The Blitz originally began as part of the Battle of Britain which lasted from July until October 1940. In July, the Luftwaffe targeted shipping centers and fleets but by August they had shifted their focus to RAF airfields and later the industrial centers producing planes and parts for the RAF. The Battle of Britain was the first all-aircraft battle in history and is generally seen as one of the decisive battles in WW2 as the German failure to obtain air superiority effectively prevented any possibility of invasion of the Home Islands. And it was a stunning victory for the British. Outnumbered, the British employed various tactical advantages to make up for their deficiencies — the small area which they had to defend, the establishment of overlapping radar detection stations all along the coastline, and the recruitment of experienced pilots from other nations.

You might recall that last week, I mentioned that a significant number of Polish soldiers and pilots escaped to Britain. Over 35,000 in total, around 8,500 of whom were airmen. However, only 145 of them served as fighter pilots in the RAF (along with over 400 other non-British pilots — New Zealand and Canada also had over 100 pilots in the RAF each) during the Battle of Britain. The Polish pilots were notable for their experience, most having already fought in the September Campaign, and several in the Battle of France. The first two fully Polish squadrons, the 301 and 303, went into action in August 1940. The 303 was known as the Kościuszko Squadron, after a Polish patriot (who also served with distinction with the American colonial forces during the American Revolution), and despite entering the battle on August 30, claimed 126 kills, the highest of any single squadron during the war. And their losses were 70 percent less than other RAF squadrons.

Because of the RAF's outstanding efforts and the continuing increase in British industrial production, the Luftwaffe was never able to obtain air superiority, so in September, they shifted their attacks to general industrial targets and civilian centers to attempt to reduce the British morale. But because of the lack of air superiority, bombing attempts were mostly limited to night time when fighter planes were less effective — in the days before on-board radar and other targeting systems, fighter pilots had to be able to see what they were shooting at. The early part of the Blitz focused almost entirely on London, with targets spreading to other industrial cities and ports from November 1940 to February 1941 and then shifting almost exclusively to ports from February until May to assist the German Navy during the Battle of the Atlantic.

By May, the increasingly heavy air and ground defenses began to take a significant toll on the Luftwaffe, and the Germans decided to cease the bombings as being ineffective and began shifting their bomber units to the Eastern Front to support the attack on the Soviet Union. The Blitz is perhaps the most significant part of the war in the British collective consciousness. It has been depicted in numerous movies and books even in stories produced recently. As much as we owe to the soldiers and sailors and pilots who fought in WW2 ("Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." — Winston Churchill), we also owe a great deal to the civilians who resisted the psychological warfare and organized and defended their homes, and today we should remember them and those who lost their homes and lives during the Blitz. And let them know that it was indeed Britain's finest hour.

Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ — Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

As the people who are participating in this literary roast are pious and good Christians, I'm certain that they don't have a vast multitude of copies of the Quran laying around. This means that they will be purchasing most of the books they will be burning. So, they will be paying bookstores for these books. To get the books, the bookstores will be paying the publishers who printed the books. In that legitimate copies of the Quran have to be attested as correct printings and translations, most such publishers are likely to be Islamic organizations. As such, it is entirely possible that there will be some wealthy Muslim backers for these organizations and some of those backers and organizations will likely have possible connections to the extreme factions of Islam and might even directly support the spread of Sharia Law. That means that some of those organizations must be partially funding and supporting terrorist activities.

So clearly, paying money to bookstores for copies of the Quran means that those bookstores are paying publishers, some of whom are Islamic and some of whom have contributed money or other support to terrorists. Clearly buying copies of the Quran to burn them is supporting terrorism! And that's even before the action promotes violence against America and it's troops.

If you are Charles Darwin, you encourage a friend of yours, who you know will be visiting the same island, to establish a series of shipments of trees, grasses and bushes and other forms of flora from botanical gardens from all across Europe to be planted on the island to flesh out the ecosystem on the island.

Why would you do that? To increase local water supplies. The trees and other plants capture rain and reduce evaporation, even with the dry prevailing winds in that area of the ocean. Over time, the plants turn the volcanic rocks into extremely rich soils. Now, the island is a cloud trap and home to a full-fledged forest, albeit one unlike any other on the planet — playing home to eucalyptus, pine, bamboo and banana trees and many others.

And why is this significant? One of the biggest problems with human exploration of the other planets in the solar system is that they aren't "habitable" — they lack liquid water and breathable atmospheres. The science fiction and science of changing those worlds is "terraforming": "making like Terra". But it is rare for scientists to have real world examples of how terraforming can work. The island of Ascension is one of those examples. While it isn't a completely isolated system the way that Mars is, there are significant ideas that can be applied to the concept of terraforming Mars.

The more we learn about Mars, the more we learn that it is potentially terraformable. But it will likely take more than the few generations. We can't start with trees, ecologies are much too complex and trees have too many large requirements. We'd have to start with extremophile bacteria and other simple life forms such as lichen to begin creating usable soils and adjusting the atmosphere and then working our way up. One of the better looks at the process in science fiction is Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars.

Until we get to Mars though, we can continue to be amazed at the wonders of nature of planet Earth.

This. So hard, this.

Though I have to admit I was quite bad about doing my homework. But I learned HOW to do the math anyway. If and when I have kids, I'm going to be teaching them basic math outside of school, because I don't want them to be stuck using crutches to solve simple problems.

With movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, the question of why locating asteroids is important is something that is fairly obvious to most people. And Phil Plait just hosted a new show on Discovery Channel called Bad Universe that takes a look at the science behind asteroid and comet impacts. But just how many asteroids do we know about and how much are we doing to find them?

Well, a week ago, a video was released that mapped the location of all the asteroids discovered since 1980.

It's a rather hypnotic video, really. But it is somewhat deceptive. Nothing other than the planetary orbits is depicted to scale. Each asteroid is a pixel, but the detectable asteroids range in size from several hundred feet to several hundred miles across. In the video, green dots are asteroids which do not pass close to the Earth any time soon, yellow dots are asteroids which are approaching the Earth but are not crossing our orbit, and red dots are asteroids which have crossed or will cross the Earth's orbit. An interesting note to consider when watching the video is that until very recently we were only detecting asteroids that were located 180 degrees away from the sun in relation to the Earth. That's because the primary way of finding them is the light reflected off them from the sun (in the same way that we can see the moon.) The more recent pattern of detection covers areas 90 degrees away from the sun thanks to a new satellite launched in 2008 or 2009 which is much more sensitive to the reflected light from asteroids in those areas.

So, as of 2010, there are over 500,000 known asteroids. Only 300 of those are on currently Earth-crossing orbits. The video is based on information put together by astronomers at Armagh Observatory, and there is a much more in-depth explanation of the information there. And they make a very important point that space is three dimensional — not all of these asteroids are on the same plane. They provide a close up of the asteroids within 0.3 AU (1 AU = the average distance between the earth and the sun) and use lines to show that each asteroid is either above or below the plane on which the sun and the earth both lie. The arrows show the direction in which the asteroid is moving and if the arrow extends from the bottom of a line, they are below that plane and if from the top of a line, they are above the plane, and the longer that line, the farther from the plane the asteroid is.

The song has gone viral, and I know I've watched it at least a half dozen times. There is something about the text-video that just matches the sound of the song so well. But the official video is out now too:

And it's good. It interprets the lyrics in ways that I think most people wouldn't have expected. But I think I prefer the original video more.

The Polish defensive plan prior to the war was for a slow, tactical withdrawl to allow their allies, the British and the French, time to come to their aid. However, the lack of natural defenses left them thinly spread and unable to mass enough of a military presence in front of any of the three primary routes of attack the Germans took. Within 2 weeks, the 400 plane Polish Air Force was reduced to 54, though nearly 100 pilots and planes were able to withdraw from combat through Romania. Many of them made their way to Britain where they joined the RAF and were some of the most successful pilots during the Battle of Britain — evidence of the high level of training and skill that they possessed.

After initial retreats, on September 9, the Polish Army counter-attacked along one flank as the Germans besieged Warsaw, and had some initial success before the German air superiority overwhelmed them. The 10 days of the Battle of Bzura were key in allowing other Polish forces to reorganize themselves and also allowed much of the Polish government and military high command to safely withdraw to the south and then to exit the country and make their way to Britain to set up a government-in-exile.

Despite being overwhelmed, the Polish military was preparing to make a significant defensive stand along the southern border with Romania. But on September 17, the Soviet Union invaded from the east, unveiling the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to the world. This was the deciding factor in Poland's decision to defend itself — the government ordered all remaining members of the military to escape the country to try to reform in Britain and France. Warsaw fell on the 28th and the final active military resistance efforts were defeated on October 6.

But despite the defeat, the Polish government never surrendered. As such, it was the only non-neutral nation in Europe which did not either surrender to or collude with the Axis powers. And despite the short duration of the fighting, the Polish military inflicted a significant amount of damage upon the Germans — though it lost over 300 airplanes (most of which were outdated), the Air Force destroyed or damaged over 500 of their German counterparts and the Germans sustained almost 50,000 casualties (16,000 of which were KIA) and lost one quarter of the 2,750 tanks they had used in the invasion. In comparison, the German invasion of France, a fight between much more evenly matched militaries only lasted a week longer, involved more than twice as many soldiers on the German side alone (over 6 million total between Germany and France), and resulted in 150,000 German casualties, 1,500 lost planes and 750 lost tanks.

One of the most persistent myths about the German invasion of Poland is that the Polish military was so outdated that horseback cavalry attacked tanks with swords. The truth of the matter is that both Germans and Soviets also employed horseback cavalry and that all three militaries generally used them as dragoons (soldiers that traveled by horseback, but actually fought on foot). The myth itself was based on an event during the Battle of Krojanty, when Polish cavalry armed with rifles and sabers who had attacked German infantry were ambushed by armored vehicles.

And on a related note, September 1 also marks the halfway point for the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 in which the Polish resistance — the Home Army — attacked the German military which was in control of the city. It was intended to be a coordinated effort in which the Soviet army would attack the German forces from outside the city and in which the RAF, South African Air Force and USAAF would provide supplies and reinforcements by air drop. But the Soviets refused the RAF and USAF permission to land on Soviet air fields to refuel and stopped their advance on Warsaw, leaving the resistance fighters to fend for themselves for just over two months.

Two days after September 1, 1939, The United Kingdom and France both declared war on Germany. The German goal in invading Poland was Lebensraum — space for Germany to expand its Nazi population, a greater source of natural resources and a region to serve as a buffer against any possible aggression from Soviet Russia. But through a combination of international alliances and changing internal foreign policies (e.g. the shift in Britain away from appeasement), it initiated a massive continental war between a multitude of nations that when combined with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and their later attacks on other nations in the Pacific led to a truly global war. September 1, 1939, is, in my mind, the single most significant day in the last 100 years.

I had seen this book prominently displayed at several different bookstores last year, and happened upon a couple of reviews of it which all spoke highly of it. It is a rather hard book to classify because at it's heart it is a classic noir style detective story, but although the technology in it is not any different than what we currently have, it is set in an alternate timeline. As such, you're most likely going to see it in science fiction sections, and indeed, it won both a Nebula and Hugo award for best novel as well as the Locus award for best SF novel. But if you're not a regular science fiction reader, I highly suggest you pick this up anyway.

Suppose that after WWII the state of Israel lasted only until 1948 when it was defeated its neighbors and the Jewish population was expelled from that territory. Michael Chabon imagines a world in which those Jews, and others, ended up settling in an area of Alaska which was set aside for them by the US government. An idea which is based on a little known historical fact; that the US Congress considered just such an option at the end of the war. Now, 60 years later, that land is about to revert to American control. Against that back drop, the main character, Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective on the Sitka police force, goes about solving the murder of a man who lived in Landsman's own apartment building.

It's a fantastically told story, weaving elements of classic detective novels, Jewish culture, and a fully developed alternate history together seamlessly. Having just read Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music which is another Chandlerian detective novel in the science fiction realm (blended with the surrealism of Philip K Dick as opposed to Chabon's dropping his detective into a world inspired by Northern Exposure) I definitely appreciated the chance to ride along with Landsman, who yo-yos between being brilliant and exceptionally effective and being completely lost and adrift in currents of corruption, religious fanaticism and general corruption that run from Landsman's own family, to a group of super-Orthodox Jews who have formed their own mafia and all the way over into mysterious figures in the American government. The writing is well-paced and clear, and as a reader, you never feels cheated on information, even when you aren't familiar with certain Jewish customs and beliefs that play into the storyline as Chabon explains them quite understandably. (And he even includes a handy little glossary of various Yiddish terms which he has adapted to the unique situation of his novel. For example 'sholem' which means 'peace' is used to mean 'gun' as 'peace' is a pun on 'piece', which is of course American slang for 'gun'.)

My rating: 5/5 stars

Side note, the Coen brothers are returning to their cold Fargo roots as writers and directors of a movie adaptation of the novel.

Without a doubt, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is one of the most beloved science fiction novels of the last 30 years. The subsequent series and off-shoot series have shown Card's ability to take both aspects -- the action and the philosophy -- of the original novel and expand them very well. And Ender's Game is definitely one of my favorite novels ever.

As a result of that, I've actually written several essays about the novel while in school. One essay which I wrote in my college freshman English class compared and contrasted it with a novel by a Russian author, though I barely remember that essay at all anymore and I believe I lost the file several years ago when a hard drive crashed. Another essay was written for my science fiction literature class with John Kessel and in that essay I was evaluating the notion of hero in science fiction by examining several of the landmark novels in science fiction -- Frank Herbert's Dune, Alfred Bester's The Stars my Destination, Ender's Game, and possibly a fourth novel, though again my memory is fuzzy and the file is not currently available, though hopefully I'll be able to find it.

When I was discussing this essay with Dr Kessel before writing it, he suggested that I find an essay which had been written by science fiction author and critic Norman Spinrad. In that article, Spinrad did the very same thing as I was planning, using those same three books that I named and one of his own novels. In his article, he actually took the same stance I did on the protagonists of Dune and The Stars my Destination being the standard hero and anti-hero, respectively. But he raised a very interesting point about Ender in Ender's Game. Though he grows as a character and as a person, he doesn't make a conscious decision, knowing the full repercussions of his action, when he destroys the Bugger homeworld and as such is in fact a failed hero, because a hero is the person who makes the tough decisions. Ender was under no pressure to make the right decision, he was just under the pressure of what he thought was very extreme training. And because he never had to make that decision, he was cheated by Card out of his chance to be a true hero. Spinrad says that the true story of Ender's heroism was the story of his life from the end of the war to the time he is an adult while he comes to terms with the truth of what he did. It is the story between the end of Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.

Ender in Exile is that story. But as Card notes in the after word of the novel, it really could not have been written without the Shadow series having been written first. But I'm not really sure how much Ender actually grows as a character in this story. Without providing any spoilers, all of his actions are made without any seeming struggle on his part and the only way he comes to any closure with the knowledge of his having committed xenocide is through no effort of his, but through the accidental discovery of the remaining bugger queen egg. And that event isn't even the final culmination of the story. Instead a face-off with one of Bean and Petra's lost children serves as such. And there, the growth is in Ender's opponent, not in himself. Ender is locked into being the same person he was in the original series. There is no growth from the time he is 13 at the end of the war to the time he's a fully grown man on his way to meet the third known sentient species on Lusitania in Speaker for the Dead.

Storywise, Ender in Exile is a very engaging book and does much to resolve some inconsistencies between the first series and the second and is successful at tying up most of the story lines left open at the end of Shadow of the Giant. At times, Card moralizes a bit too strongly, and though his respect for the men and women of the military is very appropriate with regard to events in the real world, they seem somewhat forced in the world of the story. And for the central character, it seems that Card has failed again. So, happy as I am to see this chapter in Ender's story told, I'm disappointed that it didn't come through for me the way I had hoped.