Saving Bella

Anyone who walks a dog, particularly a large breed, knowing the dog to be unpredictably violent and who takes no steps to avoid a confrontation because it is inconveniently intrusive on their right to do as they wish in public, demonstrates an abysmal lack of civil intelligence. Good enough reason for others who have dogs that are small and friendly, to ensure that they always walk their own on leashes to enable them to have control, even if others who really need to control their dogs, do not.

This, evidently, didn't occur to Bruce Simpson when he was walking Bella, his 17-month-old Miniature Schnauzer-Yorkshire Terrier at 5:30 in the early evening on Friday at the NCC Experimental Farm. Dogs and their people are given ample instruction through signage that they are expected to control their behaviour; the owners through the expedience of leashing their pets.

Mr. Simpson and Bella, wandering through the Farm's corn and bean fields on Friday happened to come across a woman with a German shepherd mix whose personality was not a pleasant one. Before either Mr. Simpson or the woman could react, to take proactive measures to leash their respective pets, the large dog attacked the small one. It was a case of some 70 pounds of snarling fury leaping upon a little ball of fur weighing under 14 pounds.

Mr. Simpson leaped toward the two dogs to attempt to separate the Shepherd from his Bella, and the woman in the process was able to place her dog on its leash. "I was just screaming at her, very upset", he said, describing the angry exchange, while he was dialling 911. "She was saying, 'I didn't know anyone was here. I came because I didn't expect anybody else to be around'",l he said.

With the implicit message that there was a darn good reason why she might not want anyone else around; a matter of allowing her undisciplined and aggressive dog to enjoy a runabout without the nuisance of anyone else being present to spoil that opportunity. One might have thought that Bella's owner would be more concerned with her physical condition after being mauled, than shouting accusation at a woman who as it turned out, refused to accept responsibility.

She left, with her dog, and he snapped a photograph of her in retreat on his cellphone. And then he turned to Bella, and Bella was no longer there. And he could see her nowhere. The 911 operator had instructed Mr. Simpson to await the arrival of police, and then he noticed a voice-mail message on his cellphone. From a medic with the Ottawa Paramedic Service. Informing him that Bella was in good hands. Quick work, that.

Bella had made her way, in pain, through the corn field, across six lanes of rush-hour traffic and into the Civic Hospital's emergency department where the chief of the paramedic service saw her: "The dog came running up and kind of looked like it was in distress. Tail between the legs and sort of this 'I'm scared' look on her face. She was terrified." Keith Buchanan, superintendent of operations, administered first aid, wrapped her in a towel.

Paramedic Keith Buchanan holds Bella the dog, moments after she she made her way to the Civic campus’ emergency room after being attacked by another dog in the Experimental Farm, Sept. 27, 2013. Paramedics administered First Aid and contacted Bella’s owner, Bruce Simpson, who had been frantically searching the farm for his dog.  Photograph by: Keith Buchanan

Bella's dog tag had her owners' cellphone numbers and they were called to be informed the paramedic service had Bella in their care. They then drove her and her owner to the Ottawa Veterinary Hospital on Boyd Avenue where Bella underwent three hours of surgery to stitch her together. She was released a day later.

"We're pretty crazy about our dog. She's like a child to us. She has a great personality. She's a real dog dog. She always looks like she's smiling. Everyone's just entranced by her, because she's pretty cute", said Mr. Simpson.

After being attacked by a much larger dog, Bella somehow knew to make her way from the Experimental Farm across busy Carling Avenue to the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital’s Emergency Room, where paramedics discovered her and administered First Aid.  Photograph by: Cole Burston, Ottawa Citizen

She wasn't smiling on Friday. "I just don't want it to happen to somebody else", said Bruce Simpson.

Astrophoto: The Arch of the Galaxy

By Phil Plait

Just the other day, scifi author (and devoted churro fanatic) John Scalzi tweeted, “I've said it before but it's worth repeating: I love living somewhere I can see the Milky Way.”

Phil Plait

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. His latest book is Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the Universe Will End.

I agree (and told him so). Living in an area with only mild light pollution—light from buildings, cars, street lights, and so on, leaking upward into the air and illuminating it—means when I walk outside into my back yard, I can immediately see lots of stars. Give me 15 minutes to let my eyes adapt to the darkness and it’s quite lovely here in Boulder. I can see the Milky Way as a faint, fuzzy stream across the sky.

But I’ve been to darker sites, places much farther from the lights of civilization, where the Milky Way is even more stunning. Still, the combined might of a hundred billion stars is reduced to a faint glow here on Earth, so the darker the sky, the higher the contrast, and the easier to see our galaxy’s wonder.

This is why I’m a tad jealous of photographer Mike Shainblum, who traveled into the Anza Borrego desert in southern California, a couple of hundred kilometers east of San Diego. The skies there get pretty dark, and the dry air cuts back on the scattered light from cities. Searching for the perfect road to make his foreground, he took this amazing picture of the galaxy in which we live:

A close encounter with the Milky Way. Click to galactinate, as you must.

Photo by Michael Shainblum, used by permission

This shot is actually a mosaic of 14 separate pictures, carefully merged into one big image. It’s a bit distorted; that’s a consequence of using a wide-angle lens and putting together so many separate shots. But still, it’s gorgeous. The central hub of the galaxy is obvious on the right, splashed with dark dust lanes that absorb the starlight from behind them, reddening it as well in much the same way dust in the air makes a sunset look aflame.

You can trace the dust to the left, following the plane of the Milky Way. Our galaxy is actually shaped like a huge disk, 100,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. In proportion, it’s about the same as three DVDs stacked together. We live inside the disk, so we see it edge-on, a thick stream of stars, gas, and dust strewn across the sky.

Light pollution dims this magnificence easily, but can also add some art to the picture; distant cities in Mexico punctuate the horizon in Shainblum’s picture, adding a splash of yellow for contrast.

Shainbloom is a gifted photographer; I featured his time-lapse video “Existence” on the blog a few months ago, and his astrophotos are simply spectacular. It’s well worth your time to peruse them.

Tip o’ the lens cap to Raphael Fraser on Twitter.

The Science As Evidence

"Our  (Environment Canada) model, in isolation, produces results that are in roughly the two-degree warming range in the mid-century. But if you look at all the models together, which is the important thing to do, there is a range and that range is important."
senior Environment Canada scientist, Greg Flato

A Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker makes its way through the ice in Baffin Bay. A local researcher says the melt of sea ice surpasses even pessimistic forecasts. 

 

"So when we talk about global warming as scientists and as a community of citizens, (and focus on air temperatures) we're making a fuss about what is really just a side show. Nearly all of what we have done has gone into the oceans ... and the oceans are going to hit back."
Graham Cogley, professor emiritus, geography, Trent University, Peterborough

The recognized "hiatus" of warming observed over the past 15 years notwithstanding, long-term trends still show to scientists that the warming over the past three decades is progressing. Their considered, professional scientific opinion is fairly universally held that global warming is a fact of our presence on Earth, and it is "unequivocal".

Dr. Graham Cogley has noted that the most recent assessment coming out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms the research holding that 93% of excess heat in the planet's climate is absorbed by oceans, while roughly 3% hastens melting ice, and an additional 3% sinks into the ground, while a mere one percent ends up in the atmosphere.

That excess heat sinking into the oceans of the world means sea levels will continue rising for two millennia, simply because it takes that long a period of time for oceans to respond to such changing conditions. Evidence is also on the rise linking trends to climate change, such as warming temperatures in the air, along with water, according to Xuebin Zhang, Environment Canada research scientist.

Data and links between levels of carbon emissions from human activity resulting in rising temperature levels could prove valuable in providing governments with information to aid in decision making surrounding how much fossil fuels should be left in the ground; what's more what will occur to temperatures if that energy is consumed.

"That's a new concept and a new result and it's described in this report" said Dr. Flato. "And that does provide a way to very simply look at the amount of emissions that could be accepted by the atmosphere for any particular temperature level." 

Dr. Flato praised the IPCC process, in that its mandate is being fulfilled, to take a collection of different scientific research, and reach consensus. The IPCC report points in the direction of research identifying links between carbon emission levels from human activity and the temperature levels that result from it.

Warming over the past 15 years has been seen at a rate of about 0.05C each decade; an estimated one-quarter of the previous short-term warming trend estimated in 2007. Numbers that do not affect the long-term trend illustrating that the three decades previous have been warmer than the last. The 1983 to 2012 period appears the warmest 30-year period in the last 1,400 years.

Since 1998, Earth has been building up heat at a rate similar to that which would be produced by four Hiroshima-grade atomic bombs being detonated every second; a measurement impossible for the normal human mind to lock into. Research has validated the presence of greenhouse warming with its distinct signature of upper atmosphere cooling and lower atmosphere warming.

BLUE MARBLE
National Academies of Science representing 80 different countries of the world all endorse the consensus opinion. Supported by leading scientific organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

IPCC report: It is clear that the atmosphere and oceans have warmed in recent decades, reducing average snow and ice cover, and increasing sea levels, corresponding to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions to levels unprecedented for nearly 800,000 years.

Sunrise Mission Provides A Closer Look At Sun’s Chromosphere

September 28, 2013

Image Credit: Thinkstock.com

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

In June 2013, the solar observatory Sunrise was carried aloft by a NASA scientific balloon. Three months later, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany have presented unique insights into a layer on the sun called the chromosphere. The images from Sunrise are the highest-resolution ultraviolet light images to date of this thin corrugated layer, which lies between the sun’s visible surface and the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona.

Sunrise has a three-foot mirror, making it the largest solar telescope to fly above the atmosphere. Sunrise weighs nearly 7,000 pounds and flew some 20 miles in the air for the five days it was drifting over the Atlantic. The telescope was launched from Kiruna in the north of Sweden and it landed on the remote Boothia Peninsula in northern Canada, gathering information about the chromosphere throughout its journey.

In the chromosphere, the temperature rises from 6,000 K/10,340 F/5,272 C at the surface of the sun to about 20,000 K/ 35,540 F/19,730 C. This region of the sun is constantly in motion, with different temperatures of hot material mixed over a range of heights. These heights stretch from the sun’s surface to many thousands of miles up. Further into the corona, the temperatures continue to rise and it is unknown what powers the rise in temperatures.

“In order to solve this riddle it is necessary to take as close a look as possible at the chromosphere – in all accessible wavelengths,” said Sami Solanki, the principal investigator for Sunrise from the Max Planck Institute. To obtain the images, Sunrise used an instrument that was able to filter particular ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are only emitted from the chromosphere.

A complex picture of the chronosphere is painted by these extremely high-resolution images in this particular wavelength. Dark regions with a diameter of approximately 600 miles can be discerned where the sun is quiet and inactive. These dark regions are surrounded by bright rims. Enormous flows of solar material rising up from within the sun, cooling off and sinking down again create these patterns. Occasionally, bright points flash up that are spectacularly eye-catching – they are much richer in contrast in these ultraviolet images than have been seen before. Researchers believe these bright points are indications of a phenomenon called magnetic flux tubes. These are the building blocks of the sun’s magnetic field, which is of particular interest to scientists as it is ultimately responsible for all of the dynamic activity we see on the sun.

“These first analyses are extremely promising,” said Solanki. “They show that the ultraviolet radiation from the chromosphere is highly suitable for visualizing detailed structures and processes.”
The Sunrise research team hopes that the next few months will provide further insights – and they are looking forward to collaborating with NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS mission. IRIS, which launched just weeks after Sunrise’s mission ended, also studies the ultraviolet radiation from chromosphere and corona.

Image 2 (below): Two images of the chromosphere as captured by the Sunrise solar observatory that flew on a NASA balloon in July 2013. On the left a typical pattern can be seen: dark areas surrounded by bright rims. On the right, the images show bright, stretched structures on the edges of the darker sunspots. Image Credit: MPS

Source: April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online

Topics: Technology Internet, Environment, Astrophysics, Sun, Plasma physics, Chromosphere, Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Corona, Solar telescopes, light sources, Physics, Astronomy, Space plasmas, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Exploring the Solar System From the Ends of the Earth

The best meteorites are found in … Antarctica.

By Meenakshi Wadhwa

The Sheldon Glacier, with Mount Barre in the background, is seen from Ryder Bay near Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, Antarctica. The white continent is also the meteorite continent.

Photo by NASA/British Antarctic Survey/Reuters

We’ve been to the moon and just about everywhere on Earth. So what’s left to discover? In September, Future Tense is publishing a series of articles in response to the question, “Is exploration dead?” Read more about modern-day exploration of the sea, space, land, and more unexpected areas.

Traditionally, when we think of exploring the solar system, we conjure up images of spacecraft that cost billions of dollars and traverse millions of miles to reach other worlds. We almost never stop to think that pieces of these other worlds may actually traverse millions of miles to reach us free of cost.

Fragments of asteroidal and planetary bodies in our solar system have been falling to Earth throughout the course of its 4.6 billion-year history. While there is some loss of this material from frictional heating in the atmosphere as the fragments fall to Earth, larger pieces do make it to the surface as meteorites (not to be confused with meteors, which represent only the light and sound phenomenon associated with the fall of a space rock through the Earth’s atmosphere). Scientists have used these pieces to push back the limits of our understanding of how and when our solar system and the planets in it were formed.

Meteorites fall everywhere on Earth with equal probability, but there are places where they are more easily found because the geology and the environmental conditions allow these fallen rocks to be preserved for up to millions of years. In fact, some of the best meteorite-hunting grounds are in the cold deserts of Antarctica. The cold and dry conditions keep these rocks from space from being weathered and eroded away. Other factors unique to Antarctica are in play, too, and they serve to actively concentrate meteorites in certain areas called “stranding surfaces.” These surfaces are typically found in ice fields near the Transantarctic Mountains. Here, the movement of the ice sheets toward the Antarctic coastlines pushes them up against the mountains. At the same time, the high-speed, gravitationally driven Katabatic winds ablate away the surface of this ice to expose meteorites that had previously fallen on the ice sheets and been carried along with them. What results is a treasure trove of meteorites: Often dozens or even hundreds can be found in an area the size of a football field. There are no other places on Earth where such concentrations of relatively well-preserved meteorites have been found. We have discovered that the southernmost continent is a uniquely excellent place to hunt for space rocks. And this discovery was made rather serendipitously.

In 1973, William Cassidy, a professor of geology and planetary science at the University of Pittsburgh, was attending a conference and happened to hear a talk about meteorites that a team of Japanese glaciologists had found in the Antarctic during a field trip in 1969. The scientists had apparently uncovered nine meteorites in a relatively small area—50 square kilometers. This would not have been terribly surprising if all these rocks had been of the same kind, which would have suggested that they came from a single meteorite fall. However, these nine meteorites represented five different types.

Something clicked for Cassidy: This meant that there was some sort of meteorite concentration mechanism operating in such areas in Antarctica. It then took him a few years to convince the National Science Foundation that it was worth funding an expedition to the white continent to hunt and collect meteorites, but he eventually managed to do it. This is how the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites, or ANSMET, program came into being in 1976, and it has since been hugely successful. In the last 37 years, more than 20,000 meteorite specimens have been collected in Antarctica by the ANSMET program. This represents many more meteorites than were ever recovered throughout the world in the 500 years prior. Parallel collection efforts by the Japanese and Europeans inspired by ANSMET have similarly resulted in the recovery of thousands more meteorites. The amazing thing is that total cost of this entire enterprise of collecting meteorites in Antarctica, by the combined efforts of the Americans, Japanese and Europeans for well over three decades, has been less than the cost of a NASA Discovery mission—a class of mission described by former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin as a “faster, better, cheaper” way of exploring the solar system.

Meteorite Alh 84001 from Mars, originally found in Antartica, is now at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Photo by Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

The contribution of the Antarctic meteorite collection effort to planetary science, and to scientific knowledge in general, cannot be overstated. The new and unique meteorite samples collected from this effort over the years have literally allowed scientists working in laboratories here on Earth to explore the far reaches of the solar system. Indeed, these meteorites represent fragments of other worlds that are unlikely to be visited by any spacecraft in the near future, much less by a sample return mission that might bring back materials from them.

For example, one of the most significant developments enabled by the Antarctic meteorite collection effort has been the recognition that although the majority of meteorites originated on asteroids, a small fraction have originated on Mars and the moon, thus providing us with the ability to study the origin and evolution of these planetary bodies. The first meteorites for which Martian and lunar origins were established beyond reasonable doubt (named EETA 79001 and ALHA 81005, respectively) were recovered in Antarctica within the first five years of the ANSMET program. Given that it could be many years before we are able to return to the moon or to get a sample back from Mars, the Antarctic has taken on a special significance as the potential source of new and interesting planetary materials for scientific investigations.

On a more personal note, I will vouch for the fact that a trip to the ice to collect precious fragments of other worlds can be exhilirating and perhaps even life-changing. It is the knowledge that one is doing one’s part in contributing to the grand scientific enterprise. It is being immersed every single day, for weeks at a time, in the astounding beauty of a uniquely majestic place on our Earth where not too many humans have ever set foot. It is knowing that the meteorites being collected are each a piece of another place in our solar system where no human may ever set foot.

More from Slate’s series on the future of exploration: Is the ocean the real final frontier, or is manned sea exploration dead? Why are the best meteorites found in Antarctica? Can humans reproduce on interstellar journeys? Why are we still looking for Atlantis? Why do we celebrate the discovery of new species but keep destroying their homes? Who will win the race to claim the melting Arctic—conservationists or profiteers? Why don’t travelers ditch Yelp and Google in favor of wandering? What can exploring Google’s Ngram Viewer teach us about history? How did a 1961 conference jump-start the serious search for extraterrestrial life? Why are liminal spaces—where urban areas meet nature—so beautiful?

The author participated in the 1992-1993 and the 2012-2013 field seasons of the ANSMET program, which is operated through Case Western Reserve University with support from NSF, NASA, and the Smithsonian Institution. This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Meenakshi Wadhwa is director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University and participates in the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program.

The New Liberal Marijuana Party

The Liberal Party of Canada under its new leader, Justin Trudeau, rejected any possibility that to gain traction against the ruling Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it would consider a merge with the New Democratic Party. It is the NDP that nudged aside the Liberals from official opposition status, gaining more seats within the Liberals' traditional source of power within the country, leaving the Liberals in a pathetic third place after its 2006 meltdown and a succession of leaders who were unable to enthuse Canadian voters.

Justin Trudeau, however, that's another matter altogether. He has panache, youth, an infectious personality and appeal, along with the propensity to speak whatever comes to mind, incautiously, which might represent a fault in anyone else, but endears him to the public. His frank, uncalled-for admission that he smoked pot with friends while a sitting MP, and his later interview where he spoke of his intention to see marijuana legalized and taxed just like any other recreational drug reveals his platform, it would seem. A decision to link his party with the Marijuana Party.

While the state of the Canadian economy remains top of mind to most Canadians thinking ahead toward the future, and is the top consideration of the current Conservative-led government, Justin Trudeau hasn't much to say about the economy and how he and his party would undertake measures according to a well-thought-out plan of action to ensure its ongoing robust condition. He feels, he has more or less stated, that to set out his position on the economy is premature.

But his position on an important social message on make marijuana legally available to all who wish to use it, while at the same time protecting young Canadians from its prevalence much as is done with tobacco, is of prime importance, is being addressed, and is causing quite a stir in the public. There will be job creation in establishing legal and large-scale marijuana production facilities.

At the present time, just coincidentally, plans are afoot that a medical marijuana facility be opened at an old abandoned chocolate factory.

Willie Wonka would love that one. Two treats; chocolate failed, but marijuana seems a winner; take your pick. More presumably modest plans for the production of medical marijuana, but once the law establishes that marijuana should be seen not as a gateway drug to more dangerous illegal drugs like cocaine, but nothing different than smoking a cigarette or having a drink, then production can be ramped up, the facilities expanded, and a larger work staff taken on.

Utilizing the old Hershey chocolate plant in Smiths Falls for an initial production staff of 100 employees is a start, one that makes the mayor of Smiths Falls fairly ecstatic for the future of his hard-done-by community. "It's going to happen somewhere in Canada, our community of Smiths Falls -- population 9.000 -- have lost 1,700 jobs in the last five or six years. Our doors are open to try and attract new investment and more fundamentally, recreate and re-establish some of the jobs that have been lost here."


He was speaking glowingly of the revelation that Tweed Inc. plans to use 180,000 square feet of the 470,000 former Hershey chocolate plant complex located in Smiths Falls, and empty of any kind of production since 2008. It was due for demolition if Icon International couldn't find tenants. "We've been shaking the trees and looking in the bushes for the last five or six years ... to try and find a user, but it's such a large physical plant", said Mayor Dennis Staples.

Well, look no more. The town's saviour has arrived. And the Canadian public is about to be extremely well served and serviced. About 30,000 Canadians have been prescribed, up to the present time, the use of medical marijuana for health and pain-relief purposes, according to Health Canada. Tweed, the company that proposes to locate its facilities in Smiths Falls, foresees operating at full capacity as soon as its operation is set up and fully functional.

And, how appropriate, given the circumstances; its corporate team has a handful of ties to the Liberals. Its founder and CEO, Chuck Rifici currently serves as the chief financial officer for the national Liberal Party's board of directors. "It seems Justin Trudeau's focus is on legalizing marijuana...", said Prime Minister Stephen Harper's deputy director of communications.

And, added Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney of the issue of the new plant opening, recently come to his attention: "[Chuck Rifici] plans to open a massive medical marijuana operation in rural Ontario, while the Liberal leader champions marijuana legalization." Something seems to be questionable in the State of Canadian Affairs; values, priorities, ethics and awareness of the greater social good.

But the economy is, after all, being highlighted, it appears. For Tweed Inc. Chairman, Bruce Linton was a past president of the Carleton University Students Association. Posters have appeared at Carleton extolling legalization, claiming that two-thirds of all Canadians have a wish to legalize or decriminalize marijuana. The Young Liberals of Canada provided those posters on campus "to engage youth in a conversation about the legalization of marijuana", according to Liberal communications manager Andree-Lyne Halle.

Reaching the hearts and minds and voting fervour of young Canadians through appealing not to their sense of mature democratic responsibility, but their partying instincts. The posters include a code linking with a "Join the Party" website with a message: "The Liberal Party of Canada wants to treat Canadians like adults. Prohibition has failed, let's create a smarter way." Those disagreeing are most obviously socially immature.

Tomas Belanger smokes a quarter-pound joint on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, April 20, 2013. Thousands of people crowded onto Parliament Hill to mark the event known as 4/20, an annual rally calling for the legalization of marijuana.  Photograph by: Chris Roussakis

"The fact that one of Justin Trudeau's first policy priorities is legalizing marijuana demonstrates that he does not have the judgement to be prime minister"; a statement issued by Conservative party officials. "With absolutely no economic policy, Justin Trudeau's highest priority remains legalizing marijuana", added Mr. Blaney, Minister of Public Safety. "Canadians deserve to know why Justin Trudeau wants to make it easier for children to access drugs"

As it is currently, the possession and use of marijuana other than for medicinal purposes remains illegal in Canada. It is used, despite that, by so many people that considering legalizing its use might represent a issue whose time has come, quite apart from the status as a subject of primary importance it is given by the Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals. Criminal penalties accruing to those arrested or threatened by the law for casual use seems outdated.

On the other hand, marijuana use by Canadian teens "is among the highest in the world", according to the Canadian Public Health Association. And the issue of whether, when, how and why there might be harm in its ongoing, long-time and over-use still has not been adequately settled by medical science. Its use or misuse can become a problem with operating a motor vehicle. Its effect on the still-maturing brain remains another issue.

This is not a simple matter with a simple answer. But nor is it an issue that should be top of the agenda for a major federal political party to solve in advance of other high-priority issues facing the country today.

The Peace Tower is reflected in the sunglasses of a woman as she she celebrates 4/20 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, April 20, 2013. Thousands of people crowded onto Parliament Hill to mark the event known as 4/20, an annual rally calling for the legalization of marijuana.      Photograph by: Chris Roussakis

Driving affects ovaries and pelvis, Saudi sheikh warns women

Saturday, 28 September 2013 -- Al Aribaya

Saudi Sheikh Salah al-Luhaydan said driving “could have a reverse physiological impact" on women. (Al Arabiya)

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Al Arabiya

Saudi women seeking to challenge a de facto ban on driving should realize that this could affect their ovaries and pelvises, Sheikh al-Luhaydan, a judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association, told Saudi news website sabq.org.

Driving “could have a reverse physiological impact. Physiological science and functional medicine studied this side [and found] that it automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis. This is why we find for women who continuously drive cars their children are born with clinical disorders of varying degrees,” Sheikh al-Luhaydan said.

Saudi female activists have launched an online campaign urging women to drive on Oct. 26.
More than 11,000 women have signed the oct26driving.com declaration that says: “Since there are no clear justifications for the state to ban adult, capable women from driving. We call for enabling women to have driving tests and for issuing licenses for those who pass.”

Sheikh al-Luhaydan urged these women to consider “the mind before the heart and emotion and look at this issue with a realistic eye.”

“The result of this is bad and they should wait and consider the negativities,” he said.

Twitter reaction

Al-Luhaydan's statement drew immediate reaction on social media, with many Saudis ridiculing his “great scientific discoveries.” A Twitter hashtag “Women_driving_affects_ovaries_and_pelvises” was created and is going viral among Arab users.
Female twitter user @Shams_AlShmous sarcastically applauded the sheikh’s “exclusive scientific achievement.”
A female user with the name of Ms Jackson @B_B1ack tells everyone: “What’s your understanding of physiology, leave it to our Sheikh al-Luhaydan.
Another female @Mshaal80 asked whether al-Haydan “studied Shariah, medicine or foolishness.”

Not part of Sharia

The head of kingdom’s religious police said last week that the “Islamic sharia does not have a text forbidding women driving.”
Sheikh Abdulatif al-Sheikh stressed that since he was appointed as head of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice religious police have not pursued or stopped a woman driving.

Tags

saudi arabia, sheikh, women driving

Pakistani quake area struck again

BBC News online -- 28 September 2013

The BBC's Saba Eitizaz: "We saw people panicking and fleeing their shops"

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has struck south-west Pakistan, in a region where at least 400 people died in a quake earlier this week.

Reports said the quake hit remote Awaran district, killing at least 12 people and burying others under rubble.

An official told Pakistan television that communications already damaged by last Tuesday's quake had been cut off.

Efforts to help thousands left homeless by the first earthquake have struggled against poor roads and separatists.

The US Geological Survey said Saturday's tremor measured 6.8 magnitude and could be felt across Balochistan province.

Pakistan's Meteorological Department classed it as an aftershock measuring 7.2 magnitude.

Abdul Rasheed Baloch, the deputy commissioner of Awaran district, told Pakistani television that one village, Nokjo, had suffered damage to most of its buildings, leaving people trapped under debris.

"The telephone system has been damaged and we are not able to talk to someone and find out the exact information about the losses... but we have reports of severe losses in that area," he said, according to Associated Press.

Eight of those who died in Saturday's tremor were from Nokjo, officials said, with another four killed in the Mashkay area.

An Agence France-Presse reporter in Awaran said hundreds of patients being treated after the last quake fled a hospital in panic as the latest tremor struck.

Saturday's quake was felt as far away as Karachi.
An office worker there described his chair shaking: "At first I thought it was a delusion or a false feeling. But all my colleagues ran out of the office. The shakes were heavy."

Officials have estimated that about 300,000 people were affected by the earlier, 7.7 magnitude quake which levelled mud and homemade brick homes, injuring hundreds.

Many survivors have been sleeping in the open air or in tents.
Rescue and relief efforts after the earlier quake have been hampered by the region's poor road network.

Officials have appealed to separatist military groups operating in the area following attacks on army units involved in providing assistance.

Pakistan's official paramilitary force, the Frontier Corps, has been leading rescue and relief operations.

It already had thousands of soldiers deployed in the area because it is fighting a long-running separatist insurgency by Baloch nationalist rebels.

The violent force of Tuesday's 7.7-magnitude quake caused the creation of a new 200m (656ft) long island off the coast of Pakistan near the port of Gwadar.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool: "Until a few days ago this was all part of the sea bed"

Giving Their All For Islam

"Ten years after the invasion of Afghanistan by Western forces, we now have people with even greater access to the details of what's going on, and have easier travel access to a conflict hot spot. And, frankly, because of the nature of this conflict, which will likely run for years, we'll see a lot of 'veterans' likely return, just like the Afghan conflict. It simply has a lot of 'ugly' that will cause repercussions in the years to come, at home and abroad."
Ray Boisvert, former counter-terror chief, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

"The benefit for myself in terms of the wordly life is most certainly back in Canda where I could see my family, indulge in fornication and infidelity legally and limitlessly and stagger around poisoned on intoxicants and then lie to myself and the world about 'Freedom' and how fantastic it is.
"After all that is what we were conditioned to believe since our school days, was it not? Challenging those learned assumptions, questioning them and actually being willing to change yourself is always much harder to do. My doing so caused a search for truth and ended in a conclusion that Islam was the answer. With that came Islam's concept of working for an afterlife that never ends. ... An eternity in Paradise cannot be traded for 7 years (if that) of this place."
"Sure, Canada -- like this life -- is a place where you can allow yourself to believe you have figured things out. Among the simplest ways to do so is to forget that anyone or anything else exists beyond it, or that you have any responsibility to anyone or anything other than it."
Canadian-born Damian Clairmont/Mustafa Al-Gharib, 22, Syria

Now known as Mustafa Al-Gharib, Damian Clairmont of Calgary converted to Islam following a suicide attempt at age 17. After he left Canada last November, CSIS officers told his mother he had gone to Syria and was part of an extremist group they had been monitoring for two years.

Damian Clairmont, now a Muslim convert by the name of Mustafa Al-Gharib is one of an estimated dozens of Canadians now in Syria, taking part in the protracted agony of its civil war. Syria is now being recognized in many quarters as "the new Afghanistan", the "epicentre of jihad". Jihadists are streaming into the country from Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. And from Europe and North America as well.

Among them was Ali Dirie, a Canadian of Somali extraction, a former member of the infamous Toronto 18 terrorist group whose plot to bomb downtown Toronto, storm the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, bomb CSIS headquarters and behead Members of Parliament -- just the way they saw it done through videos and the dreadful screening of the death of Daniel Pearl -- to avenge the perceived assaults upon and insults toward Islam and Muslims.

Alie Diri once spoke of Caucasians as the "number one filthiest people on the face of the planet". When he was sentenced for his part in the Toronto plots he declared himself to have  departed from the Islamist fold; no longer subscribing to terrorism or violence. On his release from prison, however, he departed for Syria and reportedly joined the Al Nusra Front. Recent rumours that he was recently killed were unverified.

Canada's government is uncertain how many Canadans may be involved in the Syrian conflict. There is no exit control leading to a difficulty in tracking citizens abroad. Reports of Canadian rebels killed in conflict are difficult to verify, although the RCMP did dispatch an investigative team to Algeria after two Canadians were said to have died in the joint venture Ain Amenas gas plant attack in the remotely-located desert area. Just as they've done with the aftermath of the al-Shabab mall attack in Kenya.


Mubin Shaikh, a paid informer who infiltrated the Toronto 18 for the RCMP and whose testimony during their trial was vital to the trial outcome, claims to have heard that Dirie's death had been announced at Toronto's Salaheddin mosque. Syria now represents the largest jihadist attraction for Muslim youth looking for an opportunity to pay their dues to Islam through violent jihad.

The London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalization estimates 2,000 to 5,500 foreign fighters had joined the Syrian opposition forces since 2011. And of that number 7% to 11% were considered to be of European or North American origin. Suffering a mass delusion that they are instructed by Islam to "do something" about the responsibilities they owe to their faith.

For Muslim convert Damian Clairmont it is a pious rejection of what he terms the Western-based degradation of "fornication, infidelity, intoxicants". For the destroyers of American life who pursued instruction in the United States on their entry visas in flying, but never landing, large aircraft, the promise of the easy availability of wine, women and song in the United States was an attraction.

One taken appreciative advantage of before they gave their all for Islam.

Miguel Medina / AFP / Getty Images files A Syrian rebel walks past a destroyed building in Salma in the coastal province of Latakia on April 26, 2013.

Risky Adventure Tourism

"When human lives are at risk -- although there is a dollar value attached to it -- I'm not sure that a cost can really be calculated."
"Canadians expect us to do this."
"When people are in distress in this country, we utilize our assets to find these people and bring them back to safety."
"Although lives may not have been hanging by a thread at that particular point, in the North or off the coast, things can change quickly."
Master Warrant Officer Greg Smith, Canadian Joint Operations Command search and rescue advisor

Nunavut Tourism

So, here's the story of Canada's courageous military rescuing tourists and their guides -- ten tourists hailing from Japan, Jordan, Australia, Britain, France, United States, oh and Canada. Ten staff from an outfitters, all ensconced on a very large ice floe, 50 kilometres long, 25 wide. Oops, it was no longer anchored, and had begun drifting toward the Northwest Passage. Yes, that Northwest Passage of legendary exploration, where you know, during the age of Arctic discovery many lives were lost?

The cost alone for flying rescue aircraft in a noble effort to save these people from the folly of their adventure came to $1,044,302. A lot of loose change, that. Wait; we're nowhere near done; five "radio message droppers" were floated down to the adventurers at a cost of $493.37 each. Strangely, those meant to be rescued signalled that they were "all OK", and gee whiz, "too busy to talk". Still, concerned at the ice "making large ominous sounds".

There's more to the rescue costs: three sea-rescue survival kits containing: six-person life raft, survival equipment and radio, air-dropped "just as a precaution", each ringing in at $23,000. They were not used, they were not needed, but guess what, irrespective of use or need, they cannot be "reused" another day for another rescue. They are now finito. Oops, five waterproof radio transmitters: $352.96, and five light markers at $62.96 apiece.

Not to forget salaries and living expenses for the rescuers, along with their room accommodation where a room in Arctic Bay comes in at $231 nightly. Another $2,903 for civilian overtime and $5,910 for military salaries. Now, let's see, the total would be -- $2,270,282. Rivalling, without a doubt, the stupendous costs associated with one rescue mission after another dispatched to find the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin and his crew.

A mission that was, in the end, spectacular in its vision and determination, but ultimately unsuccessful, since their remains never were discovered. As luck and modernity would have it, all those adventurous people on the ground more or less rescued themselves. Brought to Arctic Bay airport, and not by the crew of the Hercules preparing to rescue them. No fewer than five provinces sent planes and helicopters to help in the mission.

The tour director later explained that the situation as it unfolded "was never an emergency". His happy clients "were having dinner served to them and listening to presentations", even as the military was mobilizing its rescue resources. Speaking of expenses, this is a tour advertised for $10,900, plus $4,524 for return flights from Ottawa to Arctic Bay "based on double occupancy". A little pricey for many people, but presumably these were a well-heeled bunch.

"What the people were doing is a detail that doesn't change the responsibility of the folks at the pointy end of it, those doing the rescue", chided Master Warrant Officer Smit. The luxury being enjoyed by those on the cusp of rescue does not calculate for the military.  It might, though, for the people footing the bill, which is to say the Canadian taxpayer. Because that money comes from somewhere, after all.

And when all is said and done, perhaps we should expect those who can afford such delightful experiences to pay their own way, fully, when they come as guests to the country to enjoy the incredible geography, scenery and perils of survival. It should logically be well understood when such adventures are being arranged by tourism hosts that they inform their guests that they are required to have proof in their possession of prepaid danger insurance.

To compensate the military for such expenditures when they want to play Dudley Doright, and by extension, of course the Canadian taxpayer dinged by circumstances, most of whom can only dream of such fascinating adventures for themselves. Who don't really think it's up to them to subsidize either the tour operators or their clients for their delightful expeditions into the known unknown.

Hey! The Northwest Passage...!
Where for centuries Arctic exploration was riveted on the possibility of finding a passage through the ice-packed ocean that might link Europe to the Far East. From Viking sailors and Basque whalers to the European explorers whose names ring familiarly in historical accounts of hardship and disappointment, privation and abandonment. John Cabot, Vasco da Gama, Martin Frobisher, Sir John Franklin.

Some of the rescued hunters and tourists walk away from a military helicopter in Arctic Bay, Nunavut. (Photo courtesy of Niore Iqalukjuak) 

Now, with climate change and melting ice, not only is shipping being envisaged, but tourism is booming. Come one, come all, the taxpayers of Canada are proud to present this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to the curious and the opportunistic.

Nunavut Tourism

Ambitiously Carnivorous

In this photo taken from a remote camera at the Lazovsky State Nature Reserve in the Primorye region of Russias' Far East, a golden eagle attacks a deer.

"I've been assessing deer causes of death in Russia for 18 years -- this is the first time I've seen anything like this. I saw the deer carcass first as I approached the trap on a routine check to switch out memory cards and change batteries, but something felt wrong about it. There were no large carnivore tracks in the snow, and it looked like the deer had been running and then just stopped and died.
"It was only after we got back to camp that I checked the images from the camera and pieced everything together. I couldn't believe what I was seeing."
Dr. Linda Kerley, Zoological Society of London

Dr. Kerley and her study co-author and colleague, Dr. Jonathan Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society published a paper, appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Raptor Research. And it will be seen as a highly unusual situation by anyone who studies the biological imperative of survival among carnivorous creatures and those upon whom they prey. In the experience of the two scientists there have been other occasions they were aware of when golden eagles preyed upon animals.

Animals much, much smaller than the Sika deer that the eagle their camera had caught attacking -- the deer that ultimately succumbed to the savage attack by its assailant. The photographs were taken in the Lazovsky State Nature Reserve in Russia's Far East Primorye region.  The reason for the camera set-up was to document the predations of Siberian tigers on the Sika deer that are prevalent in the geography.

The deer remains were discovered weeks after the attack had occurred, very close by where the camera footage was taken. The young deer was simply no match for the seasoned and rapaciously-deadly hunting skill of the winged predator, and its determination to make a feast of deer flesh. Truly, a representative in chilling reality of "Nature red in tooth and claw".

They had been filming for five years in the area, and what they discovered on this occasion was unusual enough to have made their research a success of a type they had hardly envisaged. Grist for the mill of documentation through a scholarly paper, with full pictorial documentary evidence to support their observations.

"The scientific literature is full of references to golden eagle attacks on different animals from around the world, from things as small as rabbits -- their regular prey -- to coyote and deer.
"The most startling to me was a record from Norway in 2004, when a golden eagle swooped down and carried off a small [about 3 kg] brown bear cub trailing after its mother. Everybody knows not to mess with a brown bear sow with cubs, but that particular eagle was unfazed."
Dr. Jonathan Slaght

The Celestial Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet

By Phil Plait

Deep in the heart of the constellation of Scorpius, star formation regions litter space. These clouds of gas and dust are collapsing, birthing stars left and right. We see so many in this direction because we’re looking toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy; it’s like looking downtown and seeing more activity in that direction.

Phil Plait

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. His latest book is Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the Universe Will End.

One of these clouds, at a distance of more than 5,000 light-years from Earth, is called the Cat’s Paw nebula. When you use a “regular” telescope that sees in visible light, as our eyes do, the hydrogen gas glows in patches, resembling the bottoms of our household pets’ feet. But when you look in the submillimeter, wavelengths of light well outside what our eyes can see, the dust that is opaque and black in visible light comes alive, like a fire strewn through a network of dark caverns:

Dust aflame in the Cat's Paw! Actually, it's very very cold. Click to enfelinate, and you really want to.

This view is from the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope, located in the high desert in Chile. At an elevation of a staggering (literally) 5,100 meters (16,700 feet), the air is so thin that the 'scope is literally above most of the atmosphere. That’s good, because water vapor in the air strongly absorbs light with submillimeter wavelengths; to a telescope like APEX a little bit of moisture in the air might as well be a steel lid across the observatory.

A slightly wider view of the Cat's Paw in visible light. Click to embiggen and see this in glorious hi-res.

Photo by T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and T. Abbott (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

A new camera, called Artemis, has just been installed on APEX, and this is one of the first images it took. Artemis is a fairly advanced camera, able to see larger swaths of the submillimeter sky than cameras have before it. Affixed to APEX, it provides amazing sensitivity and field of view.

The shot of the Cat’s Paw is pretty amazing. In general, objects emit light depending on their temperature: Something very hot (like a star) will emit light with shorter wavelengths and be bright. Colder objects (like the dust in the Cat’s Paw) will emit much longer wavelength light and be faint. The dust seen by Artemis in the Cat’s Paw is beyond cold; it glows at a chilly 8 Kelvin—minus 265 degrees Celsius or minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit, just a few degrees above absolute zero. Dust like this chokes star-forming clouds, which we usually see in visible light as dark lanes and filaments strewn across them. But to Artemis, they are like flames in the interstellar canvas.

The Artemis observations have been superposed on the stars and gas seen by the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, which views the skies in infrared, just outside what our eyes can see. In it, you can just see a couple of the soap-bubble features in the Cat’s Paw, places where the furious light and winds from young, massive stars have compressed the gas around them, snow-plowing it into thin spherical shells light-years across. The forces at work here are huge and fierce; baby stars are a tempestuous lot.

Because the Cat’s Paw is a good example of a large, nearby stellar nursery, it’s a favorite target for astronomers. Not long ago, it was observed using the space-based telescopes Herschel and Spitzer, as well as the ground-based NEWFIRM infrared telescope:

In the far-infrared, glowing knots indicate where massive stars are struggling to be born. This has roughly the same scale as the visible light image above; the two blue cavities on the bottom are the same as the two round orange regions at the bottom of the visible light image.

Photo by S. Willis (CfA); ESA/Herschel ; NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC; CTIO/NOAO/AURA/NSF

That image is in the far-infrared, where warmer dust glows (shown in green). The bright red and orange spots are newly born massive stars, and as you can see, they form along that long filament seen in the APEX image. Dense dust is where new stars are born! That’s not obvious in either the near-infrared or submillimeter images alone. But when you combine the power of telescopes that see across the electromagnetic spectrum, much more of the real Universe becomes clear.

And the Cat’s Paw isn’t done yet. The thick clots of dust seen by Artemis and the other observatories is an indication that there is more material from which stars can be woven, and that the nebula will make many more before its day is done.

Artemis is new, and still being tested. The image above is a down payment on the science it promises, and clearly, what it will certainly be able to deliver.

Unfit

There is just no end, it seems, of these dreadful trials where the most odious child abuse is revealed to the public. It is almost impossible to fathom that a man would act out violently toward his seven-week-old baby. So consistently and so violently as to create a future for the child that is utterly bereft of normalcy. Inflicting upon the child blindness, delayed intelligence and an utterly bleak future. That child, now three years of age, is blind, cannot speak other than the most basic sounds.

This is 'Jay' as a baby. He is now three years old.

The little boy, whose full name is understandably withheld is unable to stand or walk without assistance. As a baby he suffered catastrophic brain injury. It is his father who is now on trial in Toronto. He has pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and an additional two offences with respect to the injuries sustained by the child. And one count of assault against his former common-law wife, the baby's mother.

Joao (John) Rosa is now 23 years of age. When his child was born he was 19, the child's mother 18 years of age. The child's mother's family disapproved of her choice of a partner in life, and she was estranged from them. There were no neglect charges lodged against the mother. When they moved in together, they had a little two-bedroom apartment, and the young woman worked, while John Rosa did not.

John Rosa in 361 University Ave. court Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. (Pam Davies sketch)

Her common-law partner was a lay-about. She worked until the baby was born. While he did nothing other than play video games and hang out with his pals. When the baby was born they lived on welfare. While she became a housewife and caring mother, he indulged himself however he wished. While controlling everything she did; whom she could see, how she should dress, and she obeyed.

They had arguments, and he began to be violent with her. He would fling her about. Once he punched her in the stomach, tried to choke her and kicked her where she had stitches from the delivery of their child. He also began banging the baby about discreetly, when she wasn't around, although noticing a bruise or two she queried him and he denied, denied.

One day the baby was unresponsive. She fed the baby through a dropper, bathed it, but the baby hardly responded. His father had developed a habit of tossing the 7-week-old baby into the air, terrifying the infant, but when the mother demanded he cease, he simply laughed. She explained he wasn't yet old enough for that kind of treatment, to little avail.

The baby failed to wake for his usual night-time feeding and in the morning he was feverish. She informed her partner they would have to take the baby to hospital. He simply continued palling about with his friends, finally came up to the apartment, demanded dinner, and had a shower. And then acquiesced to driving the baby to Sick Children's Hospital.

Where doctors examining the baby found him with seven broken ribs, four broken leg bones, bleeding in his eyes and brain. And a skull fracture "almost from ear to ear", in the description of the trial prosecutor. Feverish work on the part of the medical staff saved the baby from imminent death.
Six weeks later, on his release from hospital he was given over to the care of a child-welfare agency.

Now three years of age, he lives with a foster mother who is also a nurse. His mother has supervised visits. She is expecting another baby, this one with a new boyfriend.

The Autumnal Equinox … FROM SPACE!

By Phil Plait

Our home planet on the day of the Autumnal Equinox. Click to engaianate.

Photo by Roscosmos / NTSOMZ/ SRC "Planeta" / zelenyikot.livejournal.com

A few days ago—Sunday at 20:44 UTC (4:44 p.m. EDT), to be exact—was the moment of the autumnal equinox. There are a number of ways to explain this, though the definition is that it’s the moment the center of the Sun’s disk has a declination of zero degrees when it’s moving southward in its annual path across the sky.

Phil Plait

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. His latest book is Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the Universe Will End.

Not very enlightening, is it? Well, unless you’re an astronomer.

Another way to say it is that the Sun was directly over the Earth’s equator, illuminating equally the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This happens twice a year, the other time being at the vernal (spring) equinox in March.

The word equinox itself means equal night, referring to the idea that daytime and nighttime are the same length on that day. In reality that’s a misnomer; the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a lens, making the Sun rise a few minutes earlier than it would if the Earth were airless, and set a few minutes later as well. So daytime on the equinox is actually a few minutes longer than night. The more you know.

But the equinox makes itself known if you look at the Earth from space. The picture above is from the Russian weather satellite Electro-L. This orbits our planet high above the equator, in what’s called a geosynchronous orbit. The time it takes to circle the Earth once is 24 hours, the same amount of time it takes the Earth to spin once. To the satellite, it appears to see the same face of the Earth all the time; to us on the ground, the satellite appears frozen in the sky, occupying one spot in space.

The picture shows the Earth on the day of the equinox, taken at about 05:30 UTC (01:30 EDT), 15 hours before the actual moment of the equinox. Still, close enough. It’s lovely, isn’t it? The picture is a combination of visible light (the kind we see) and near infrared, which highlights vegetation. The IR is given a green tint in the picture to make it look more natural to our landlubber eyes.

More importantly, note the illumination: The entire northern and southern hemispheres are lit! If you were on the north pole or the south pole, you’d see the Sun sitting right on the horizon. Of course, for the former the Sun gets lower every day, marking the oncoming winter. For the south pole, the Sun gets higher, meaning summer is coming.

The image was processed by journalist and space enthusiast Vitaliy Egorov. He also put together a day’s worth of images from Elektro-L (ranging from Sep. 20 at 20:30 to Sep. 21 at 15:30 UTC) into this very cool animation:

Remember, from the point of view of the satellite, the Earth sits motionless underneath it … but our atmosphere is anything but. You can see clouds swirling, the shadow line between day and night sweep across the globe, and even the reflection of the Sun in the waters beneath. In the images used, the infrared images are colored red, which gives our planet an odd, Mars-like hue.

I’m fascinated by the clouds. You can see the huge (and deadly) typhoon Usagi about to slam into China (in the still frame above, taken two days later, you can see it’s moved west), and the enormous swath of clouds splayed across the southern Indian Ocean (note again in the still frame the eastern tip has developed into a curled shape by the Coriolis effect). I think if I lived in space, once I stopped throwing up everything I’ve ever eaten since I was born, I could simply gaze out the porthole at our spinning globe. Maybe this is just a billion years of evolution speaking, but I think our planet is a fantastic place, pleasing to the eye and to the brain as well. We’ve been living on it for a long, long time, but sometimes you need to get up and above it to truly appreciate its beauty.