Time for another episode of the excellent documentary series The Planets, this time on the Sun. Titled Star, the episode captures the magnitude of several “Eureka!” moments, as when Angelo Secchi, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, realised the blinding disc in the daytime sky is another one of those points that twinkle at night. As with previous episodes, there’s plenty of rare footage and some interesting characters, not least Kristian Birkeland, who created laboratory auroras while wearing a fez to protect his brain from radiation.

Part 1:

Splitting light. Secchi’s discovery. A makeshift umbrella. Twisted magnetism.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2:

Artificial auroras. Comets and clues. Force field. Heliopause. The stuff of life.

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Related: Astronomical Odds, Craters, Freefall.  (h/t, The Thin Man.)

Busy today, but two items caught my eye:

You’d think the media would delve into this relationship a little. If John McCain kicked off his political career at the house of, say, a bomber of abortion clinics, you probably would have heard about it by now.

And, 

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico’s reporter that Ayers “is one of my heroes in life.” Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said, “I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now – so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community.” Why, exactly, can Ayers and Dohrn be seen as “legitimate members of the community”? How is it that they get prestigious university jobs when even the whisper of neocon tendencies is toxic in academia?

Related: The youthful indiscretions of Peter Tatchell.

Update and video at Hot Air.

Thanks to The Thin Man, here’s the 2007 documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, in which the surviving Apollo crew members recount their remarkable, and at times moving, experiences. There’s previously unseen mission footage, an excellent score by Philip Sheppard, and keep an eye out for Kennedy’s extraordinary speech, about 13:20 in.

The film is also available in six parts here. Related: Freefall, Craters, Astronomical Odds. 

As regular readers will know, the Guardian has long been a home to unpleasant political appetites and revolting apologia for murderous idealists of an approved political stripe. The most recent example, though by no means the most dramatic, comes from Peter Tatchell, who recalls, a little too fondly, his youthful romance with Maoism:

In response to the Australian media’s deranged and often racist anti-Chinese propaganda, a few of us organised a ‘Be Kind to Mao Month’, where we promoted the ‘good’ aspects of the red guards’ rebellion against what we saw as the privileged, arrogant and authoritarian communist elite in Beijing.

Over at the Joy of Curmudgeonry, Deogolwulf shares a few thoughts:

Now, I have little interest in what Mr Tatchell’s youthful sympathies were, or in what they are now, still less in what claims he might make for the purity of his intentions. Another political fantasist to add to the pile makes little difference. What interests me is how the ideal of communism has enjoyed so charmed a life in the West, eking out a fanciful existence in the heads of such men, wherein it has remained unsullied by the reality of its application or even of its theoretical expression…

But how is it that anyone can be so brazen as to claim compassion as the very basis of his politics, and yet not bother to find out whether those politics might actually be good for others? To advocate a scheme for the whole of society, and to have made little effort to find out what effects it might have, other than that it makes one feel warm inside, is not to show compassion for others, but rather to show passion for oneself. Here, ignorance may be a defence, though not of any claim to compassion.

Indeed. And there’s something almost surreal about one-time enthusiasts of a blueprint for violation and horror speaking of their former affiliations as if they were simply fashion gaffes or a taste for embarrassing pop music.

The whole thing.

The Thin Man directs us to this item at the Washington Policy Centre, on Earth Day predictions of yore.

Seattle – Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet. Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975. Documented examples are below.

“By 1985… air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half.” Life magazine, January 1970

“Civilisation will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapour “…the planet will cool, the water vapour will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” Newsweek, January 26, 1970.

“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…” Life magazine, January 1970.

Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

Our purpose on Earth Day 2008 is not simply to point out how often environmental activists have been wrong, but to learn from the mistakes made during past Earth Days. Learning from the past will give us a better understanding of our world and the threats that face it. By being sceptical about routine portents of doom, we can stay focused on the real threats that face our planet, and on the reasonable and achievable actions we as a society can take to meet them.

The Thin Man also points out a not entirely unrelated phenomenon, noted by, among others, Richard Tomkins of the Financial Times:

At the time Elvis Presley died in 1977, he had 150 impersonators in the US. Now, according to calculations I spotted in a Sunday newspaper colour supplement recently, there are 85,000. Intriguingly, that means one in every 3,400 Americans is an Elvis impersonator. More disturbingly, if Elvis impersonators continue multiplying at the same rate, they will account for a third of the world’s population by 2019.

Related. And. Also. Plus.