RIP Christopher Hitchens

A great man has died.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 15-12-2011
Christopher Hitchens was a man of controversy. He was not afraid to pick sides regardless of their popularity. He relentlessly attacked people and beliefs that he thought were wrong. Taking aim at increasingly bigger targets God was the inevitable final target. In many debates with religious apologists Christopher always made the debates interesting to watch. As no other he knew how to fight the rhetorics used by apologists by rhetorics of his own. His contributions to the debates were great ones and he even got his own term for his devastating debating skills: the Hitchslap.


You will be missed by many.

Beautiful short video taken from the ISS of planet earth

Beautiful short video taken from the ISS of planet earth.

Going from the Middle East to the South Pacific Ocean on 29-10-2011.

The video begins just northwest of the Tibetan Plateau, where the greenish glow is from airglow. The line separating the plateau and the city lights to the right of track are the Himalaya Mountains, with cities like New Delhi, Lahore, and Islamabad standing out. Continuing down track, one can spot the brightly-lit city of Calcutta just right of track before flying over Burma and Thailand. Thailand's capital city, Bangkok, is the brightest-lit city in the video. The white lights of the city can be seen nearby the green and purple lights on the Gulf of Thailand, which are fishing boats and oil rigs. Once across the Gulf of Thailand, cities like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore stand out right of track before flying over the island of Java (long, thin island downtrack from Singapore). Near the end of the video the ISS flies southeast over Australia and lightning storms, and the Milky Way can be seen rising in the sky.

Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/