This (Monday) morning brings sad news: the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition passed away due to side effects from an (unspecified) kind of cancer. CBC had the dolorous news.

However, he also wrote a final open letter to his fellow Canadians before he died. The last paragraph is worth quoting:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is ( Read more... )

Two days ago, on Monday, the controversial Science Fiction [SF] author James P. Hogan was found dead at his home in Ireland. The cause of death has not yet been stated. He was 69 years old.

Along with many others, I was surprised and saddened to hear of this. He was well-known as a writer of hard SF and of several critiques of science (such as ( Read more... )

While I suspected that something like this might happen, given the current economic mess (which has been referred to as the Second Depression by some), it still is sad to see it happen. At the beginning of February, US President Obama came out with the US government’s proposed budget for 2011 - and cancelled NASA’s Constellation space program ( Read more... )

As I noted in this entry, this day would have come sooner or later, but I am sorry to hear it happened sooner.

Apparently, Edmonton City Council recently encountered a large budget deficit (due to the ongoing economic mess) and has decided to sacrifice something that helped save the environment. As of May 2 this year, the last trolleybuses ran in ( Read more... )