LXD: Series release July 7, 2010

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD) series will be released online starting July 7th, 2010.  For those of you who missed the Oscars or one of their many performances, the LXD is a collection of dancers from different backgrounds with some really amazing talent.  If you want to see some crazy moves then check out their site now and the series when it is released in July.

OK Go’s – This Too Shall Pass – Video

You have to check out OK Go’s latest music video.  If you don’t recall OK Go was the band made famous by their music video for Here It Goes Again, which featured the band doing tricks on 8 treadmills.   I always wondered how a band could top that, well they have really gone all out on the latest video for This Too Shall Pass, literally destroying the old video.  The video features an insanely large Rube Goldberg machine. I won’t give away anymore.

Alberta missing the link

I was born and raised in Calgary, spent a great 16 years there.  I still have a soft spot for the province and defend it from people’s belief that it is filled with right wing conservatives.  I always felt the province had a special sort of “conservative” view that was for smaller government and business, but pretty much middle of the road on everything else. Above all I always thought people in the province looked out for each other.  I started having some doubts about this view when the tar sands projects were allowed to run rampant with a lack of concern about the future of these areas and the people living downstream.

Well my doubts have been sadly bolstered this week with the announcement of a new bill with a section allowing parents to remove their kids from classes when certain topics are discussed.  I can understand that some parents may want to take care of sex education at home.  I however can’t fathom why the law of evolution would be a possible topic to miss.  Sure I understand that some people’s religious beliefs don’t jive well with parts of evolution but the science of evolution is a fact.  What about gravity or geology,  I can only imagine the young earth people lining up to remove kids for these topics as well.

Our government and education are supposed to be secular.  Science classes should be taught on the basis of scientific knowledge and not pandering to religious groups.  If they are really this insecure with their beliefs then I suggest home schooling.  This way the kids can blame the parents when they are older and ask them why they missed out on the fundamentals of their education, while they try to find a career in which this knowledge doesn’t matter.

For a province rich in field of natural science, think the Royal Tyrrell Museum, it seems strange to still be having these debates.

I hope the people of Alberta tell the government to get back on track.

Spaceflight Now

If you are lucky enough to catch a rocket launch, then Spaceflight Now can be a huge help .  On a recent trip to Florida I managed to see the launch of a Delta-4 heavy rocket.  The launch was a surprise and was pushed back several times because of technical glitches and weather.  Due to the nature of the payload – NRO spy satellite – the official sites had little details. Spaceflight Now had all the details and on the night of the actual launch had a play-by-play of the several restarted count downs.

Tandoori Beaver Tails

Tandoori Beaver Tails is a great blog written by one of my colleague at work.  Kulpreet definitely writes a lot better then I do and he also tends to ramble on a lot more, which in his case is a good thing.  He has expanded on my Google Trends post with a really interesting set of searches that you should take a peek at, Canada: According to Google Trends.  There is also some fun commentary on politics.  So go give it a read.