Well really another photo of the same thing, M42 but with longer exposure (4x30 seconds for a total of 2 minutes) and different filters. Why the fascination with M42 (The Great Nebula in Orion)? Well a few reasons. First I'm still learning the ins and outs of my new imager so by using the same object I can compare what happens when I change things. Second, M42 is bright so easy to photograph with relatively short exposures. Third, since I'm doing this from my backyard in the suburbs of Calgary, the light pollution is brutal and the brightness of M42 again makes it easy to image.

All the signs are there, a massive wave of attack ads, John Baird and the rest of the Conservative caucus denying it, Stephen Harper desperately wants an election sooner than later. He can't be seen as wanting one of course so the question is how is he going to do it?

CBC is reporting that the Newfoundland and Labrador government is asking the federal government for money (in the form of loan guarantees) to expand the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project (I originally heard this on CBC Radio One, the link is the closest at CBC.ca). This poses a dilemma for Harper. Does he give the money in an attempt to buy needed votes in Atlantic Canada? This despite the fact that this would mean that federal money would go to ridings that aren't represented by the Tories and that there would be no local Tory MP available to hand out a large novelty cheque with a CPC logo on it in the resulting photo-op.

Back in December I picked up a new CCD imager for my telescope. Prior to this I had been using my DLSR to take astrophotos and with an upcoming course requiring an actual astronomical CCD imager it seemed like a good time to take the plunge. Now the imager I wanted the SBIG ST7ME was a bit out of my price range for the time frame I had so I ended up going with the monochrome Orion Starshoot III . The Starshoot III has a larger sensor than the ST7ME (1392x1040 pixels vs 784 x 520 pixels) but lacks the second auto guiding sensor. It also costs, with a 5 filter magazine, about $1000 less than the ST7ME so it's the imager I went with.

The CBC show Marketplace recently did a show exposing homeopathy for the sham it is. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with this particular form of non-medicine, homeopathy is the belief that if you take some form of "natural" medicine, dilute it till there's none left and drink the water, you'll feel better.

A while back we had Harper taking a salute meant for the Queen and it would appear now that Harper and his government are looking at aligning the rest of the Canadian Honours System with the PMO and not the Queen (or more specifically her stand-in the Governor General). It would seem that Harper is again either a) confusing the difference between Chief of State and Head of Government, or b) knows the difference and wants to be both, which isn't allowed in our system.

Have this in elementary and Jr. High science textbooks....

Stephen Harper is many things, but a good leader is not one of them. There are three basic leadership styles, autocratic, democratic and free-reign. A good leader understands there's a time and place to use each one. Stephen Harper only knows how to use autocratic. A good leader listens to his followers, looks at the situation and makes a decision based on the best information available to enable the success of the mission. Stephen Harper ignores anyone who isn't a "yes-man", ignores the situation in favour of ideology and goes out of his way to ensure the best information is not available at all, let alone look at it. A good leader inspires his/her followers to action, Stephen Harper fails to inspire so has to use fear and terror to maintain his power and keep his followers moving. Stephen Harper is not a good leader.

On cue and as predicted, the Harper Tories are blaming the Liberals for Canada losing the election for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This is the same old song and dance for the Harper Conservatives in that something doesn't go their way, it's obviously the Liberal's fault. The big difference here is that the right wing media isn't buying it this time. Both the National Post and the Globe and Mail have come down squarely on the side of this is all Harper's failure. The Calgary Herald who never met a Tory they didn't like has the wire service article on the topic buried good and deep and no comment while the Sun media chain also has an article and no comment, no doubt awaiting orders from the PMO. Of course the usual crowd of Conservative war room con-bots are out in full force defending the actions of the Harper government by also attacking Ignatieff and crying sour grapes in the "we didn't want that seat anyways" way.

I started this blog on the 18th of December 2004 (at 10:56 pm MST apparently). Since that time I've made 500 posts, including this one. At about six per month, not a blistering rate of posting, but this is a hobby for me after all and I don't always have the time or the gumption I'd like to have to put into posts here. Some posts I'm particularly proud of, some aren't the best but they can't all be gems. One set of posts has even spawned a different website.