Sir Bandelot

Hmm, sounds like Brian Mulroney

Yeah I know what your saying exactly, I also use registax. As a kid I loved astronomy and had a small refractor telescope, and some binoculars. Even with very basic equipment there is a lot you can enjoy. Webcam imaging is what got me interested in astronomy again a few years ago. I use an SPC900nc webcam with the lens taken off, to do prime focus imaging of planets. I have not done DSO's. BC I assume you must be using a 5x powermate, or stacking barlows?

Cool. Nice to see there are a few astronomers here. As a kid I too lived in a very dark sky place, and remember seeing the milky way very brilliant and white against a dark sky. My eyes were also much better then... I've been into this hobby for about two years now. I have pretty basic equipment. I've tried some imaging as well, but haven't "bagged" Mars yet. I have looked at it though. For imaging, my scope can't get the focal length needed to resolve Mars as it is now. Mars is only 18 arc seconds across, and my focal length is about 2000 mm. Mars would be only 36 pixels in dieameter in the image. How do you do it BC, do you have a catadioptric scope?

I don't think "these people" have zero concept. No one denies it's a major challenge to coordinate. If someone goofs up, it's still a problem, even though it may be very hard. If others can do it and do it right then so should we. Keep in mind it ain't just me, "These people" also includes officials from other countries including Italy France etc, as demonstrated in the links. IE, it's not just some guys personal blog thats condemning whats going on when whats needed is coordination of priorities. You wanna be the boss, lets see some action. Otherwise, step aside son, let a real man show how its done

Well its kind of like Katrina, I mean if you claim your going to conduct a rescue operation , do it. You either do it, or you don't and get the hell out the way... Plus, its about the ripoff. Are we helping Haitians or funding military ops. Seems to me like its now become the same thing.

Also at the hockey game the other night, there was people walking around in orange vests, carrying cardboard boxes collecting for Haiti. You just drop your pocket change in here. And club zellers points, was asked if I wanted to donate them today. I said "yes", becuase it was the politically correct thing to do. Then I asked her if that means the people in Haiti can use it when they shop at zellers. She just laughed

Twenty-five sailors from HMCS Athabaskan, the Canadian destroyer which arrived earlier Tuesday, arrived this afternoon on the shore of Leogane, located west of Haiti's hard-hit capital, Port-au-Prince. The desolate community was about 90 per cent destroyed by the earthquake. "We need water and medicine," local resident Sam Moly told The Canadian Press. "We got nothing (from international community). Everything we do, we do for ourselves." Canadian sailors land in Haitian fishing village Thats a straight cut and paste there, no editing by me. Anyone else smell a rotten fish under the docks? Meawhile Elsewhere: The military component of the US mission, however, tends to overshadow the civilian functions of rescuing a desperate and impoverished population. The overall humanitarian operation is not being led by civilian governmental agencies such as FEMA or USAID, but by the Pentagon. The dominant decision making role has been entrusted to US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). A massive deployment of military hardware and personnel is contemplated. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has confirmed that the US will be sending nine to ten thousand troops to Haiti, including 2000 marines. (American Forces Press Service, January 14, 2010) The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti ------------------- You may think Globalresearch is off the wall on this, but the mainstream media is telling the same story. Here is a portion from an article on Yahoo news, with all the other information removed just the parts about aid delivery problems and military dominance of the airport. The U.N. food agency reached an agreement Monday with the U.S.-run airport in the Haitian capital to give aid flights priority in landing — a deal that came after the U.S. military was criticized for giving top billing to military and rescue aircraft. The United States has taken over the Port-au-Prince airspace and incoming flights have to register with the Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Over the weekend, the aid group Doctors Without Borders complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the airport amid reports that U.S. military flights were getting priority. French, Brazilian and other officials complained about the airport's refusal to let their aid planes land, forcing many flights to end up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, a day's drive away. On Monday, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet urged the United Nations to investigate the dominant U.S. role in the relief operation, claiming that international aid efforts were supposed to be about helping Haiti, not "occupying" it. Haitians have complained that food, medicine and water have been woefully slow in reaching them. Still, Italian civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso said there was little coordination in the relief effort and the international community needs "strong leadership" to channel aid where it is most needed. "We are still lacking someone who will give orders and tell each country what it must do," he said in Brussels while attending an emergency EU meeting on Haiti. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100118/ap_on_re_eu/haiti_aid What is going on here? Staging ground for Mr. chavez

Anyone like it? Mars is in the sky these days. Or nights rather. I would like to take a look at Mars but there's so many clouds all the time, skies are almost never clear lately. :angry:

Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now and look into it, to see why you feel that way. My view has been that Harper et al are devoted followers of Leo Strauss, and admire the style of Ronald Reagan. I try to never make empirical statements. It's not entirely flawed if you read carefully, I said "Although, it does seem to be part of the general neocon philosophy to oppose the idea of rehab, in almost any form." Now we can argue if thats a neocon thing or not, but it does seem to be a Harper thing. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/24/conservative-prison-plan024.html http://www.newresilient.com/2009/03/02/federal-government-to-close-prison-farms-and-end-rehabilitation-program/ and their plans could even be dangerous to the public: http://www.canada.com/news/Federal+prison+overhaul+plan+dismissed+amateur+alarming/2028026/story.html If I was a bad boy, I will wear my conservative veil of shame for the day.

We live in unique times in terms of our consumption of natural resources, the energy we use and the amount of waste and toxins we create. Although other societies have had similar problems in the past and ultimately suffered the consequences, the sheer numbers of our population, along with industrialization and now, globalization make this an unprecedented era of consumerism in human history. Today we hear much hype about the 2012 end of the world as apparently foretold by Mayans, but what many people don't realize is that one of the main reasons that Mayan/Aztec civilizations collapsed (before Cortez) was that they were unable to create a sustainable culture. Link. And so this doomsday vision might be fulfilled in an ironic way, if we don't learn from the past and make plans for a sustainable future. The problem is that consumerism is so ingrained into our culture, it's the very fundamental part of our economic system. The big challenge will be to maintain this highly technologically advanced society we have created, with all the great benefits of comfort and security, and advanced medicine, and somehow minimize the damage we do to the habitat. If you care, there is a lot the ordinary citizen can do, maybe even the biggest impact could be achieved by ordinary citizens working together. Reduce frivolous spending, reduce the amount of toxic waste your household produces. If you don't care, well, go to blazes Report: Consumerism must be halted to save the planet (CNN) -- Consumerism is threatening to undermine measures by governments worldwide to combat climate change effectively according to a report by a U.S. think tank. Erik Assadourian, senior researcher and director of the 2010 report told CNN: "In essence, the whole point of the report is to say that for humanity to thrive long into the future we'll need to transform our cultures intentionally and proactively away from consumerism towards sustainability." "There are six key societal institutions -- education, business, government, media, traditions and social movements," Assadourian said. "We break those six apart and address how we can use those institutions now to help create a cultures of sustainability." "Italian schools have been sourcing locally for decades," they explain, "often complementing their emphasis on local products with a wide range of educational initiatives for children and their parents that emphasize the values of seasonality and territoriality." Assadourian believes the path towards sustainability will also be aided by harnessing social marketing to spread a new message. "No longer is it enough to simply change our lifestyles. We have to take an active role in changing the very cultures we are part of."

What smallc is trying to say is, they went from "double-plus-ungood total flea hole", to merely "total flea hole", in a space of about 30 years. "The international community was helping to keep order." Yes they were, by ousting the democratically elected leader and putting one in that serv es our interests first and foremost. Let alone the economic disaster which was set up by taking our governments advice in the first place. They should have stayed as a quiet agro based society, so they could at least grow their own food and not depend on us so much. Now look, there's no bread. Smallc: "Let them eat cake"

PORT-AU-PRINCE Sun Jan 17 (Reuters) - World leaders have stepped up to pledge aid to rebuild a devastated Haiti, but on the streets of its wrecked capital quake survivors were still waiting on Sunday for the basics: food, water and medicine. "We're moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in our history to save lives and deliver relief that averts an even larger catastrophe," said Obama, flanked at the White House by predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who will lead a charity drive to help Haiti. But on the streets of Port-au-Prince, where scarce police patrols fired occasional shots and tear gas to try to disperse looters, the distribution of aid appeared random, chaotic and minimal. "The distribution is totally disorganized. They are not identifying the people who need the water. The sick and the old have no chance," said Estime Pierre Deny, standing at the back of a crowd looking for water with his empty plastic container. Hillary Clinton told Haitians the United States will ensure their country emerges "stronger and better" from the disaster. "We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead," she said after meeting Preval at the airport. The president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, will visit Haiti on Monday and attend a donors meeting in the Dominican Republic to start analyzing Haiti's reconstruction needs, a bank spokesman said. World pledges quake aid, Haitians still waiting ----------- It's the new charity

My view is there's been a subtle paradigm shift in western consciousness, away from material self gratification. Consumerism is in decline, leading to the economic crisis we face. But its not that people don't have money, they still do. Personal savings have increased, So people are sitting on their money, don't want to spend it on any more toys (for whatever reason, won't go into it here) yet clearly people ARE willing to give to charity when they perceive an urgent need. However my concern is that this desire to help others could easily be exploited. Although there may have been a paradigm shift in the general public, ie. the middle class, its the same old story for the greedy elite. They are able to manipulate the media and try to persuade people to spend money on their causes. Wherever there's a billion dollars to be made, you'll find the unscrupulous money mongers looking for ways to get their meathooks into it. Of course there has to be some overhead cost in administrating funds to help the Haitians, or others the question is how much of the money has any meaningful value toward its real intent. Such funds collected voluntarily from the public, intended to help the needy will soon become the next big investment opportunity.

I've never heard of him either. It will be interesting to see if his message gets the same wide level of appeal as those of Limbaugh et al. I doubt it. As far as I know there is no left wing equivalent.

I understand what you are saying, and was going to say something similar in response to the idea that we should lock up all drug users for twenty years etc. How far does that idea go... if we are to execute it completely and fairly you would see a lot of prominent people, doctors, judges, politicians, business execs also go to jail for twenty years. In other words, people who you'd never guess were addicted and abusing substances. Pure coke is the rich mans drug... thus the penalties for it are generally less harsh than that of the crack coaine user, let alone the potheads. One can only conclude that the idea of inarceration for drug abuse is nothing to do with getting "criminals" off the streets, where no crime even really exists. Except that, somebody else in power calls it one.

It doesn't. By neocons in this case I simply meant the Feds. Although, it does seem to be part of the general neocon philosophy to oppose the idea of rehab, in almost any form. For example, they want to remove alot of the prison rehab programs, and not only for drugs.

We all want to help them, obviously. But how can we do that, if it only means giving money to the very ones who "helped" make these people as poor as they now are? How can we trust these organizations working at the behest of our government, the politicos. What if "who's fault this is" are the same ones who would take our good money and give it to villanous manipulators, embezzle it, waste it. Even, get rich off it, off the backs of the misfortunate. I suppose all we can do is give them a billion dollars, and hope that at least 1% makes it to the front lines.

That's all fine and well, and I would agree as long as we at least get out of their way, and let them get on with it. But it's certainly not been the case over the last twnty years or so. They have received the blessings of "western charity".

EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic” 04 January 2010 The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is to hold an emergency debate and inquiry this month into the “influence” exerted by drugmakers on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global H1N1 flu campaign. The text of the resolution approved by the Assembly calling for the debate and inquiry states that: “in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” according to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman of the PACE Health Committee, who introduced the parliamentary motion.The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers,” he adds. http://www.pharmatimes.com/worldnews/article.aspx?id=17147 Some very disturbing allegations about the WHO. These scandals only serve to further discredit these global organizations as being in the best interest of big money enterprises.

Thats true for visual observing but with the use of cameras, adpative optics and image stacking the resolution can often be better than that. Even for backyard Gallileos with small scopes, like me. Still, the features of the lander sitting on the moon are so very tiny, it's beyond our abilities to resolve in detail. Example the moon is about 30 arc minutes in diameter, thats 1800 arc seconds, representing a distance of roughly 2000 miles. If the lander and it's shadow are a mere 30 feet across, that is 1800 * 30/(2000 x 5280) = .005 arc seconds. Resolution would have to be even better than that to see any detail. Not feasible with the current technology.

Who gave what to whom? Is that why Haiti is the great place to live that it is, even up to a week ago? No! Anyone who knew anything about Haiti before last week knows that its one of the poorest nations in the world. But somebody gets the money, I don't doubt that. That money is to prop up the puppet rulers, to run their pissant army and keep them in our pocket. Why do they need our troops, where's their own army now? The facts on the ground, the appalling poverty speak for themselves.

You know what bugs me, how this recent disaster in Haiti is being whipped up in the media. Now the UN is asking for money, another reason to start distrusting their intentions. As their spokesman just said on the TV news, this disaster is an opportunity. If its an opportunity to improve life in Haiti, why did we wait until an earthquake destroyed their capital? Headlines screaming Haiti is like a war zone. Footage of people dressed in dirty rags, roaming about the devastated street scenes aimlessly, scavenging for food. They should show us the "before" footage, the way it looked before the earthquake. Not too different, just a bit worse than before. Don't get me wrong about the plight of Haitians, those people need immediate help. But it certainly appears a lot easier to drop in teams of reporters, than it is to bring in useful supplies and real help. "No rescue workers, or aid have arrived" - Lloyd Robertson, CTV Newsnet, 5 minutes ago. Lloyd continues with "The graphic pictures out of Haiti have caused Canadians to give generously, and some have given VERY generously". Haitians, Habeas Pecunium? We are being warned to be wary of con artists acting in the guise of charities. Seems to me the bigger con artist is the one that Haiti needs to be wary of. And thats us. Haiti is probably one of the worst countries in the world in terms of its poverty. Ignored. Manipulated and abused, by Canada even. After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16985 "The current situation in Haiti, for which the Canadian government bears much responsibility, is characterized by political assasinations and imprisonments, the murder of peaceful protesters by police, the destruction of limited social programs and health care, and the repression of democratic activity. The evidence shows that at every turn, Canada has declined every opportunity to uphold democracy in Haiti, while taking the lead in overthrowing the country's democratically elected government and legitimating a power grab by Haiti's wealthy elite. Consequently, Canada finds itself in league with a grim roster of alumni from Reagan's murderous interventions in central America such as Roger Noriega, John Negroponte and Jesse Helms and on the wrong side of a war against Haiti's poor majority." Canada out of Haiti The 2004 Haiti rebellion was a coup d'etat that happened after conflicts that occurred for several weeks in Haiti during February 2004. It resulted in the premature end of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term, in which he left Haiti on a United States plane accompanied by U.S. military/security personnel. Controversy remains regarding the involvement of the U.S. in his departure and whether or not the departure was voluntary. Aristide described his departure as a kidnapping. An interim government led by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (brought back from the US) and President Boniface Alexandre was installed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_rebellion What happened on February 29, 2004? Thats why Haiti descended into the craphole it became, before the quake. So now lets feel good about how much we really care and want to help them. Keep in mind, during this critical first 36 hours almost nothing of any real value has arrived to help rescue them. Except reporters, camera crews, and lots of media footage asking us to give with our wallets.

From the same article- "The court has given very cogent reasons for why (Insite) is not only an essential service to drug users but one that is within the provincial government's purview," Pongracic-Speier said of North America's only such facility. "The province has to be able to make decisions about how to deliver health care to some of the most vulnerable people in the Downtown Eastside." (Dr.) Montaner said that since the facility opened, there's been a 30 per cent increase in the number of addicts who enter detox. Sound like the road to rehab to me

VANCOUVER — Canada's attorney general and minister of health have lost their appeal of a court ruling on Vancouver's controversial supervised injection site, raising proponents' hopes that similar facilities will now open in other cities. The B.C. Appeal Court decision Friday upheld a lower court ruling that provinces, not the federal government, have jurisdiction for health care, and therefore services such as the injection site. Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS, said the decision sends a clear message that Prime Minister Stephen Harper should abandon "his draconian, ideologically motivated public health policy-making" and embrace evidence-based research to continue operating the clinic, called Insite. The lower court ruling found that Insite is a health care facility, and therefore provincial jurisdiction, not federal, and gave Insite immediate constitutional exemption to stay open without a federal exemption from drug laws. The appeal court ruled that the federal government must pay the court costs for those who have fought to keep the facility open since it began operating. B.C. injection site to remain open, feds lose appeal The idea of putting people in jail because they are addicted to a substance is not justice. Once again the neocons demonstrate that they prefer ideology over real data, but fortunately they do not yet have so much control as to pervert due legal process. Given the opportunity, they would do it. Neocons have removed most of the prison reform programs anyway, attempting to fulfill their dream to fill up the prisons with non-dangerous offenders, not offer any therapy, not offer any retraining, just let them rot as long as possible. Good to see that this draconian BS has been halted. For now

Especially if they are Norwegian.