Blinding me with science...Immigration protests...Winning the Hearts and Minds

Good Morning!

We've got an interesting piece of science this morning....Saturn's moon Enceladus may be the best place in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. New information from the Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of water, methane, and nitrogen. All of these were primitive building blocks on early Earth. There's one problem though...it's frickin' cold on Saturn! Scientists are researching further to determine why Enceladus is so hot, and there is water vapor present on such a cold and distant world.

Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus may be the best place to look for life elsewhere in the Solar System.

That is the view of a senior scientist working on the Cassini spacecraft, which has been studying Saturn and its moons for nearly two years. Dr Bob Brown told a major conference in Vienna, Austria, Enceladus contains simple organic molecules, water and heat, the ingredients for life. He raised the possibility of future missions to probe inside the moon.

Other research presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting suggests that Enceladus may have a core of molten rock reaching temperatures of 1,400K (above 1,100C).

In July 2005 Cassini completed a spectacularly close flyby of Enceladus, passing just 173km above its surface.
From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.

It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring. Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.

From his base at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Bob Brown leads the scientific team for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (Vims) which analysed the chemical composition of Enceladus's atmosphere and mapped the distribution of various gases.

"We very clearly saw water; there's water everywhere on Enceladus, it's 99.9% water ice in general at the surface, and we've known that for years, so it wasn't a big surprise," he told the BBC News website.

"But when we started looking at our spectra we saw absorption bands from a compound that had to have carbon and hydrogen bonded together.

"And when we mapped the location, it was right in these 'tiger stripes' - right where the jets are coming out, and right where it's hot - and it's pretty hard to imagine it's getting there from anywhere but inside."

The organic molecules appear to be quite simple, he said, probably largely methane. The jets also contain nitrogen; and putting all this together means, said Dr Brown, that Enceladus contains all the ingredients necessary for the development of life, or of precursors to it.

"What you need to put microbes together of the kind that we're familiar with is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and water to act as an intermediary for metabolism," he said.

"You've got a rock core that's hot as hell; you've got all the conditions that we think gave rise to the first self-replicating molecules and eventually to life on this planet.

"So Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa, for instance."

Turning to more worldy issues....there are dozens, if not hundreds, of pro-immigrant rallies planned for around the country today. Boston is expecting to see a large on on the traditional protest grounds of the Boston Common. Last week, the protest was against immigration reform, and this week is to show support for awarding citizenship to those who are already here. Not to put too fine a point on it, but unless your bloodline includes indigenous, pre-Columbian peoples...We're ALL immigrant and our forebears had to face similar opposition and hardship when they first came here.

NEW YORK Demonstrators flying banners of immigration reform marched in cities across the nation on Sunday to demand citizenship and a share of the American dream for millions of illegal immigrants who have run a gantlet of closed borders, broken families, snake-eyed smugglers and economic exploitation.

Singing, chanting and waving placards and American flags, a sea of demonstrators - police estimates ran as high as 500,000 - marched in downtown Dallas in the largest of the protests. Some 20,000 rallied in San Diego, 7,000 in Miami, and 4,000 each in Birmingham, Alabama, and Boise, Idaho.

Thousands more gathered in Salem, Oregon, and other cities in peaceful, forceful displays of support for the cause of immigrants.

"It's a good feeling that we are finally standing up for ourselves," Robert Martinez said at the rally in Dallas.

"For years, we never say nothing," said Martinez, who crossed the Rio Grande illegally 22 years ago and eventually became an American citizen. "We just work hard, follow the rules and pay taxes. And they try to make these laws. It's time people knew how we felt."

While Sunday's rallies were an impressive extension of the growing immigrant protests that have spread across the country in recent weeks, organizers said they were only a tuneup for nationwide demonstrations on Monday, billed as a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. Events in more than 120 cities are expected to draw more than two million people.

On a gentle spring Sunday basted by golden sunshine and blue skies, crowds gathered in ebullient moods, spreading over downtown streets and parks in cities large and small. The demonstrators were mostly Hispanic, but they included people of Asian, European and African backgrounds.

Most wore white shirts to symbolize peace. Many carried American flags or the flags of Mexico and other countries of Central and South America and Asia. At the rally in Dallas, "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land" blared on loudspeakers, as well as the music of Mexico, as marchers chanted "Sí, se puede" ("Yes, we can") and "USA all the way."

Lastly this morning....we're winning the war for the hearts and minds of the Middle East....NOT. The pace of so-called democracy is slowing, and in some countries has reversed entirely or simply does not exist at all. Glad to see everything is working according to the neocon's plans.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Steps toward democracy in the Arab world, a crucial American goal that just months ago was cause for optimism - with elections held in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian areas - are slowing, blocked by delays in reform efforts, legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.

The political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq along with the newfound Shiite power there with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization, analysts and officials say.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and reformist. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments, it was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

In Egypt, the government of Hosni Mubarak, which allowed a contested presidential election last year, has delayed municipal elections for two years after the Muslim Brotherhood made big gains in parliamentary elections late last year, despite the government's violent efforts to stop the group's supporters.

In Jordan, where King Abdullah has made political reform and democratization a mandate, reformers believe their situation has been weakened with a national agenda for change that has been put on the back burner.

Plans for parliamentary elections in Qatar were postponed a third time, to 2007, in violation of the country's Constitution, activists say, while civil groups say that laws permitting the emergence of civil society organizations have stymied their development instead.

In Yemen, the government has cracked down on the media ahead of presidential elections later this year, jailing journalists who are considered overcritical of the regime.

In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has refused calls that the country's consultative council be elected, while the arrest of Muhsin al-Awaji, a government critic, last month raised questions about how far the country's newfound openness would go. And in Syria, promises for reforms have been followed by a harsh crackdown on the opposition.

U.S. officials do not deny that there have been setbacks in the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, but they say that recent negative trends do not discredit their approach.

"Democratic development isn't always linear," said a senior State Department official, insisting on anonymity in commenting for this article. "It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about."

Arab nation-states in the Middle East are largely led by monarchies and authoritarian regimes, many of which have been unable to keep up with explosive population growth and development needs.

So, there you have it. Would that our children and grandchildren might still be interested in science and have the resources and will to pursue the first story to its conclusion...instead of letting the second and third stories devolve into global conflict and catastrophe.

Keep smiling, some days it's all you can do.