"April 23, 2009"
http://www.spaceweather.com/
"Daily Sun: 23 Apr 09 The sun is blank--no sunspot. Sunspot number: 0"
"Far side of the Sun: This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far
side of the sun."

The face of the Sun is without blemish:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images20...kqohfe3h tvl0

Please visit:
http://blog.nj.com/southjersey_impac...SolarCycle.jpg

The right panel shows the face of the Sun as it looked on a good day during
the late Modern Warm Period. Sunspots are the apparent size of craters on
the moon. The left panel shows a Sun as it appears today. Please write to Al
Gore so that Al knows that the Sun is not living up to his religious
expectations. Al Gore is a divinity school dropout. George Carlin had a
better grasp of the true nature of God's creation, than does Al Gore.

Please visit:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/newsl...es/sun-etc.jpg
which shows the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Compared to the Sun,
Jupiter is the size of a pea, earth is the size of a grain of sand.

Time marches on for our World War II heroes
Cameron Stewart | April 23, 2009
Article from: The Australian

IN nursing homes and darkened bedrooms across the nation, the generation of
soldiers who fought to save Australia during World War II is suddenly dying
in record numbers.

During the course of today alone, 44 veterans of that terrible conflict are
likely to draw their last breath. They will die quietly and without fanfare
in a country which, thanks to them, has the luxury these days of being more
worried about the economy than about war.

In this week leading up to Anzac Day , the death toll among World War II
veterans is likely to top 300, or 33 infantry platoons.

Brigadier Keith Rossi, who at 87 is the last WWII veteran in Australia to
hold a senior formal job in the Returned and Services League, said: "I have
lost four of my mates in the past few weeks. You get a bit more lonely and a
bit more emotional as you go to their funerals; it's hard not to cry.

"But then again, we can't grizzle too much because it's our time to go."

Brigadier Rossi rose from the rank of private, serving in the Middle East
and the Pacific during WWII, then in Vietnam. He remains on the state
executive of the Victorian RSL.

Figures provided exclusively to The Australian by the Department of Veterans
Affairs reveal for the first time the extent and speed of the passing of the
WWII generation - a loss that will transform the nature of Anzac Day.

They show that in the past 12 months, 16,000 - or 12.5 per cent - of WWII
veterans died, leaving only 112,600 alive. This compares with almost 200,000
survivors five years ago.

For the first time, the surviving veterans of some of Australia's most
iconic military campaigns - the men who turned back the Japanese tide on the
Kokoda Track; the rats who saved Tobruk; the Diggers who stopped Rommel's
tanks at El Alamein; and the gunners who defended Darwin - will be numbered
in the hundreds rather than in thousands.

Within a year, every WWII veteran in the country will be able to fit into
the MCG, with room to spare.

The numbers of former prisoners of war are also crumbling.
There are only 880 former POWs of the Japanese left, 530 POWs who were held
in Europe and 12 held during the Korean War. Cyril Gilbert, a former POW at
Changi and on the Burma Railway and who was recently given the title of
honorary life vice-president of the Queensland RSL, said: "We lost 281 POWs
in the last 12 months alone."

Even the youngest WWII veteran is now in the mid-80s.

Within five years, their numbers will have more than halved to 48,600, less
than the combined number of veterans from the Vietnam and Korean wars.

RSL national president Bill Crews said: "We are witnessing a very sad and
very significant change in our history.

"We are losing the generation to whom we all owe so much."

Veterans Affairs Minister Alan Griffin said: "We owe them not only for their
service and sacrifice but also a promise to always remember what they gave
for their country, and in our name."

The current death rate of 16,000 a year for WWII veterans and rising is
three times the death rate experienced by Australians in WWII itself. By
contrast, only 700 Vietnam veterans died in the past year, an average of two
a day, leaving the total number of Vietnam survivors at 49,000.

Mr Crews said the age of the WWII generation meant it no longer had a direct
influence over the RSL. "It is always sad, but life is like that," he said.
"This was the generation which grew up in depression, then fought through a
six-year global conflict and then had to build much of Australia.

"Their decline in numbers places an even greater onus on younger Australians
to understand what they went through. While they are still alive, oral
history is important to learn what they went through.

"Many of the WWII veterans are now more willing to speak about their
experience than they once were, and we need to take advantage of that."