Farewell Naomi - for now

Yesterday we travelled to Canberra to attend the funeral of Naomi Atkins. Naomi and Felicity were born prematurely to good friends of ours Graham and Karen in December last year. It is always difficult to go to a funeral of a small baby, but we found the funeral very helpful. It is good to keep in mind that as Christians God knew us while we were still being formed in the womb. We look forward to getting to know Naomi when we see her again in heaven.

I just finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (web site about Margaret Atwood). It is fiction, but very well researched fiction, and kind of along the lines of The Handmaid's Tale. It deals a lot with genetic engineering, but is quite a thought provoking look at where our society is going, particularly with regard to the influence of big business and governments on our society. I highly recommend it.

Nasa's Earth Observatory has a great satellite photo of Zurich today.

Sad news today: My iPAQ met with misadventure yesterday. Serious misadventure. Terminal serious misadventure. Screen smashed, case bent etc etc. It has been really strange, because I keep going to look up stuff in it, but then I remember that it's dead.

I found a great site about bushwalking today: The Australian Bushwalking & Camping
Reference Site. There are lots of great walks on the site all over Australia.

Another interesting view on what happened to Beagle: "Americans have found SOMETHING (aliens???) on Mars and wont let anybody to see it. It is classified. So Oddyssey reprogrammed Beagle to remain silent."

It seems that after NASA thought they had lost their first Rover they have now found it again. They seem to be scratching their heads as to what went wrong, but I think the cause is obvious: My first option was right on the mark, and somehow ... Beagle 2 is back, and it's NOT HAPPY.

Look, the Brits may as well give up now. It is quite clear that Beagle 2 is dead. I think the more important question is: Why won't the 2 American Rovers help look for Beagle? So far I have 2 possible answers:

1 - The reason Beagle 2 is missing is because the Americans shot it down. They didn't want to be upstaged, so they took the appropriate action. In space noone can hear you scream (etc). They are hardly going to help look when they don't want it to be found now are they?

2 - The American probe never went to Mars, nor has any American probe. All the pictures are generated from a small special effects company outside Hollywood. How do we know they really went to Mars? Because the pictures look similar to the ones from their last successful Mars probe? And I suppose you think that that one really went to Mars also?