A Dark Source for our Familiar Myths

Just a quick comment on this fascinating story up at the newscientist about the  possible dark matter original of our familar bright constellation stars. I’m quite interested in astronomy and I didn’t know that most of the bright stars that make up the most familiar constellations in our skies (Orion, canis major, the souther cross, perseus, scorpius etc) are part of an identifiable belt of large, young, hot stars (this is astronomy people not hollywood, calm down!) that are not part of the normal spiral structure of our galaxy.  They can be identified as a seperate line of stars formed at an odd angle to the plane of the galaxy, its called Gould’s belt, and astronomers are still not sure why its there.

So, that’s the first interesting thing.  The second thing is that there is a theory gaining more and more credibility that Gould’s belt was formed by a cloud of dark matter passing through our galaxy, get this, around 30 million years ago.  If that doesn’t blow you mind you need to go refresh you memory about the ages of planets, stars, galaxies etc.  Thirty million years is literally nothing in astronomical terms.  The dinosaurs died out twice as long ago as this.  Which means the dinosaurs wouldn’t have seen Orion in the sky.  (Of course, the stars also move, so the constellations would have been very different millions of years ago, but these bright stars weren’t even born at that time).  The thing that seems fascinating about it is the possibility that all of these stars were created at once due to the impact of a passing cloud of dark matter.

This is important culturally and scientifically.  Culturally, these bright stars form the backbone of the constellations that were incredibly influential in the formation of human culture.  The Egyptians and the Greeks (for example) would surely have found other things to look at if they were not there, but the sky would have been significantly less interesting without the stars of Gould’s belt.

Scientifically, it turn out that these bright stars may help us locate a nearby cloud of passing dark matter that can be studied because, oh yeah, we have absolutely no idea what dark matter actually is.

Anyways, I just thought it makes a good story, it ties together our modern attempts to understand the makeup of the universe with our ancient attempts to understand the makeup of the universe.  The great Orion  and Perseus may yet lead us to the ultimate Truths.

Nation Builder of the Decade ala Globe

The globe and mail is running a question for its readers, who is the ‘Nation Builder’ of the past decade?  They suggest some names as well as the yearly Nation Builder winners from each of the past 10 years. Its a fascinating read, you should take a look.

 

Off the top of my head, asking me to pick one person from the past decade who has helped to shape Canada into something a bit better, the first and only person I can think of is

Throwing Cold Water On Progress

Talk about a downer. Lawrence Martin at the venerable old G&B has a great, concise explanation of three major institutional changes that many people want to see in Canada in the coming decade in time for Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017 : a re-evaluation of our relationship with the monarchy, electoral reform and a green revolution.

You thought I was crazy? Another Strategic Proposal for NDP-Libs

Well, my last post suggesting that the Green Party strike a strategic deal with other parties to get their fair share of the votes generated a lot of good discussion.  Most of you answered my final question “Am I crazy?” with a decided “Yes, Mark, you are, now go play.” Fair enough, I can take it, maybe it is a crazy idea. We worked out some more plausible ideas in the comments where the Greens don’t give up so much. Well, today a atom bomb of an opinion piece in the Canadian #fairvote community by UBC Poli.Sci prof Michael Byers.

How the Green Party Could Make a Difference

It looks like we’re not going to have a federal election for at least 5 months now so its time for the parties to pull back and consider strategy.  Clearly that’s what the Liberals are doing with their recent change of chief of staff.  So I’d like to suggest a bold change of strategy for the Green Party.  Fair warning, you’re probably not going to like it   Note, I am not  a Green party member and have no involvement with their campaigns so this approach will anathema to people for all kinds of reasons I can think of and probably many I cannot.  But hear me out.

Reckless Talk by Polling ‘Experts’

You know what they say about polls…well I don’t believe they are all lies and statistics about Canadian opinions can be very useful, when considered in a balanced way.  Apparently if you are the head of a polling firm, such as Nik Nanos, however, you are able to infer trends from a very short sequence of data.  Just taking a look at the chart in this article with a short, narrow peak in the past two weeks being called a new normal is a bit of a laugh.  How can a few points define a new normal? 

Goodbye Rex.

Dear Rex Murphy,
I always thought you were intelligent and usually gave you the benefit of the doubt when I disagreed with you, you use such big words you see… but then you wrote this article about global warming.
Well I’m done now, you’ve completely invalidated yourself.  Its all very evocative to compare the environmental movement to the Catholic church silencing Galilieo but just a moment’s look at that community and you’ll know they don’t have nearly that level of control and agreement. 

Whew, that was close! I supported the govt for a whole 5 minutes.

Frightening.

Two stories out yesterday about some upcoming policies coming out of Ottawa. The first sounds quite reasonable, they want to create a national regulator for securities.  Given the meltdown of last fall this kind of body might be able to tighten up some of the investment rules and make sure we don’t have loopholes showing up because one province has different policies than another.  So I was in happy agreement with the government for a whole five minutes on some issue.  I was even more surprised to learn that

Tories lift off towards a false majority, is this Democracy?

Here’s what counts for a majority in Canada:

According to EKOS, the Tories now enjoy 40.7 per cent support compared to 25.5 per cent for the Liberals, 14.3 per cent for the NDP, 10.5 per cent for the Green Party and 9.1 per cent for the Bloc.

Two polls last week showed the same upward movement for the Conservatives, edging them into majority territory.

via Tories ‘really taking off’ in polls – The Globe and Mail.

I continually amazes me that no one looks at these numbers and feels that something is wrong.  EKOS did a seat projection as well (which is very problematic given the small sample sizes in each riding)

The projections – all hypothetical – do not bode well for Mr. Ignatieff

and his Liberals. It would give them 68 seats, meaning he would do

worse than his predecessor, Stéphane Dion, who won 77 seats in the 2008

election.

The EKOS model gives the Bloc 50 seats, up from 47; the NDP 23 seats,

which is a decrease of 13; and the Green Party would be shut out once

again.

Does this seem fair? There’s your issue Mr. Ignatieff: Bloc -> 9%/50 seats Green -> 10.5%/0 seats.  There are Liberals who should be in Alberta, there are Conservatives who should be in Toronto, there are Greens and NDP that should be everywhere.  If you are worried these pollsters are right then you have nothing to lose by saying “We need to fix our democracy, we need to look at proportional representation. We need to do it now.”  You can use longer words if you like. But you need something that tells Canadians you are really going to change things.

The Natural Governing, Triangulation and Safety Party

Just like the majority of Canadians, I consider my political views to be centre to centre-left on the ‘political spectrum’.  That’s why I was excited that the Liberals decisively picked a decisive leader after Stephane Dion imploded last fall. That’s why I was glad a few weeks ago when that same leader finally stood up and started acting like an opposition party, opposing a government that a majority of Canadians did not vote for.  That is why this week I am slightly depressed that the promise the Liberals had over the last, has be squandered again and again. There’s a good article up on rabble about the Liberal and their current slide to catch you up to speed on this week’s disappointments if you’ve missed it.

They are saying just what I and others have been saying for a while, that Mr. Ignatieff and his Natural Governing Party(TM) needs to grow a spine and stand for something.  They need to stand for the 60% of Canadians who opposed the Conservative party in the last election.  This is the job of all opposition parties but the leader of the opposition should well, you know, lead that opposition. Flowery words and fancy speeches are nice but frankly Mr. Ignatief’s speeches aren’t even all that flowerly and inspiring, just long winded.  People criticized President Barack Obama this week for accepting the Nobel Peace prize even though he’s provided more inspiring speeches about peace than actual peace itself.  But  if Mr. Ignatieff were that inspiring he might be forgiven.  He’s not.  So he needs to reach an even higher standard of action than Mr. Obama.

The Liberal party seems to have convinced itself in the past decade or two that it does not stand for any particular causes per se but rather for a state of mind.  To be Liberal is to eternally sit on a fence talking about balance and holding Canada together and bla bla “>bla bla.  What do you stand for Mr. Ignatieff?  Do you want to militarize the North?   Are you angry we don’t have national childcare yet? Are you disgusted by our lack of progress on global warming? Do you dream of a future Canada with high speed rails linking our major metropolises, of being a voice for peace, of leading green technology or bioscience or robotics or nanotechnology?  Do you want Canadians to believe in their democracy again, to make sure every vote cast in Canada counts the same whether its in Nunavut or Charlottetown or Toronto or Prince Rupert?

Do you believe in anything? We know you do, you’d been a writer and academic for three decades.  You must have an opinion on everything?

So tell us.  And stand for it.  Or die trying.  That’s the only message people will respect at this point.

If you read this blog you know what issue I think the Liberals should focus on, if you agree electoral reform should be one of these issues sign this twitter petition to demand Ignatieff declare his party will fix our democracy by committing to to real electoral reform : pass the link on act.ly/nk