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NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, from about 4km above the surface of the planet -- the snow is vapourizing before it hits the ground, however. Still, ain't that cool news? Phoenix also found evidence from soil experiments of past interaction between liquid water and minerals. It should be noted that Phoenix was developed with some funding and work by the Canadian Space Agency ... which just goes to figure ... it had to take a Canadian team to find snow falling on Mars.

I missed FLOW , when it was showing at one of the documentary film festivals in Toronto this summer -- I still want to see it, although it will be preaching to the converted. I just recently came across this review on CNN , echoing the dire warning of the world running out of clean water. The planet may be mostly water, but most of it can't be consumed by humans. We can't drink the water in the oceans -- and the limited quantities that are in our lakes and rivers are being poisoned. We shit and dump toxic pollutants in the same glass that we drink from -- how stupid is that? Recently, to Canada's shame, the Harper government voted to reject a UN resolution that would declare water as being a fundamental human right -- a UN motion, which would have no teeth, would nonetheless enshrined in the International community the notion that clean water should be held sacred. Canada, with its abundance of fresh, clean water, probably has little to worry about -- but in places li...

Umm ... the chrome-ier browser ? Currently in beta release ... get yours before all the bugs are fixed! Actually, if history is any indication, expect Chrome to stay in beta forever. It's the Google way.

Apparently, terrorists are dumber than US Homeland Security policy makers -- I say this, because you've got to be dumber for the smarter person to catch you. So terrorists smarter than Homeland Security policy makers have the potential of ... well, getting away with murder. Apparently, to avoid being caught by the US Homeland Security's "no fly list," all you have to do is change your name .

GIMPS has found two new Mersenne prime numbers. The world remains unchanged. The world of mathematicians on the other hand -- there's a quiet party going on.

CNET has unfortunate coverage on work secretly being conducted by the UN to bring the gauntlet down on Internet anonymity. The work is supported by both China and the United States. Of course, the UN is pursuing this course of action with some noble intentions -- to secure computer networks from hackers; to find criminals who use the internet for nefarious purposes. But the UN is made up of nations who have stated intent of criminalizing free speech and squelching opposition to totalitarian rule. As much as the proposed traceback tools would be used to save the world, they would also be used to bring it to its knees. Care to hazard a guess on which purpose the tools to lift the veil on anonymity would be most used on? You guessed it. Truth and justice are about to be fucked.

Canadians have learned from the US experience of the last eight years, on what a right-wing government can do. It brought America to its knees -- and Canadians took notice, and in turn, shifted their values to the left. The recent assertion from Stephen Harper that Canadian values are shifting to the right couldn't be any more out of touch with reality. In Harper's fantasy world, where Canada is remade in the image of his Master GW, it may seem that way -- but Canadians have seen much right-wing policies enacted in America, and are not ready for their share. Our values that are simply incompatible with the right, and conservatism -- both economic and social conservatism. Canadians care about each other, not just their own self interests. Canadians care about the world they live in, and the world they are building for future generations. Canadians respect our diversity. Canadians value economic prosperity, but know that it is not a gift for the lucky few, but for all Ca...

Tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and warships. These weapons of modern warfare, are being transferred in unprecedented numbers to countries around the world -- including those in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and yes, even Canada -- from the good ole USA. The New York Times is reporting that year to date, the Bush Administration has agreed to sell $32 billion in weapons -- compared to $12 billion in 2005. Commercial sales in services and equipment to support the DoD weapons sales is an additional $96 billion, year to date. Of course, the US isn't alone in exporting sophisticated weapons to unstable nations. Russia provides stiff competition, and the EU and a host of smaller nations sell less sophisticated and small arms. The arms trade remains quite the viable business, and was there before globalization was a buzz word. You don't need to be a cynic to see why having the US and Russia exchanging nasty words is...

John Cole responds to the Dan Drezner's interview of Sarah Palin the other day. To summarize: And Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge. This is depressing. Depressing because Americans have a real choice, and it is in Obama, unlike the lack of choice Canadians have in the upcoming election. Americans are not only electing a president of the United States, they are also electing the most powerful world leader. The choice Americans make will in large part influence the policies of Canada, and politics around the globe. What's disturbing right now, is that Sarah Palin is new. She's the fresh face, and the American general public likes a new celebrity. That's what politics hav...

The vacation is now over, and we're sitting having coffee at Glasgow's BAA, waiting for our flight back to Toronto. It's been a hectic two weeks, and I'm definitely looking forward to being back home. Two weeks ago we landed in Glasgow, and took a taxi to hire a car. The adventure started then. My wife fell and sprained her ankle, but the Scot blood must have been all fired up, cause she soldiered on. We drove from Glasgow to Stirling to Perth to Aberdeen to Forres to Thurso to Kirkwall (via a ferry) to Ullapool to Stornaway (via a ferry) to Inverness before ending in Glasgow, right where we started. For the two weeks, we were in a constant state of awe. Scotland is a beautiful country, rich in horrible history , and we couldn't miss it. Every step was another beautiful photo-op or something historical. After all of that, and having not seen quite enough or taken enough pictures (over 4,500, totaling 9GB of JPEGs), I would like to go home. Go home to our ...

The previous week Saturday, I landed in Scotland, and went to pick up the Vauxhall I had reserved at Enterprise. The car I was supposed to get was still out -- now extended. They wanted to give me a luxury Mercedes for more money. They wanted to give me a mini-van. I didn't want those. I wanted something shorter, than I could fit into small places. After an hour wait, they offered me the Chevrolet Captiva . An SUV. So I'm driving around in an SUV. Heated seats; AUX input for the MP3 player; and automatic everything, including the wiper that starts when it detects rain, and speeds up and slows down on its own accord. I'm putting up with it.

9-year old Jericho Scott is too fast for the Youth Baseball League of New Haven . The kid pitches at 40 mph, and at his last game, when he took the mound, the other team packed up and left, forfeiting the game, because he's too fast. So fast in fact, that the league has banned him from playing. Yup, you got it. He excels in pitching, so he's no longer allowed to play baseball. WTF?!? Anyway, it doesn't matter. The kid is now famous. He's got his own Wikipedia entry .

I take it you already know, Of tough and bough and cough and dough. Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps. Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead, For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’! Watch out for meat and great and threat, (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt). A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother. And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear. And then there’s dose and rose and lose – Just look them up – and goose and choose. And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword. And do and go and thwart and cart – Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Why man alive! I’d mastered it when I was five. Bloody hell -- the English language is hard !

There's something really fucked up in the world, when an 8-year-old can be married off. Married off to a man in his fifties. Married off by her father. Where in the world does this fucked up sort of thing happen? In the Arab world, where a strict Wahabi version of Sunni Islam rules .

I keep wondering when this shit is going to happen to me -- not just when I travel to the US -- but even here in my own country. I'm just the wrong skin colour -- and being held up by border security agents, whose only qualification for the job seems to be the ability to have a total disconnect with their fellow humans, is now happening to just about anyone, with no regard for good, ole fashion, stereotypes. What's the world coming to when even the invidious public servants don't meet expectations? The world -- our democratic and free loving world -- is going the way of the totalitarian regimes. The enemy is winning, when we grow to accept the story scribed by Emily Feder at AlterNet . Feder describes the thuggery experienced while detained by Homeland Security enforcers at JFK, recently. In the past five years I have worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia, Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and USAID. I have ...

My wife and I were at the local Second Cup this evening, imbibing and completing a crossword puzzle from the Toronto Star -- as is our ritual every Thursday -- our date night. One of the clues we encountered, referenced Eric Clapton's "___ the Sheriff." That one sent me into a spin. Clapton? I was confused. I didn't even know Clapton did the song. I know the song as being written by Bob Marley and performed by him (originally performed on The Wailers' Burnin' ). WTF? The crossword puzzle clearly inferred that the song was a Clapton song -- Clapton did a cover of the song in 1974, a year after it was released by the Wailers. What a pissant that wrote that clue -- stealing the credit from Marley and handing it to Clapton in one fell swoop. So here's to correcting the literary crime. Marley wrote the song. Don't mess with him. Bob is god.

I recently completed my second Charles de Lint novel: Someplace To Be Flying -- first published in 1998. I'm now going to have to find and read every de Lint novel. The man is an amazing writer. De Lint is a contemporary fantasy author, with his stories set in modern, urban settings. Someplace To Be Flying is set in his fictional city of Newford, and it's like every major North American city -- expect, around the corner, in shadows, the places hidden in plain site, magic is happening. In Someplace To Be Flying , that magic comes in the form of the First People -- the animal people -- those that were here before the world began; that saw the coming the humans and the changes they brought in the world. De Lint pays homage to Native American mythology in Someplace To Be Flying . He deftly crafts his prose around mythology that most of us will not be familiar with, but will seem more real than the overused Judeo-Christian mythology. The novel is quite an introspection, co...

Check out Cuil ... yet another search engine claiming it's better than Google.

The headline: Deadly blasts strike Indian city . Will these fucking people ever stop? I don't mean the bomb makers, or those behind them that finance their operations, plan the logistics and pick the targets. I mean the Indians themselves -- the whole lot of them, including the Pakistanis. When extremists go mainstream, it's only due to some level of acceptance in society -- some level of sympathy, support and tolerance. What will follow this latest attack is a counterattack -- and so it will go on -- an eye for an eye, until there's no one left.

I recently finished my first Charles de Lint novel -- The Blue Girl . I'm glad I had picked it up -- sometime ago, and just stashed it in the pile of books I had every intention to read -- eventually, someday. That someday came along recently, and I finished the book way too fast. It was a pleasure to read. Charles de Lint writes fantasy novels, in an urban, contemporary setting, weaving magic into the everyday world you and I wander through without a second thought. The Blue Girl is set in the fictional North American city of Newford, which I place in Canada, since de Lint lives in Ottawa. The protagonists are two 17-year-old high school girls, Maxine and Imogene, who meet for the first time in their final year of high school. Both are outsiders, not fitting into the cool kids crowd -- because they're too smart, and weird. Maxine is the smart one, cloistered by her mother and endures the bullying any nerd would be familiar with. Imogene is the weird one, new to Redd...