Category: Life: News Commentary

Coverage continued in next post

I know I said I’ll be taking a blogging holiday, but waking up with the news that the Space Shuttle Columbia has broken up on re-entry with the loss of 7 lives still comes to as a shock. It was built in 1978 and was first flown in 1981 (I’ve heard it rumored that this was supposedly the Columbia’s last mission)

I’m watching the BBC News feed at the moment, but it appears that the shuttle lost contact with NASA Florida’s space centre around an hour before it was due to land, and then 15 minutes before it was due to land at 1416 GMT debris was spotted and it seems the shuttle has disintegrated. Earlier indications report that it has not exploded, but NASA has declared a state of emergency and President Bush is returning to the White House to make a statement. It possible that there was a heat-shield failure.

It is extremely unlikely that there are any survivors of mission STS 107 as the shuttle broke up travelling at over 12,500 mph (20,000 kph – around 18 times the speed of sound) over 200,000ft above Texas as it was gliding in to land. Your thoughts please for the families of Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, Michael Anderson and the first Israel in space – Ilan Ramon. This was the 113th flight in the program’s 22 years and Columbia’s 28th flight – the last major incident which caused loss of life was the space shuttle Challenger exploding just after lift-off on Jan 28th 1986 (when another seven crew members lost their lives).

More coverage from ABC News, ITV News, MSNBC and many other news organisations – news reports are being gathering in this new ODP category. There are images taken from the mission available at the BBC News site – looking at those pictures helps you realise that there were, in fact, human beings in the shuttle and that they probably were burnt alive and suffered suffication during the last few minutes of their lives.

There is also a good timeline which illustrates what happened when.

Other blog entries: Quinn Macdonalds, Tampa Tantrum, Gamer’s Nook, Bill Egible, Boing Boing, Stupidevilbastard, Jason Defillippo, About D@mn Time, No Prerequisite, Carisenda, Mr. Mist’s Blog, Mouse Musings, From The Orient, Spinneyhead.

17:11: Flags are now flying at half mast at the NASA launch site as it is officially announced the shuttle is “gone”. Kennedy Space Center workers have been told that all work has been cancelled for this weekend. Only essential personnel should report for their duties. Operatives at the Space Center have already started to put folders, printouts and other information into boxes for later data analysis to hopefully find out what went wrong – I’m hearing that the shuttle came in for re-entry at too steep an angle which burnt through the heat shield (and the resulting radioactivity caused by this would have probably caused the last garbled communications from Columbia at 2pm GMT/UTC).

Picture (c) BBC News
Originally posted: 15:58. Updated: 16:16, 16:48, 17:11, 17:32
Coverage continued in next post

3 hours before the firefighters latest 48hour strike was due to happen, there was a major fire quite close to me. Around 6am, the old Bestway cash and carry warehouse on Loughborough Road (close to Red Hill Circle) resulted in the armed forces attending the scene with the “Green Goddesses” fire fighting appliances. Once they managed to gain access to the building (the access road was/is blocked off with concrete blocks to try and stop travellers camping on the site) they extinguished the fire by 9am – just in time for the “proper” firefighters to take over.

However, Loughborough Road is one of the main roads into the city centre (it joined Melton Road – the “Golden Mile” – closer to town which then leads traffic directly into the centre) from the main Outer Ring Road (I live practically parallel with the Bestway cash and carry – and around 1 mile away from it) and for safety reasons, the police closed Loughborough Road between Checketts Road (just before Belgrave Hall as you are leaving the city) and the ring road.

Some drivers obversely thought that they could get away with breaking the law under these circumstances though.

Call me a sentimental old fool, but this article on BBC News nearly brought tears to my eyes. It is reported via the Sunday Mirror tabloid newspaper that J.K.Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling) – the author of the famous Harry Potter series of books (see my previous coverage) granted a dying child’s wish.

Nine year old Catie Hoch was dying from Neuroblastoma (an aggressive childhood cancer) and when it became clear that little Catie only had weeks to live, JK Rowling read her the manuscript of the then incomplete “Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire” book.

Whilst I understand that she will probably be unwilling to do a similar act for every child (if you just think about the number of children that are Harry Potter fans and the number that could be seriously ill at this moment of time- it wouldn’t give her time to do anything else), it is still quite “touching” and thoughtful. Yeah, some people will probably scream “publicity whore” – but does it really matter to a dying little girl? It just about “makes up” the time when Warner Brothers (who own the film rights to the Harry Potter films) started threatening maintainers of various Harry Potter websites – some of those being children…

Looking at various news sources (I first read about it via Tracy‘s blog, but it’s now been covered by CNN, the BBC, CTV.ca, ABC News, The Independent, MSNBC, Ananova and many other news services), it appears Clonaid has been the first organisation to clone a human being. They’ve named the little girl which was born on Boxing Day to a 31 year old American woman “Eve”.

Whilst there has yet to be any scientific evidence presented by Clonaid (they say DNA evidence will be available in 8 to 9 days time and according to the CNN article, there will be strict 3rd party evaluation of the evidence), there is a large amount of controversy about this claim. It goes further than the normal ‘Is cloning right?‘ moral issues… It appears the company has very strong links to a cult religious group called the “Raelians” (indeed, the scientific director of Clonaid – Brigitte Boisselier – is a “bishop” in the group).

The Raelians believe their spiritual leader is a direct descendant of the aliens that created life on Earth through genetic engineering. This spiritual leader is the former French journalist Claude Vorilhon (who now calls himself Rael) who also wrote the books “Messages given to Me by Extra-Terrestrials“, “Yes to Human Cloning: Immortality Thanks to Science“, “Lets Welcome the Extra Terrestrials” – may I just remind readers of a slightly similarity with the founder of Scientology – L. Ron Hubbard – who was also an author/writer (and, it appears, the Raelians also have ‘ties’ with the CoS).

Whilst I’m waiting for true scientific evidence to emerge before making a decision on this issue, I’ve already put the salt on standby (i.e. I’m taking this with a large pinch of salt/I have large doubts about this). Religious “cults” have not exactly had a good track record for telling the truth, plus the likely hood of the Raelian‘s coming from practically ‘nothing’ to producing a fully fledged human clone seems unlikely to me (considering a large number of other companies have been working on the same thing and have not yet achieved success)…

I’ve just read something slightly “strange” in this morning’s Daily Mail newspaper concerning Britney Spears. Basically, Pepsi “is dropping the 21-year-old as the face of its advertising campaign”. Why? “Miss Spears signed with Pepsi in February 2001 in a two-year deal but soon infuriated bosses by being spotted drinking Coca-Cola… She has also been pictured smoking and drinking, which is not the image we want.”

So Brit’s lost the advertising deal because she’s been seen smoking and drinking. I wonder who Pepsi Co will sign up to replace her? Step forward heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne who they signed up “following the success of the reality TV show The Osbournes“.

Hang on a rock-picking minute. Is this the same Ozzy Osbourne (real name John Osbourne) who was the lead singer for Black Sabbath, who spent about $1000 a week on drugs, smokes, famously bit the head off a bat in 1982 (and then had to be treated for rabies), has been jailed for theft and burglary, and is known for having been dependent on alcohol?

<sarcasm mode on> Yes – that’s a great improvement isn’t it? <sarcasm mode off>