Anyone can yacht. It takes a certain boldness, though, to excoriate someone for hanging around an island in the Caribbean with a billionaire while you're yachting around the Caribbean with another billionaire.

Well, it's nice to have assistants to send out the press releases and do your Tweeting for you, I guess, when you're soaking up the sun on deck at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. 

I know, I know … Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke a rule on his way to hanging around with the Aga Khan, who is also a family friend. Whereas Opposition Leader Rona Ambrose broke no rules on her way to hanging around with N. Murray Edwards, late of Calgary, who is also a family friend.

About 178 million kilometres from us yesterday, give or take, Europe's Schiaparelli spacecraft went missing and is presumed to have come to a bad end somewhere on the Martian surface.

The lander's parachute failed to properly deploy, as the military-scientific-industrial complex loves to say; its retro-rockets turned themselves off too soon. The probability is said to be a small new crater on the Red Planet.

"The European Space Agency has not yet conceded that the lander crashed but the mood is not positive," the BBC reported with delightful understatement.

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Are there any sane conservatives left in Alberta?

Given the events of the past few weeks, this question must be asked.

The answer, of course, is yes. But you wouldn't necessarily know it from reading the political news in this province.

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Yesterday's claim by Frank Magazine that Postmedia Network Canada Ltd. will amalgamate its daily newspapers in Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa next spring just pulled the fire alarm on the parlous state of this country's print media.