Alien life may exist without conditions like Earth

...Scientist have discovered more than 700 planets outside our solar system, most of which have been written off as candidates for life because of their orbits or gas-based character. However the current research would now include them as possible habitats for exotic life forms completely unrelated to us

We can dance if we want to

United Arab Emirates lists Council on American Islamic Relations as a terrorist organization

The United Arab Emirates has released a list of groups it considers to be terrorist organizations today. Among them is the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The Canadian branch of that group, The National Council of Canadian Muslims, which until last year was known as CAIR-CAN, filed a libel notice against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman Jason MacDonald for saying they had direct links to terror groups.

I wonder what happened to that lawsuit.

Also named as terrorist organizations by the UAE were the Islamic Relief Organization, which has operations in Canada, and the Muslim Society of America.

The disgusting Canadian campaign to enable terrorism: "Hug a Terrorist"

No, the propaganda tools in the "Hug a Terrorist" aren't actual terrorists, they're human shields and terror-enablers:

Looks like they haven't yet quite got the hang of twerking in Russia

OISE Professor accused of pedophilia-related crimes to have preliminary hearing in two weeks

There hasn't been much information in the news about the upcoming trial of Ben Levin, the former Ontario Deputy Minister of Education under Kathleen Wynne who was indicted for numerous child pornography and other offenses involving minors.

But one of the detectives involved with the case confirmed for me today that Levin, who at the time of his arrest was a Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing starting on Wednesday, November 26 at the courthouse at 1000 Finch Avenue West in Toronto.

Levin's preliminary hearing is expected to last three days, at which time the court will hear a great deal of evidence about his alleged involvement in procuring child pornography and allegations about his arranging to commit sexual assault, as was described in his indictment. The judge at the hearing will determine if the evidence presented merits the next step of proceeding to trial.

For those familiar with the environment and culture guiding the institution where Levin was a professor, that someone of such high standing there would be in such a predicament comes as less than a total shock. OISE is the same place that, only a few short weeks after Levin's arrest, co-sponsored a symposium for teachers of young children where the keynote speaker postulated, without genuine scientific evidence, that adult sexual attraction to children is a natural phenomenon.

Considering that culture, the crimes of which Levin stand accused seem to be a natural, logical progression.

Regardless of the outcome of the Levin trial, hopefully the focus will shift to what bizarre, inappropriate dogmas are being taught at OISE. We need to be careful to determine whether that place responsible for the education of our children's educators is actually a place from which our children need protection.

Tarek Fatah on the lies of Canadian Islamists

I'm finally done listening to CBC Radio

For more than twenty-five years, I've had my radio dial more-or-less permanently set to CBC Radio 2, as it's now known, or CBC FM, and then CBC Stereo, as it was called when I started listening to it.

It's primary use for me was as the music that would go off in the morning when my clock-radio is set to wake me up. But as I'm the sort of person who finds each morning a startling new experience which requires lingering in bed for at least half an hour before actually crawling out from under the covers to face it, that entailed quite a bit of listening over the years.

Only coincidentally, unless there's a subliminal element, yesterday I made a decision that comes around the same time as the recent scandal involving Jian Ghomeshi and allegations about his sexual battering of women. However he was a host on CBC Radio One, with which I almost never bothered.

Finally, after years of frustration with its decline, inanity, and tedious biases, I am done with CBC radio forever.

The reason I had begun regularly listening to CBC FM in the first place in the 1980's was because of its mostly classical music, with some jazz, format. Then as now, there was no shortage of radio stations playing golden oldies or crappy contemporary pop. Which isn't to say I'm not a fan of rock music. But the intricacy and elaborateness of great classical music has appealed to me from the time I was a kid watching Warner Brothers cartoons that used such phenomenal scores as a backdrop. While I had my own extensive library of classical music, the mix of someone else's choices, plus the opportunity to discover unheard of (by me) tracks, were of particular appeal.

CBC FM's hosts, back then, were also outstanding broadcasters, including the late, great Bob Kerr, whose 1 to 4 pm daily show also featured "Organ Thursdays." I was dating a CBC FM producer for a few years in the late 80's/early 90's ( no, this was long before Jian Ghomeshi worked there, so any sex scandals at CBC radio of which I'm aware and not telling don't involve him.)  I heard from her how the CBC administration actually despised Kerr's devoting an entire day, once a week, of his show to organ music broadcasts. But Kerr was such an institution at the Ceeb and he insisted on it, so he got his way, and I, like many other aficionados of organ music, was grateful for his perseverance. At that time, I was working for the provincial civil service and would have the radio in my office fixed on CBC FM, and those Organ Thursdays made the end of the second last day of the work week so much more enjoyable.

But following the heyday of great announcers like the curmudgeony, but encyclopedic Kerr, the eclectic Clyde Gilmour, and the erudite Richard Ouzounian, there was, beginning in the mid 1990's, a precipitous decline in the quality of announcer introducing the music on CBC Stereo/CBC 2.

From the time of the retirements of Kerr and Gilmour until now, mixing that civil service trait of simultaneously being obsequious and condescending, an onslaught of tedious announcers were blathering over CBC 2's airwaves. The next generation of announcers didn't just briefly introduce music, or perhaps also provide a bit of historical trivia about the composition or composer, as one would want from music radio. The new crop evidently felt that any asinine thought that popped into their head, or any mundane personal detail, like providing a prolonged account of their last "mature men's" hockey league game, was something that needed to be shared on air.

Making things worse was that the hourly news reports were being treated by CBC's "journalists" like it was the NDP's radio broadcast service. In 1993, we had a Liberal majority government, and the NDP was the 4th party with a meager 13 Parliamentary seats, behind the Liberals, the Canadian Alliance and the Bloc Quebecois. Yet is seemed whenever there was a government policy announced, the hourly news reports on CBC 2 didn't feature a government spokesman or even a member of the Official Opposition, but would only have a comment from an NDP member.

It became so outrageous and irritating that I complained to the CBC Ombudsman. As one would expect from the CBC, that process was totally useless. Rather than reviewing the Radio 2 hourly news broadcasts about which I complained, the CBC Ombudsman instead reviewed only CBC Radio One's World at Six program and rejected the complaint as "unfounded." Fortunately, in the aftermath of the complaint, at least for a few months, CBC 2's hourly news reports shifted somewhat away from giving NDP exclusivity of coverage to actually giving the government and Official Opposition some air time.

Back in 2005, CBC announcers were off the job for almost two months as part of a labor dispute. It was back when CBC 2 was still all classical. Management took over announcing duties and during the lockout, CBC Radio 2 listeners were treated to an announcer briefly introducing music by the name of the piece and the composer. It was the best time in the entire history of CBC Radio. If only they could have kept that format permanently!

Unfortunately, the dispute was eventually settled and the incessantly irritating, mundane and seemingly endless droning of CBC's on-air personalities resumed.

Then came the change of format, when instead of the classical music which made CBC 2 worth enduring, despite all its flaws, the programming was changed to consist of contemporary garbage with a particular emphasis on crappy Canadian adult-pop music.

I've always thought Ron Sexsmith's music was boring and uninventive. But his awful music was almost welcome when played alongside, untalented drivel from the likes of Joel Plaskett and the completely inane Sam Roberts. I swear, I'm absolutely convinced Sam Roberts has only written one song in his life and he just changes up the lyrics for them. Every one of his terrible songs sound exactly the same.

Making it worse, far worse, was having the lame-assed CBC host proclaiming that every piece of garbage about to be played on air was "great."

"Great" was the Beethoven that they used to play before they changed the format to be dominated by sound pollution calling itself "Canadian Adult Contemporary Music." And having some smug CBC host telling me that a piece of feces smells like lilacs doesn't make it so.

Even the one redeeming feature of CBC radio was an illusion. The absence of commercials wasn't really that at all. It ran plenty of commercials, only they weren't for commercial products or services, they were for other CBC programs. But that made them no less, and actually quite more obnoxious than the regular sort.

So the other day I finally had enough. I have switched my radio dial over to Classical 96.3 FM.

I wish I had done that years ago!

The announcers are professional, intelligent and capable. Just like the sort CBC FM had 20 years ago. The news reports are relevant and are actual news, not the biased propaganda that is a trademark of CBC news.

And even the commercials are comparatively tasteful and relatively brief - certainly no less painful than the tiresome, self-congratulatory exposition to which the CBC regularly subjects its listeners.

The only positive thing CBC 2 had going for it in recent years was the sexy, silken, sultry voice of the wonderful Molly Johnson. But she left at the end of 2013.

My morning radio has found a happy new home at Classical 96. Goodbye CBC radio - we had one of those relationships that lasted too long and became toxic at the end, leaving nothing but bitterness and resentment. perhaps some day I'll look back at the good times more fondly and forget the bad. I won't, for one second, miss hearing Stuart McLean's banal screaming into the microphone, extending his Garrison Keilor impersonation for years past the point where people even remember who Garrison Keilor was.

Still, there will always be affection for the days of Bob Kerr and Organ Thursdays and of Clyde Gilmour's Eclectic Circus. But those days are never coming back to CBC Radio 2, and neither am I.


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N.B. This blog post was originally an experiment by which readers of Eye on a Crazy Planet could observe how I sometimes come to create these posts. The above is the now complete version.

Liberals Are Killing the Liberal Arts

On campuses across the country, hostility toward unpopular ideas has become so irrational that many students, and some faculty members, now openly oppose freedom of speech. The hypersensitive consider the mere discussion of the topic of censorship to be potentially traumatic. Those who try to protect academic freedom and the ability of the academy to discuss the world as it is are swimming against the current. In such an atmosphere, liberal-arts education can’t survive...

More of Rick McGinnis' Old Pictures

THE MAN AND THE WOMAN IN THIS PICTURE HATE EACH OTHER. They might not have hated each other at some point previous to my taking their picture, and might not have done so at some point afterward, but on the evening when I set up my light in a room at the Albany Club in the early days of spring in 1990, Mike Harris and Dianne Cunningham could barely stand to be in the same room.

Harris and Cunningham were fighting each other for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario at the time...

Meanwhile, in outer space news...

...On Wednesday, the European Space Agency will try to do the equivalent of transferring an object from one speeding bullet to another. More than 500m km away from Earth, between Jupiter and Mars, a probe named the Philae lander will be ejected from the Rosetta spacecraft and land on a comet for the first time in scientific history...

And...

Thousands of shooting stars per hour scraped a yellowed Martian sky last month as a comet blazed through the red planet's atmosphere at 35 miles per second.

Unfortunately, no one was there to experience the spectacular pass of Siding Spring on Oct. 19, and the remote images and data from the close encounter were not nearly so dramatic.

Still, the space agency has learned surprising things from its  extremely rare observations of a comet composed of the matter that formed the inner solar system, scientists said Friday

Cultivating Consciousness at Hillcrest Community Garden

My pal, the wonderful Toronto artist John Clapp, wrote a piece recently about the Hillcrest Community Garden that is worth a read:

Among the plots of fruits, vegetables and fragrant herbs in the Hillcrest Park Community Garden, a frail figure with a long, snowy beard sits in a dilapidated wheelchair, hunched over a large pot of soil and looking rather like an aged Charles Darwin.

Meet my friend, Darryl-a 52 year old man with advanced Muscular Dystrophy, a degenerative disease that systematically destroys bone and muscle cells and severely diminishes motor dexterity.

Covered in compost, garden trowel in hand and with awkward,  jerky motions he somehow manages to successfully transplant a few of his favorite varieties of flowers.

Upon completing the task, I ask him what he would like to plant next. He responds in his usual barely audible voice: “sunflowers.”..

News Briefs - Republicans gain control of Senate and retain House majority as Lame Duck Obama limps into final two years of his term

Republicans took control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, a result that transforms the political dynamic in Washington and gives the GOP new power over President Barack Obama ’s final two years in the White House.

Republicans won Senate seats from West Virginia to Colorado and beyond to assemble a majority of at least 52 seats, expanded their margin in the House—possibly to levels not seen in decades—and won key governor races.

The sweep left Democrats without a majority in either chamber for the first time since 2006...

Oh, and Jian Ghomeshi hired the beautiful and brilliant Marie Henein, a protege of Eddie Greenspan, to defend him from criminal charges. Let's hope she has a can of pepper spray handy during their meetings.

And in the "why did this not happen years ago?" file: Citizen and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander to ban immigrants in polygamous, forced marriages.

A discussion about genocide at the Munk Centre

On October 14, a panel convened at the Munk School of Global Affairs, under the auspices of the Raoul Wallenberg Legacy of Leadership Project, to discuss genocide in the modern world. I had intended to write about what was discussed there sooner, but my own foray into local politics kept me too busy to get to it until now. As it happens, that delay may have been fortuitous and added to the relevance of this post, since a panelist that night,  Jonathan Kay, has since been thrust into the spotlight for two very different reasons. One of them is the announcement a couple of days ago that he would be taking over as Editor-in-Chief of Walrus Magazine, a staple among Toronto's lefty, middlebrow readers;  a move that was bold, unexpected, and will undoubtedly raise the quality of that publication.

Additionally, some reflected glare from the spotlight thrust on Jian Ghomeshi, in the wake of revelations of his reported proclivity to violently assault women as a form of sexual foreplay, has also been thrust on Jonathan, who was a regular panelist on Ghomeshi's CBC radio show Q. As Editor for Comment and a columnist at the National Post, Jonathan has been commenting, quite rationally, on trying to separate Ghomeshi, the accomplished and charismatic radio personality, from Ghomeshi the (allegedly) vicious, narcissistic sexual deviate. Though many people have been infuriated at what they perceive as any attempt to mitigate outrage against a person who committed terrible acts towards women, Jonathan's is a valid argument. In the way that one can despise the personal beliefs and ideologies of Richard Wagner, yet still admire the music he created, separating the artist from the art requires intellectual examination and the courage to discuss honestly held beliefs in the tumultuous climate of the hysterical media whirlwind of the Ghomeshi scandal.

It's always a pleasure to hear Jonathan speak at an event such as the Munk Centre panel. Unfettered by the word number limitations of a newspaper column or the need to speak in talking points on radio or TV, one gets to hear from him detailed, insightful, intelligent, and often very humorous perspectives on contemporary and historical developments that have and are shaping our world.

The word I most frequently use in my descriptions of Jonathan is "reasonable." While that might be something that should seem a requisite quality for someone in the media or in a position of public influence, the unfortunate reality is that there are far too few media personalities who could be described that way. The fact that I have friends on the left who think Jonathan is a doctrinaire "right-winger," and very conservative friends who are convinced Jonathan has sunk into the quicksand of leftist dogma is actually, as far as I'm concerned, indicative of a balanced intellect who isn't married to any political or ideological position. It suggests he views issues, case-by-case, on their merits. Which isn't to say I always agree with Jonathan's positions, but I always expect they'll be sane and well-considered.

Now back to the Wallenberg Project panel about genocide.

In 1985, Raoul Wallenberg, who vanished under suspicious circumstances in Soviet-controlled Budapest at the end of the Second War and at that point was presumed to be dead, was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of Canada.

Wallenberg received that honor for his courageous accomplishment of saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death camps, and another honor bestowed on his name is The Raoul Wallenberg Leadership Project. That effort is an initiative of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University.

Aside from Jonathan, the other panelists for the discussion were the eminent Liberal MP for Mount Royal and former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, and Global Brief Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Irwin Studin.

It's an obvious tragedy that ongoing discussions about genocide are necessary when the world should have learned the lessons of Holocaust and of the depths to which man can sink, and the unspeakable consequences of what can happen if the world fails to take action to prevent an onslaught of targeted mass murder. Yet genocides have occurred since 1945 in places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Rwanda, and a genocide is still going on in Darfur.

Despite these atrocities, one of the points that emerged from the discussion is that while the incidences of genocides seems not to have abated, the magnitude of those crimes, compared with earlier times has, thanks to international awareness of them. We live in times where news is not confined to print journalists from relatively few newspapers. Now multiple cable all-news channels, and the Internet, social media, and smart phones can instantly draw attention to crimes such as ISIS' murderous campaign against Yazidis and pressure a relatively quick response. Whereas half a century ago, such monstrosities, competing with other domestic and international events, might have have only been a half column buried deep in the pages of The New York Times.

Which is not to say that genocide is a matter that need not concern us in today's world. One of the issues that ate up most of the panel's Q & A time came from an audience member's (ok, it was me) question about the degree of commitment that western countries have towards combating genocide when it becomes difficult for them. Jonathan during his talk recalled how the murders and mutilation of ten Belgian peacekeepers during the Rwandan genocide led to that country withdrawing all its forces, reducing the UN Peacekeepers' effectiveness and leaving Tutsi victims that much more vulnerable. I reminded the panelists of a similar occurrence the year before that, when following the killing and mutilation of American soldiers in Mogadishu, Bill Clinton withdrew US forces that has been in place to ensure that famine-stricken civilians were not easy prey for Somalia's warlords.

In reality, we have to understand that combating genocides are a combination of factors, including  altruism, a moral duty, and the not unreasonable expectation that global powers are more likely to be motivated to act when there is an element of self-interest.

Considering the night was dedicated to the memory of Raoul Wallenberg, it was quite natural that questions arose about contemporary anti-Semitism and the desire among some to commit another genocide of Jews. A general consensus among the panel was that the existence of the State of Israel has made such an outcome a near impossibility. Despite that country being surrounded by enemies, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and its master Iran and Hamas , who openly advocate for eliminating Jews, the Jewish State's military prowess and determination for survival, plus its existence as an ultimate sanctuary, are all factors that will confound the aspirations of those who want a second Holocaust.

Tragically, it is from within western societies, often on university campuses, that supporters of genocidal maniacs such as Hezbollah, hiding behind the lie of wanting "social justice," are doing their utmost to enable the would-be perpetrators of another Holocaust. Which makes exposing and standing up to such people all the more important today. Our failure to do so would be a betrayal of the lessons of history and of Raoul Wallenberg's courage which ultimately cost him his life.

Howard Jacobson: Russell Brand and Miriam Margolyes - Don’t fall for the false charms of those two pantomime preachers

When Russell Brand uses the word “hegemony” something dies in my soul. When Miriam Margolyes sees the word “Jew” something dies in hers. Such accomplished clowns, both of them, it’s a matter of regret to those of us who like to be amused that they don’t stick to clowning. It takes from their comedy to discover they are fools in earnest. But it’s also on behalf of seriousness that we ask them to stay with what they know. For neither has the first idea what serious thought is. And these are dangerous times, when what looks like an idea is more likely to be attended to than what actually is one.

One can’t put all the blame on Russell Brand for “hegemony”. The word has been the curse of the social sciences ever since that branch of knowledge thought of calling itself that. If the phrase “as Chomsky says” had one thinking of leaving any meeting addressed by a social scientist in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, it was “hegemony” that finally got one out of the door...

Well, it's about time! A new Pee-Wee Herman movie is in the works!

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure isn’t over just yet: Paul Reubens went on The Tonight Show Wednesday evening and confirmed another Pee-wee movie is in the works.

Kathy Shaidle: Lessons on Being a Grown-Up from… Vincent Price?

The Seventies was a lousy time to be a kid.

Oh, sure, it wasn’t all bad:

We didn’t wear bike helmets. Our parents made us play outside (“Get out of this house, and don’t come back ’til the street lights come on!”).We “bounced around in the back of the station wagon.” No one was allergic to peanut butter, or very much else.

Evel Knievel was a role model.

But something freakish, sinister, and incomprehensible was always being talked about, over at the Me Decade’s grown ups’ table:

Watergate (which had something to do with “bugs” invading America, I concluded; men in suits talked about it on TV so much, they interrupted my lunchtime Flintstones for months), the Patty Hearst kidnapping, Vietnam, Jimmy Carter, Bicentennial toilet seats, The Gong Show, hijackings, the Loud family, D.B. Cooper, divorce, things called “muggings,” crying Indians, gas station lineups and an unprecedented combination of high inflation, unemployment, and interest rates that adults muttered about in worried voices just out of earshot.

Epitomized by Howard Hughes’ will, fakery was epidemic:

We decorated our houses with plastic flowers and fruit. Squeaking drugstore paperback racks were laden with books about astrology, crypto-zoology, alien astronauts, and other junk history. “Everyone knew” that some all-powerful “They” had gotten away with killing the Kennedys and King. What chance did a timid, puny seven-year-old girl have?

If a rich child porn aficionado could bury a bunch of kids in their school bus, what the hell couldn’t happen?

A kid needed a break.

If you lived in my part of the world, starting around 1971, that respite came in the form of a cheap local TV show called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.

More HERE

Canada praised for leadership on standing up to Iran

 OTTAWA - Canada was praised for its "tough stance" on Iran one day before the Islamic Republic's human rights record is up for review before the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Foreign Minister John Baird welcomed the UN's rapporteur on Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, to Parliament Hill Thursday and proffered that Shaheed's work was "crucially important."

Shaheed said Canada's strong stance served as encouragement to those living within Iran...

John Gray: The truth about evil

"...Ever since it was spun off from al-Qaida some 10 years ago, Isis has made clear its commitment to beheading apostates and unbelievers, enslaving women and wiping out communities that will not submit to its ultra-fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. In its carefully crafted internet videos, it has advertised these crimes itself. There has never been any doubt that Isis practises methodical savagery as an integral part of its strategy of war. This did not prevent an abortive attempt on the part of the American and British governments in August of last year to give military support to the Syrian rebels – a move that could have left Isis the most powerful force in the country. Isis became the prime enemy of western governments only when it took advantage of the anarchy these same governments had created when they broke the state of Iraq with their grandiose scheme of regime change.

Against this background, it would be easy to conclude that talk of evil in international conflicts is no more than a cynical technique for shaping public perceptions. That would be a mistake. (Tony) Blair’s secret – which is the key to much in contemporary politics – is not cynicism. A cynic is someone who knowingly acts against what he or she knows to be true. Too morally stunted to be capable of the mendacity of which he is often accused, Blair thinks and acts on the premise that whatever furthers the triumph of what he believes to be good must be true. Imagining that he can deliver the Middle East and the world from evil, he cannot help having a delusional view of the impact of his policies.

Here Blair is at one with most western leaders. It’s not that they are obsessed with evil. Rather, they don’t really believe in evil as an enduring reality in human life. If their feverish rhetoric means anything, it is that evil can be vanquished. In believing this, those who govern us at the present time reject a central insight of western religion, which is found also in Greek tragic drama and the work of the Roman historians: destructive human conflict is rooted in flaws within human beings themselves. In this old-fashioned understanding, evil is a propensity to destructive and self-destructive behaviour that is humanly universal. The restraints of morality exist to curb this innate human frailty; but morality is a fragile artifice that regularly breaks down. Dealing with evil requires an acceptance that it never goes away... "

Christian priest tells UN: "Israel is the only Mideast country not persecuting Christians"