Post number 100!

I've been thinking of stopping it here. One hundred is just such a tempting number to stop at.

Christmas

I'm pretty cynical about Christmas, you know. I loath Black Friday, and everything related to it that comes afterwards. It is disgusting. But there is also a part of me that is fond of Christmas. I remember a fire on Christmas eve, family gatherings, the feeling of something special - back in innocent times. It still follows me, this nostalgia. Nostalgia, "a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." But times have changed, and though I still hold Christmas as a unique month in my calender, I find more to dislike than to like. For a time that is supposed to be so positive and happy, why is it that so many people are stressed and depressed? Why are there people storming the malls, even hurting each-other, for something their 8 year old really wants? I guess I just wish consumerism wasn't such an integral part of Christmas. It's grotesque.

Anyway, merry Christmas! At the very least, try to keep the Man out of it.

Exoplanets

The holy grail in the search for exoplanets is to find a rocky, Earth-like planet that orbits its star in the "habitable zone", where is liquid water is possible. There are several ways to detect these planets, and even determine what their atmosphere is like, but by far most exoplanets that are discovered (over 1000 now) are huge gas giants like Jupiter, unlikely to support life. However, as we know from our own gas giants, these massive planets can often have very interesting moons, so the recent discovery of a Jupiter-like planet in our galaxy is causing a bit of a stir, not because of the planet itself but because it very probably has rocky moons also in the habitable zone.

 Gliese 581d

A discussion

It's always nice to come across a sensible conversation on belief and non-belief as opposed to the usual "debates" where the same old points get dragged out and beaten senseless. Here we have a discussion between Seth Andrews AKA the Thinking Atheist and a Methodist minister named Bob.

Missionaries

Past, present, and future missions to objects in our solar system, with pictures!