Archive - 2009

History won’t forget each one who deploys diplomacy rather than weaponry to end war which inevitably imposes tremendous suffering on humanity. History remembers that a team of three once did the impossible, ending the Afghan war, ending misery of refugees due to war. The trio also won "Charlie Wilson's War" (a movie based on the true story stars Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson), Julia Roberts (Joanne Herring) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Gust Avrakotos).

(quote)

Charles Wilson  read more »

(quote)

*update*
Spending in Iraq and Afghanistan stands at $6.4 trillion through fiscal year 2020, according to a new study from the Cost of War project at Brown University.

The health care system in Canada is funded by a mix of public (70%) and private (30%) funding. The U.S. spends more per capita than any other nation in the world, but is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal health care. In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private).

All Canadian citizens are covered with a provincial Medical Services Plan, which receives funds from the federal government via tax transfers. The system is therefore a single-payer one, whereby everyone contributes to the care of all citizens. Individuals choose their own physicians, who decide what care is required - not the government, regardless of what you might hear on radio and TV talk shows - and they do not have to ante up large sums for emergency and intensive care or even for infant delivery. The system works very well.

(unquote)

Photos courtesy of costofwar.com and docotube.com  read more »

(quote)

Before being saved on Sunday morning (July 12), a missing baby boy was "navigating" his battery-powered toy truck in a wild ride down B.C.'s Peace River for 12 kilometers over 2 hours on his 3rd birthday. When spotted, the toddler was kneeling on all fours on top of the overturned car, sitting in about three meters of water, according to Fort St. John RCMP. "He was wet from his knees down, and his hands were wet, but this torso was okay". Rescued from the swirling 10ft deep water, the boy was insisting that he wanted to get back on his “boat”, and he “had made his truck into a boat and rode down the river.” The baby navigator was in good shape except for needing a diaper change.

The boy was not wearing a lifejacket, just a diaper and T-shirt at the time. He went missing from his family's campsite in the Peace Island Park just after 7 a.m. Sunday. Campers joined Fort St. John RCMP in a full-scale search of the park to find him. Don Loewen spotted the boy more than two hours after he went missing while searching the river with four other men in his boat.  read more »

(quote)

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century was visible in a 155 miles corridor as it traveled half the globe and passed through the world's two most populous nations, India and China. The eclipse began at 5:28am local time (2358 GMT) in India and lasted up to a maximum of 6 minutes and 39 seconds when it hit the Pacific Ocean. Total eclipses are caused when the moon moves directly between the sun and the Earth, covering it completely to cast a shadow on Earth. Wednesday's was the longest since July 11, 1991, when a total eclipse lasting six minutes and 53 seconds was visible from Hawaii to South America. There will not be a longer eclipse until 2132.  read more »

(quote)

*update*
Moon trees are trees grown from 500 seeds taken into orbit around the Moon by Stuart Roosa, the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.

July 20, 1969 saw the first human footsteps on the moon. John F. Kennedy remarked, "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard." Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, after he snapped the historic Earthrise photo on December 1968, said, "we came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, took with him tree seeds from a Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweet Gum, Redwood, and Douglas Fir. After Roosa's return to Earth, the original seeds were germinated by the U.S. Forest Service and the result was "moon trees." Moon trees now grow in many places. A Moon Sycamore also shades Roosa's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.  read more »