There is, rightly, much ado about the internet spying bill C-30 that is currently before the house. A bill so poorly written that the Harper Conservatives have sent it to committee for amendments before it has even reached second reading. There are several moral reasons why the inappropriately named "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act". I say inappropriately named act due to the fact that CSIS has no jurisdiction in dealing with child pornography, but this act allows CSIS the same access as the police. That goes to the bill's deeper purpose, allowing the Harper government to spy on Canadians.

My project for my final course in my degree has been approved. I'm looking at if there's a connection between the presence of singly ionized sulphur and the morphology (shape) of the nebula. A side benefit of this is that there will be lots of pictures of planetary nebulae. Not the best cosmetically since that's not my purpose, but they still can be quite pretty.

It is well known in political circles that Harper is at best ignoring Quebec and is at worst being actively hostile towards the province. It's at the point where long time Conservatives in Quebec are starting to complain about it. The question of why an allegedly national leader is ignoring Canada's second most populous province? There two reasons for Harper's action (or more appropriately inaction) towards la belle province. First and simplistically it feeds his base in the west who see Quebec as a province of lazy whiners who only take, take, take. The real reason is more Machiavellian, in that Harper needs a strong Bloc Quebecois to maintain his majority in parliament.

Ok, dying stars. Some more planetary nebula. Again not the best images as they're residuals from some science images I'm taking for school (no to mention is was a couple of days before full moon). I need to image several more, but the weather isn't cooperating at the moment. Hopefully things clear up by next weekend.

In honour of the deep ties between the Conservative Party of Canada and the folks that run the "Ethical" oil organization, a new Conservative Party of Canada logo:

The political right of this and most countries hates unions. They blame them for everything from job losses to hemorrhoids. It is astounding how much the right blames unions for problems. This editorial in the National Post shows how extensive the mythos against unions goes in the political right.

Of late I've noticed that the con-bots of the world have been trumpeting "parliamentary supremacy", especially with respect to the CWB. They seem to be of the mistaken belief that the term parliamentary supremacy means that parliament can do whatever it wants without let or hindrance. This is only partially true.

Calgarians are getting an example of what happens when you blindly put your 'X' beside whatever bale of hay the Conservative party puts up for election, you get the short end of the stick when they're doling out the money since they don't need to buy your vote. Mayor Nenshi and various community groups are justifiably upset that money that was promised is now not coming. They shouldn't be surprised though, as it's just politics.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

As part of the data collection process for my current school project, I've had to image various objects through various filters. The purpose is to see if elements can be detected using narrow band filters. Now as a byproduct I do have some astrophotos of these objects. The photos aren't the best as they were taken for scientific purposes and aren't necessarily cosmetically the best (not to mention the C-14 needs some collimation). So here we go.