Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Astronomy Queen...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 2, 2018 at 7:39am

The Tower of the Moon and the Stars, an observatory built by Queen Sonduk, after she came to power in 632 CE. Credit: GABRIELLA BERNARDI

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, History, Diversity in Science, Women in Science

Will I ever know the truth about the stars?

I’m too young to engage in theories about our Universe.

I just know that I want to understand more. I want to know all

I can. Why should it be forbidden?

This sentence, found on a votive jar dedicated to her grandmother, had been written by a young girl, a Korean princess of the Silla Dynasty, when she was 15 years old. Her name was Sonduk, but it is also written as Sondok or Seondeok, and she was very interested in astronomy in an era where no education was granted to women. Nevertheless, she became a queen and could pursue her astronomical passion, at least in a certain sense. But let’s go in order.

She was born in 610 CE, and later became the first female monarch of Korea, ruling her country for 14 years. Jinpyeong, her father, was the king of Silla, a kingdom that was born as a city-state in 57 BCE and grew into a kingdom in about 350 CE. The king had no male heirs, so the choice fell on his daughter Sonduk.

This young princess had a brilliant mind, evident from a very young age. At seven, for example, a box of peony seeds arrived at the Court, from China. It had been sent with an accompanying painting that showed what the flowers looked like. Sonduk, looking at the picture, remarked that the flower was pretty, but it was a pity that it did not smell. When asked why, she answered: “If it did, there would be butterflies and bees around the flower in the painting.” Her observation about the peonies’ lack of smell proved correct – one illustration among many of her intelligence.

The first contact with astronomy and the study of the stars occurred through her tutor, the Chinese ambassador Lin Fang, who was also an astronomer. At the age of 15 she was introduced to Confucianism, which soon became an obstacle to her thirst for knowledge. The Confucian model, indeed, placed women in a subordinate position within the family, which meant that education in general, let alone astronomy, was not considered suitable. Sonduk, however, used to make observations every night and was mostly self-taught. A clash of wills was inevitable.

The unforgotten sisters: Sonduk, the astronomer queen, Gabriella Bernardi, Cosmos Magazine

In the first of a three-part series, Italian science writer Gabriella Bernardi profiles a seventh century Korean astronomy pioneer.

MOND on Maundy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 29, 2018 at 10:10am

The image on the right shows the galaxy, full of "globular clusters." The image on the left shows the measurement the researchers used to track the speed of one such object. Credit: Gemini Observatory / NSF / AURA / W.M. Keck Observatory / Jen Miller / Joy Pollard

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter, Theoretical Physics

Note: I almost didn't blog about this, because the original links at Live Science and Cosmos Magazine lead to "page not found" errors. I was able to find the article on Nature's direct website and provide it here. It's strange both sites had the same bogus links.

Here's a problem: The universe acts like it's a lot more massive than it looks.

Take galaxies, those giant, spinning masses of stars. The laws of motion and gravity tell us how fast these objects should turn given their bulk. But observations through telescopes show them spinning way faster than we'd expect, as if they were actually much more massive than the stars we can see indicate.

Astrophysicists have come up with two main solutions to this problem. Either there's a lot of mass out there in the universe that we can't detect directly, mass scientists call dark matter, or there's no dark matter out there, but there is something missing from our laws of gravity and motion. Researchers call the second proposed solution modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), which suggests that if the laws are properly tweaked, the universe would make sense without dark matter.

A new paper, published today (March 28) in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that there really is dark matter out there and that modifying the laws of physics wouldn't by itself solve the universe's weight problem.

In that study, the researchers found an object that could exist in a universe that has dark matter, but that would be nearly unimaginable in a MOND universe: a totally normal galaxy, one that seems to operate without any dark matter-type forces. [1]

*****

In a study published in the journal Nature, scientists have found a galaxy that appears to contain no dark matter — the unknown material thought to be common in the universe because of its gravitational effect on normal matter.

It was a startling discovery, because galaxies similar to our own Milky Way generally appear to contain 30 times more of the mysterious substance than normal matter, while smaller galaxies can contain up to 400 times as much.

The dark-matter-free galaxy, called NGC 1052-DF2, lies 65 million light years away in the constellation Cetus. It initially caught the attention of astronomers because, while it’s about the size of the Milky Way, it contains only 0.5% as many stars.

“That makes it very diffuse,” says the study’s lead author, Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University, in Connecticut, US. “You can look straight through it. You can see galaxies behind it.”

It was discovered by a special, low-tech telescope in New Mexico called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, which consists of a bundle of 400-millimetre camera lenses of the same type used by sports photographers, and can scan the sky for large, dim objects. So far, it’s found 23 of them, but NGC 1052-DF2 (the DF is for “Dragonfly”) stood out because it wasn’t just a big, diffuse blob. [2]

1. Astrophysicists Claim They Found a 'Galaxy Without Dark Matter', Rafi Letzter, Live Science

2. Found: a galaxy devoid of dark matter, Richard A Lovett, Cosmos Magazine

Lithium Air Battery...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2018 at 1:03pm

"The new battery design protects the lithium metal anode with a coating of lithium carbonate. That allows lithium ions from the anode to enter the electrolyte while keeping unwanted compounds from reaching the anode. It’s easy to create this protective layer, too. The researchers just had to run a few charge-discharge cycles with a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, and a crystal mesh of lithium carbonate accumulated." Extreme Tech

Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Solar Power

The lithium-ion battery has transformed the portable electronics industry and is making inroads into energy storage on the electric grid and electrically powered transportation. Today, research laboratories around the world are seeking to develop beyond-lithium-ion batteries that are even more powerful, cheaper, safer and longer lived.

As reported in the journal Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has produced a new design for a beyond-lithium-ion battery cell that operates by running on air (hence, referred to as “lithium-air”) over many charge and discharge cycles. Larry Curtiss, co-principal investigator and Argonne Distinguished Fellow, observed that the team’s article was appealing to Nature because “others have tried to build lithium-air battery cells that run on air, but they failed because of little cycle life.”

“This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call ‘beyond-lithium-ion’ batteries.” — Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor, University of Illinois at Chicago.

The problem with past technology has been that battery cells tested in the lab required a separate supply of pure oxygen (hence, referred to as lithium-oxygen batteries). As a consequence, a tank of oxygen gas would have to be part of the battery system, making it prohibitive for use in electric vehicles due to space requirements. A lithium-air battery that uses air from outside eliminates this problem.

The key features of the team’s newly developed battery cell are a new protective coating for the lithium metal anode, which prevents the anode from reacting with oxygen and hence deteriorating, and a novel electrolyte mixture that allows the cell to operate in an air atmosphere. In tests under an air environment, this cell maintained high performance during 700 cycles, far surpassing previous technology. According to Amin Salehi-Khojin, co-principal investigator and assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “The energy storage capacity was about three times that of a lithium-ion battery, and five times should be easily possible with continued research. This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call beyond-lithium-ion batteries.”

Out Of thin air, Joe Harmon, Argonne National Laboratory

Tiangong, Soon Gone...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2018 at 8:00am

Tiangong-1 altitude decay forecast as of March 22, 2018.

Topics: ESA, NASA, Space Exploration

China's first space station may fall to the ground as soon as one week from now, and certainly within two, orbital debris experts with the European Space Agency (ESA) say. Scientists, however, still cannot predict with any confidence where pieces of the 10.4-meter long Tiangong-1 station, which is traveling at 17,000 km/h, will land.

The latest estimate from the ESA indicates the station will enter Earth's atmosphere between March 30 and April 3, at which time most of the station will burn up. However, the station is large enough—it weighed 8.5 tons when fully fueled but has since used much of that propellant—that some pieces will very likely reach the planet's surface.

Beyond the fact that the station will reach a final impact point somewhere between 42.8 degrees north and 42.8 degrees south in latitude and probably near the northern or southern extremity of those boundaries due to Tiangong-1's orbital inclination, it is not possible to say where on Earth the debris will land. However, the likelihood of it affecting humans is quite low. Scientists estimate the "personal probability of being hit by a piece of debris from the Tiangong-1" is about 10 million times smaller than the annual chance of being hit by lightning.

A Fiery End - Chinese space station will fall to Earth within two weeks

Eric Berger, Ars Technica

#P4TC: Tiangong, Tentatively... April 30, 2011

Single Atom Sensor...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2018 at 1:04pm

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Atomic Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Nanotechnology

Researchers at Griffith University working with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have unveiled a stunningly accurate technique for scientific measurements which uses a single atom as the sensor, with sensitivity down to 100 zeptoNewtons.

(Zepto = 10^-21, or 0.000000000000000000001.)

Using highly miniaturised segmented-style Fresnel lenses - the same design used in lighthouses for more than a century - which enable exceptionally high-quality images of a single atom, the scientists have been able to detect position displacements with nanometre precision in three dimensions.

"Our atom is missing one electron, so it's very sensitive to electrical fields. By measuring the displacement, we've built a very sensitive tool for measuring electrical forces." Dr Erik Streed, of the Centre for Quantum Dynamics, explained.

"100 zeptoNewtons is a very small force. That's about the same as the force of gravity between a person in Brisbane and a person in Canberra. It can be used to investigate what's occurring on surfaces, which will help miniaturise ion trap type quantum computers and other quantum devices.

Scientists unveil high-sensitivity 3-D technique using single-atom measurements, Griffith University

The Shattering (repost)...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2018 at 2:58pm

Image Source: wiseGEEK

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, History, Politics

This was originally posted March 31, 2017. I've updated it with the YouTube video by Channel 4 London on Cambridge Analytica (CNNMoney.com and The Guardian details). The original blog post has aged well.

From FBI.gov:

COINTELPRO The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.

The John Birch Society (TIME):

Had his story ended when he retired as a candy-maker, Robert Welch Jr. might have made his mark on history as the father of the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. But Welch, whose shrewd leadership helped grow his brother’s Massachusetts candy business a hundred-fold from 1935 to 1956, shifted his aim from caramels to communists.

On this day, Dec. 9, in 1958, Welch — then retired from the candy business — founded the ultraconservative John Birch Society along with 11 like-minded “Americanists,” as they referred to themselves. Their goal was to expose and eradicate the growing leftist threat in America, which they believed to be 40 to 60 percent communist-controlled, according to a 1961 TIME report. Members of the John Birch Society saw communists wherever they looked, from the Oval Office of Dwight Eisenhower (“A conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,” per Welch) to the Bay of Pigs (“a theatrical performance jointly sponsored by Castro and ‘his friends in the U.S. Government’ in order to strengthen the communist hold on Cuba,” as paraphrased in TIME).

The "growing leftist threat"...

COINTELPRO was the government version of John Birch. Though the write up eludes to other groups the FBI had under surveillance, it was felt by African American communities the most, specifically the Black Panther Party; the Nation of Islam; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc. The approval of the Communist Manifesto by the likes of Huey Newton and the unrest in the streets likely gave J. Edgar Hoover much alarm. It couldn't have been the treatment of American citizens by their fellow citizens and de facto/de jure Jim Crow laws against them. It was easy to wrap surveillance in the flag and patriotism to hide the racist overtones of the act.

The "growing leftist threat"...

If the Birch philosophy sounds familiar, it's because one of its ardent members was the famous Koch Brother's father, Frank Koch, an MIT oil engineer. He infamously built oil refineries for Nazi Germany and did a considerable amount of business with the Russians.

The Nazis... the Russians...

It was "American" to oppose godless communism. It was easy for the right to demonize the left as unpatriotic, out-of-touch and not fluent in the deified "free market."

The reclusive billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer has been known to fund right wing groups in this country (Steve Bannon) and overseas (Nigel Farage). Like many of the self-made billionaires, he's likely a fan of Ayn Rand and her apotheosis of selfishness in "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," lauded by Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Speaker Paul Ryan and President Ronald Reagan. It's funny how an avowed enemy of religion as a sickness can be so praised by those who put the Ten Commandments, godly masculinity and "family values" on high pedestals.

During the 1960's, COINTELPRO was concerned that foreign powers were infiltrating us and destabilizing our republic in the various Civil Rights organizations. They, along with the John Birch Society, were decidedly anti-communist, such that the Republican Party made this stance a litmus test for two generations. At that time, foreign Russian interference would have been called the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or the Committee for State Security). If they were infiltrating Civil Rights organizations, it was a time and an environment ripe for manipulation.

Fast-forward 40 years: 1968 - 2008. Forty years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the country has gone through a massive experiment in forced busing that would eventually be objected to and eliminated. Cities would through economic opportunities and structured stratification re-segregate more so than 1968. The former Soviet Union would fall in that window in 1989. Then President George Bush (41) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would opine on the "Peace Dividend." The previous Russian Politburo was their 1%. As I recall from Air Force ROTC class in college, they were the ones with the actual money while their populations starved. They had access to things like fashion, food, sex all the while pretending that the Politburo was "temporary" and eventually there would be pure Communism with no hierarchy, no stratification: no "income inequality" as we now call it. It never came. An attempt at reformation from the previous authoritarian communist regime - Democratization - would be attempted and fail. Some would say it was a weakness of Russian civil society, as in democratization usually entails a beneficial tug-of-war from above and below. If citizens aren't putting pressure on their leadership, that leadership will eventually go back to what they know well: ironclad, authoritarian control.

2008 saw the election of the country's first African American president, Barack Hussein Obama, for the first time in 232 years of the republic during a financial free fall compared quite literally to the Great Depression, a concern that furrowed his brow and eventually grayed his mane. A graduate of two elite schools, a Constitutional Scholar and community organizer, he "dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't'." His crowds were compared to rock concerts. We quickly spat out the bubblegum philosophy of a "post-racial" society. We had "grown up" Dr. Maya Angelou commented; poems were composed, t-shirts were made, tearful hymns were sung: we had finally "overcome."

President Obama's name was a source of angst to his legitimacy. Then the Tea Party arose, AstroTurf-fed by dark money - Koch, Mercer et al - as a faux grass movement, their bigotry was hidden - at least initially from their Tea Party selves - behind clever slogans and jingoism: "I want my country back!" The demographics was decidedly, predominately the only original creation of the American continent: "whiteness," and a few people of color comfortable in tokenism and able to maneuver within a religion of white supremacy, that itself masquerades as a faux evangelical Christianity.

The KGB became the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service). Some rumors that they would weaponize misinformation on a scale heretofore unseen. As the former KGB observed an opening in the Civil Rights unrest, the FSB noticed Birtherism, the bigotry, the calling out "YOU LIE" during a president's State of the Union; the praying of Psalms 109:8 and callously calling themselves "Christians." They saw faux voter integrity ID laws designed to act as a 21st Century poll tax; they saw the slaughter of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, and countless others. Add to it the lack of any jurisprudence/convictions of their slayers (the noted exceptions in Davis and McBride): note also the rush to call them "thugs" and disappointed Kentucky fans "students." The clever bigotry giving way to blatant racism, our national pathology laid naked to any intelligence officers to manipulate. From the ascendancy of a rock star African American president, the situation demanded his precise antithesis as counterbalance.

It was simply a change in strategy: if COINTELPRO was correct (though biased), the infiltration was through some Civil Rights organizations. If our current intelligence is correct, the infiltration was through our obvious bigotry: it was designed to shatter our institutional norms, and internationally like democratic republics from within.

With fake news by bots and hackers, servers between Moscow and New York; backroom deals that may have been caught with (possible) FISA-warranted incidental communications monitoring, the Russians merely enacted in real-time cyber attacks the poignant observation President Lyndon Baines Johnson made on a trip to the south with journalist Bill Moyers:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

With Brexit proceeding in the UK, spurred broadly by bigotry, their next targets to destabilize western democracy are France and Germany, with the ultimate goals of dismantling NATO and the European Union. There would be in essence a "New World Order" - not of the conspiratorial kind - but under the same conditions when "IRA" stood for Irish Republican Army (not Individual Retirement Account): there were a lot of bombings, death and instability. Before the EU, European countries often warred among themselves. That can't be good for tourism, ...or world peace.

We have "given them the store" of white supremacist bigotry, and our republic. I'm concerned apathy, racism, stupidity and tribalism may well not allow us... to get it back.

Narcissism and Publicity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2018 at 8:00am

Image Source: Learning-Mind.com/malignant-narcissist

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics

I've been away doing grad work and thinking about how I'm going to fund myself this summer. In our current anti-science era, it's a constant concern.

I have other concerns, most recently the Austin bomber and my family in harm's way. The shame is he didn't expire himself before taking the lives of innocent others.

An excerpt of a post from another blog I manage on this subject:

*****

Megan Meier thought that "Josh" loved her. The figment of a neighboring mother's imagination broke up with her and resulted in a sweet girl’s suicide.

Now we have Robert A. Hawkins in what is now the Omaha Mall shooting at the Westroads Mall: nine dead, including Robert and five injured at last count.

I'm old enough to remember when CNN debuted in 1980. Prior to that, HBO had limited showings and television shut down (the "snow" screen in the scene of the movie "Poltergeist") around 11 PM. If you were an insomniac, you REALLY had to work at it.

Not to say there weren't shootings: the UT tower incident in the '60s comes to mind. However, with 24-hour news and the Internet on which you read this commentary, becoming "famous" can happen in nanoseconds at near light speed with the voracious need for copy by the media.

Ironically, "Robert" means "bright and shining fame." I wonder if he knew this when he wrote "I'll be famous" in his suicide note?

In 2004, Nebraska ranked 41 out of 50 states in the rate of suicides recorded: 166 deaths reported in the state at a rate of 9.5. I'm getting this from http://www.suicidology.org/.

From the CNN article linked above, his landlord paraphrased: "He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."

Mental health in this country is a phobia, a cousin in the attic no one wants to discuss. We've all got our issues, and they can be exacerbated by the economy, social situations and most importantly, lack of treatment.

It would seem silly if someone broke an arm or the femur in their legs and tried to "play it off" as if nothing hurts. Mind you, I've had my share of hairline fractures as a martial artist that I did the same thing with, but as I get older I'm a little more cautious and check out everything, EVERYTHING with my doctor.

When will we have this attitude about mental health?

Could crime rates be the result of desperate people finding themselves in desperate situations where nefarious criminal activity makes "sense" in warped minds?

Would their be a decrease in wars if we had clear-minded leaders that steered their countries towards peace and alternate energy sources so we're not beholding to despots and dictators to drive our SUVs, pay $3 in gas and turn on a light bulb?

*****

I'm not giving an excuse for the bomber. He paraphrased Alfred Pennyworth's line in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight: "some men just want to see the world burn."

Mark Conditt was apparently such a young man. The stereotypical "lone wolf" I'm sure they'll say. "Mental issues" and troubled will be overused metaphors. Never "thug" or terrorism. Never... There's already a stance on "not knowing his motives," despite his initial targets having a distinct hue of Melanin. No word on the motives of the Pulse Nightclub shooter. Not even a word on the motives of the Las Vegas shooter. Nothing...

Perhaps it's simpler than that.

Paul Bloom in 2017 explored it in his New Yorker piece "The Root of all Cruelty?" In it, he comments on the philosopher David Livingstone Smith's book "Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others"; the historian Timothy Snyder "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning"; "Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships" by anthropologist Alan Fiske and psychologist Tage Rai; "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny," by philosopher Kate Manne, "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps," Andrea Pitzer and starts his piece with the apropos cultural Netflix series Black Mirror all to come to a single conclusion:

Humans suck.

It is not that the Austin bomber or any other previous to this heinous act lacked an appreciation for the diversity of humanity. It may be that he realized despite his Internet screeds to the contrary, gays, women, minorities are all human...he just didn't care that they are. He "defined his stance" on his personal blog for the world to see. I've noted no news agency, save the Dallas Morning News has reported on it.

Anyone in a free society is free to hold any opinion that s/he wishes as long as it doesn't impact others negatively.

But for a malignant narcissist, that's not good enough. It is the "other" that's responsible for their pain. It is the "other" that must suffer.

Symptoms

Narcissistic personality disorder includes symptoms such as poor self identity, inability to appreciate others, entitlement, lack of authenticity, need for control, intolerance of the views/opinions of others, emotional detachment, grandiosity, lack of awareness or concern regarding the impact of their behavior, minimal emotional reciprocity, and a desperate need for the approval and positive attention of others "How to Recognize a Malignant Narcissist," Rhonda Freeman, PhD, Psychology Today.

Malignant narcissists on a personal level can be associated with physical violence. I'm not sure if it's been correlated with domestic terrorism. However, we have never given one the nuclear codes before, nor investigated them for collusion with a hostile power; nor seen them sued by a former adult film star, an ex-playboy playmate and a former contestant on "The Apprentice" as well as many other women for sexual assault. Nary a peep from the religious right, so animated during the Bill Clinton era.

And some with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur might be willing to burn the house down while standing in it. As the walls close in, he may use his vast powers to rain down nuclear Armageddon on the human species, versus doing a "perp walk." He might kill a cellist that was a model student and hoped to be a medical doctor. Now that dream is dust. Maybe Conditt knew him, and was jealous that the cellist, Draylen Mason was African American and his currency of whiteness only allowed him to take a few classes at Austin Community College. Whether he lived or died (the latter now reality), he'd be "famous." Pflugerville, Texas was shut down after his confirmed death in "an abundance of caution" to a discovered package. The currency of whiteness could historically get you any job in the idealized past free of "others" - the unspoken, underlying id of #MAGA. Maybe Conditt was expecting such luck, and resented it not working out for him. Even one you're hopelessly unqualified for - the US presidency as case-in-point, in probably the last, best example for all time of white male privilege.

This currency is a dividend we're all paying, whether we like it or not.

Sadly, there will be another, as there were over 600 similar threats after the Parkland shooting, that will try to one-up Conditt.

The difference of my youth to now is we're surrounded by a ubiquitous deluge of information: television, radio, satellite radio, Internet, blogs and social media apps, which can be accessed on cell phones, computers and I-pads.

I grew up in an era of ABC, CBS, NBC and a few UHF stations. There was no CNN or HBO. Television stations signed off at midnight. News wasn't instantaneously spread around. It took time. There wasn't a vast stage to visit cruelty on so many innocent "others"; instant fame and infamy for twisted psyches.

We've always had malignant narcissists. They just didn't have as many platforms for amplification and echo of their ego, mayhem and fame... or, the nuclear codes.

The Pretenders...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 19, 2018 at 7:24am

Credit: NASA, ESA; D. Coe; J. Anderson; R. van der Marel (STScI)

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, General Relativity, Quantum Gravity

New research reveals a possible mechanism allowing “black stars” and “gravastars” to exist

When giant stars die, they don’t just fade away. Instead they collapse in on themselves, leaving behind a compressed stellar remnant, usually a city-size, superdense ball of neutrons appropriately called a neutron star. In extreme cases, however, most theorists believe an expiring giant star will form a black hole—a pointlike “singularity” with effectively infinite density and a gravitational field so powerful that not even light, the fastest thing in the universe, can escape once falling in. Now a new study is reinvigorating an alternate idea, that objects with names such as “black stars,” or “gravastars,” might exist midway between neutron stars and black holes. If real, these exotic stellar corpses should appear nearly identical to black holes save in one key way—they could not irretrievably swallow light.

There are good reasons to seek such alternatives, because black holes raise a host of theoretical problems. For instance, their singularities are supposedly hidden by invisible boundaries known as event horizons. Throw something into a black hole, and once it passes the event horizon it should be gone—forever—with no hope whatsoever of return. But such profound annihilation clashes with other long-cherished laws of physics that suggest the destruction of information is impossible, including information encoded within anything falling into black holes.

Conceived and developed across the past two decades, in part to sidestep such conundrums, models of black stars and gravastars postulate these objects would lack singularities and event horizons. But questions have lingered as to whether such objects could actually form—and remain stable after they did. New research from theoretical physicist Raúl Carballo-Rubio at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy provides a novel mechanism that might allow black stars and gravastars to exist.

Carballo-Rubio investigated a strange phenomenon known as quantum vacuum polarization. Quantum physics, the best description yet of how all known subatomic particles behave, suggests reality is fuzzy, limiting how precisely one can know the properties of the most basic units of matter—for instance, one can never absolutely know a particle's position and momentum at the same time. One strange consequence of this uncertainty is that a vacuum is never completely empty but instead foams with so-called “virtual particles” that continuously fluctuate into and out of existence.

Black Hole Pretenders Could Really Be Bizarre Quantum Stars, Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American

17 Minutes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 16, 2018 at 5:43am

Topics: Commentary, Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Politics

Type	Muzzle Velocity	Web Links
38 pistol	830	http://www.ballistics101.com/9mm_vs_.38special.php
9-mm	1150	http://www.ballistics101.com/9mm_vs_.38special.php
M-16	2900	http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_muzzle_velocity_for_the_m4_carbine
AR-15	3241	http://www.epicwilderness.com/best-223-remington-review-ar-15-ammunition/
25-06 Deer	3440	https://gunnewsdaily.com/best-caliber-for-deer-hunting/

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,The leopard shall lie down with the young goat,The calf and the young lion and the fatling together;And a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6

The Excel graph and table compares the muzzle velocities of different firearms in feet per second (FPS). The physics of bullets and bodies can be tremendously horrible, as Gina Kolata and C. J. Chivers in the New York Times attests. Maureen Downey in the Atlantic Journal Constitution reports trained police officers have an 18% accuracy rate in a gunfight. Arming teachers is not a solution towards an "armed and polite society": it is the recipe for future bloodbaths, supplied by young bodies.

In the Y2K scare days (they seem mild in comparison to current events), my oldest son was shouted "WHITE POWER" at from the front of our lawn in Cedar Park, Texas by the occupants of a passing pickup truck. It was 1999, and everyone was getting "Apocalypse crazy." I promptly went to a pawn shop and purchased a Gloc 9 mm to protect my wife and his younger brother. I've since sold it. I admit it was a reaction to what for most African Americans is a real and historical evidence-induced fear of a crazed lynch mob. It is dissimilar completely to the irrational fears chronicled in Scientific American by Jeremy Adam Smith: "Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?" I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't because some Panther Party member shouted "BLACK POWER" from their front lawns.

If I said my sister's name, you wouldn't find it in a history book. She, like these youth was a part of a movement. It was the reason we have the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act (under attack) and the Fair Housing Act. It was the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. She was and is my hero. It was a time of lambs becoming lions.

It was the youth then that drove the change in laws, first at the Woolworth counter in Greensboro that eventually got rid of the "whites only"; "blacks only" signs ubiquitous at the time. There were nervous days when she was arrested, hosed, beaten...I just become emotional typing it out. The sacrifices were not trivial then, or now.

I also become emotional when children are killed. We failed them as a nation in Sandy Hook. The imbeciles then and now that labeled the parents and now young citizens as "crisis actors" are the vilest of humanity. They are not to be argued with, but pitied.

It appears the youth have found their voice: in organizing this impressive, symbolic walkout; by organizing the March for Our Lives on the 24th of this month. Also by realizing they have another power: voting. They have promised to vote in 2018 when many will first turn 18, 2020 and thereafter.

If there had not been an assault on their peace at a place they once considered safe, they would be sharing ear buds listening to music, gossiping and arguing on social media apps. They would have looked at Civics as antiquated, something their parents concerned themselves with. Nothing about who was president or which party was in power would have mattered. For the children at Parkland, nothing changed their fortunate and quite privileged lives...except the massacre visited on their doorsteps last Valentine's Day. The irony is like the opioid crisis vs. the crack cocaine epidemic, the difference in approach tends to correlate with zip codes. Black Lives Matter was their most recent prototype for the usage of social media to prove a point.

No more. Without specifically mentioning "intersectionality," their online, in-person and grass roots rainbow campaign has remarkably achieved it.

There will be those who tell them unceremoniously to "shut up." There will be threats both frivolous and genuinely deadly. There may be nervous days, hosing, beatings and worse. Don't listen and don't let them kowtow you. You are STRONGER than you know; you are stronger than THEM - and they KNOW it. Reagan won the youth vote 61 - 30 in the 1980's. They can't do that anymore. Jonathan Chait of NY Magazine says you are younger, more diverse, more liberal and know your power. They - the old, ossified fossils - are dying off, and they are TERRIFIED.

Children - then, and now - will lead us. It is always when lambs are slaughtered, lions are eventually stirred, and roar.

Analog signs have been supplemented with websites. Fliers have been updated to Facebook Live and Snap Chat. They are still marching as did their ancestors. That's what lions do.

10:00 am, children walked out en masse on the one month observance of the massacre when people are usually struggling with restaurant invitations, candies given to sweethearts or lamentations of not having one. 17 minutes for 17 lives lost.

The 15th of February, during African American History Month, they became adults; they became LIONS. You've taken "social justice warrior" from pejorative to movement.

#ENOUGH!...and thank you.

Pi Departure...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 15, 2018 at 7:30am

Poker with Data, Einstein, Hawking, and Sir Isaac Newton on the Holodeck

Filming the scene with Professor Hawking

Images from Star Trek tribute to Professor Hawking

Topics: Physics, Physics and Pop Culture, Star Trek, Stephen Hawking

BBC: World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.

The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.

There are a myriad of tributes to Professor Hawking from around the world. It is apropos for him, as well as poetic he passed on Pi Day and Albert Einstein's 139th birthday. Both were extraordinary and complicated men.

Less so than the world we live in, where a former campaign manager in France says to a right wing Le Pen crown to where their racism "as a badge of honor." That the president* he helped a foreign government select for us called the nations on the birth continent of the human species as well as Caribbean nations "s--- hole countries."

We are being pushed inexorably from the Age of Enlightenment into the overbearing arms of our lesser angels. Professor Carl Sagan's "candle in the dark" is being snuffed by bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia and every "ism" you can modify a noun with. The Dark Ages were about scientific ignorance as well as emotional and irrational fear. Some of us seem determined that those were our "better days."

He wasn't supposed to live beyond his twenties. Perhaps with something like his pluck and determination, we can beat back fascism as he defied the odds of his own existence.

Perhaps...

BBC: Stephen Hawking: Visionary physicist dies aged 76

Nature: Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)

Si Qubits and Quantum Computers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 14, 2018 at 11:59am

Artist’s impression of the two-qubit logic gate device developed at UNSW. Each of the two electron qubits (red and blue) has a spin, or magnetic field, indicated by the arrow directions. Metal electrodes on the surface are used to manipulate the qubits, which interact to create an entangled quantum state. (credit: Tony Melov/UNSW)

Topics: Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A new two-qubit quantum processor that is fully programmable and single electron spins that can be coherently coupled to individual microwave-frequency photons are two of the latest advances in the world of solid-state spin-based quantum computing. The breakthroughs could help in the development of large-scale spin-based processors in the future.

While classical computers store and process information as "bits" that can have one of two logic states – "0" or "1" – a quantum computer exploits the ability of quantum particles or bits (qubits) to be in a "superposition" of two or more states at the same time. Such a device could, in principle, outperform a classical computer on certain tasks, such as factoring large prime numbers and sorting large random lists, thanks to it being massively parallel.

In recent years, researchers have succeeded in making qubits from a number of solid-state materials, including semiconducting quantum dots and superconductors. Semiconductor spin qubits appear to be better for a number of reasons. For one, they last for a relatively long time before decohering (interacting with their environment). They can also be controlled electrically and can be integrated with high density on a chip.

The problem, however, is that it is still difficult to control the state of individual spin qubits and intertwine multiple qubits in a controlled way.

Silicon qubits show promise for quantum computers, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

I Am Not Your Negro...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2018 at 1:11pm

James Baldwin, in the new documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Dan Budnik/Magnolia Pictures

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

A Facebook post I made responding to some of the president's* supporters wanting a "white history month" (last chance to disengage before the rant):

365 - 28 = 337 freaking days! You freaked out over President Obama when you had 232 years of white male rule that only changed parties. You freaked out on Black Panther, when you had THREE Thor movies. Speaking of which, you freaked out when Idris Elba played Heimdall and Tessa Thompson played Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarök. You lost it when Kate Mulgrew played Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager; you had a conniption fit over Avery Brooks as Commander, then Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek Deep Space Nine and you almost had a Grand Mal seizure over Sonequa Martin-Green on Star Trek Discovery! Don’t let me get started on how the sad/rabid puppies attacked NK Jemisin on having the audacity to WIN the Hugo and Nebula Awards for EXCELLENT science fiction that didn't center around gene spliced clones of Buck Rogers, John Wayne, James T Kirk and Han Solo! In other words, how emotionally butt-hurt do you have to be where ANYTHING that doesn’t involve your culture as front-and-center of the plot line is an all-hands-on-deck existential crisis? Get some therapy and switch to Decaf!

Rant over. Read the title and listen to the embed videos. Definition with ramrod straightened back follows. Blog break during spring break next week and the rest of this one to prep for midterms. \\//_

Definition of negritude (Merriam Webster)

1 : a consciousness of and pride in the cultural and physical aspects of the African heritage

2 : the state or condition of being black

The Harlem Renaissance inspired Negritude. Authors such as Claude McKay and Langston Hughes laid groundwork for black expression. Senghor, Damas and Césaire together drew influence from their work. Other artistic influences were jazz and earlier fin-de-siècle poets such as Rimbaud, Mallarmé and Baudelaire.

Negritude responded to the alienated position of blacks in history. The movement asserted an identity for black people around the world that was their own. For Césaire and Damas, from Martinique and French Guiana, the rupture from Africa through the Atlantic Slave Trade was a great part of their cultural understanding. Their work told of the frustration and loss of their motherland. For Senegalese Senghor, his works focused more on African traditionalism. In ways the assertion of each poet diverges from each other, but the combination of different perspectives is also what fueled and fed Negritude. Black Past dot org: Negritude

Fimmaker Raoul Peck's Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro features the work of the late writer, poet, and social critic James Baldwin. Baldwin's writing explored race, class and sexuality in Western society, and at the time of his death in 1987, he was working on a book, Remember This House. It was never completed, but his notes for that project became the foundation for Peck's I Am Not Your Negro.

Among those notes was a letter J Baldwin wrote to his literary agent, Jay Acton, in 1979. In that letter, he wrote that he wanted to explore the lives of three of his civil rights movement contemporaries and close personal friends: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. "I want these three lives to bang against and reveal each other as in truth they did," he wrote, "and use their dreadful journey as a means of instructing the people whom they loved so much who betrayed them and for whom they gave their lives."

Peck had been wanting to make a film about Baldwin for years, but he says it felt like an impossible one to make. When he first read Baldwin's letter, he knew he had the basis for that film. "I had access to those notes, which for me was the real opening I needed to address the film I wanted to make — which was how do I make sure that people today come back to Baldwin and the important writer that he was, and the important words that he have written, and [have] this well-needed confrontation with reality today with words that he wrote 40, 50 years ago?"

The Haitian-born filmmaker has been a fan of Baldwin's writing since he was a teenager. "He helped me understand the world I was in," Peck says. "He helped me understand America. He helped me understand the place I was given in this country."

'I Am Not Your Negro' Gives James Baldwin's Words New Relevance

Mallory Yu, NPR, heard on "All Things Considered"

Your Wall...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 27, 2018 at 6:39am

Originally published in the evening newspaper, the Winston-Salem Sentinel. The handwriting is my mother's note to her brother, my Uncle James: "This is Reggie. Your nephew. My son." They are both with the ancestors now. RIP - rest in power

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

This is a photo that should not have happened. Since I volunteer to teach SAT math, I use it as an inspiring story, especially to young women and men that share my same cultural experience. I've posted this photo, or one like it before. It occurred to me I've never told the story behind it.

When I was in the ninth grade at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem, NC, Major Thomas L. May and Sergeant Major Dennis R. Casey - my Army ROTC instructors - invited the Cadet Brigade Commander of Winston-Salem, Forsyth County Schools. Cadet Colonel Wall was tall and lithe, blond-haired and steely blue-eyed; his rank represented by three shiny diamond-shaped metal insignias on his uniform collar, or in many cases his shirt collar. He spoke to each ROTC class and conducted a rank inspection. During class time after the inspection, I approached the-then Brigade Commander, impressed with his ribbons and medals, not knowing what else to say with a nonchalant question: "how did you achieve your rank?" I thought I was making a rhetorical statement. He took it as I was asking for me: "YOUR KIND will never get to this rank!" he exclaimed.

"Your kind"...I was dumbfounded and silent with rage. "Your kind" was an insult to my mother and father, whom he had never met. "Your kind" castigated my sister, who as a young woman put her life on the line in the Civil Rights movement a decade before our encounter. "Your kind" damned generations after me, for all time. "Your kind" was like the faux "curse of Ham" Jedi mind tricked on my culture, or myths of angels in the war of heaven coming to Earth as either "light-skinned or dark-skinned babies" depending on some measure of valor opined, but not observed. "Your kind" labeled my sons and their future children as failures before they landed on the planet! I was fourteen, but suddenly I was in an instant thrust into an adult world of privilege, power and prejudice.

My instructors looked embarrassed and tried to move to another subject. My friends were also silent, and somewhat disappointed that I didn't follow my first instincts and deck him. Even then, Juvenal detention was an ever-pending reality for any African American male teenager that stepped out-of-line. I fumed silently. I discussed the affront with my parents that night at home, who were genuinely and understandably upset. They asked me if I wanted them to call the school, or visit the principal. I said no. I wanted to handle this one myself. My mother, in her gentle way reminded me of Philippians 4:13.

Colonel Wall returned the next day. It was now, or never...

"Do you read?" I asked. (I noticed I didn't address him as Colonel Wall anymore.)

"Of course I do," he said.

"In three years," I challenged, "I will be wearing your rank!"

"I doubt that very seriously," he scoffed.

"Watch me!" At that point, hitting him resurrected, albeit briefly.

I took that as a challenge to prove him wrong. I studied harder than I had ever before. His name became a metaphor for any barrier presented I had to overcome. I was up to that point indifferent to academics until my encounter. I routinely wheezed and coughed when I ran on our track during gym. I worked on my running, push ups, sit ups, weight training; I improved. I joined the pistol, rifle and orienteering (ranger) teams. I worked on my public speaking skills, presenting for an Air Force ROTC inspection at North Forsyth High School, where I matriculated after the 10th grade due to forced busing. I memorized what amounted to twenty-two ribbons, one medal and two shooter's badges I could identify without looking down at the pocket they were pinned on. Three years later, I went before the city board that decided which young man or woman would be the next Brigade Commander for the 1979-1980 school year. I became that person. It was not without challenge, as the Ku Klux Klan (or, someone affiliated with them) apparently didn't take too kindly to my ascent. The Greensboro massacre was fresh on my mind, months into my tenure. I was sent threats to "not show up, or else" on a poorly written note left in my locker regarding our annual Brigade Review in Bowman Gray Stadium. I ignored whoever that cowardly cretin was too. I had participated in the annual parade as a cadet. I was going to as its commander.

Later in life, I was a commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force, having completed my matriculation at NC A&T State University in Engineering Physics. The former Cadet Colonel Wall had gone in the Army, enlisted. I saw him at Bergstrom Air Force Base...and he saw me (though from his body language, he tried to avoid me). By the US Constitution we both swore to protect and defend, he by law HAD to salute me. We said nothing, other than me saying..."carry on, Sergeant."

"That was a good story," my SAT student said. I summed the moral of my personal tale to the group of young men and women that you'll have obstacles placed in the way of your goals. The key is to ignore the erstwhile opinions of "your walls" and overcome them. They at least nodded they were paying attention. I smiled. They are "my kind."

"Living well is the best revenge." George Herbert

Diaspora Spirituality...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 26, 2018 at 6:00am

"Wade in the Water." Postcard of a river baptism in New Bern, North Carolina near the turn of the 20th century. Image source: Wikipedia

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, NASA, Science Fiction, Women in Science

We run the gamut: from A - Z, the diaspora has a rich and diverse spirituality. The Baptist Church is the oldest construct, but Mother Emanuel AME could be one of the oldest black churches, famous way before the recent terrorism in Charleston:

Just days after the tragic shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., last year, the pews at Emanuel AME were filled for Sunday service. A black cloth was draped over the chair where Emanuel's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, should have been sitting.

Holding worship in the church sanctuary — while its basement was still a fresh crime scene — served as a way for the congregation to move forward while acknowledging the deaths of nine of its own. [1]

My wife and I had just passed this church on a quaint carriage ride through the city. We were told Emanuel had been visited by Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King as well as other luminaries of the Civil Rights movement. We also passed near the shore, the auction area, what looked like a long covered porch...where slaves, my ancestors were sold.

My great-grandfather and his brother helped form New Light Beulah Baptist Church in Congaree, South Carolina in 1867; I've been a member of Bethel Baptist in Wappingers Falls, New York, the founders building a stop on the Underground Railroad. I'm a current member of Providence Baptist, the oldest African American church in Greensboro, starting in 1866. Tina Turner and a few African Americans are practicing Buddhists. There are several sites dedicated to atheism and agnosticism, modified by the adjective "black." Santeria and Voodoo are slightly different than Wiccan, but many participate in it. There are Nation of Islam, Shia, Sufi, Sunni and Orthodox Muslims. There are officially black millennial "nones." Goldie Taylor wrote an excellent exploratory piece in the Daily Beast, reluctantly joining a side of this diversity.

The intersection of the Venn diagram is a people that were counted as less, supposed to be conquered and mute about the occasional brutality visited upon it; we found ways to construct community and survive. I recall a scene in the movie Black Panther where Lupita Nyong o (Nikia) and Danai Gurira (General Okoye) and other warriors in the Dora Milaje did a celebratory dance on the coming coronation of T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) as king. I thought about the ease of the rhythm before me on the film that communicated a freedom I don't feel most of the time. It was a freedom of having a culture, customs, a language and history uninterrupted by human trafficking, middle passage and forced miscegenation. It was a moment in the action movie that raised an envy; a longing. Much has been said the movie expressed Afrofuturism, itself a branch of Sun Ra, preceding George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic with his video "Space Is The Place," itself an homage to the spiritual "swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home," a "coded 100" song giving instructions to potential runaway slaves; itself a longing and knowing the brutality of the American system was not a desired, permanent state for any thinking people. Whether by Harriet Tubman, alien tech, Wakanda or ectoplasm, an escape is still an escape.

Each diverse expression of agnosticism, atheism, Buddhism, theism and nature spirit traditions are all exercising under a construct of white supremacy and navigating it. Even in higher education, especially when in the numerical as well as cultural minority, we must as Dr. Holbrook points out, develop Survival Strategies. We have been and are subject to terrorism, fire bombings, lynching, castration and murder by citizens and judicial policy - either the state on a gurney or in a blue uniform. We are demonized for our skin color, our worship patterns, or neighborhoods like Native American reservations we were forced in through redlining and who we choose to love by WASP convention. Under the rubric of oppression, we've constructed the blues, dance, gospel, jazz and literature; their immediate children being disco and hip hop, the latter having a resurgence of relevance with Jay Z and Kendrick Lamar speaking verse like spoken word artists tackling relevant subjects and divergent expressions of asking the universe "who am I?"

The Rev. James Cone is the founder of black liberation theology. In an interview with Terry Gross, Cone explains the movement, which has roots in 1960s civil-rights activism and draws inspiration from both the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, as "mainly a theology that sees God as concerned with the poor and the weak."

Cone explains that at the core of black liberation theology is an effort — in a white-dominated society, in which black has been defined as evil — to make the gospel relevant to the life and struggles of American blacks, and to help black people learn to love themselves. It's an attempt, he says "to teach people how to be both unapologetically black and Christian at the same time." [2]

There is an old proverb that says something to the effect a ship sailing a particular course can change its destination by altering its original coordinates by a few degrees. It is this degree of separation if you will that makes the notion that we would think the same, preach the same, worship the same under the anvil of white supremacy is "quaint" to say the least. It is why Reverend Jeremiah Wright's jeremiad was sampled in sound bite, purposely taken out of context to foil an interruption in the highest symbol of white supremacy in 232 years of the republic. Bill Moyers corrected the record with an interview with Dr. Wright. (Coincidentally, Baruch - the Hebraic spelling of Barack - was an aid and friend to the prophet Jeremiah.) It is why in the outpouring of grief for Michael Jackson, commentators marveled at how "long the service was taking," when everyone spoke about our new ancestor. The same was repeated for Prince. In each instance, it showed a lack of experience with a part of the American fabric that was supposed to be seen, not heard; ruled and not [ever] to govern.

Sadly, millennials are falling away from that due to disappointment in leaders more interested in leer jets, access to political power and bling than service to the community, or helping with their burgeoning student loans. I share their disappointment, but not their lack of hope. Dr. William Barber's Moral Mondays that has become Breech Repairers and John Pavlovitz's Stuff That Need to be Said are noted exceptions to these blanket observations.

I see another convergence between the millennials in the recent Florida shooting, the murdered kindergarten students at Sandy Hook, Black Lives Matter and Me Too. The Civil Rights movement was led primarily by people we see now as seasoned, but during the time of hoses, dogs bits and billy clubs were the youth of their day. The youth of this day are connected via social media primarily to each other, typically sharing innocuous things like selfies and food eaten. Now more than ever, they need to use that power - and it is considerable - to bring about the change they seek; to BE "the change they seek":

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

― President Barack Obama, Good Reads

The sixties, seventies, eighties and early nineties lulled all of us into apathy. Entertainment like "I Spy"; "Star Trek"; "The Courtship of Eddie's Father"; "The Cosby Show"; "Miami Vice" showed people of different cultures and different worlds working together in a spy agency or on a spaceship; a single, widowed father raising his son alone, a professional couple raising five children and a cop duo that changed the television genre into episodic music videos. We were lulled into thinking - as Dr. Maya Angelou opined hopefully after the election of President Obama - "America had 'grown up.'" In 2016, our Democratic Republic put on its training wheels again, following the dueling pied pipers of a Russian oligarch and a dimwitted demagogue.

Instead of waiting on their parents, it's time for the children to lead US, not to a promised land, but ever closer to a more perfect union.

May the ancestors be pleased, give you strength, and guide you all. We will follow.

1. How A Shooting Changed Charleston's Oldest Black Church, Debbie Elliot, NPR, "All Things Considered" 2. Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder's Words, NPR "Fresh Air"

Dr. Claudia Alexander, In Memoriam...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 23, 2018 at 9:35am

Claudia Alexander: 1959 - 2015

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, NASA, Science Fiction, Women in Science

As a research scientist, she inspired a generation, especially young women, to seek careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

This weekend was one of great excitement for the planetary science community as the New Horizons spacecraft moved in on Pluto following decades of hard work. But that optimism took on a somber tone Saturday as news quickly traveled that pioneering scientist Claudia Alexander had died at age 56. Friends and family writing online tributes reported she suffered from breast cancer, but no official cause of death was given.

Alexander was an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the final project manager for NASA’s Galileo mission. But her public profile rose dramatically last fall due to her duties as project scientist for NASA’s role in the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

"The passing of Claudia Alexander reminds us of how fragile we are as humans but also as scientists how lucky we are to be part of planetary science,” James Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. “She and I constantly talked about comets. Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in particular. She was an absolute delight to be with and always had a huge engaging smile when I saw her. It was easy to see that she loved what she was doing. We lost a fantastic colleague and great friend. I will miss her." [1]

The C. Alexander Gate, located on the smaller lobe of Comet 67P/C-G, has been named for Claudia J. Alexander, a U.S. Rosetta project scientist. Alexander passed away on July 11, 2015, after a 10-year battle with breast cancer. She was 56.

Alexander earned a bachelor's degree in geophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in geophysics and space physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She went on to earn her doctorate degree in atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She began working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California before completing her doctorate. At the relatively young age of 40, she served as project manager for NASA's Galileo mission in 2000.

Alexander strove to inspire young people, writing children's books on science and mentoring young African-American girls. She also wrote "steampunk" science-fiction short stories. [2]

1. Pioneering Rosetta mission scientist Claudia Alexander dead at 56, Eric Betz, Astronomy Magazine

2. Rosetta Team Names Comet Features for Lost Colleagues, Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com

A Taste of Armageddon...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 23, 2018 at 9:31am

Scene from "A Taste of Armageddon" - I see where SNL got the Cone Heads.

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics, Star Trek

From "A Taste of Armageddon," Teaser and excerpt of Act I:

On a diplomatic mission, the crew visit a planet that is waging a destructive war fought solely by computer simulation, but the casualties, including the crew of the USS Enterprise, are supposed to be real.

Anan reveals that Eminiar has been fighting a war with the third planet of the system, Vendikar, for almost 500 years. But despite a hit, right in the city, Kirk and his landing party can find no evidence of war. No explosions, no radiation, nothing that would suggest the damage he is assured is occurring.

Spock finally deduces the truth: the war is fought with computers. Casualties are calculated, and the victims have twenty-four hours to report to a disintegration station so their deaths may be recorded. This tidy solution preserves the civilization, despite the cost in lives. Kirk is incredulous that people would simply walk into disintegration machines and never come out; Anan assures him that his people have a high sense of duty. And then Anan tells Kirk that when the Enterprise entered orbit, it became a legitimate target, and it has been destroyed by a tricobalt satellite explosion. Like the victims on the surface, Kirk's crew has twenty-four hours to report for disintegration. Kirk and his party are imprisoned to ensure compliance.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." Good Reads

George W. Bush: "Good evening. Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, business men and women, military and Federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror." The American Presidency Project

S-hole president*: “He said he didn’t meddle — I asked him again,” Mr. Trump told reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force One as he flew to Hanoi for more meetings. “You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.” NY Times

That has been proven a lie in a sequence of colossal, Olympic-level lies with the thirteen indictments last Friday and the thirty-two additional yesterday. It is not a lie; not a hoax. It is the deluge of 2,000 plus lies that have pummeled us; stymied ethics specialists and statisticians tabulating political fact from fiction, alike from our faux chief executive* that has insulted "truth, justice the American way" and everyone BUT Vlad the Impaler of democratic republics.

We

were

ATTACKED!

It didn't result in deaths or casualties, at least not immediately. It didn't result in 3,000+ souls lost and twin towers crashing. It didn't result in the heart wrenching sight of people who decided between fires hot enough to turn human bodies into ash...and gravity as they fell to their certain deaths. Our deaths now are serial: to which we will naval-gaze and pontificate until we grow numb...until the next shooting.

No...what we're witnessing is the death of democracy. It's happening with every school shooting the NRA uses the silent treatment for us to forget (and likely channeled money to a certain campaign from Russian oligarchs). The colossal gun deaths that make it 25 times more likely to die of gun violence in the US only benefits our enemies. We slowly lose hope in the collective responsibility of governance with every march after every shooting, every call to our so-called representatives* that only answer to the whisper of bills from the gun lobby. It doesn't matter to the Russians who they choose for public office. A Florida mayor (a democrat) was indicted for laundering money from Russian benefactors. They could select a democrat in 2020. Holy HELL would break out on the right, and we'd officially have to admit we have no clear way to choose our own leaders without the interference of a hostile foreign power, that are NOT our friends! We'd question every result from city, county, state and national. We could see a Civil War in the 21st Century on American soil that would make dystopian science fiction writers blush. The educated, upper middle class, skilled and well-to-do would depart for Canada, Europe and parts unknown. Universities would lose talented professors that frankly don't want to deal with a country that produces violent citizens - they want to return home to their families too. Innovation would naturally start migrating overseas. The economy would limp along until it collapsed and the world market switches like lightning from the dollar to the Euro as the foundation of world currency. We'd be John Donne's island; isolated by our own hubris, prejudices and shortsightedness. The rest of us, still here would be left in a cesspool formerly known as the "United States" (a historical byword and oxymoron) with a Cheetos puppet emperor in a bad toupee, that's WAY beyond the normal narcissism of the presidency: it's obvious he wants to be worshiped, like a god. Some places online, he is called that.

Armageddon - even a taste of it - may not be with a flash, "but a whimper*."

I've quoted T.S. Elliot before. It's still apropos:

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

(Elliot's last, most quoted stanza)

V

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper*.

Dr. Pamela McCauley...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 22, 2018 at 9:00am

Dr. Pamela McCauley Bush

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Engineer, Educator, Leader & Entrepreneur

Dr. Pamela McCauley is an ergonomics and biomechanics expert, an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, a Professor and Director of the Ergonomics Laboratory in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida where she leads the Human Factors and Ergonomics in Disaster Management Research Team. She previously held the position of Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She is the author of over 80 technical papers, book chapters, conference proceedings and the best-selling ergonomics textbook, Ergonomics: Foundational Principles, Applications, and Technologies. Many of her leadership, diversity, innovation and STEM education related keynote talks draw from her research-based book; Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation: Inspiration and Strategies for Women, which examines the growing need for leadership and innovation in America, particularly among women and STEM professionals. To inspire students, particularly minorities and females, to consider careers in STEM, she authored, Winners Don’t Quit…Today they Call Me Doctor, in which she shares her challenging yet inspirational journey to engineering success despite financial, academic and personal difficulties.

Dr. McCauley is an award-winning educator often described as an “outstanding” professor and “enthusiastic” teacher. Her teaching efforts have resulted in the receipt of both the College of Engineering Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the Teaching Incentive Program Award (TIP). She is also the recipient of the National 2015 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Educational Leadership and the Promotion of College-Level Education.

The U.S. State Department awarded Dr. McCauley the prestigious Jefferson Science Fellowship for the 2015-2016 term. Jefferson Science Fellowships are distinguished appointments to senior academics based on their stature, recognition, and experience in the national and international scientific or engineering communities, and their ability to rapidly and accurately understand scientific advancements outside their discipline area to effectively integrate this knowledge into U.S. Department of State/USAID policy discussions.

Dr. McCauley has the distinction of being a 2012 U.S. Fulbright Scholar Specialist Program Awardee for her US-New Zealand Human Engineering and Mobile Technology in High Consequence Emergency Management Research Program. Due to her extensive expertise in biomechanics, human factors, and ergonomic design, Dr. McCauley is a highly sought Certified Professional Ergonomist (C.P.E.) and Expert Witness.

Website: Dr. Pamela McCauley

Laser Phone Charging...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 22, 2018 at 8:52am

A new laser system can wirelessly recharge phones from across the room(Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington)

Topics: Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Laser

We've cut the cord for communication, thanks to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but charging our little pocket supercomputers still takes a tether. Judging by the range of wireless charging technologies in the works, that might not be the case for much longer. A team from the University of Washington has demonstrated how lasers could be used to charge a device from across the room.

The team mounted a power cell on the back of a smartphone and hit it with a narrow laser beam in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. From a distance of 4.3 m (14 ft), the laser was able to deliver 2 W of power to a 97-sq cm (15-sq in) area, charging the phone about as quickly as a regular old USB cable.

The laser emitter is designed to automatically sense when a phone is ready to be charged, while the smartphone was programmed to send out high-frequency "chirps" inaudible to the human ear that tells the emitter where it is.

"This acoustic localization system ensures that the emitter can detect when a user has set the smartphone on the charging surface, which can be an ordinary location like a table across the room," says Vikram Iyer, co-author on a study describing the device.

Laser system wirelessly charges phones from across the room, Michael Irving, New Atlas

Dr. Jarita C. Holbrook...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2018 at 5:49am

Dr. Jarita C. Holbrook, Astronomers of the African Diaspora

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii Pre-doctorate education: B.S. Physics (1987), California Institute of Technology; M.S. Astronomy, (1992) San Diego State University Doctorate: Ph.D. Astronomy & Astrophysics (1997) University of California, Santa Cruz Area: History and Cultural Studies of Astronomy

Jarita C. Holbrook, received her degree in 1997 from the University of California at Santa Cruz. A National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA, her interest is mainly in contemporary and historical African astronomy and cultural astronomy. Holbrook has traveled to Africa and the South Pacific to document celestial navigation techniques there and how new technologies have modified those techniques.

Experience (since the Ph.D.)

1998 NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCLA.

Oct 98 - Oct 00 Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Biological, Social,Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation

Aug 99 - Nov 99 Visiting Faculty, Department of Seamanship and Navigation, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD

May 99 - July 99 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation Fieldwork, Kerkennah Islands, Tunisia, North Africa

Oct 98 - Jan 99 Visiting Faculty, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY

August 1998 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation Fieldwork, Moce Island, Fiji, South Pacific

Oct 97 - July 98 Visiting Scholar, Center for the Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine, History Dept., UCLA

Sept 1997 Visiting Scientist, Research on organic compounds in comets, NASA Ames Research Center

July 1997 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation and Astronomical Artifacts Fieldwork, Tunisia, North Africa.

June 1997 Professor, Physics Dept., North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC

2000 Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow in The UCLA Center for the Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine

RESEARCH

Current Projects:

* African Astronomy & Culture

* Celestial Navigation in Three Cultures: Fiji, Tunisia, and the United States

* Celestial Navigation in East Africa

* Celestial Aspects of African Art

Research Interests: The night sky continues to fascinate people all over the world. How people think about the sky, use the sky, and depict the sky is immensely varied. Assuming that these variations reflect social and environmental differences, I use sky lore and sky knowledge as a way to probe cultures other than my own. Oftentimes, I decipher the science behind the myths: For example, moon goddess myths often speak of the goddess growing larger and then shrinking and growing larger again. This reflects the observed waxing and waning of the moon which occurs over 29.5 days.

As an applied anthropologist, I am thinking through ways in which my research can be of benefit. As a BARA member, I study indigenous knowledge systems and practices primarily to uncover the science in order to better understand the limitations of their effectiveness. This can be important in 'development' settings because quaint practices are then scientifically validated and transformed into practices that work. These practices then can be left intact or modified rather than destroyed.

DESI...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2018 at 5:42am

The 5,000 pencil-size robots will fit snugly inside 10 wedge-shaped petals. Here, one of those wedges is fully stocked with 500 robots, each of which will swivel independently to gather light from a known group of space objects, including distant galaxies. Credit: DESI Collaboration

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Space Exploration, Spectrograph, Robotics

A 45-year-old telescope is going to get a high-tech upgrade that will enable it to search for answers to the most perplexing questions in astronomy, including the existence of dark energy, a hypothetical invisible force that might be driving the expansion of the universe.

The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope in Arizona closed earlier this week to prepare for the installation of a 9-ton device that will feature 5,000 pencil-size robots aiming fiber-optic sensors at distant galaxies.

Every 20 minutes, the swiveling robots will reposition to allow the instrument — called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) — to capture a new portion of the sky. Ten extremely powerful instruments called spectrographs will then analyze the light from the distant objects captured by the sensors and create what has been described as the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe to date.

"We started with a conceptual design for the instrument in 2010," Joseph Silber, a DESI project engineer who works at the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, said in a statement. "It's based on science that was done on the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) instrument. But it's all done robotically instead of manually."

How 5,000 Pencil-Size Robots May Solve the Mysteries of the Universe, Tereza Pultarova, Space.com