GREAT CANADIAN RIVERS

Discovered a series on Amazon Prime. Dating from the early 2,000's it's called Great Canadian Rivers. Covers three seasons and has film of over three dozen rivers. Big ones. Small ones. From the east coast to British Columbia. From the border with the United States to the Arctic. Fantastic video, out its the product of Canadian producers.

Different music for each film, which they have the good sense not to use ALL the time. But different for each episode. Good film of birds and wildlife. With plenty of birdsong. I just wish they had labels. I recognize some. Discovered the call of the bald eagle. And it it's not what you would expect. Sort of a crk, crk, crk. Interviews with First Nations tribes that lived on the land long before the Europeans showed up.

My only real complaint is that the episodes jump around the country. However a map is used to show where the river is. Some of the rivers are the great ones like the Columbia. Some are very small. All are beautiful. Some are small. All are wonderful. Some are largely unchanged. Some are threatened. All are precious to us.

 Worth a watch if you can find it. And reminds us how dependent many of those rivers depend on the glaciers and snows of the high mountain ranges.

CARL SAGAN AND THE PALE BLUE DOT

As the Voyager space craft left the orbit of Neptune the craft was turned towards the sun for last pictures of the planets. Just below the rings of Saturn is a pale blue dot. That is earth. What Carl Sagan said about our little dot in space then echoes even more strongly now. Our spaceship earth.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.

On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar. Every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, live there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturing, our imagine self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity-in all this vastness- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and if I might add, a character building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known..  

FIFTY YEARS AGO

This week marked the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Al Jazeera English had an entry on FB. Which brought out the usual it's all a hoax crap. However many of them had Arabic sounding names. Some with enough flaws in English to suggest this was an actual real person.Also try this Wickipedia entry.

But you go on the page and there isn't much there. Somebody spending all their entries changing their profile pictures. Real person or a bot? Heaven knows there is a lively conspiracy industry claiming the lunar landings never happened. Along with flat earth, crisis actors at shootings, 9/11, and so on into inanity.

Read some of the goofy comments. And there it's no changing closed minds. But I watched those landings take place. There were monitoring stations all over the earth including Jodrell Bank observatory in England.

And there is reentry. The capsules landed within sight of an air craft carrier and their support ships. A C130 prop driven plane can get to 30,000 feet. Unloaded. I believe someone would have noticed the command module being dumped out the rear of b the plane. Total shrug here. Somebody who was part of the hoax filmed on a soundstage would have written a book by now and made a mint.

Funny

If we could harness all that energy. BTW. Even the Vatican has an official astronomer. Although he has to work at an observatory in Arizona these days. Less pollution and a lot less light.

CHUM IN THE WATER

In his latest Tweet Storm the current occupant has suggested that the four women of color in the house should go back where they came from and stop criticizing him and our f***ed I'll up immigration policies. Three of the ladies in question were born in the US and the fourth is a naturalized citizen.

Now like everyone with more than three brain cells to rub together I was more then a little pissed off. Today I got to thinking. We are being played like a cheap violin.

His used to be good buddy and fellow target in at least one lawsuit, Epstein, has been arrested and the decor in his mansion is disturbing. To say the least. Also his catalog of under age women. It seems more than a few of his long term associates are ducking for cover.

Mueller is due to testify under oath before the house. What better way knock those stories off the front page and off the popular searches then a good old fashioned racist, woman hating, Muslim bashing, patented Trump Twitter melt down. Only  one question? Did he come up with this on his own or was it the result of some carefully planted suggestions?

Whatever. It worked like a charm. The base is eating it up. Their messiah is sticking it to those uppity females again. The media is responding like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Crazy? Like a rabid hyena. A pack of them.

THE CRAB NEBULA

Image is a mosic from NASA and the European Space Agency. M1 Charles Messier's list. Known as the Crab Nebula, we now know it is the remnant of a super nova explosion. First seen in the eleventh century it is more than six thousand light years from earth. The spectrum shows oxygen and sulpher to be present and the blue glow is from the neutron star pulsar in the heart of the cloud.

The nebula can be found in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. The cloud can be seen, sort of without the aid of a telescope. Shot can be found in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Glorious isn't it?

LEAVE THEM A FLOWER

I have posted this before. However in the rush to extract every last resource on the planet and the hell with the next generation it won't hurt to post it again. Comes from the seventies. The author was Willie Whytton. My favorite version was done by Ed Ames.

And yes this has something to do with astronomy as we rush to make the sky too thick with pollution to even see the stars. Or even have anyone left who cares to look at the stars. 

LEAVE THEM A FLOWER

I speak on behalf of the next generation.

Our sons and their daughters, their children to come.

What will we leave them for their recreation?

And oil slick? A pylon? An industrial slum?

Chorus:

Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedge row.

A hill and a valley. A view to the sea.

These things are not ours to destroy as we want to;

A gift given once for eternity.

We plunder. We pillage. We tear and we tunnel.

Trees lying toppled, they finger the sky.

Building a land for machines an computers.

In the name of progress, the farms have to die.

Chorus:

Fish in the ocean, polluted the poisoned.

The sand on our beaches all stinking and black.

We and our tankers and banks and investsments

They never worry, the birds will come back.

Chorus:

When the last flower has dropped its last petal.

Then the last concrete is finally laid.

The moon will shine cold in a nightmarish landscape.

Our gift to our children. The world that we made.

ISLAND IN THE SKY

NASA has an archive of pictures taken, one per day, of objects in the sky ranging from stars, galaxies, comets. sunsets and storm cells. This is the galaxy known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda.

The M is for Charles Messier, a French astronomer whose primary goal was discovering comets. Along the way he spoted other objects that looked like they might be comets but didn't act like comets. Basically what could be seen either by the naked eye or with the telescopes available at the time. It wasn't until years, if not decades, later that we realized that many of these objects were not in our home galaxy. This shot is composed of a mosaic of shots taken over a ninety hour period.

Approximately two million light years away astronomers believe our Milky Way looks much like M31.

CRUCIFY HIM AGAIN

The image of the cop is, I believe, taken from a shot of a Jewish demonstrator arrested outside one of the detention center. 

My title is deliberate. Not only is the detainee not white, doesn't speak English, says he's a carpenter, he is from the Middle East. Obviously a trouble maker, might even be a terrorist. Spotted the image in another blog. I'll get back to the astronomy. Eventually. Seems taking the blog up again took a right turn. Or something. 

In the film Romero, a bio of archbishop Romero, father Rutilio Grande jokes that if the army or police confiscated a Bible all that would be left when you got it back was the cover. He was murdered a little later. A murder that may have started the archbishop on the road to his own martyrdom and sainthood. His people called their monsenor a saint long before the vatican did. 

JFK

Hac a hard time coming up with a title for this one. Lost dreams? Bullets and dreams? Took me back to 1963. 1968 was a bitch of a year too. 

Found this on the web. Damnit Jack you died too damn soon. We are so far from the dream right now. This not the country I thought I thought I was working to build when I got out of high school. Five years after that fatal day in Dallas. 

BONE SPURS

A man who never served in any branch of the military is finally going to get his parade. Complete with tanks. His five deferments for bone spurs in the Viet Nam era have been a running joke. But I got to thinking while watching this travesty of a fourth grow like poison mushrooms.

America's growing involvement began at a time when serving in the military was seen as an asset. And face it. The son of a millionaire was not going to end up slogging through the jungle in Nam. So, why the bone spurs?

I did a little tip  toeing through the net this morning. A regular enlisted has to take tests for aptitude and general knowledge. Money will make sure you are never a private.

You can become an officer in one of the following ways. Graduate from one of the military academies. Getting in is hard.  Graduating is a lot harder. West Point takes pride in graduating engineers.Or a BSc. in liberal arts. Take ROTC in college. It is a four year program. Graduate from college and go to officers candidate school.

We've heard how the schools Trump attended have been pressured to not allow access to his academic records. He boasts that he doesn't read and goes with instincts to make decisions.

So why the bone spurs. He had college degrees. OCS was a possibility. Son of a millionaire he could have spent his time riding a desk somewhere. The U.S.has bases all over the world. Or get himself assigned to a staff position. Dad could have pulled some strings. Some place fairly cushy.But I just cannot picture him taking orders from anyone, any time, anywhere.

I believe Trump could not cut the mustard as they say. Probably figured nobody would dig deep enough for reasons for those deferments to become public. Better than admitting he just could not pass the tests. Even then his ego probably would not have allowed anyone to know that about him.

And given the story about the kid he nearly shoved out the window while in military school he probably would have washed out of boot camp. If military school couldn't help with impulse control I guess nothing else would work.

WARNING BEACONS EARTH SYSTEM

Contemplating the military extravaganza planned for D.C.  tomorrow. All to stroke the bottomless ego pic someone many are calling president bone spurs. More on that in another entry.

Ran across an old entry I titled Beacon at the Edge of the Universe.

 "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent love exists somewhere is the fact that none of it has tried to contact us." Calvin and Hobbs.

I ran across this quote on the net. Given my sideways sense of humor and love of shows like Babylon 5 or Stargate I think it is just as likely that someone from somewhere did drop by for a fast recon. They took some readings. Took a really good look at  the results , and got the hell out of Dodge.

They paused just long enough tho plant a series of warning beacons around the borders of our solar system broadcasting some version of the following message. "Warning, warning, warning enter at your own risk. Avoid the third planet from the local star. The dominant life form is semi intelligent and very well armed. They tend to shoot first and ask questions later. Sometimes they don't bother to ask questions. Enclosed see footage of what happened to the unmanned exploratio drone.

If you do insist on dropping by for a visit do not bother sending a mayday if you run into trouble. No rescue missions will be attempted. Please use the record function to leave the following information. Name of ship, roster of crew and passengers, planet of origin, flight plan and contact information of next of kin, pouch brothers/sisters, clan affiliation so we can notify them if you don't come back.

If you choose to ignore these warnings don't forget to duck and make sure your engines are on at all times.

SHALL THE CHILDREN LEAD US

Watching a program on Prime called Tales of the First People. Modern telling puff old legends. One telling from the Comanche. How the people forgot that when we take, we have to give back. A great drought came. The people danced, demanding rain.

The eagle came and told the people had too sacrifice something that was prized above all and scatter the ashes to the four winds. The adults refused too sacrifice anything. "It won't work." " Why should we sacrifice anything? " Sound familiar?

There was a small child.  A girl who lost her family to the drought. All she had left was a small doll, that she loved above all. So after night fell she built a fire and gave up her doll. Scattered the ashes to the four winds. When morning came, so came the rain. And with the rain came beautiful blue flowers. Bluebells I believe.

How