Many times you hear people saying went to a dark place and they could see millions of stars... Well, it turns out that it is not really possible to see that many even if you had the eye sight of the six million dollar man....
In reality you can at most see around 2500 stars even in the best of conditions - aka perfectly dark sky. The total number of stars visible to the human eye on Earth is around the 8500. Of course you can only see one half the sky at any one time (unless you can see through the planet) plus there are various atmospheric reasons that limit the number of stars you can see near the horizon.
If you want to read a bit more detail about it check this out
Apologies if this is not entirely on topic for this site but I'm trying to spread the message and its influence as wide as possible.
Hopefully most of you have heard about this story already but in case you haven't..
Over a week ago a little 7 year old was abducted from her home and she has been missing since then. The family has started a campaign to raise awareness about this case and also about the general safety of all children in our country. In the broader sense it is message to show how many dangers there are that threaten our children but also ourselves. In the end the government must take notice and do something (more than what they are doing now).
Several web sites, including the news sites like news24 and iAfrica.com have regular reports about the story.
Another web site (http://www.eblockwatch.co.za) has a live forum going with updates as news become available or things happen.
Sheldean is still missing and the police is doing all they can to help. The hope is that it would become so difficult for criminals to do these kind of things that it won't be worth their while doing this again. Of course, we live in a non perfect world but we have to keep on trying.