Corruption Skulduggery

"I don't recall an Olympics without corruption. It's not an excuse, obviously, and I'm very sorry about it, but there might be corruption in this country...."
Jean-Claude Killy, head, International Olympic Committee coordination commission for the Sochi games

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Jean-Claude Killy, Chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for Sochi 2014, during a February summit. (Alexei Druzhinin/RIA-Novosti/Associated Press )

It's a world class spectacle, held in a country that has every desire, much as China did before it, to display its grandeur and its ability to fund grand infrastructure for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. If China could manage, by temporarily shutting down its carbon-belching coal-fired chimneys in Beijing to briefly welcome the sun to shine benevolently upon international visitors to the Summer Olympics, Russia can build outstanding venues and upgrade bridges, roads, hotels, trains, port, airport and power grid.

It all gets costed into the final tally. A building spree that includes of necessity all the venues for the various sport events; an Olympic stadium, three Olympic villages, a ski jump, hockey arenas, Alpine facilities, and more, much more. The original estimate announced in 2007 -- once the Olympic Committee had selected Sochi, beloved of Vladimir Putin and close by where he has had another sumptuous palace built for himself -- to host the 2014 games stood at $12-billion.

Russia has ample revenues from its large gas energy fields and its monopolistic provision to much of the European Union to keep them from freezing in winter, dependent on the good graces of the man who occasionally turns rather grumpily nasty with them, and who himself owns an significant share of the country's energy giant, Rosneft. A riches-generating source for his old KGB cronies as well, who now own their own significant shares.

But corruption doesn't start and end with the President, it permeates the society at all levels. And Boris Nemtsov, one-time deputy prime minister has become a critic of the Kremlin, and he contends in a report just released that up to $30-billion of state funding has been 'liberated' into the bank accounts of Russian officials and associated businessmen. Inflating the original cost to prepare for the Olympics to rather considerably more than was originally estimated: $51-billion.

Cost overruns do not explain the differential. Nor does inflation. Nor does the doubling of infrastructure and other costs in preparation for mounting the Olympic Games over time. The 2012 London Summer Olympics came with a pricetag of $14.3, and it was a brilliant affair. The difference between the initial and final costs of Olympic Games in the past 14 years, according to Mr. Nemtsov's figures on average was two-fold.

Russia's new costing of $51-billion far outstrips that normal range of expectation. Alexander Zhukov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, claims he requires time to analyze Mr. Nemtsov's report and the figures contained therein, but he is confident that Russian prosecutors and the Audit Chamber have kept well abreast of Olympic costs.

Someone isn't touching base; state auditors at Russia's Audit Chamber have repeatedly spoken of their concerns relating to the skyrocketing overruns. They issued recommendations that those overruns be perused by prosecutors. To which Mr. Zhukov responds that additional infrastructure had to be built at some of the venues, raising costs.

Sochi is reputed to be a beautiful city, situated as it is on the Black Sea, a lovely vacation venue. Certainly President Vladimir Putin holds it in high esteem. And the city is set to benefit hugely from hosting the Olympics. Good thing the rest of Russia doesn't mind, those hard-working citizens who haven't the personal wherewithal to bask in the beauty of the city. A city that they have bequeathed with their hard-earned funds, with additional perquisites.

And generous abundance as well for on-the-take, grasping, venal officials and businessmen. Ta-dum!

Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a Moon!

By Phil Plait

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Posted Friday, May 31, 2013, at 8:00 AM

Radar observations of asteroid 1998 QE2 show it has a moon orbiting it.
Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR

Say hello to my little rocky friend: Asteroid (285263) 1998 QE2 has a moon!

The asteroid pair is currently on a relatively near pass of Earth, sailing by us at a closest approach of just under 6 million kilometers (3.6 million miles) later Friday. Asteroids that get this close are of particular interest to astronomers, because that means we can use radio telescopes to bounce radar off them, which can lead to a better determination of their size, shape, speed, and position.

Using the Goldstone telescope in California, astronomers were surprised to find that 1998 QE2 is actually a binary asteroid, a big rock being orbited by smaller one. Here’s the video of the two (the moon is the bright spot seen moving vertically over time):

Statistically, it’s not shocking that 1998 QE2 has a moon; about 16 percent of near-Earth asteroids bigger than 200 meters across have companions. The primary is about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) across, as previously estimated, and the moon is about 600 meters (2,000 feet) across. More observations are planned over the next few days, including using the Arecibo radio telescope, which will provide higher-resolution data.

Mind you, the radar data is a bit weird. It’s not showing you an actual picture of the asteroid. The vertical axis is showing distance to the asteroid—if there’s a hill you’d see it poke up toward the top, and a crater would be a depression. The horizontal axis, though, is actually the velocity at which the asteroid is spinning. The faster the rock spins, the more smeared out it is left to right; one that doesn’t spin at all would look like a vertical line. I know, it’s weird, but it’s the way this kind of radar observation works.

Not only that, but we’re illuminating it with the radar pulses, so when you look at the picture or video, it’s like the radio telescope is off the top of the frame, shining down on the asteroid. Imagine holding an orange in one hand and a flashlight in the other; you’re illuminating one side, not the whole thing. Radar reflections are strongest from the point on the asteroid directly under the radar beam, so that becomes the bright edge in the image. The reflections tend to get weaker near the edge, so it fades toward the bottom, giving it that odd crescent shape.

The moon looks curiously bright in the radar imagery, but I’m not sure why; I haven’t heard any comments about this yet—that may simply be because it’s small, so we don’t see it fade as much toward its edges like we do in the bigger rock. Think of it like having all its light compressed into fewer pixels, so each pixel is brighter.

From these data we now know that the main asteroid spins about once every fours hours at the most—previously it was thought to have a 5.3-hour spin. That old estimate was based on its light curve—that is, brightness variations as it spins. Imagine a dark ball with a single white spot on it. As it spins, you’d see it get brighter every time the white spot comes into view, and that can be used to peg its rotation. It’s not always 100 percent accurate, though, as it wasn't in this case. There are several dark features on the asteroid that may be craters, but they might also be patches of material that absorb radar so they simply look darker. We should know better soon as more data come down.

The moon spins more slowly—you can see it’s not very smeared out in the radar data. It probably takes a day or so to rotate once, but the actual rate is still not well known.

The very presence of the moon is a good thing. By measuring how long it takes to go around the primary, the mass of the primary can be found using math known for centuries (the more massive the big asteroid, the faster the moon will go around it at a given distance). We also know the size of the primary, so that means we can find its density, and therefore what it’s made of (probably mostly rock). Those numbers should be coming in over the next few days.

And finally, using the radar we get the precise position and velocity of the asteroid over time, and that allows a much better determination of its orbit around the Sun. We know that 1998 QE2 is not a threat to Earth, but it’s still nice to show that more clearly.

Of all the data we’re getting on this asteroid pair, the radar is the most precious because of the treasure trove we get from it. Just by bathing it in radio light and watching for the reflection we get a better orbit for it, we see it’s a binary, and we can determine its mass and even composition… all from millions of kilometers away.

That’s pretty amazing. There’s nothing like going to an asteroid and seeing it up close—and there are plans to do that—but we can learn a lot from the safety of our home planet too. Not bad for a bunch of apes who only recently figured out how to get into space in the first place.

No rise in cancer rates after Fukushima disaster - UN

BBC News online - 31 May 2013

The Fukushima nuclear plant was crippled by the deadly earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011

Cancer rates are not expected to rise as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, UN scientists say.

The evacuation of thousands of people shortly after the accident in 2011 sharply lowered their exposure to radiation, a draft report concluded.

The World Health Organisation has said local residents have a slightly higher risk of developing certain cancers.

Reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant were crippled by an earthquake and tsunami that killed some 19,000 people.

It was the world's worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986.

The findings of the draft report were presented by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear) in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Committee member Wolfgang Weiss said the decision by the Japanese authorities to evacuate large numbers of people had proved to be the right one.

"If that had not been the case, we might have seen the cancer rates rising and other health problems emerging over the next several decades," he added.

Unscear's report also stated that "no radiation-related deaths have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers involved at the accident site".

Studies after Chernobyl linked cases of thyroid cancer to radioactive iodine that contaminated milk. But Mr Weiss said that had not been the case in Japan.

The report was prepared by 80 scientists from 18 countries and will be published in full later this year.

The findings contradicted a report published by the WHO in February, which said the risk of cancer for those living near the nuclear plant had risen.

Have A Heart

The world extended its compassion and condemnation in yet another story out of China. A newborn discovered lodged in a sewage pipe. Still alive, urgently requiring rescue. A complicated rescue demanding delicacy, time and care in extracting the tiny boy from his impromptu cradle where he would surely have died if his birth mother had not alerted her landlord that something was horribly amiss.

This was a classic tale of a young woman not knowing where to turn in her dilemma as an unmarried mother. Made even more complex by the fact that China is a country with a child-bearing policy, but it is one that is directed at couples; it would not appear to be helpful to a young women with an age-old dilemma

She had attempted to abort the foetus, but was unable to find an agency to help her. The pregnancy was the result of an unfortunate and brief affair, and the man with whom she had shared that intimacy had no interest whatever in her problem. It was her problem and hers alone to solve, and she had no idea where to begin, how it would end, and the manner in which she could proceed.

So she did nothing. Made no one aware of her condition, unwilling obviously to inform her parents. Who likely lived in the countryside, while she had gone to the capital to find her own fortune in life. That fortune appears to have slipped her by, leaving her vulnerable and forlorn, with a basic elementary education, and an ill-paid service job.

It could happen anywhere in the world, in fact, it is such a mundane, classic situation of a young woman trapped by her biology, friendless and confused. The baby, the alarm given, was eventually extracted from the piece of pipe that was cut out of a rental-apartment's public restrooms. Public in the sense that the rental rooms do not come equipped with private toilets; residents use shared accommodation.

The young woman explained to police that she had attempted to deliver the baby herself, squatting over the toilet. Naive in the extreme, since such toilets have no seating appliances, they are simply holes in the floor with sewage pipes washing the human waste away to a main sewage disposal. The baby had become lodged in an L-joint, from which he was eventually rescued.

The baby's injuries were slight, a few bruises. He is a good weight and appears to be in good health. And he has been released from the hospital which had been given his initial care, and where he had been extracted from the portion of the pipe that rescue workers had transported to the hospital. The mother wanted to raise the child, she said, but had no idea how she would do that.

The baby is now in the custody of its maternal grandparents. It is clear enough there was no intention on the part of the young woman to flush her baby away, to abandon it to death. Squat toilets offer no support whatever; the user simply squats. Impossible single-handedly to squat and then successfully grasp the emerging baby, particularly for someone in that condition.

Evidence that she clumsily tried to prepare for the baby was found in her rented room, where police discovered baby toys. And a bloodied mess. It obviously occurred to the young woman that she might keep evidence of her delivery to a minimum, squatting over the toilet, but the baby slipped from her grasp, likely leaving her horrified, since she went directly for assistance.

It was discovered as well that she was in need of medical help, since her physical condition had been compromised through the unassisted delivery. A conjunction of circumstances. It happens.

Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Rest In Peace

Dead at 90 years of age. Years well lived in a determined battle to confront an ill he saw before him, and unrelentingly unwilling to allow himself to falter, though he paid a considerable price. When Dr. Morgentaler challenged Canada's anti-abortion laws he was derided, slandered, arrested, and incarcerated. But his pursuit of justice for half of the country's residents led him to persevere.

No one else with the authority of an outspoken, resolute medical practitioner bothered to champion the right of women to choose when and under what conditions they would bear a child.

"I decided to break the law to provide a necessary medical service because women were dying at the hands of butchers and incompetent quacks, and there was no one there to help them. The law was barbarous, cruel and unjust. I had been in a concentration camp and I knew what suffering was. If I can ease suffering, I feel perfectly justified in doing so."

"If I should die tomorrow, I could say I have accomplished something with my life. The fact that some people are opposed to abortion on religious grounds doesn't bother me as long as they are not allowed to influence other people by force or by other means. The situation in Canada is much better than in most other countries in the sense that abortion is practised by good physicians under good conditions. I believe as a medical doctor my duty was to help humans, and I did it."

His critics, vociferous with rage against this man, made comparisons to what he was doing, freeing women from the burden and pain of carrying a foetus when they had no wish to bear a child, to the abhorrently ghastly medical experimentation done by Nazi Germany's Josef Mengele. Hysterical condemnation of abortion likened it to a 'holocaust' of the innocent unborn.

These are easy enough charges to toss about; people having no idea what the Holocaust accomplished in beggaring the world of millions of Jews whose numbers have never since recovered. These were living, breathing human beings of all ages. They were not 'unborn children', on the cusp of being.

They existed as full-fledged, thinking, feeling human beings and then those lives vanished in a voluminous cloud of ash darkening the sky in a paroxysm of triumphalist genocide.

If anyone wanted to know what deprivation and horror, fear and carnage really resembled, they could ask Dr. Morgentaler, for he was very familiar with desolation, loss and anguish. And he had no wish to inflict it upon others. His wish was to remove the potential for all of that from the lives of women.

And he succeeded. At least in Canada, he did. For the most part, since there are still pockets of resistance to women's most basic entitlements -- withholding that right of abortion.

When Dr. Morgentaler opened the country's first free-standing abortion clinic at 2990 Honore-Beaugrand Street in east-end Montreal, abortion was illegal; punishable by the law in a most dramatic fashion. Anyone convicted of performing an abortion for any reason other than that the pregnancy endangered the life of the mother -- to which a panel of doctors at an accredited hospital would have to agree -- could be jailed for life.

It was also the time that selling or advertising any kind of contraception was illegal, even within pharmacies, and doing so could lead to a jail term.

"I have a vision, a dream that all people should be treated in a humane, compassionate way", Dr. Morgentaler declared, paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 declaration of human rights entitlements, as he opened that Montreal clinic in 1970. That same year he was arrested, charged with two counts of performing illegal abortions.

He would be arrested and acquitted by juries on a number of occasions. In 1974 his jury acquittal was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal, and he was imprisoned for a ten-month period, until another government came to power and released him bowing to the will of the majority in an unspoken social covenant.

TOBIN GRIMSHAW, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN    Dr. Henry Morgentaler greets the crowd before being awarded with a lifetime achievement award from PPO and the Pro-Choice Canada Coalition, part of the National Day of Action for Choice on Elgin st. Sunday April 25, 2004. 

In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's abortion law as unconstitutional. Later, the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney attempted to introduce Bill C-43, permitting abortions in the case of a woman's proven mental, physical or psychological health being affected by carrying a foetus to term. Both patient and doctor could face prison if such conditions were not met under the law.

In an instance where the Chamber of Sober Second Thought performed its duty to the country and its citizens, the Senate of Canada defeated the bill that had been passed in the House of Commons.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 to Safely Pass Earth Tomorrow

By Phil Plait

slate

Posted Thursday, May 30, 2013, at 11:20 AM

The near-Earth Asteroid 1998 QE2 will miss our planet by a wide margin—six million kilometers—on Friday.
Illustration by JPL

On Friday, May 31, 2013 at 20:59 UTC (4:59 p.m. EDT), the asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest approach to Earth. Not that it’s all that close: It will miss us by six million kilometers (3.6 million miles), or 15 times the distance to the Moon. That’s good, because the asteroid is 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) across.

To be clear, were safe from this particular asteroid; this pass is only close in an astronomical sense. It’s still so far that you’ll need a decent telescope just to see it at all (it’ll get to a brightness of about magnitude 10—the faintest star you can see with the naked eye is 50 times brighter), and this is the closest it’ll get to us for literally hundreds of years.

Still, it’s a big rock and close enough that astronomers are taking note. It’s a prime target for radar observations, and the Goldstone observatory will be pinging it during the pass. Those observations should resolve surface features on QE2 just a few meters across. NASA’s JPL put together a short video about all this:

As with any near pass of an asteroid, conspiracy theories abound. Forgive me if I don’t give them any air by linking to them, but I've seen these claims come and go a dozen times in the past. Silliness like NASA is hiding evidence the asteroid will hit us; the asteroid will connect with the Earth
electromagnetically and cause storms, and so on ad nauseum. The only things these breathless (and baseless) claims have in common is that they are always wrong, yet they always pop up again the next time an asteroid comes within a few million klicks of us. Either conspiracy theorists have a short memory, or their audience does.

I have to admit, this kind of nonsense is cramping my sense of humor. Given the asteroid’s designation and size, I really want to say it’s titanic. But I’ll refrain.

Anyway, NASA has a bunch of talks, interviews, and other activities about the asteroid planned for today and tomorrow. Instead of getting worked up over nonsense, here’s a chance to learn about the reality of asteroids, what we can discover about them, and what role they play in the understanding of our solar system. I bet you’ll find, as always, that reality is far, far more amazing than fantasy.

Well, Oops!

"I am writing to inform you of an unfortunate incident that happened over the course of the last three weeks. I was stopped en route to my home by a member of the Ottawa Police Service and asked to undergo a breathalyzer test.
"As a result, my driver's licence was suspended for three (3) days.
"Although I was not charged with an offence, I deeply regret my behaviour and apologize to my constituents and council colleagues for any embarrassment this incident may have caused."
Peter Clark, Ottawa city councillor

Well, can't have Toronto hogging all the limelight with Mayor Rob Ford having all the fun, achieving celebrity status and defying convention and playing up his tough guy persona. Ain't no crack-smokin' allegations goin' to stick to him. Even if he has to buy the damn video himself. Though it's not likely his executive assistant will cough up the entrance fee; that's a federal story.

Ottawa doesn't like playing second fiddle in the news to big-city TO. So here's our own little scandal. Where a former regional chair of the Ottawa-Carleton Region before amalgamation, and current city councillor has taken pre-emptive steps hoping the entire sordid story won't surface, by addressing his fellow councillors in an email explanation. But guess what? it did. And, as a result it isn't only his colleagues who may be feeling rather put out.

It is alleged (ahem!) that Mr. Clark pulled rank with the police officer who pulled him over for a roadside breath test earlier in the month. And this is where the disreputable and offensive conduct came into play in scene two. He puffed over the legal limit of blood alcohol but not enough to warrant criminal charges. Despite which he huffily intimated he might become the victim of violence at the hands of police. That quite impressed the police officer.

At which point he brought out some additional artillery, claiming that he was a personal friend of Ottawa police Chief Charles Bordeleau. Hint-hint, officer. The officer, said Mr. Clark, recognized him, asked the reason for his remark impugning the integrity of police. "I'm not down on the police, I'm a friend of the police", he claims to have responded.

Suggesting that it was this statement, not one where he invoked his personal friendship with the chief that led the police officer to the accusation, since Mr. Clark acknowledged he doesn't know the chief, after all.

Mr. Clark had been playing bridge that evening with friends. One of whom suggested a drink for the road, and they stopped at the Playmate Club on Montreal Road - a truly grubby venue. "It's on the way home and it's convenient. The fact it's a strip club is not an issue with me. I don't avail myself of the young women there. Nobody'll ever accuse me of mauling the women because I never touch them", he said.

It just so happened that as he was driving home from the Playmate Club, Mr. Clark explains, he realized he was driving too fast, and slowed down. Which action caused the police officer to stop him, obviously feeling Mr. Clark had slowed to a crawl to look over a few prostitutes standing at the side of the street. Goodness, heaven forfend!

Whereupon the officer made his enquiry: "He asked me if I had a drink and I said yes and he asked me if I would blow and I said yes." He's still blowing.

“Amateur” Digs Deep—Very Deep—Into an Active Galaxy

By Phil Plait

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Posted Wednesday, May 29, 2013, at 8:00 AM

Centaurus A (or Cen A to its friends) is a nearby galaxy with a weird history. It’s an elliptical galaxy—a giant cotton ball collection of stars—that was, until recently, two separate galaxies that collided and merged. It has a huge dust lane cutting right across the middle, a sure-fire sign that the galaxy was the result of a cosmic train wreck.

Amateur astronomer Rolf Olsen sent me a note the other day, telling me he had taken an image of Cen A. And it’s not just any image: It’s the result of a shocking 120 hours of total exposure! It’s a jaw-dropping view of this iconic galaxy:

The galaxy Centaurus A, taken by so-called "amateur" astronomer Rolf Olsen. Click to anthrohippenate, and you really want to.
Photo by Rolf Olsen, used by permission

Holy Haleakala!

The detail is amazing, and you really seriously want to embiggen it; I had to shrink it a lot to fit it on the blog. Going over the details at Olsen’s site just amazed me more and more.

First and foremost: He took these images with a 25 cm (10”) telescope that he made himself. That’s incredible. A ‘scope that small is not one you’d think you could get this kind of image with, but persistence pays off. It took a total of 43 nights across February to May of 2013 to pull this picture off.

The features you can see are astonishing. The galaxy has a massive central black hole, and is actively gobbling down matter (which is why it’s called an active galaxy). You can’t see the black hole itself, but blasting away from the black hole at a good fraction of the speed of light are a pair of jets, beams of matter and energy heading in opposite directions (I describe how these form in detail in a post on Herc A, another active galaxy). Olsen’s image easily captures the inner jet on the side of the galaxy facing us:

Rolf Olsen's shot of the Cen A jet (left) versus a professional observatory (right).
Photo by Rolf Olsen, used by permission

On the left is Olsen’s shot, and on the right one from a 2.2 meter telescope. Obviously, the bigger ‘scope has far higher resolution, and can see fainter stars and features in the jet, but Olsen’s shot is pretty impressive.

In the big picture you can also see the shells of gas surrounding the galaxy, which are probably remnants of the collision, which sent out vast waves of material like ripples from a rock dropped in a pond. He was also able to identify over 700 globular clusters in his image—those are tight, spherical clusters of stars that orbit most galaxies. The Milky Way has over 150, but Cen A may have ten times as many.

The man and his machine.
Photo by Peter Meecham/Rolf Olsen

Cen A is pretty close, just 12 million light years away, making it the nearest active galaxy to us, and one of the brightest in the sky. It’s best visible from the southern hemisphere, making it a juicy target for Olsen’s New Zealand location. Still, using a ten-incher to take an image this deep and detailed is a daunting task, so I encourage you to read how he did it. I’ll add that a few years back he contacted me to say he had actually seen the debris disk—the leftover planet-forming material—around the star Beta Pictoris. No amateur had ever done that (it was only discovered in the 1980s!), so I was very skeptical. But his image and methods checked out; it was an incredible acomplishment. It’s clear he is very skilled and extremely dedicated. To say the least.

I can’t even imagine what he’ll try next. But whatever it is, I know it will be worth keeping an eye on his efforts.

Asteroid Mining Company Kickstarts a Space Telescope

By Phil Plait

SLATE

Posted Wednesday, May 29, 2013, at 1:16 PM

Illustration of the proposed orbiting ARKYD small space telescope controlled by the public.
Illustration by PRI

Planetary Resources, Inc.—the company that wants to mine asteroids—has a new project they've just announced: They're crowdfunding a space telescope.

Yup, you read that right. PRI has a Kickstarter page set up to fund a small (20 cm, or 8”) telescope that will orbit the Earth. It will take pictures of our planet from above, and astronomical objects, too. Different funding levels will give people different access to the telescope. In a clever twist, if you back it at the $25 or above level, you can upload a picture of yourself that will be displayed on a small screen, and the satellite will take a picture of your picture with the Earth as a backdrop. 

Pledging $25 or more gets a photo of a photo you uploaded to the 'scope.
Illustration by PRI

This is one step of PRI’s overall goal to eventually mine asteroids. The company’s plan is a series of steps leading to that ultimate goal, including launching several small telescopes to observe the Earth and sky, survey the sky to find near-Earth asteroids, create small probes that can visit and study asteroids, and eventually mine them for useful materials. I have a detailed description of their plans from when they first announced them in 2012.

This crowdfunded space telescope, called ARKYD, is a way for them to test out their abilities to launch and use such a satellite. PRI has already invested quite a bit of money into the development of a series of telescopes—mostly to look for asteroids, but this new one has different goals and therefore a different design. While they are still putting their own money into designing and building it, the Kickstarter is a way to get people involved personally. It has a series of astronomical filters on it (for the nerds out there: UV (< 300 nm), B, V, R, [OIII], Hα, 1 μm, and a clear (luminence) filter) which means you can create near-true-color pictures, too. It’s not a huge telescope, and you don’t get vast amounts of time, but it should be fine to get nice shots of bright nebulae and galaxies.

PRI President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki explains it in this video:

My personal opinion is that this is a legit effort, and should work pretty well. I like the idea of people using it to observe objects they want—getting something like this in the hands of kids in classrooms will do a huge amount positive outreach. You can donate your time to scientists or classrooms, too.

I’ll be curious to see if some of the claims pan out; for example, they talk about finding asteroids with ARKYD, but given the size and filter choice it’s not optimized for it. The ‘scope should find quite a few rocks, but discovering new ones is a tough game these days. It generally takes big telescopes with lots of time to find previously undiscovered asteroids; most are very faint. But it could find a few, which is enough for PRI’s initial purposes.

The other claims look solid enough. Given the small size and low mass, launching ARKYD isn’t all that expensive, and the running costs can be covered if they get enough money pledged. A million dollars is doable via Kickstarter; as I write this they already have more than $40,000 pledged before the official announcement was even made public (the Kickstarter page went live a bit early to test it out). I know my geeks, and I suspect PRI will meet their goal pretty quickly.

Bottom line: I think this is a good idea, it can work, and if it does it’ll be a great way to get the public excited about space exploration and discovery. The team is solid (I saw a few old friends in the video, and the engineering team is made of lots of ex-NASA folks who have tremendous experience in robotic planetary and space exploration), and the goal is reachable.

I might kick some money their way myself. I know a few cosmic objects I wouldn’t mind observing, and it’s a fun idea. They don’t list a launch date, since that’s difficult to determine so far in advance. But stay tuned; when I find out more I’ll let you know!

Speed Kills

On Sunday evening Kouchi Matsumoto, 70, a former Carleton University chemistry professor died. In a car accident, as he was driving his Hyundai on Woodroffe Avenue. The car that plowed into Mr. Matsumoto's vehicle was a BMW, westbound on the Highway 417 off-ramp. Speeding. The 28-year-old driver lost control. Neither the BMW's driver nor his 22 year-old-passenger was hurt.

The BMW struck a curb, crossed two southbound lanes and leaped over the median. And then it hit Mr. Matsumoto's car. A 66-year-old woman seated on Mr. Matsumoto's car's passenger seat suffered serious chest, abdominal and hand injuries. She is now in stable condition in hospital, while Mr. Matsumoto was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mr. Matsumoto, a resident of Kanata, in west-end Ottawa, studied chemistry at Carleton University in 1967. He returned to Japan, his native country, and lived there, but was concerned about the never-ending cycle of earthquakes, and the use of nuclear power in a country so geologically unstable, certain that it was a poor mix. "You cannot negotiate with nature", he once said.

In 1983 he returned to Ottawa, and took up a teaching position in chemistry at Carleton University. And he has been a resident of Ottawa ever since. When he was two years of age he and his family lived in Hiroshima. His mother was killed and his family home destroyed in 1945 when his city was bombed along with Nagasaki, by American Atomic bombs, just before the end of the Second World War.

Police have said that alcohol did not factor into the crash that killed Mr. Matsumoto. But speed most certainly is held to have contributed to the collision. Police are as yet uncertain whether charges would be laid. Although the circumstances certainly do lend themselves to the laying of charges.

Loving Domesticity

"There's too many injuries on her. There's too much damage. She's a hurt woman. The damage that's done to her over the last series of years is unbelievable. I've never seen it in my life. It's not something you can explain away."
Ottawa Police Sgt. Mike Hudson

Donna Jones had been married two years of her 32-year-old life when she was found dead on December 9, 2009 in the basement of her home, her body in rigor mortis, seeping with infections, lying on an old mattress. When she was found it could be immediately seen that she had a broken nose, two black eyes and burns on half of her body. These injuries, old and new alike all resulted from accidents. Donna Jones was accident prone.

This is a fact. It is a known fact because her husband has steadfastly informed police and court during his first-degree murder trial, that this was an unfortunate fact, one that would explain much about the injuries she sustained. During an interview a scant five days after her death, Donna's husband Mark Hutt was asked by the interviewing detective, "Did you ever tie her to a tree?"

The video of that interview was played in court. "God, no. No, no, no", responded a shocked Mark Hutt. He was drunk, aimed at a bottle the night he accidentally shot her with his rifle-type pellet gun. X-rays of Donna Jones's body had revealed broken ribs and bones and almost 30 pellets still resident in her body. This revelation was given to Mark Hutt when he was arrested for causing her death.

In his first interview the day of her death, he was considered a "grieving husband". The second interview was far, far different. He admitted to another accident, this one when he inadvertently happened to pour boiling water all over his wife. And the reason he chose not to seek medical help for her was because she insisted she was fine. Two weeks later he did dial 911, and by then he had discovered that her breathing had stopped.

"I thought I was doing well by respecting her wishes. It's my stupidity. I should have listened to myself, but I didn't. I should have never listened to her." The man is guilty of stupidity, certainly not guilty of murder. Although he caused the accident, it was her fault that no medical attention was given her, because she refused medical treatment. We know that, because her husband has testified to that little fact.

And that he could be accused of deliberately killing his wife is beyond his understanding. "I would understand criminal negligence, but that other word -- that's not me", he protested to Sgt. Hudson. Negligence due to the fact that he respected his wife's autonomy in decision making for herself, fine. Murder? Simply unbelievable, because he is not that kind of person. He wasn't a violent person. He once slapped his wife - once only - in self-defence.

Not his fault, that one slap. They'd had an argument, just one of those husband-wife things, and she slapped him. He responded. Only time. Never again. And he apologized immediately. The court has his word on it. He waxed eloquent about how he would recommend to his wife that she wear a helmet, because she was always and forever tripping over something; the vacuum cord, the dogs, down the stairs. Accident-prone.

"I don't want to say she was clumsy, but she didn't look where she was going." So there's the sound explanation for those broken ribs, broken bones, broken nose, black eyes. Oh yes, and the pellets lodged securely in her body. And he knew what grief and pain was himself, he did. "Push, shove, punch, kick, slap, throw. I had a rough life", he reminisced about his childhood beatings by his father and his mother's boyfriend.

Sgt. Hudson wasn't easily convinced. He just had it in for this poor bereaved husband; you could tell. "She's been lying for you for years. Every time you'd hurt her, she'd go to work and make up a f---ing lie about this bruise and that bruise, this injury and that injury. She changed the way she wore her hair. She put on makeup. Get it off your chest. This is your chance", Sgt. Hudson urged Hutt, trying to bully him, the poor guy, into a confession .

Organ Retrieval Impossible

"The court cannot restore our lost weeks, the lost future of a young man, or repair the heartbreak of losing our son. For us, it will have to be enough for the court to make decisions that protect the public it serves from repeatable behaviour and from preventable tragedy."
Victim impact statement, Joanna Anderson

Joanna Anderson and the rest of Nathan Anderson's family sat by his bedside for two weeks, witnessing his frequent seizures as he lay dying. They have no idea whether he might have been aware. Whether he was able to hear his mother softly singing childhood lullabies to him. They celebrated his birthday as he reached 32 years of age, lying comatose, his body broken and his head "so badly smashed" his mother knew he could never recover.

"That was the most painful day that my husband and I ever spent. His sister couldn't bear it. We would wish it upon no one, except a person who needs to be stopped from causing such destruction", Nathan's mother said, reading her statement to the presiding justice at the trial of Glen Carkner who had destroyed their son's future as he was bicycling, the impact of the vehicle that hit him sending him into the car's windshield, then three metres into the air.

Nathan Anderson's body had been so destroyed that there was nothing left salvageable for his parents to give to organ donation medical replacement services. All that they were able to salvage were their son's corneas. Now, someone else sees out of his eyes. No other part of his body that might have advantaged someone desperate for organ replacement could be taken, he was so completely destroyed.

Glen Carkner had an old impaired driving conviction. At the accident scene he had refused to submit to a drug evaluation, while blowing zero on a roadside alcohol screening device. Oxycodone and cocaine were discovered in his car. Witnesses described the vehicle he was driving on February 2, 2012 as careening "recklessly and erratically" as he drove away from a Liquor Control Board of Ontario store parking lot when he had been refused service there.

Before even reaching Anderson road at a speed estimated to be around 60 to 70 km/hr., he had hit two cars in the LCBO parking lot. But Glen Carkner. at his trial pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death, refusing a demand to determine if he was impaired by drugs, failing to remain at the scene of an accident in the parking lot, and drug possession.

His own personal story is that drugs represented for him a way to cope with the "overwhelming" stress of being the primary caregiver to his elderly parents, his father who had suffered a stroke, his mother who had pancreatic cancer. According to his defence counsel. Ontario Court Justice David Wake seemed to take that extenuating circumstance into account.

Mr. Carkner was given credit for his guilty plea and his admission about cocaine use. He apologized, weeping openly in court about having "screwed up" by killing an innocent man. His remorse appeared genuine. He listened to Joanna Anderson speak of her family's agony of grief watching over their son and brother as he died two weeks after the impact of Mr. Carkner's vehicle destroyed his life.

"Everyone should feel safe using our roadways, whether you are a motorist or a cyclist like Mr. Anderson was that day", said Justice Donoghue as he sentenced Mr. Carkner to four and a half years in prison and banned him from driving for twelve years following his release from prison.

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• Egypt's antiquities face bigger problems than Chinese graffiti

How a young Chinese boy defaced an ancient Egyptian temple, and unwittingly joined a long tradition in the process.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / May 28, 2013

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The Chinese words 'Ding Minhao was here' is seen on artwork in the 3,500-year-old Luxor temple in Luxor, Egypt, May 6.  AP

A picture of a graffiti that a Chinese boy wrote on one of Egypt's grandest Pharaohnic temples went viral on Chinese social media over the weekend, stirring debate in that country over whether the legions of inexperienced tourists it sends abroad each year is replacing the old image of the "ugly American" with that of the "ugly Chinese."

Dan Murphy Staff writer
Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East. Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

The photo was posted on Friday by a fellow Chinese tourist, who was outraged to find that a countryman had defaced the monument.

In Egypt, the questions were far more practical in nature: Why, and how, is the government failing to protect the ancient temples, tombs and pyramids that lure millions of tourists a year? And how did this particular instance of defacement go undetected for so long (the parents of the boy, now in middle school, indicated he defaced the temple on a trip some years ago).

The Chinese teenager scrawled "Ding Minhao was here" on one of the reliefs at the Temple of Luxor, which Pharoah Amenhotep III began constructing circa 1340 BC, or nearly 3,500 years ago. It has remained untouched for years. The temple is in the center of modern-day Luxor, a town on the banks of the Nile that was known as Thebes in antiquity and is today on the UNESCO World Heritage list, along with the surrounding region.

After the pyramids at Giza, the temple, connected to the equally famous Karnak Temple by a sphynx-lined boulevard, is one of Egypt's most visited ancient monuments.

At busy times, thousands of tourists a day pour through the complex (and at night, when it is spectacularly lit). That it's possible to scrawl graffiti there is unsurprising, though that it went unnoticed and unaddressed for so long is more alarming – as is the fact that parents would leave a child unsupervised long enough to carry out his vandalism.

State-run Xinhua, which generally operates as a government mouthpiece, writes that Ding's graffiti "caused his countryfolk to reflect on how to build a good national image... Leaving graffiti is common among Chinese tourists, damaging historic sites and demonstrating poor education and behavior."

China's image abroad has been a growing issue for the Communist Party that runs the vast country because in the past decade it's begun unleashing ever more of its increasingly wealthy citizenry on the world. In April, the United Nation's World Tourism Organization said China had for the first time become the largest source of international tourism, with 83 million Chinese traveling abroad last year and spending $102 billion in the process. The UN said Chinese spending on tourism is up 8 times from what it was just a decade ago.

China's export-led economic growth has been phenomenal, and has already left profound marks on Egypt and across the Middle East, displacing much of the local textile industry and manufacturing. Even local crafts have not been spared. In Egypt, it's traditional to light ornate lamps called fanoos during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, yet in recent years the locally produced glass and tin lanterns have been displaced by cheaper plastic Chinese versions.

From an Egyptian perspective, the graffiti at Karnak is the least of the problems for its antiquities – a minor nuisance similar to a group of Russians who illegally climbed the Great Pyramid at Giza a few months ago and obtained some amazing pictures in the process. Far more troubling has been the rampant looting of less famous Egyptian sites accompanying the collapse of law and order since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak two years ago. Dahshour, a 4,500 year old grave and pyramid complex not far from Cairo, has been particularly hard hit.

The Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Egypt, at times publicly ambivalent about the symbols of pre-Islamic Egypt, has not made protecting that site a priority, though whether out of disinterest or distraction, is hard to say.

At any rate, the Chinese boys graffiti joins a long tradition of defacing Egypt's monuments that, when they get old enough, become interesting in themselves. The oldest vandals may be the Pharoahs themselves, who had a habit of defacing the tombs of dead predecessors, scratching out the cartouches that named the royal builders and often replacing them with their own names. When the Greeks came to Egypt, they felt compelled to scrawl on the monuments, as did the Romans after them. Egypt's early Coptic Christians wrote their names and crude paintings on the grand old temples, as did French soldiers in Napoleon's expedition to Egypt at the end of the 17th century, as did the British who came after them.

Studying this graffiti is common among archeologists and historians.
All of which is to say, that young Ding was joining a grand and ancient tradition, however destructive, without knowing it. The world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have been drawn to Egypt for thousands of years. As the Chinese move into those ranks, more of them will come to Egypt, and leave their mark in one way or another.

Getting Around, Making Good

"I saw him at school all day and absorbed all night into his computer. It became very clear David needed the space to live his passion. Which was computers. All things computers."
Barbara Ackerman

"When I first met David he was 20 years old and wearing sneakers and jeans. But I knew he was one of these rare entrepreneurs that grew up on the Web and who could come up with an idea, build it himself and then ship it that night."
Bijan Sabet, general partner, Spark Capital

"When I feel the most productive and engaged is when I'm buried in code, buried in some project, tweaking some designs. I'm certainly introverted."
David Karp, founder, CEO, Tumblr

When my granddaughter started a blog it was originally at my having recommended it as a way that she could write things; book reviews, film reviews, relieve herself of her opinion on so many things that occupy the mind of a teen. She is opinionated, she is a bibliophile, and she is an excellent writer, capable of expressing her ideas and perceptions very well indeed.

Then she graduated from the original Blogger site to one I'd never before heard of, one she told me was really "cool". She kept at it for awhile, and I would be amused no end and entertained as well, visiting the site, one that expressed her priorities, values and perceptions on a whole host of subjects, though some of the pictorial entries gave me second thought on occasion.

Now she never blogs; she gave up her Tumblr site years ago and before that the Blogger one as well. She hasn't signed on to Twitter, nor has she a presence on Facebook. She does have a Blackberry and she textmessages, but not nearly to the extent that she used to, at first when five thousand text messages a month were the norm for her; now she's pared that down to 300 monthly at most.

She's different, all right. She is both an introvert and an extrovert. And she aspires to become the solicitor general of the country at some future date. Law, that's what she's interested in. She wants to practise criminal law. And she is busy trying to acquire a school record of excellent academic performance, hoping to be accepted into the university of her choice.

Quite unlike David Karp, who at fourteen attending classes at Bronx High School of Science was bored out of his mind. Oh well, my granddaughter isn't all that fond of school, nor of most of her teachers, but she is convinced she is grooming herself to occupy her destiny; her future, in any event, as a lawyer. David Karp clearly was enamoured of computers and he was capable of schooling himself on them.

His mother, Barbara Ackerman, recognizing that, invited him to leave school and be 'home-tutored'. He never did complete his high school courses, never went on to attend college. But he did school himself in the great, wide world of computer science and technology. He had that entrepreneurial spark that Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital recognized through his own experience, that convinced him to invest in a new start-up called Tumblr.

That was six years ago. And the blogging website and its founder have never looked back. Before then, he had been around, working for a while in Tokyo for a startup there. Back in the United States again, he worked for a number of other startups, and became chief technology officer at UrbanBaby. When CNET Networks bought out UrbanBaby, David Karp was left with several hundred thousand from the sale.

And Tumblr was born. Social networking sites were his baby, after all. Like most really serious techies, David Karp was a loner, absorbed in the generating sphere of his mind, locked into solving riddles of computer code. It was his preference to arrive at the office early enough so that he would have lone working hours uninterrupted by the distracting presence of others.

In this Oct. 1, 2012 file photo, Tumblr founder David Karp participates in the "Bloomberg Leadership Summit" seminar in New York.   (AP Photo/Charles Sykes/Invision for Advertising Week) 

 

With the $1.1-billion sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, 26-year-old David Karp has earned $250-million of his very own, after taxes. He has a girlfriend, he has a dog. What more does any young fellow need? Oh, he has plenty of money, and because of his tender age, plenty of time to think about what's next in his future. He will "figure out something" with philanthropy, following a fine tradition in that respect.

He might even entertain the prospect of finally attending college: "At least I should be able to afford it", he recklessly declared.

Moonrise from Space

By Phil Plait

SLATE

Posted Monday, May 27, 2013, at 8:00 AM

In March 2004, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta probe on its way to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s still on its way there—space is big. But it made a few detours along the way, including a pass of Mars, three of Earth (to gain energy and boost it along its way), and two asteroids (Steins and Lutetia).

On Mar. 3, 2005, during the first Earth flyby, it took several images of our planet, including this achingly beautiful picture of the crescent Moon rising over the limb of our home world:

A ghostly Moon peeks over the edge of the Earth.
Photo by ESA/Emily Lakdawalla

My scientist brain immediately notices that the Moon looks small compared to Earth because of how close Rosetta passed to us—just under 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) above Earth’s surface, a fantastically close shave—as well as how dark the Moon looks. Its surface is, on average, far less reflective than Earth’s, so to expose the planet correctly means the Moon looks much fainter.

But the part of my brain that appreciates art and beauty just sees the panoply of clouds, the graceful arc of the world, the thinner arc of atmosphere (visible on the left) allowing us to breathe, and the ghostly, milky looming of the Moon.

This is science, this is engineering, and this is art.

The raw image from Rosetta.
Photo by ESA

Some of the artistry came long after. My friend Emily Lakdawalla, writer for The Planetary Society Blog, took the raw image from Rosetta and reprocessed it to clean it up, enhancing the natural beauty stored in those zeros and ones. The raw image is inset here to give you an idea of what she did; click both to see them far larger.

Rosetta is due to reach the comet next year. It will launch a probe that will physically land on the surface of the comet, the first time humanity will have achieved such a feat. I can only imagine what wonders it will reveal then. Given that Rosetta took one of my favorite pictures of Earth of all time, I expect amazing things come 2014.

Three Planets Dance in the West After Sunset

By Phil Plait

SLATE

Posted Monday, May 27, 2013, at 2:14 PM

Speaking of sunsets, over the past few days and for the next few as well, the planets Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury can be seen together in the west just after the Sun slips below the edge of the Earth. This is called a conjunction, and you don't need any fancy equipment to see it; just your eyes, and a clear view to the west.

If you pick your spot carefully, the foreground might enhance what you see, though. The brilliant astrophotographer Thierry Legault went to the northwest coast of France, and on May 26, 2013 took this ridiculously beautiful picture:

Three planets over a tidal island. Click to conjunctivate.
Photo by Thierry Legault, used by permission.

Mon dieu! That's Mont-Saint-Michel, a tiny island off the French coast. It's a tidal island; the causeway connecting it to the mainland is submerged at high tide and exposed during low tide. A monastery sits upon it, making it look like something out of a fantasy story. I've never been to that part of France, but it's on my list now!

In the sky above and around it you can see Venus (lower right), Mercury (upper right), and mighty Jupiter (to the left). All three are unresolved dots at this magnification, but they may look different sizes because of their varying brightnesses. If the size variation were real, Jupiter would look three times bigger than Venus, and five times bigger than Mercury in the picture! Currently, all three are on the other side of the Sun, making them appear smaller than they can be. Mercury is actually the closest right now, about 170 million kilometers (105 million miles) distant, compared to 250 million km (150 million miles) for Venus and 910 million km (565 million miles) for Jupiter.

Think on that: Jupiter is so flipping big that even though it's nearly four times farther away from us than Venus, it still looks much bigger through a telescope!

Photographer Ken Griggs also had a great view of the conjunction on May 26 in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, and this photo appears to be celebrating it:

Celebrating the planetary conjunction. Click to enpyrenate.
Photo by Ken Griggs, used by permission.

I'll note it's actually a composite of two different photos; both had the fireworks and planets in them but added together made the picture even more pleasing.

As the days go on, Jupiter will sink lower to the horizon after sunset as Venus and Mercury climb higher, so this configuration will constantly change. It's best this week, though, so go out and take a look. It's a rare opportunity to watch these three worlds dance together in the sky.