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| Lisette Titre (Photo: Cindy Charles) |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
The Computer Animator
Lisette Titre
Senior Character & Special Effects Artist
EA (Electronic Arts)
ACG artist and computer animator Lisette Titre has contributed to some of EA’s highest profile games, including Tiger Woods Golf for Nintendo’s Wii, The Simpsons, and Dante’s Inferno.
As a character modeler, Titre takes data from scanned images of characters or real-life individuals and reworks the information to build a 3-D digital sculpture. After the character’s digital skeleton is built, she takes the skeletons and applies computer modeling controls so the fingers will curl, the legs will bend, and the character moves with fluidity.
Titre, who is often the only animator working in-house on her projects, also manages a team of outsourced artists in China, Australia, and Canada. Each team can consist of five to 20 people who work on game titles for as little as one year to as long as four years.
Ms. Lisette Titre, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM
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| Jedi Master Yoda. Quote for the image below. |
Topics: Commentary, Civics, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Star Wars
July 27, 2009, Wikipedia:
Orly Taitz+ (born August 30, 1960)[8] is a Moldovan-American political conspiracy theorist. A dentist, lawyer,[9] and former real estate agent,[10][11] Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States. Taitz also promotes a number of other conspiracy theories both related and unrelated to Obama. Taitz has initiated a number of lawsuits on behalf of the "birther" movement; all were dismissed by the courts, and on one occasion Taitz was ordered to pay $20,000 as a sanction for misconduct in filing frivolous claims. Taitz has unsuccessfully run for statewide office in California three times.
Taitz alleges that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as President. She claims he was born in Kenya and that he falsified his Selective Service papers and his application to the Illinois bar.[22] "I believe [Obama] is the most dangerous thing one can imagine, in that he represents radical communism and radical Islam: He was born and raised in radical Islam, all of his associations are with radical Islam, and he was groomed in the environment of the dirty Chicago mafia. Can there be anything scarier than that?" [1]
April 4, 2011, Politico:
Birtherism is the latest and most enduring version of a theory in search of facts.
The original smear against Obama was that he was a crypto-Muslim, floated in 2004 by perennial Illinois political candidate and serial litigant Andy Martin. Other related versions of this theory alleged that Obama was educated in an Indonesian “madrassa” or steeped in Islamist ideology from a young age, and the theories began to spread virally after Obama appeared on the national stage – to the casual observer, from nowhere – with his early 2007 presidential campaign announcement.
All through that year, the Obama campaign – with the affirmation of most leaders of both parties – aggressively battled that smear by emphasizing his Christian faith. Obama’s controversial but emphatically Christian pastor emerged as a campaign issue and the belief that he was a Muslim seemed to lose traction.
Then, as Obama marched toward the presidency, a new suggestion emerged: That he was not eligible to serve.
That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.
“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008. [2]
February 14, 2014, Outside the Beltway:
While the American public as a whole has a largely negative view of both Vladmir Putin and Russia as a whole, there is a segment of the American public that has, over the past several years developed an oddly positive opinion of a nation that Mitt Romney, to the cheers of many on the right, called our biggest geopolitical rival, and a man who was once a top agent in the KGB. What’s odd is that these cheers are not coming from the left side of the political aisle as they might have in the 1930s, but from the right. Back in August, I observed that people such as Pat Buchanan and Rod Dreher have been heaping praise on Putin for things such as the anti-gay “propaganda” laws that he push through the Russian legislature and compared him positively to President Obama and what seems to be the new version of Buchanan’s “culture war” argument from the 1992 Presidential campaign. In December, Buchanan and Dreher were back with more praise for the Russian President and his authoritarian, anti-equality, and allegedly “pro-Christian” policies. [3]
October 24, 2016, New Republic:
Public-opinion polling shows that Trump’s low opinion of American elections has practically become Republican Party orthodoxy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Republicans have an “unprecedented” level of “concern and mistrust in the system.” Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters believe that if Hillary Clinton wins the election, it’ll be due to fraud. In both this poll and an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, only half of Republicans say they’d accept a Clinton victory. (In the latter poll, by contrast, 82 percent of Democrats said they would accept a Trump victory.)
This suspicious Republican electorate is joined by growing ranks of conservative politicians, pundits, and intellectuals. They’re all increasingly willing to say that the existing American political system is hopelessly flawed and needs to be rolled back to the days before blacks and women could vote. On the most obvious level, this can be seen in moves by Republican governors all over America to make voting more difficult, through stringent voting ID laws, new hurdles to registration, and the curtailment of early-voting options. Equally significant has been the gutting of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act by conservative Supreme Court justices in the 2013 Shelby Country v. Holder ruling.
But these overt forms of voting suppression are merely the most visible manifestations of a larger questioning of democracy on the political right. Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric—and the eagerness of so many good, white patriotic Americans to cheer it and believe it—is a symptom of the larger trend on the political right toward doubting the legitimacy of the American system. The question we need to be asking isn’t, “Why is Trump being such a jerk?” It’s, “Why is the American Right giving up on democracy?” [4]
One interesting side bar: Orly Taitz+ - the original birther conspiracy theorist before our erstwhile Putin-puppet, Manchurian candidate president* took up the mantle - like two of his three serial marriages is herself an immigrant.
In the 1994 book "Black Labor, White Wealth" by Dr. Claude Anderson, the 1850 census found the slave population coming to parity with the majority white population. Up to that point, "white" had a specificity and excluded certain European countries. Because that parity - even for a slave population - meant an increase in power, the definition of that artificial demarcation got "liberal." To maintain superior numbers, the US opened the floodgates. Czechs, Italians, Jews and Poles would eventually be considered a part of the majority, as if their exclusion had never occurred. It's always been a numbers game.
The immigration policies regarding LEGAL immigration ala Stephen Miller would delay the date white Americans become a numerical minority by five years. It moved from originally 2050 to 2042; it had recently shifted by two years to 2044, apparently. The policies again, on legal immigration thus push it a year before the original 2050 date, which is a deliberate calculus, but it doesn't stop it. The specific targeting of a diverse diaspora is quite deliberate. Couple that with the fever pitched effort to suppress the votes of people of color, you have a naked exercise in white supremacy you can easily measure. It's been the nature of the nation from its genocidal (Native Americans) and kidnapping (African Americans) origins.
It's never been about Christian "family values," if the enabling of wife beaters that don't need security clearances attests to. Christian supremacy - according to the thesis of "The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America" by Jeannine Hill Fletcher (a white theologian) is the bedrock on which this nation's bigoted behavior was founded on.
And now it has a voice: the personification of its calamitous zeitgeist: a true man of lawlessness. A need to look back to a pristine time of superiority. It clarifies opposition to people of color, deport any and all Hispanic/Latino immigrants (legal or not), label whole nations in the Caribbean and on the African continent s-house countries (as if "hole" was the insult); the LGBT (they biologically cannot make white babies, to paraphrase Steve King's ridiculous statement). It makes the rise of racist organizations - be they alt-right, birther, homophobic, KKK, Neo Nazi - have a consistent, base theme.
That theme is fear.
“Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate...hate leads to suffering.” Yoda, "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," May 6, 2014
1. Orly Taitz, Wikipedia
2. Birtherism: Where it all began, Ben Smith and Byron Tau, Politico
3. Explaining The Conservative Love Affair With Vladimir Putin: It’s All About Opposing Obama, Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltway
4. The Right Is Giving Up on Democracy, Jeet Heer, New Republic
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| Tanya Moore (Photo: Cindy Charles) |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
The Mathematician
Tanya Moore, Ph. D.
Youth Services Coordinator, 2020 Vision Projects
City of Berkley California’s Unified School District
Tanya Moore demonstrates that mathematicians can help divert social catastrophes. As the leader of the city-wide 2020 Vision Projects, launched in June 2010, Moore’s job is to help close the achievement gap between white, black, and Latino students in Berkeley, California, by 2020. She has a central role in designing the surveys, methodologies, and statistical indicators to be used for tracking student progress. After analyzing the data, she will help design and evaluate youth interventions and services across community agencies and city departments.
Moore’s concern with increasing educational achievement for minorities doesn’t end in Berkeley, where she received her Ph.D. in biostatistics. She also spearheads Infinite Possibilities, a national conference for women of color in all stages of mathematics–from high school students to post-docs and women in private industry. “I started it initially as a reunion because of the experiences I had at Spelman [College]. Now it has grown. It has created this wonderful community over the last few years.
Participants regularly write Moore about how Infinite Possibilities helped them feel less isolated in grad school. She understands their frustration firsthand. While working on a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins she received her share of intolerant comments. “People told me I would only pass qualifying exams because I was an African American woman and the school wanted to make their quota. I’d walk into a room and people would tell me I was in the wrong classroom. Sometimes a professor would say ‘Wow, you did better than we expected.’"
Dr. Tanya Moore, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM
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| Image Source: APS link below |
Topics: Civil Rights, Commentary, Human Rights, Diversity in Science, Women in Science
The title of the post originates from a pejorative. The initials "SJW" are meant as an insult to discourage a post on a topic like police brutality against a group (e.g. Black Lives Matter) as being too "politically correct." What is typically left out of the missive is the considerable amount of courage it takes to actually live the initials.
2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize Recipient
Narges Mohammadi
Citation:
"for her leadership in campaigning for peace, justice, and the abolition of the death penalty and for her unwavering efforts to promote the human rights and freedoms of the Iranian people, despite persecution that has forced her to suspend her scientific pursuits and endure lengthy incarceration."
Background:
Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian physicist, engineer, and human rights defender currently serving a 16-year sentence in Evin Prison (Tehran), was born in Zanjan in 1972. She majored in physics at Imam Khomeini University in Qazvin, where she became actively involved in promoting rights and social justice by founding a political student organization and publishing on issues related to women’s and students’ rights. After graduating, she worked both as an engineer with the Iran Engineering Inspection Corporation and as a journalist, highlighting issues related to gender equality. Ms. Mohammadi’s efforts to maintain a career in the sciences while speaking out about human rights abuses were unsuccessful. In 2009 she was dismissed from her position with the Engineering Inspection Corporation. The same year, she was arrested and incarcerated.
Ms. Mohammadi is known globally for her efforts to promote and protect the rights of women, prisoners of conscience, minority communities, and other vulnerable groups. She has also been deeply involved in efforts to promote free and fair elections and abolish the death penalty in her country. As spokesperson and vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), an organization founded in 2001 by Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other prominent Iranian lawyers, and closed by the government in 2008, Ms. Mohammadi helped to provide pro bono legal assistance to prisoners of conscience and monitor the human rights situation in Iran. She also served as president of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Peace in Iran, an organization dedicated to opposing military conflict and violence. Together with other human rights activists, she created the Women’s Civil Center, a body that defends the rights of women, political prisoners, and minorities. Her courageous actions in support of human rights have taken many forms, from protests before parliament concerning acid attacks on women to prison vigils with the families of individuals facing execution. Ms. Mohammadi is the recipient of the 2009 international Alexander Langer Award and the 2011 Per Anger Prize for human rights.
2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize Recipient, American Physical Society
"Andrei Sakharov - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 8 Feb 2018. < NobelPrize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1975/sakharov-facts.html >
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| Ashanti Johnson (Photo: Steve McAlister) |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
The Chemist
Ashanti Johnson, Ph. D.
Chemical Oceanographer/Geochemist
University of South Florida,
College of Marine Science
Studying soil and sedimentation of rivers, estuaries, and beaches, Ashanti Johnson’s work as an aquatic radiogeochemist was instrumental in decoding the environmental effects of potentially hazardous incidents throughout Puerto Rico.
Johnson can be found scouring the beaches of Rincón, where a nuclear power plant operated until the 1970s, or collecting soil samples in Vieques, where depleted uranium residue remained for years following an artillery firing range run by the U.S. Navy. “These problems have been investigated very little," says Johnson. “It takes a lot of dedication and is really labor intensive. You get muddy, you get wet, and at the end of the day, you’re happy to have processed your samples."
Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in marine science and a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from Texas A&M University. Her Ph.D. work helped assess whether nuclear waste released in the Arctic by the former Soviet Union migrated toward the Alaskan coastline. She also spent a short time working at Exxon as a geochemist before venturing back into teaching at Georgia Tech and Savannah State University.
Dr. Ashanti Johnson, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM
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| SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center, February 6, 2018. Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images |
Topics: Mars, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight
Earlier today, our sun gained a new satellite, courtesy of SpaceX’s first test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket: A cherry-red Tesla Roadster once driven by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, blasting tunes from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with a spacesuit-clad “Star Man” dummy strapped in the driver’s seat. On the dashboard display as it hurtled into the void? “Don’t Panic,” the tagline from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Launched with an earth-shaking roar from Pad 39a at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida—the same launch site of the Apollo 11 lunar mission in 1969 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981—the Roadster was boosted onto an interplanetary trajectory that takes it looping between the orbital vicinities of Earth and of Mars. It is neither the first car nor even the first electric model ever launched into space (the Apollo-era lunar rovers take both of those prizes). But it is certainly the fastest, approaching a speed of 12 kilometers per second relative to Earth when it separated from the Falcon Heavy’s payload fairing en route to deep space.
The big news here, though, isn’t actually the Falcon Heavy’s eccentric payload, but rather the mere fact that this behemoth of a rocket exists and is on the verge of regular operations. Musk, for his part, pegged the chances of success at only 50/50, where “success” was defined as the rocket merely flying high enough to clear the launch pad before exploding. In actuality, the rocket performed nearly flawlessly.
Elon Musk Does it Again, Lee Billings, Scientific American
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| Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson, NASA, image source link below |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
The Aerospace Engineer
Aprille J. Ericsson, Ph.D.
Deputy Instrument Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
As the deputy instrument manager for the ATLAS Instrument team at NASA, Aprille J. Ericsson leads development of an instrument to house satellite-based lasers used to measure the topography of ice sheets from space in order to measure global climate changes.
Ericsson, who holds a master’s of engineering and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in aerospace from Howard University and who earned a bachelor’s of science in aeronautical/astronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was previously one of the lead engineers on the concept study report for GEMS, or the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer. The unmanned observatory, which is scheduled to launch no later than April 2014, will be the first to measure polarized X-rays to study supermassive black holes and magnetars. Ericsson's work was influential in winning $105 million of funding for the project in 2009.
Ericsson was also the project engineer for LOLA, a lunar orbiter laser altimeter, which created an unprecedented topographic map of the moon’s landscape in late 2009.
“High school students need to be encouraged to do summer programs. If they have an interest in engineering or science they need to apply at field centers at NASA and NOAA so they get a feel for what they want to do," says Ericsson, who did the same at a young age. “It’s really important to have [hands-on lab] exposure as early as freshman and sophomore year. They perform better with their course work because they learn in an applied atmosphere."
Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson, Marcia Wade Talbert, Black Enterprise: Women in STEM
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| Image source: Article link below |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter
Abstract
The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are each surrounded by a thin plane of satellite dwarf galaxies that may be corotating. Cosmological simulations predict that most satellite galaxy systems are close to isotropic with random motions, so those two well-studied systems are often interpreted as rare statistical outliers. We test this assumption using the kinematics of satellite galaxies around the Centaurus A galaxy. Our statistical analysis reveals evidence for corotation in a narrow plane: Of the 16 Centaurus A satellites with kinematic data, 14 follow a coherent velocity pattern aligned with the long axis of their spatial distribution. In standard cosmological simulations, less than 0.5% of Centaurus A–like systems show such behavior. Corotating satellite systems may be common in the universe, challenging small-scale structure formation in the prevailing cosmological paradigm.
A whirling plane of satellite galaxies around Centaurus A challenges cold dark matter cosmology Müller et al, Science Magazine
They can be found during black history month at horroraddicts.net
My expression of PRIDE for the BLACK PANTHER MOVIE are the Promotional posters of the characters within the Movie. Soon I am getting each of these enlarged and posted on a wall or two in the crib. Just wish I had a LARGER crib with more walls!
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| Ella Tyree image source: Cliotropic (link below) |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
Spelman graduate Ella Tyree worked near Chicago, where she did animal research "to determine the effects of radiation on humans." She managed the lab-animal farm for Argonne National Laboratories before being promoted to a research position. Source: "Atom Scientists'', Ebony, September 1949, 26.
There are some excellent write ups about her. Two of them are in "Related links" below.
Shane Landrum, historian and technologist has a blog called "Cliotropic." Shane's Master's thesis was titled “‘In Los Alamos, I feel like I’m a real citizen’: Black atomic scientists, education, and citizenship, 1945-1960.” The title literally speaks volumes on its own with little commentary. Part of the dearth of African American STEM talent simply boils down to access and exposure. There's also a definite image the American consumer is "sold" of what constitutes the authentic "African/Black American experience." Sports and hoodlum is acceptable; scientists and engineers only in small quantities. That is socially engineered by way of standardized tests, employment bias, negative stereotypes and the unequal application of the American judicial system, specifically the need to fill private prisons with bodies post middle passage, once piled in ships; now cell blocks.
It is repeated formulaic in media and omitted history. If life imitates art, then specifically for us, it's often blaxploitation. "Our place" is drilled into us, and the stratification of society into that part of humanity numerically in the majority in the United States (for now, at least until 2042). For the owners of society that inequality doesn't affect in their pristine, well-guarded enclaves, intentionally-stoked racial strife is a useful cudgel to wield on bewildered herds*.
I'll have more to say about this as we get closer to the premier of Black Panther.
In the meantime, here's the URL to the Facebook group I started for it. Feel free to join us. I have my T-shirt and dashiki. I sadly can only where one to the premiere.
The bewildered herd* is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Super bowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops" [or, #MAGA - my add] You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think. Therefore it’s important to distract them and marginalize them. Noam Chomsky, "Media Control" (2002), page 27, more at the link.
Related links:
Cliotropic, Shane Landrum
Beyond Tokenistic Inclusion: Science, Citizenship, and Changing the Questions, Ruha Benjamin, Ph.D., HuffPost
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| The g-2 magnet arrives at Fermilab to be installed in the Muon g-2 experiment (Courtesy: Fermilab) |
Topics: Modern Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics
Physicists in Japan say they have a solution to a problem that has puzzled particle physicists for nearly two decades – the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.
Measurements made over several years at the at the g-2 experiment at the US’s Brookhaven National Laboratory suggest that the muon magnetic moment is significantly larger than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. After careful analysis of data related to the decay of the muon to an electron, the statistical significance of this discrepancy is at 3.6σ – which means that it is extremely unlikely to be a fluke.
One possible explanation is that particles not described by the Standard Model are involved in the muon decay, and their presence affects the measured value of the muon magnetic moment. Finding evidence for such particles would be a colossal achievement, which is why the new Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab is gathering data this year.
Now, however, Takahiro Morishima of Nagoya University and Toshifumi Futamase of Kyoto Sangyo University have come up with an alternative explanation of the anomaly. In three preprints uploaded to the arXiv server, the duo calculate that effects due the curvature of space-time could result in an increase in the measured value of the magnetic moment. This effect of general relativity is related to the gravitational field of the Earth.
Has the muon magnetic moment mystery been solved? Hamish Johnston, Physics World
CONGRATS to MY peeps in Philly! LOVE Y'all!
Check out this event in ATL the Saturday before the North American premiere of "Black Panther!"
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| Portrait of Katherine Johnson Credits: NASA |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
Date of Birth: August 26, 1918 Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937 Hired by NACA: June 1953 Retired from NASA: 1986 Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson
Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918, Katherine Johnson’s intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By thirteen, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At eighteen, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in Mathematics. Katherine graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.
When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president Dr. John W. Davis selected Katherine and two male students as the first black students to be offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. Katherine left her teaching job, and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband. She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband, James Goble, decided to move the family to Newport News to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into Katherine’s tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight test, and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.
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| Image Source: Debate dot org |
Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics
Abstract from Oxford Handbooks:
“Sources and methods” is a term used to describe the practice of intelligence collection and analysis. Intelligence sources and the nature of information obtained vary. Intelligence sources may include information obtained from espionage, images obtained by satellites, intercepted communications, and publicly available media reporting. The nature of information may vary from purloined documents to the “signature” of ship's radar. The term methods, which is synonymous with tradecraft, pertains to the techniques used by operations officers and analysts to carry out their duties. Methods may include social-science methodologies, computer-based analytic tools, maintaining secretive communications and so on. Sources and methods of intelligence agencies are heavily guarded because it comprise of the ways the information is collected and analyzed can give opponents opportunity to assess the capabilities and interests of their enemy. Intelligence agencies surround their sources and methods in a cloak of secrecy because they are significant in the success of ongoing and future operations and analysis. In the advent of globalization, the barriers are dissolved between foreign and domestic violence activities including the way local and national law enforcement and intelligence agencies work. Distinctions between private and public interests and entities are also blurred as activities in the public and private sphere interact to shape domestic and international threats. Apart from globalization, the advent of information revolution also changed the practice and study of intelligence. Policymakers, analysts, and scholars are now confronted with a torrent of data and information as well as the virtual realities of “cyberspace”. New collective workspaces which are empowered by the advancement in communication and computer technologies are also creating new opportunities for collaboration. This article discusses three emerging topics in the study and practice of intelligence in such a way to illustrate the emerging sources and methods of intelligence studies. These new emerging topics are: the intelligence for homeland security, the concept of collective intelligence, and the application of intelligence and warning methodologies to mitigate risk.
We can no longer call them the party of "family values." That title went out the window with the Birther Movement cum Orly Tate cum the 45th occupant-Manchurian-candidate of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That title went when quite a few of them PROUDLY displayed a bumper sticker quoting Psalms 109: "8 Let his days be few; [and] let another take his office. 9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. 10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek [their bread] also out of their desolate places." about the p-grabber's black predecessor. That title went with justifying an avalanche of lies that impugns the so-called "faith" of white evangelicals, from the p-grabbing serial adulterer that has his third wife pissed with him at the state of disunion because he paid off a porn star to hide their secret backgammon games! Which is kind of ironic, since she was his affair on his second wife, and his SECOND wife was his affair on his first wife! Talk about not getting-a-clue. Kind of makes you NOT stand on the applause line "family and faith." There's only so much felgercarb even a possibly illegal Slovenian can take. From his warm-up act at the Vice President Debate to the Olympic-level obfuscations we've endured since January 20, 2017, Pence is the physical embodiment of John 8:44. Millennials may be lost for generations for this laid-bare, abject hypocrisy.
We can thoroughly jettison national security as a bona fide of republicanism. It was way before changing the republican platform in 2016. The same political party that went after their president's* opponent for mishandling classified information in the form of emails on a private server is MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! The sanctions are not being implemented, even after overwhelming, presidential* veto-proof support in congress. Vlad the impaler is hellbent on repealing the Magnitsky Act, and he has the right stooges in our executive and legislative branches in the government of our shredding republic to do it.
With the release of the Nunes memo, likely on Carter Page that's probably being exploited as an asset (my thought) in a "honey pot" trap, the FBI's hands are tied, and the republican* house knows it. They can't say which area in the memo is true or false because THAT would reveal "sources and methods." Methods like those the traitor Edward Snowden revealed on his work in the NSA (he's conveniently in Russia for "protection"). Sources like HUMINT: human intelligence, meaning spies and informants, behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, or allied agents in Russia.
As someone who had to go through an excruciating interview with the-then Defense Intelligence Service over my SF-86 form (the same one the first son-in-law has botched ad nauseum without consequences), that the investigator kept me over 2 HOURS because as the only African American in my Air Training Command class, he couldn't believe I had never smoked weed. "Why should I believe you?" he asked. My answer: "because most of my class would likely have driven into my neighborhood to buy it, going back to their pristine suburbs. Just because I lived there, doesn't mean I used anything!" He said they would personally interview five people and "I'd better be telling the truth." I challenged him to interview ten. I passed my security clearance.
"Sources and methods" was drilled into ALL of us the whole time I held a Top Secret SCIF (special compartmental information facility) clearance in the Air Force. I had to in order to work in Communications for COMSEC (Communications Security) and OPSEC (operations security). I was in during the Cold War, when Vladimir was master spy head of the KGB. It was the difference between winning and losing; the difference between agents and informants for the FBI or the CIA living through an operation...or dying.
I'm incensed as a veteran because a lot of people are about to get killed, and that's not hyperbole.
What American would want to serve their nation when its president* is willing to sacrifice their lives to cover up a possible crime, collusion or espionage? What American would want to serve in the Armed Forces when our elected representatives* (I guess I have to use the asterisk for these yahoos, too) would collude to stop an investigation to protect ONE man and a demographically dwindling party, versus our COUNTRY?
The frightening thing that's likely to happen is a lot of good, experienced people are going to start running for the door, or retiring before being put in harms way by traitorous buffoons. #MAGA should mean: morons are governing America. I can't blame them.
However, you can't GO FUND intelligence services. They take years to build in apparatus and infrastructure and apparently, a few months of septuagenarian bowel-movement tweeting incessantly to deconstruct, along with a feckless congress that hasn't read The Constitution they swore to "protect and defend."
And like a hog fattened for the slaughter, that's when our republic (like Rome) will topple over the cliff, pushed over by a master spy...and his orange puppet.
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| The Greensboro Four |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science
I will be here. It will be an honor to be in their great presence.
Greensboro, N.C. (Jan. 8, 2018) - In continued honor of the legacy of Jibreel Khazan (Ezell Blair Jr.), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond -- better known collectively as the A&T Four, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University will hold the 58th Annual February One Sit-In Commemorative program “Conscious for the Culture.” The university will welcome White House correspondent and CNN political analyst April Ryan as keynote speaker for the event scheduled for 8 a.m., Thursday, Feb. 1, in the Alumni Foundation Event Center.
Similar to the leadership and courageous acts of the A&T Four’s protest against segregated lunch counters (which ignited a national sit-in movement) and corresponding segregation laws of the 1960s, Ryan has been a leader among her peers. She stands alone as the only black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House, a position she’s held for American Urban Radio Networks since the Clinton era.
Ryan has served on the board of the prestigious White House Correspondents Association, one of only three African Americans to do so in the association’s over 100-year history. Even in the face of often pointed criticism and ostracism, she continues to champion the cause and agenda of minorities.
NC A&T State University to Commemorate 58th Sit-In; Award-Winning Journalist April Ryan to Keynote
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| Graphene-glass bimorphs can be used to fabricate numerous micron-scale 3-D structures. CORNELL UNIVERSITY |
Topics: Biophysics, Chemistry Nanotechnology, Robotics
A team of physicists from Cornell University in the US has developed electricity-conducting, environment-sensing, shape-changing robots the size of a human cell.
The robots – described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – are made from atomically thin layers of graphene and glass. Known as biomorphs, the tiny machines bend when exposed to stimuli including heat, chemical reactions or electricity. They can transform in a fraction of a second from two dimensional planes into complex three-dimensional forms such as tetrahedra and cubes.
Team member Paul McEuen says the biomorphs are designed as carriers for even smaller, but potentially very powerful, bits of photonic, electronic or chemical kit.
“We are trying to build what you might call an 'exoskeleton' for electronics,” he says. “Right now, you can make little computer chips that do a lot of information-processing, but they don't know how to move or cause something to bend.”
Super-strong cell-size origami robots are coming, Andrew Masterson, Cosmos Magazine
