Monday, July 12, 2021

BEGINNING TODAY

All postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Morgan Freeman on Racism

 

Attention Readers

 BEGINNING MONDAY JULY 12, 2021...

I have decided to combine three of my blogs into one blog, therefore as of the above date, all postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have already been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Stellar Evolution

Sometimes when a star reaches the end of its life it does so with a cataclysmic bang. In quick time it shreds itself, throwing out the raw materials that will seed the next generation of stars and planets. Even companion stars can be caught up in the explosion and scarred by the fallout.

Astronomers have found that this scarring can tell them a great deal about the binary star system as it was before the explosion even occurred. With most stars being a part of multiple star systems, this is of particular interest to scientists trying to understand their evolution.

But not all stars will go supernova as they run out of fuel – only the more massive ones have enough self-gravity to actually explode. A star needs to have roughly eight times more mass than our Sun for what is known as a core-collapse supernova to occur.  And it is gravity that drives the processes that lead to this dramatic ending.

For most of its life, a star exists in a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, where the inward and outward forces on the star are finely balanced. Gravity draws in surrounding matter towards the star’s core, while radiation pressure from the heat being generated within pushes outwards and prevents the star from imploding.

In fact, these two forces are inextricably linked. If the core were to cool a little, the inward force of gravity would exceed the outward radiation pressure and the star would contract. The contraction would increase the temperature and pressure of the star again, returning it to equilibrium.

The real excitement comes as the star runs out of fuel and can no longer support itself against its own weight. Within a split second the core collapses, sending a shockwave radiating out through the star blowing it apart and causing one of the most energetic events we see anywhere in the Universe.

How much energy are we talking about? Roughly as much as the Sun will generate over something like 10-billion years. All produced in barely a fraction of that time.  If there is a nearby companion star, it can be hit by debris from the explosion. When this happens, the surface heats up and causes the star to swell, a bit like having a burn blister on your skin.

The star blister can be 10 or even 100 times larger than the star itself, but it lasts only for a very short time. Within a few decades, the blister heals, and the star shrinks back to its original form.

The team of Australian and Japanese astronomers, including post-doc researcher Dr Ryosuke Hirai from Monash University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), have carried out hundreds of computer simulations to investigate how companion stars inflate depending on their interactions with nearby supernovae. They then applied their results to SN2006jc, a supernova that was first seen by amateur astronomers and preceded by something that was, well, a little confusing.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE,
CLICK HERE...

Friday, July 9, 2021

China's Super Carrier

A new aircraft carrier, currently under construction in Shanghai, is the most visible sign of China's rapidly expanding navy. It is larger than China's current two carriers and differs in key aspects. But the natural comparison is to the U.S. Navy's latest carriers, the Ford Class.

Aircraft carriers are a strategic priority for the world’s leading navies. Experienced players such as the Royal Navy, French Navy (Marine Nationale) and Indian Navy are all in the process of bringing in new carriers. And Japan, South Korea and likely other countries are all taking steps to join the club. But nowhere is the capability gathering steam as much as in China. The Chinese Navy (PLAN) has already commissioned two carriers based on the Russian Admiral Kutzenov class. But their third carrier, known as Type-003, promises to take the PLAN to the next level.

Meanwhile the U.S. Navy, for decades the world leader in this technology, is also modernizing with a new class of super carrier. The first Ford Class ship, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was commissioned in 2017. While it has suffered some teething problems it remains the largest and most modern carrier afloat.

The Type-003 is very close in size to the U.S. Navy’s carriers. And although the definition is vague, it seems fair to also describe it as a “super carrier”.

Fresh commercial satellite imagery from Kompsat, via Shadowbreak Inti., allows us to finally measure the size and layout of the Type-003. This permits a general high-level comparison to the Ford Class.

The imagery shows that it is approximately 320 meters (1,050 feet) long. This is about 13 meters (43 feet) shorter than the Ford Class. And it seems less than it sounds if you placed the two ships side by side.

The Chinese ship does have a narrower flight deck however, It’s width of about 73 meters (240 feet) is very similar to preceding Type-001 and Type-002 carriers. There may be logistical reasons for this, such as dry dock sizes. Or it may simply be that the Chinese planners were happy with the width of the current carriers.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Thursday, July 8, 2021

Civilization Most Likely

The Milky Way is 13 BILLION years old. Some of our Galaxy’s oldest stars were born near the beginning of the Universe itself. During all these eons of time, we know at least one technological civilization has been born – US!

But if the Galaxy is so ancient, and we know it can create life, why haven’t we heard from anybody else? If another civilization was just 0.1% of the Galaxy’s age older than we are, they would be millions of years further along than us and presumably more advanced. If we are already on the cusp of sending life to other worlds, shouldn’t the Milky Way be teeming with alien ships and colonies by now?

Maybe. But it’s also possible that we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Recent computer simulations by Jason T. Wright et al suggest that the best place to look for ancient space-faring civilizations might be the core of the Galaxy, a relatively unexplored target in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

The Churn
Older mathematical models of space colonization have tried to determine the time required for a civilization to spread throughout the Milky Way. Given the size of the Milky Way, wide-scale galactic colonization could take longer than the age of the Galaxy itself. However, a unique feature of this new simulation is its accounting for the motion of the Galaxy’s stars.  

The Milky Way is not static, as assumed in prior models, rather it is a churning swirling mass. Colonization vessels or probes would be flying among stars that are themselves in motion. The new simulation reveals that stellar motion aids in colonization contributing a diffusing effect to the spread of a civilization.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

ATTENTION READERS

 BEGINNING MONDAY JULY 12, 2021...

I have decided to combine three of my blogs into one blog, therefore as of the above date, all postings for this blog will appear on my blog:  JOURNAL FOR DAILY PAGES....  all of the internal page links have already been switched.  This blog will remain open should anyone want to revisit previous articles that have been posted.

Who's To Blame?

Women have become prey for “female-identifying” inmates in Californian prisons. A California law is being blasted by women’s rights groups for allowing transgender inmates to pick the gendered prison of their choice, citing abuse of females by men.

In a letter to Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) accused the state of violating the constitutional rights of incarcerated women and subjecting them to “physical, psychological, and emotional harm” by allowing men into their living quarters to “prey on women.”

“Under the law as written, there is no method to screen out males who genuinely self-identify as transgender from those who are using the system to prey on women. Even if sincere self-identification was the criterion for transfer, however, it would not mitigate or remove the danger posed to women. A 2009 report found 20% of trans-identified men in California are sex offenders, and 50% have committed crimes against persons,” the letter reads.

“Those running the prison system know how dangerous conditions have become for the women in California state custody. Many of the correctional officers have openly acknowledged that they expect the women will be raped and assaulted, there will likely be pregnancies, and, in general, the environment will be ripe for exploitation of the women and challenging to control.”

The WoLF has received numerous complaints from women who have been subject to abuse and traumatized at the hands of male inmates who transferred to their prisons, WoLF Legal Director Lauren Adams said.

“We are working with a woman who was punched in the face so hard by a new transfer that she couldn’t chew for three days. He was taken away and released back in a different yard with no restrictions,” Adams said. “He was her cellmate. She had to sleep with him.”

Adams added that many women who have been sexually abused in the past now have to share communal showers with nude men.

“One woman went in there with two naked men showering who still had penises,” Adams added. “It was incredibly traumatic and scary, to know for, [possibly], the rest of their lives they are going to be subjected to this.”

The state currently has 273 transfer requests. 266 of the requestees are housed at male institutions and are seeking to be transferred to female institutions, while only seven from female institutions are requesting a transfer to male institutions. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the state has 1,286 inmates who identify as transgender or nonbinary.

So far, 24 male prisoners have been transferred to female institutions. WoLF speculates that many of the male inmates looking to transfer to women’s prisons are not transgender, but are looking to escape their current living situation.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Ancient Human Discovered

Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago.

They believe the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.  The finds consist of a partial skull and jaw from an individual who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Details have been published in the journal Science.

The team members think the individual descended from an earlier species that may have spread out of the region hundreds of thousands of years ago and given rise to Neanderthals in Europe and their equivalents in Asia.  The scientists have named the newly discovered lineage the "Nesher Ramla Homo type".

Dr Hila May of Tel Aviv University said the discovery reshaped the story of human evolution, particularly our picture of how the Neanderthals emerged. The general picture of Neanderthal evolution had in the past been linked closely with Europe.
 
"It all started in Israel. We suggest that a local group was the source population," she told BBC News. "During interglacial periods, waves of humans, the Nesher Ramla people, migrated from the Middle East to Europe."

The team thinks that early members of the Nesher Ramla Homo group were already present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago. The researchers have noticed resemblances between the new finds and ancient "pre-Neanderthal" groups in Europe.  "This is the first time we could connect the dots between different specimens found in the Levant" said Dr Rachel Sarig, also from Tel Aviv University.

"There are several human fossils from the caves of Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun that date back to that time that we could not attribute to any specific known group of humans. But comparing their shapes to those of the newly uncovered specimen from Nesher Ramla justify their inclusion within the [new human] group."  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Our Divided House


 

Stupid Laws












 

Our Milky Way Galaxy

Photos from satellites and other sources are just one of the ways we learn about the universe around us. NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, for example, can create composite views of radio waves and X-ray waves, which is exactly what we see in this new image of the Milky Way. And wow, is it awesome.

The photo, originally released in May, shows a composite image of our galaxy’s core, and combined Chandra’s X-ray images with radio-wave data from South Africa’s MeerKAT Radio Telescope. NASA colorized the striking image so that all of the lightwaves are visible to the human eye. The brighter band at the center of the image is the Milky Way’s plane, which is a disk of matter where most of its stars are located.

The accompanying explainer video from NASA (above) states that the image “contains a wealth of scientific information” to explore. One of the most fascinating elements found within the image are threads—long, narrow bands of X-rays comprised of superheated gas and magnetic fields. One such thread runs perpendicular to our galaxy’s plane and looks to have X-ray and radio emission intertwined. It measures 20 light-years long but is only one-hundredth that size in width. Researchers think the threads were formed due to magnetic fields that collided with and twisted around each other.

NASA’s panoramic image uncovered several other amazing elements as well, like enormous plumes of hot gas that extend 700 light-years above and below the Milky Way’s plane. These plumes are believed to be heated by things like supernova explosions and hard-to-detect magnetic reconnections. There is also a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, too, which also impacts movement and other elements.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Monday, July 5, 2021

Critical Race Theory


 

Unintended Consequences

U.S. taxpayers may have to end up paying $15 billion to the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline. The company is seeking damages after Democrat President Joe Biden canceled the pipeline to pursue his far-left energy agenda.

TC Energy announced last month that they were scrapping the project because revoked the permit needed to complete the pipeline. Fox Business noted that a study from the State Department found that the pipeline would have created 26,100 indirect and direct jobs.

TC Energy announced last week that it had “filed a Notice of Intent to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to recover economic damages resulting from the revocation of the Keystone XL Project’s Presidential Permit,” the company said in a statement. “TC Energy will be seeking to recover more than US$15 billion in damages that it has suffered as a result of the U.S. Government’s breach of its NAFTA obligations.”

The Notice of Intent was filed with the U.S. Department of State. In May, nearly two dozen state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for canceling the pipeline, saying that he exceeded his presidential authority.

The attorneys general argue that Biden exceeded his authority because “of a provision Congress tucked into tax legislation in 2011 that required then-President Barack Obama to either approve the pipeline within 60 days or issue a determination that it wasn’t in the national interest,” NBC News reported. “Obama then rejected TransCanada’s (now TC Energy Corp) application weeks later, saying Congress gave him insufficient time, but allowed the company to re-apply, which deferred the decision until after his re-election. Obama later rejected the application, President Donald Trump approved it, and Biden revoked the approval.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Hollywood



 

Ancient Ruins

The world is littered with the ancient ruins of man-made cities and settlements that stretch back thousands of years. Represented are 100 ruins that embody some of the outstanding achievements of humanity across various cultures and civilizations.

1 – Por-Bazhyn – The Mysterious Island Fortress in Siberia
Por-Bazhyn, meaning “Clay House” in the Tuvan language are the remains of an adobe monastery or a fortified palace, that was built on a small island in Lake Tere-Khol, located in the Sengelen mountains of southern Siberia, Russia. Radiocarbon dating and dendrochronological studies suggest that Por-Bazhyn was built around AD 777 by the Uighurs, a tribal confederation under the Orkhon Uyghur that ruled from AD 742 to 848.


2 – Rujm el-Hiri – the “Stonehenge of the Levant”
Rujm el-Hiri (meaning “”stone heap of the wild cat”), also called Gilgal Refā’īm (meaning “wheel of spirits”), is an ancient megalithic monument, located in the Israeli-occupied region of the Golan Heights. Archaeologists dating sediment eolian samples, and the study of pottery sherds excavated in situ, suggest it was constructed either during the Early Bronze Age II around 3000 to 2700 BC, or from the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age I between 3880– 3540 BC (although there is still no consensus).

3 – The Sunken Town of Pavlopetri
Pavlopetri, also called Paulopetri, is a submerged ancient town, located between the islet of Pavlopetri and the Pounta coast of Laconia, on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Ceramics recovered in situ confirms that Pavlopetri had Mycenaean occupation, but further archaeological evidence suggests that the town was occupied as early as 3500 BC.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Sunday, July 4, 2021

America



 

Independence Day


 

Fourth of July

Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July or July 4) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States, on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III, and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress had voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2, but it was not declared until July 4.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches, and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain in 1776 actually occurred on July 2, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declaring the United States independent from Great Britain's rule.  After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration to remove its vigorous denunciation of the slave trade, finally approving it two days later on July 4. 

Jefferson had written the following indictment against King George III:  He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Saturday, July 3, 2021

Liberty




 

Using Novels to Predict...

Philip Oltermann of THE GUARDIAN writes...



Three years ago, a small group of academics at a German university launched an unprecedented collaboration with the military – using novels to try to pinpoint the world’s next conflicts. Are they on to something?

s the car with the blacked-out windows came to a halt in a sidestreet near Tübingen’s botanical gardens, keen-eyed passersby may have noticed something unusual about its numberplate. In Germany, the first few letters usually denote the municipality where a vehicle is registered. The letter Y, however, is reserved for members of the armed forces.

Military men are a rare, not to say unwelcome, sight in Tübingen. A picturesque 15th-century university town that brought forth great German minds including the philosopher Hegel and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, it is also a modern stronghold of the German Green party, thanks to its left-leaning academic population. In 2018, there was growing resistance on campus against plans to establish Europe’s leading artificial intelligence research hub in the surrounding area: the involvement of arms manufacturers in Tübingen’s “cyber valley”, argued students who occupied a lecture hall that year, brought shame to the university’s intellectual tradition.

Yet the two high-ranking officials in field-grey Bundeswehr uniforms who stepped out of the Y-plated vehicle on 1 February 2018 had travelled into hostile territory to shake hands on a collaboration with academia, the like of which the world had never seen before.

The name of the initiative was Project Cassandra: for the next two years, university researchers would use their expertise to help the German defence ministry predict the future.

The academics weren’t AI specialists, or scientists, or political analysts. Instead, the people the colonels had sought out in a stuffy top-floor room were a small team of literary scholars led by Jürgen Wertheimer, a professor of comparative literature with wild curls and a penchant for black roll-necks.

After the officers had left, the atmosphere among Wertheimer’s team remained tense. A greeting gift of camouflage-patterned running tops and military green nail varnish had helped break the ice, but there was outstanding cause for concern. “We’d been unsure about whether to go public over the project,” recalls Isabelle Holz, Wertheimer’s assistant. The university had declined the opportunity to be formally involved with the defence ministry, which is why the initiative was run through the Global Ethic Institute, a faculty-independent institution set up by the late dissident Catholic, Hans Küng. “We thought our offices might get paint-bombed or something.”

They needn’t have worried. “Cassandra reaches for her Walther PPK” ran the headline in the local press after the project was announced, a sarcastic reference to James Bond’s weapon of choice. The idea that literature could be used by the defence ministry to identify civil wars and humanitarian disasters ahead of time, wrote the Neckar-Chronik newspaper, was as charming as it was hopelessly naive. “You have to ask yourself why the military is financing something that is going to be of no value whatsoever.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Friday, July 2, 2021

Dark Matter & Galaxy Spin

The Milky Way rotates at a whopping 130 miles (210 kilometers) per second, but a new study has found that dark matter has slowed the rotation of its bar by at least 24% since its formation nearly 14 billion years ago.

"Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the center of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening," study co-author Ralph Schoenrich, an astrophysicist at University College London, said in a statement.

These new findings not only shed light on the rotation of the Milky Way but also provide an insight into the nature of one of the most elusive materials in the universe — dark matter.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a thick band of stars in the center and large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos. Scientists think that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way, extending out far beyond its visible edge, as occurs at other galaxies.

In the new study, researchers used data from Gaia, a European Space Agency mission mapping the positions of billions of stars, to study the Hercules Stream, a thick cluster of stars that revolve around the Milky Way at the same rate that the galactic bar itself spins.

Because the stars in the Hercules Stream are gravitationally trapped by the pivoting bar, slowing down the bar's rotation would cause the stars to creep outward to keep their orbits in sync with the bar's spin.

The researchers found evidence of such an outward cosmic migration when they investigated the chemical makeup of the stars. The Hercules Stream stars are rich in heavier elements, suggesting that these stars formed closer to the galactic center, where stars are about 10 times richer in metals compared to those in the galactic suburbs.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Thursday, July 1, 2021

Some Characters




 

I Don't Own No Gun

I am a Vietnam Veteran but after leaving the military made a pledge to myself that I would never own or fire another firearm...  at 73 years of age, I have honored and continue to fulfil that pledge...

HOWEVER, I do believe in the Second Amendment and the right of every American to bear arms if they so desire...  I also believe that it is not the law abiding citizens that are the problem with firearms but the few people who have criminal intent on their minds...  or, those who are mentally deranged for some reason...  typically outside of their own control. 

AND, if a LIBERAL GOVERNMENT ever tries to take guns or the Second Amendment away from the people, there will be a CIVIL WAR in this country because of it...   This is NOT A THREAT...  this is a fact of life and the RIGHTS that were given to us by our Founding Fathers.

Change the government to SOCIALISM and change the CONSTITUTION so that there is no more Second Amendment and this country will pay the price for that egotistical desire...  MOREOVER, not only will this country suffer internally, but it will suffer externally as well as our enemies RUSSIA and CHINA will have a perfect opportunity for conquest...

WAKE UP AMERICA...


Chine's Secret Computer System

Whether it is China’s rover on Mars, its space station orbiting the Earth or its moon probe bringing back lunar samples, one little-known system is behind them all.  The core of the Kylin computer operating system has been guarded as a national secret and its use in the country’s space programme has only just been officially confirmed.

Its main codes were written by Chinese military researchers, according to developer China Electronics Corporation (CEC), but it also includes elements of Unix-like software FreeBSD, parts from Linux, and a user interface similar to Windows.  It is a hybrid, like the mythical qilin dragon beast it is named after.

Speaking to state media on the weekend, members of the Kylin development team revealed the role the operating system played in these missions, coordinating communication between artificial intelligence software, human controllers on the ground and all the hardware on board the spacecraft.

Until about a decade ago, China, like most other countries, relied on Linux and Windows to drive its space programmes, according to a paper published in domestic journal Space Industry Management last year.

From 2008, China’s space authorities started to replace Western software and hardware in satellites and spacecraft. The process sped up after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US hacking activities.

Kylin was one of the results – along with the Zhanxing, or Warring Star, system developed by the Chinese military’s space force, according to the paper.

Dan Jianqun, a lead scientist with CEC’s Kylin project, said China had no other choice but to develop its operating system.

“Using other people’s systems, to quote President Xi [Jinping], is like building a house on other people’s land. It can be large and beautiful, but it can also be destroyed overnight,” he said in an interview on state television on Sunday.

The transition from western to home-made software was full of challenges, according to some of the software engineers involved.  Liu Jun, a software engineer on the Kylin team, said space missions required not only high security, but reliability and performance.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Defund Police


 

Constitution



 

China's Mars Rover Zhurong

China's first-ever Mars rover was on the move earlier this month, imagery by a NASA spacecraft shows.

The rover, named Zhurong, is part of Tianwen-1, China's first fully homegrown Red Planet mission, which arrived in orbit around Mars in February. Zhurong separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter on May 14 and touched down on the vast plain Utopia Planitia a few hours later.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) photographed Zhurong on June 6 using its HiRISE ("High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment") camera, which is capable of resolving features as small as a coffee table on the red dirt far below.

The HiRISE team released a second image of Zhurong taken on June 11, which shows the rover and its tracks extending noticeably farther away from the mission's landing platform.

"The landing site remains distinctly colored from removal of Martian dust during landing, and movement of the Zhurong rover toward the south can be seen when comparing the two images," HiRISE team members wrote in a description of the photo.

MRO has been circling Mars since 2006, studying the planet's geology and climate, hunting for signs of water ice, scouting out good potential landing sites for future missions (both crewed and robotic) and serving as a communications relay between Mars rovers and landers and their controllers on Earth.

As the Zhurong images show, MRO also keeps tabs on the Red Planet's surface robots from time to time as well. Over the years, HiRISE has photographed NASA's Phoenix and InSight landers and the agency's Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers — and Zhurong as well.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Just Politics



 

Being A White Oppressor

 

In 1947, I was born white and in 2021 at the age of 73, I am still white, and I supposed that I will continue to be white for the rest of my life...  and, it does not make any difference if I like or dislike rap music.

I married twice and both times they were white females and with the first wife, I had a white daughter who he in her 40's and is still white as well.

PERSONALLY, I like the idea of saying that ALL WHITE PEOPLE are oppressive and have oppressed the blacks...  but, I am not sure why I like that other than being white.  I also like the idea of teaching school children (as young as possible) that whites are the oppressors and that blacks are the ones being oppressed.

I like this idea because over time, it will divide this country worse than it has ever been divided before...  and, it will cause most blacks to hate whites and vice versa...  which I also think is good for this country...  especially if we want to be controlled by CHINA down the road.

AMERICA NO LONGER NEEDS TO BE UNITED...

Prevent Murder



 

Airplane RV

The owner of a vintage World War II-era transport plane decided to do something radical—but still practical—to the big prop plane: he turned it into an RV. The result is the "Fabulous Flamingo," a traveling camper that boards like a real airplane, but drives like a recreational vehicle.

Aviation fan and Air Force veteran Gino Lucci purchased the old Douglas R4D airplane in 2019. Damaged in a tornado, the plane no longer flew. So by the time Lucci purchased it, he bought it "for the cost of a used car," according to an Insider report.

To make the conversion from plane to RV, Lucci purchased parts from Bontrager's Surplus in Michigan, which specializes in RVs and RV parts. Then, he began the year-long renovation process at his home in Nashville, Michigan.

Lucci's RV incorporates as many parts of the original plane as possible. He bolted the front fuselage of the plane to a delivery truck frame. The air stairs, which unfold from the right side of the fuselage, are the only way in and out of the vehicle. The original plane intercom still works. And he turned the engine cowlings into wheel guards.

The airplane, which Lucci renamed "The Fabulous Flamingo," offers 300 square feet of internal living space, and even features a play area for his youngest son. As Bontrager's describes it on their Facebook page:

The seats from the old airplane were used for the driver & front passenger seats in the RV. They added a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom - complete with a stove, sink, fridge, microwave, cabinets, sofa, dinette booth, toilet and even a tub!

The southern California-based Douglas Aircraft Company (now a part of Boeing) built and delivered the first DC-3 plane—called the Douglas Sleeper Transport—to American Airlines in June 1936. It was the "height of luxury" at the time, according to Boeing, and could accommodate 14 overnight passengers or up to 28 on shorter daylight flights.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Monday, June 28, 2021

Opinions



 

When Stars Had Light

Astronomers have worked out when the first stars began shining.


They say that this period, known as the "cosmic dawn," occurred between 250 to 350 million years after the Big Bang.  The results indicate that the first galaxies will be bright enough to be seen by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to be launched later this year.

The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Discovering when the cosmic dawn began has been the life's work of Prof Richard Ellis, from University College London, UK.

He told BBC News: "The Holy Grail has been to look back far enough that you would be able to see the very first generation of stars and galaxies. And now we have the first convincing evidence of when the Universe was first bathed in starlight."

Webb telescope's golden mirror in final test
Scientists detect oxygen legacy of first stars
Planck telescope puts new date on first stars

The team analysed six of the most distant galaxies. They were so far away that even with the world's most powerful telescopes they appeared as just a few pixels on the computer screen. They are also among the earliest to have emerged in the Universe and so, by the time their images are captured by telescopes on Earth, they are seen not long after the Big Bang.

By working out their age, the team calculated the start of the cosmic dawn - when the first stars formed. Dr Nicolas Laporte, from the Kavli Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge led the analysis.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Sunday, June 27, 2021

The Mall

Today, I spent in Knoxville at the Mall, and while I was there got myself some vanilla cappuccino from Starbucks and watched the most recent Fast and Furious movie which was a little more hard-to-believe than some of the others, although, the special effects were not so spectacular as they were well done...


As I walked around the inside of the Mall, I realized that I was mixed in with a group of visitors, none of which had their facemasks, and none of whom I saw as any particular color other than Americans...  yet, I am sure that there were plenty of black, Hispanics, and Mexicans all around me.


Nobody looked out-of-place or that they did not belong there...  I saw males, females, families, and people who were by themselves.  I saw people that were well dressed and those who looked like they had spent the morning at the lake.


The whole time that I was at the Mall, I was thinking about why I did not want to be WOKE and why I did not particularly care for Critical Race Theory...  because the ones I was around were just a bunch of different people who wanted to spend some time at the Mall on Sunday.


While we were walking my wife was surfing the web and all of a sudden blurted out, "did you know the richest actor in Hollywood is a black person?"  My first thought was brought brought that about...  but, all I said was, "no shit" and continued walking?


But to myself, I was wondering why all this fuss about blacks being suppressed by whites...  and, then I wondered how I would have done my job if I had spent my career in law enforcement...  but, I was a teacher and spent my career in front of all kinds of people...  some were smarter than others and some did not want to talk, and some could not write well, but they were all students trying to make a better life for themselves.


Since my coffee was gone, we decided to leave the Mall and return home and spend the evening enjoying whatever it was that we wanted to do...  like watch a Korean movie with sub titles or post articles to a blog.


Isn't this the way is supposed to be in America?

Predictions

 

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Blue Whales

Scientists have discovered an entirely new population of pygmy blue whales in the Indian Ocean, which have managed to evade detection for decades despite their enormous size.

Researchers uncovered the secretive cetaceans by analyzing acoustic data collected by an underwater nuclear bomb detection array, which revealed a unique song scientists had never heard before.

The new population of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) — a smaller subspecies of blue whale that reaches a maximum length of 79 feet (24 meters) — is now called the Chagos population, after a group of islands in the Indian Ocean near the group's lair.

"We are still discovering missing populations of the largest animal that has ever lived," senior author Tracey Rogers, a marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, told Live Science. "It's a testament to the difficulty of studying life in the ocean."

Bomb detectors
"Blue whales are generally hard to find," lead author Emmanuelle Leroy, a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW, told Live Science. "They were brought to the edge of extinction by industrial whaling and they are recovering very slowly."

Currently, about 5,000 to 10,000 blue whales exist in the Southern Hemisphere, compared with the pre-whaling population of about 350,000 there, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The few that remain are often solitary and are spread across large geographic areas, making them easy to miss, Leroy said.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Friday, June 25, 2021

Another View

 



Shining Light

Fast Radio Bursts are relatively new on the astronomy scene, having really emerged over the last 10 or so years. Scientists have determined that they can also be used as powerful cosmic flashlights that can tell us more about the Universe. Now, two Australian scientists have written an excellent review paper about this mysterious phenomenon and how it can help us better understand our place in the Universe.

Often we hear that the Universe works in mysterious ways, and yes, this is very true and a great starting point for science. There are things about the Universe that we observe and are yet to understand, which are then theorised, modelled, investigated and analysed by scientists to help make them mysteries no more.

Sometimes, space-based objects or phenomena can lie in the fascinating waters between something we are yet to understand vs. something that has come through our established systems of science, being peer-reviewed and accepted into becoming the most up to date fact.

Of course, new data might come through and change these facts, tweaking them to represent further observations and confirmed results, and so science continues to progress in these recognised steps over time.

In the last 15 years a relatively new, not-yet-fully understood phenomenon has emerged, fuelling excitement and a race to learn more by global radio astronomers. What began as a discovery in the archival data of the CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope that was several years old, has now bloomed into a research field with an army of astronomers around the world working around the clock to turn mystery into fact.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Thursday, June 24, 2021

US Divided

President Biden in a speech given in North Carolina said that the US was more divided than it was during the CIVIL WAR and blamed former President Trump for this problem...

LOGICALLY...  President Biden is saying that in only a 4 year period of time, that ONE MAN was able to divide the country worse than it has been divided since the CIVIL WAR.

HOW STUPID DOES PRESIDENT BIDEN THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE???

It is impossible to divide a country that fast unless the country was basically already divided between CONSERVATIVES and LIBERALS and thanks to former President Trump, people had the courage to stand up for what they believed.

It is somewhat IRONICAL that the country is divided along political lines because one would think that the country is divided because of:

  • Wealth/Middle Class
  • Educated/Not Educated
  • White/Black
  • Male/Female
  • Old/Young
  • North/South
  • Married/Not Married
  • Religious/Non Religious
  • For Gun/Against Gun
  • For Abortion/Against Abortion



Friday Funnies



 

Chinese Jets

Some 28 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan's air defence zone on Tuesday, said its defence ministry, the largest reported incursion so far.

Fighters and nuclear-capable bombers were among those in the so-called air defence identification zone (ADIZ).

The incident comes after Nato leaders on Monday warned of the military challenge posed by China.  While democratic Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state, Beijing views the island as a breakaway province.

According to Taipei, the Chinese mission included 14 J-16, six J-11 fighters, four nuclear capable H-6 bombers as well as anti-submarine, electronic warfare and early warning aircraft.

An air defence identification zone is an area outside of a country's territory and national airspace but where foreign aircraft are still identified, monitored, and controlled in the interest of national security. It is self-declared and technically remains international airspace.

The Chinese aircraft flew close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, as well as around the southern part of Taiwan itself.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Lost Jobs by 2030

A 2017 report by global consultants McKinsey
predicted a third of workers in the US would be replaced by automation and robots by 2030. But events like pandemics have the potential to change all the timelines and experts say it's really up to humans to decide how they want to integrate this technology in the world.

What we must realize is that 2030 is less than 9 years away...  and, no one is focused on how much of the workforce is going to be displaced by robots...  and, what they are going to be doing for work...

TWENTY MILLION WORKERS will be replaced by robots by the year 2030...

What jobs will be replaced?
  • taxi driver
  • travel agent
  • store cashiers
  • fast food cooks
  • administrative legal jobs
  • manufacturing 
  • jobs that are repetitive
What jobs might remain?
  1. Lawyer
  2. IT Professional
  3. Medical Professionals


BEGINNING TODAY

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