One and a half posts per day is not too stressful.

Today I came across Peter Russell’s Life Expectancy Calculator, which has cheered me up considerably.

Although I was born in the 1950s, it estimates my virtual age as an encouraging 39.6 and reckons I have another 13,700 days to live. Disappointing, of course, to be regarded as mortal at all by a faceless computer application – but that still seems like quite a lot, at least from a 2009 vantage point.

Peter Russell's Life Expectancy Calculator

I may retire from blogging at the age of 90, depending on whether Fidel Castro is still at it. Even though the Cuban health care system is superior, I still think I should be able to out-blog the old fox. Stress over the Bay of Pigs and decades of cigar abuse must surely have taken some toll?

Incidentally, I encountered this gem via Suraci’s feisty blog, which seemed to be down for a few days. I’m relieved the Mossad haven’t got him. Russell’s calculator has its limitations and didn’t ask about whether one maintains a blog that gets up the nose of Israelis

Will Barak Obama still be on Twitter in 2050?

If I eat wisely, exercise and keep my stress levels under control, I may well find out.

Last November I blogged about a jaw-dropping image of the Milky Way by the American photographer Wally Pacholka – see Amazing. He’s developed a stunning way of photographing the night sky that gives a sense of three dimensionality.

According to his website, NASA has now published 34 of Mr Pacholka’s photographs in its Astronomy Picture of the Day series – more than any other photographer.

Today’s APOD – The Milky Way Over Devil’s Tower – is the latest. Devil’s Tower in Wyoming will be familiar to movie goers; it was the scenic backdrop for Stephen Speilberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Milky Way Over Devil's Tower by Wally Pacholka

This morning Australians heard the news that the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in Iraq will soon be down to just one member.

After the last troops from a humbled, bloodied, bankrupted Britain exit the country, only troops from a humbled, bloodied, bankrupted USA will be left.

Greg Sheridan: an Australian Zionist War-Liar, works for News Corp

In just a couple of days the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq will be a coalition no more.

The only troops remaining will be American, and even they’re continuing to reduce their role towards making a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Those of us who opposed this disgraceful episode in murderous imperial barbarity prior to March 2003 were often accused of ‘appeasement’ . It was facile reference to events in Europe in the late 1930s, based on a skewed, simplistic view of the history of that era.

The blatant dishonesty of these 21st Century war liars has gone unpunished.

In Australia, a cavalcade of pundits and ‘experts’ were paraded before us in 2002/3 to stir up popular enthusiasm for war. Most of them remain on our screens and in our newspapers today.

They were never particularly successful in generating real war fervor – but helped persuade most conformist politicians their interests lay in regurgitating the same nonsense and going along with the media-sponsored war.

Andrew Bolt: another Australian Zionist War-Liar, works for News Corp

The reputations of these war-mongers should now be in tatters. They survive only through collective amnesia and a general reluctance (breached only occasionally) to point out they are a proven pack of fools and/or liars.

Why were these fraudulent ‘experts’ so utterly wrong about Iraq?

Why should we take them seriously on any other subject unless and until they deal honestly with that question?