gore movie puts heat on Bush

Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects - global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long and the first two or three go by slowly enough so that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems out of sync.

But a moment later, you will be captivated, then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket.

You will see the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps melting. You will see Greenland oozing into the sea. You will see the atmosphere polluted with greenhouse gases that block heat from escaping. You will see .photos from space of what the icecaps looked like once and what they look like now, and, in animation, you will see how high the oceans might rise. Shanghai and Calcutta swamped. Much of Florida, too. The water takes a hunk of New York. The fuss about what to do with Ground Zero will turn to naught. It will be under water.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming. The case Gore makes is worthy of sleepless nights: Our Earth is in extremis. It's not just that polar bears are drowning because they cannot reach receding ice floes or that "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" will exist someday only as a Hemingway short story. It's rather that Hurricane Katrina is not past, but prologue. Katrina produced several hundred thousand evacuees. The flooding of Calcutta would produce many millions...

www.nydailynews.com

An Incredible Force For Good

by Fazeer Sheik Rahim

Nobel economist, Gérard Debreu once said that value is nothing but an element of the set of real numbers. Illustration: the ’suite princière’ at the ‘Prince Maurice’, an exclusive resort on the East coast of Mauritius costs around $10 000 a night, enough to run a small hospital in Afghanistan for a month, to keep 3000 Kenyan children an extra year in school by freeing them from intestinal worm or to feed and shelter one of the two billion least-fortunate inhabitants of this planet for 27 years. Depressing perhaps? Well, yes. But economists have never been so close, as they now are, to answering the fundamental question posed by Adam Smith in 1776. What makes the wealth of nations? And the consequences for humanity are simply staggering.

We are currently witnessing first-hand the contribution of Economics to the world. On a global scale, the very existence of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is the product of a century-long consensus among economists on the virtues of free trade. The WTO can be credited for pointing the finger at problems that no one dared to raise before: European agricultural subsidies, trade protectionism in the textile and apparels sector, in the American steel industry. Thanks to the process of globalisation that free trade has unleashed, millions are being lifted out of poverty in Bangladesh, China and India. Freer and fairer trade in agriculture is needed for globalisation to work for Africa.

But the intellectual battle on free trade is, more than ever, frustratingly hard to win. After all, for much of our evolutionary process, we, humans, have been hunters and have had to envisage our relationship with fellow humans as a zero-sum game in our quest for food, for a mate or for new territories. It is only recently that, with the complexity of modern economies, we have had to develop trust towards strangers in our economic relationships. In ‘The Company of Strangers,’ Paul Seabright (Toulouse) provides a brilliant exposé on the evolution of economic institutions.

The recent debt cancellation for some third-world countries is as much the product of intense lobbying by influential persons like Bono of U2, as the background contribution of economists, among whom Jeffrey Sachs is perhaps the most well-known. They have diligently quantified the costs and benefits of this exercise, shown its feasibility and the extent to which it will lift countries out of poverty and be of benefit to everyone.

At a micro level, data is also the most powerful of arguments and politicians do take them seriously. Harvard economist, Michael Kremer is one of the many to have left his Ivory Tower to study real-life problems. Together with Edward Miguel (Berkeley), he has conducted field experiments in Kenyan schools and found out that, by spending a one-off $3.50 per pupil on medication against intestinal worms, average schooling per pupil can be increased by one year. This is clearly more effective than traditional programmes such as free uniform and food, which can cost in excess of $100 per pupil. Consequently, the government of Uganda has already put in place a systematic deworming campaign and that of Kenya is likely to follow suit. Kremer has also proposed novel incentive mechanisms to fund drug development for developing countries, to prevent elephant poaching in Africa, amongst others. Esther Duflo (MIT) and Rema Hanna (NYU) have recently conducted experiments in India to identify the factors that could motivate teacher presence. Indeed, India boasts more teacher truancy than pupil, with absenteeism among primary school teachers in excess of 25% (on a good day!). They have found that some well-designed pecuniary benefits can halve teacher absence and have impact that lasts well after the benefits are removed.

fazeer.wordpress.com

A Cute Little Keeley Story...

The darling of my heart Keeley, who is now seven, was getting ready to leave for her trip to Cozumel, with her mother for a week.

I said to Keeley "Sweetie, I'm really going to miss you, I won't be seeing you for a whole week".

Keeley replied in her animated way, by saying "Oh Daddy it won't be that bad! I'll be so busy having fun, that I probably won't even have time to think about you"!

lol, out of the mouth of babes... Tanned and Braided after my trip

Becoming more self-absorbed probably isn't going to solve your problems...

There are many books and articles written about how to improve your life. Many focus on changing what's going on inside your head. They want you to think more positively, change your inner conversation, and carefully examine your past. In general, they have one thing in common, they want you to become more self-absorbed. Life isn't simple, and I don't suggest you dismiss these suggestions completely. My own advice sometimes talks about changing what's going on in your mind. But keep these techniques in perspective.

Generally, focussing only on yourself and how you think isn't a great way to get ahead in life. It's those who focus on what's going on outside themselves that usually have the most success. People that win in relationships, business, money and life usually don't manage it by obsessing over every little thought that enters their heads. They can't, because they're too busy focussing on what's external to themselves - their family, their business, their finances and so on.

For most of us, what's missing in our lives isn't to be found on the inside. At least, the easiest things to fix aren't there. Instead they're in the people and environment around us. Rather than thinking "how can I change myself,?" be thinking "how can I change my situation?".

If your environment, body, finances and relationships are in good shape, you're much more likely to be feeling happy. If there's a problem with any of these factors, you can try changing the way you think until you're blue in the face with very little in the way of results.

Always be ready to question your own beliefs...

Something unfortunate happens to us with each year we spend on this planet. We gradually become convinced of the correctness of our ideas. We become arrogant in other words. Make peace with the certain fact that there are a great number of things that you are wrong about. Rather than twisting the evidence to fit your theory - twist your theory to fit the evidence.

This habit can be one of the most difficult of all to develop, but it is also one of the most important.

www.paulstips.com

Dishing Out Real Power

Costs are down, interest is up, and the Stirling solar system is ready to flick the switch

The way Robert Liden sees it, his company is simply building an odd-looking car. It’s made mostly of steel and glass, after all, and it has an engine with a radiator and a water pump. It just doesn’t have wheels, seats or a Blaupunkt.

What it does have is a generator that can power up to eight homes. No, the device isn’t a car; it’s a Stirling solar dish, and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has recently completed a mini power plant composed of six of Liden’s dishes.

The dish, made by Stirling Energy Systems in Phoenix, is the world’s most efficient solar generator. It uses an old principle—that concentrated light is a great heat source—to achieve a level of efficiency on par with conventional power sources and far higher than traditional solar cells. Instead of converting sunlight directly into electricity, as those familiar rooftop solar panels do, it uses a concave array of mirrors to focus light on a central point, where the resulting heat causes compressed hydrogen to expand, driving a four-cylinder engine that turns a 25-kilowatt generator.

www.popsci.com

New World Relationships

by Noam Chomsky
The prospect that Europe and Asia might move toward greater independence has troubled US planners since World War II. The concerns have only risen as the ‘tripolar order’ — Europe, North America and Asia — has continued to evolve. Every day, Latin America, too, is becoming more independent. Now Asia and the Americas are strengthening their ties while the reigning superpower, the odd man out, consumes itself in misadventures in the Middle East.

Regional integration in Asia and Latin America is a crucial and increasingly important issue that, from Washington's perspective, betokens a defiant world gone out of control. Energy, of course, remains a defining factor — the object of contention — everywhere. China, unlike Europe, refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the fear of China by US planners, which presents a dilemma: Steps towards confrontation are inhibited by US corporate reliance on China as an export platform and growing market, as well as China's financial reserves, reported to be approaching Japan's in scale.

In January, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia visited Beijing, which is expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for "increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas and investment," The Wall Street Journal reports. Already, much of Iran's oil goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons that both states presumably regard as deterrent to US designs. India also has options. India may choose to be a US client, or it may prefer to join the more independent Asian bloc that is taking shape, with ever more ties to Middle East oil producers. Siddarth Varadarajan, deputy editor of The Hindu, observes that "if the 21st century is to be an 'Asian century,' Asia's passivity in the energy sector has to end."

The key is India-China cooperation. In January, an agreement signed in Beijing "cleared the way for India and China to collaborate not only in technology, but also in hydrocarbon exploration and production, a partnership that could eventually alter fundamental equations in the world's oil and natural gas sector," Varadarjan points out. An additional step, already being contemplated, is an Asian oil market trading in euros. The impact on the international financial system and the balance of global power could be significant. It should be no surprise that President Bush paid a recent visit to try to keep India in the fold, offering nuclear cooperation and other inducements as a lure.

Meanwhile, in Latin America, left-centre governments prevail from Venezuela to Argentina. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether. Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic gridlock.

www.chomsky.info

Fries With That?

Sometimes it's all too easy to lose perspective in the modern world. On Tuesday, The Times reported that McDonald's has begun experimenting with a new way of routing menu orders at the drive-through window. The voice you hear at the squawk box comes not from an employee inside the restaurant but from a call center hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. The order is then relayed to the front of the very restaurant where you are bodily present and filled as usual. A man who wants a Big N' Tasty in Wyoming and a woman who wants an Egg McMuffin in Honolulu may be placing their orders with the same teenager in California. Several customers, told of the fact, seemed taken aback.

And yet where is the surprise? There you sit, perhaps miles from home, idling in a car that was manufactured almost anywhere, burning gasoline refined from a substance pumped out of the ground who knows where and shipped, in all likelihood, across the ocean to be trucked to the station where you last filled up. Meanwhile you're talking to your best friend on your cellphone — and who knows how that works or where those signals go? — or listening to satellite radio beamed down from space. Yet what's really on your mind is the food they're getting together for you inside that McDonald's, made from cattle that once lived anywhere and potatoes that grew someplace else, all of it relayed from some way station in the McDonald's supply chain.

www.nytimes.com

This safer way of delivering chemotherapy also sounds promising:

The method, produced at the University of Bath, England, involves using tiny fibres and beads soaked in the chemotherapy drug which are then implanted into the cancerous area in the patient's body. These fibres are bio-degradable and compatible with body tissue, which means they would not be rejected by the patient's body. They gradually turn from solid to liquid, releasing a regular flow of the chemotherapy chemical into the cancer site, and a much lower dose to the rest of the body.

The subject of British medical advances reminds me of the right-wing mantra that socialized medicine leads to “waiting lists” for healthcare. If this happens in Canada or the UK, the logic goes, it’ll inevitably happen here, too…because despite being “the greatest country on earth,” we have no ability whatsoever to solve the problems that bedevil lesser nations.

bouphonia.blogspot.com

Hugo Chávez won the presidency of Venezuela by a landslide in 1998. Has he also won the hearts of his people?

The president of Venezuela has many enemies—partly, at least, because he so clearly relishes the fight. In late 2002 the anti-Chavista workers and managers of Petróleos de Venezuela joined forces to stage a two-month strike, crippling the Venezuelan economy. The president sought to take control of the company by firing nearly half its workforce, but there is no way to tell whether those who got to keep their jobs are any more loyal to him now than they were before the strike. The middle classes appear to be almost unanimous in their hatred of him. Doctors have marched in the street against him, demanding better wages. An unknown number of military personnel—including several army officers I interviewed—dislike Chávez and his leftist politics intensely, if not openly (many others joined forces to lead the coup against him in 2002 and have since been discharged). For the moment, however, the aggregate numbers of his enemies don't add up to an opposition, and they have lost every battle so far.

www9.nationalgeographic.com

Join Earth Day Network’s Climate Change Campaign. Earth Day 2006 will launch a sustained, three-year campaign to educate consumers, corporations and governments worldwide on the urgent need to take concrete steps on climate change now – before it’s too late. Our Goal For Earth Day ’06 – 10,000 Climate Change Events Worldwide.

www.earthday.org

Climate of Fear

Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

continued at

www.opinionjournal.com

Experts Slam Disease Mongering

Combating "disease mongering" will require a multi-pronged approach that includes existing patient groups refusing pharmaceutical company funding and more awareness and vigilance from journal editors and the media to ensure that bogus or exaggerated studies are more carefully vetted.

Experts from around the world Monday called on the global health community to challenge what they see as a trend of pharmaceutical companies blurring the boundaries of legitimate illness and normal conditions in an attempt to increase sales of their products.

The trend, which is dubbed "disease mongering" by the experts, "turns healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic harm," David Henry, a professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and Ray Moynihan, a journalist and conjoint lecturer at the university wrote in a commentary in PLoS Medicine.

continued at
www.terradaily.com

The Great Uninsured

A meditation on the covereds and the uncovereds, and other things.

America has a new persecuted minority. The Great Unwashed have been replaced by the Great Uninsured. The word "uninsured" has taken on the freighted tonality of "unemployed," "deadbeat," "indigent," and even "homeless." The next time you hear someone confess to having no health coverage, check out the ever-so-slight pause in his listener's voice. Watch for the slow blink, the quick wiping clean of alarmed features back to bland American acceptance. We're good at this; nobody can do the pause-blink-wipe number like an American.

continued at...

www.nationalreview.com

Who, or What, Will Stop Bush’s Military Attack on Iran?

Recent articles in the Daily Telegraph in England and the Washington Post and New Yorker reinforce the speculation that the Bush Administration will launch a military attack on Iran. Although leading Administration officials from Bush to Secretary of State Rice to UN Ambassador Bolton insist that they are pursuing a diplomatic route to preventing a nuclear Iran, the military “option” remains at the core of the preemptive strikes consistently favored by this rogue Administration. Furthermore, while it may seem preposterous that this discredited right-wing cabal would undertake another military campaign while bogged down in a growing civil war in Iraq, both their previous actions and continual ideological orientation suggest that deliberative diplomacy is trumped by aggressive militarism. So, who, or what, will stop Bush’s military attack on Iran?

One might suppose that, given the Iraq debacle, the corporate media might now be more reluctant to act as conduits and cheerleaders for reckless military action. While there may be some evidence of periodic skepticism, the media’s lack of contextualization and adversarial investigative reporting has led to a recycling of half-truths and lies that framed the disastrous military adventure in Iraq. First and foremost, one hears about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran without being reminded that most intelligence estimates put Iran’s development of a bomb some 5-10 years away. Moreover, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, Iran has been calling for a nuclear-free Middle East. Given the willingness of Washington to support the robust nuclear-weapons programs in Israel, India, and Pakistan, the focus on Iran obviously is not about nuclear proliferation alone. In fact, the US has deliberately tried to marginalize the International Atomic Agency because of its findings that Iran was in “substantial compliance.” Instead, the Bush Administration has attempted to manipulate the UN Security Council into open antagonism against Iran.

continued at...

www.commondreams.org

Thanks to E.I. for sharing this with us...

This site is devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents alike, as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism. Our initial project was to fight for the case of non-intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency and continued with the case against the campaigns in Haiti, Kosovo and the bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan. Our politics are libertarian: our opposition to war is rooted in Randolph Bourne's concept that "War is the health of the State." With every war, America has made a "great leap" into statism, and as Bourne emphasizes: " . . . it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution [the State]." At its core, that "nature" includes the ever-increasing threat to individual liberty and the centralization of political power.

antiwar.com/who.php

China considering a visit by Dalai Lama

China is willing to consider allowing the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the country for the first time since 1959 but if he sincerely abandons his pursuit for 'independence', a senior Chinese official has said.

"The fundamental policy of China on the question of Dalai Lama is that we demand he acknowledge that Tibet and Taiwan are part of China and seriously and sincerely abandon his pursuit of 'Tibet independence'. Then we can discuss his personal future," Liu Jianchao, spokesman, Chinese foreign ministry.

"The door (for negotiations) remains open," Liu, also the newly appointed director general of the ministry's information department told PTI when asked about reports that the Dalai Lama has expressed a wish to visit China.

Is China evolving... I truly hope so, a bazillion values are at stake!

http://us.rediff.com/news

Unafraid: Life in Jittery Times

“I just keep thinking, it will start with some random, unsuspecting New Yorker opening a letter, and why shouldn’t it be me?”

My sister’s voice shivered nervously down the phone line. It was November of 2001, and the country was in the throes of the anthrax scare – when 22 people got sick and five died, including that little old lady in Connecticut who had no connection to anything. To my sister, it looked like the opening salvo of a new attack, one that would sweep the nation. One that would start with her. She hunkered down in her apartment and awaited the worst, eyeing each incoming electricity bill warily as a stamped missive of doom.

I said the necessary things: calm down, be rational, think about the improbability. I said it was natural to expect the worst – she had been in New York on September 11th, after all, while I was camped out in front of cnn in another city. So I didn’t make a fuss about her weird behavior, and that crisis passed.

As the months and years ticked by, as the terror alert level vacillated between orange and yellow, she and her husband bought a bigger apartment, and renovated it. It was a good investment. They were saving for retirement, oh yes, they would be ready for whatever life threw their way. They carefully built up their safety high around them, one share of stock at a time.

adbusters.org

Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others...
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Walt Whitman

www.inspirationpeak.com