climate change - BLOGS - Blacksciencefictionsociety
2024-03-28T22:59:25Z
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/climate+change
It's On Us...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/it-s-on-us
2024-03-08T10:00:00.000Z
2024-03-08T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12398497500,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12398497500,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12398497500?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;">― <strong>Gaylord Nelson</strong>, former Republican Governor and Senator of Wisconsin, Founder of Earth Day, April 20, 1970, which led to the formation of the U.S. EPA, December 2, 1970. Image: Nelson Institute of Environmental Science, <a href="https://nelson.wisc.edu/about/the-nelson-legacy/#:~:text=Elected%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Senate,the%20National%20Environmental%20Education%20Act.">University of Wisconsin-Madison</a></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Robert Mueller was the subject of Internet memes as a 21st-century version of Joe Friday in "Dragnet." There was going to be an arrest. The 45th Oval Office occupant was going to be put in handcuffs and "perp-walked" in full view and total embarrassment of the Troll-in-Chief who tormented them with his itchy, psychotic Twitter fingers.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Robert Mueller did not save us.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Jack Smith was appointed late in the game of criminality. He joined Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Letitia James, Shawn Crawley, and Roberta Kaplan after two impeachments and 91 federal indictments, trying to do justice, stymied by wealth and privilege that most of us will never have. He has been convicted twice in the E. Jean Carroll: the second time because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He owes over half a billion dollars between the two. But these are civil lawsuits. He owes money that he actually doesn't have, so he has to go hat in hand to the faux Tony Stark to get a bailout, I guess because a check in Rubles would be to hard to gaslight, even for him.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Jack Smith will not save us.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Meme posting on Facebook, tweeting (or "X"), Threading, Snapchatting, Reddit posts with pithy commentary, and real clever zingers will not change anything. Hiding behind your laptop as a "keyboard warrior" is no different and no less cowardly than the trolls you get your blood pressure up over in their mom's basements. Our democratic republic is "hanging by a thread." We need your bodies; we need your commitment.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Focus your anger into action.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Due to a lot going on at work, I ended up voting on Super Tuesday. I did not encounter any resistance. The tape in the machine had to be replaced, so my ballot was counted sometime later. I came back when my wife voted to get my sticker.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The candidates I voted for won in the primaries. I plan to volunteer for the campaigns that I want to be successful.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">If you're angry about the state of the world and your country, I quote the Honorable John Lewis, who joined the ancestors: <em>"Get in good trouble, necessary trouble."</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It's not just civil rights anymore. It's Women's Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Immigrant Rights, and the rights to just BE yourselves.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>The Danger of Echo Chambers</strong></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The State of the Union started with the pomp and circumstance of the Joint Chambers of Congress, which is still a crime scene. The current Speaker filed the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/congress-house-speaker-2024-election-certification-8cd7c5a9e6ae69635bbb4624cc78e5c5" target="_blank">Amicus Brief</a> to overturn the results of the 2020 election. However, I am reminded of the 2012 election.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">I see Senator Romney glad-handing everyone on the floor. I recall him so confident that he had won the 2012 election, he launched his transition website. It was because he consumed a lot of Fox (not) News, and they projected he would win, until he didn't.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">I recall Karl Rove making Meghan Kelly walk to the statisticians' office at Fox (not) News, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/karl-rove-was-so-karl-rove-on-fox-news-tuesday">totally apoplectic</a> that Obama/Biden had won re-election. The other persons utterly stunned were Mitt and Ann Romney. As Karl and Fox (not) News viewers, they absorbed a medium that made them feel better, but it did not, in fact, inform them, and still doesn't.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The danger of echo chambers is like Narcissus; it only gives you the last thing that you might hear:</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>One day, while hunting, Narcissus comes across an untouched, glassy spring. He is drawn to its beauty and lies down to take a drink, but what he sees in the still water enchants him. He is in love with what he sees and is inflamed by the features of the vision: the hair, his eyes, porcelain skin, and rosy cheeks. Attempts to kiss and hold the reflection are in vain, and Narcissus is only frustrated by the teasing reactions of the image. When Narcissus winks, the image winks back; when Narcissus waves, the image waves; and when he cries tears, he sees that the image also cries. Narcissus cannot understand why he cannot reach what he so desperately desires.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>The tormented boy agonizes over his unrequited love. He cannot leave the spring and is trapped in his frozen gaze at his reflection, pining away for the boy in the water who rejects all advances. Then Narcissus realizes that the image is his, but it’s too late, as he has already fallen tragically in love with himself. Knowing that he can never have what he desires, his body withers away in despair. When Narcissus says “Goodbye” to the reflection, Echo’s voice says “Goodbye.” At that moment, Narcissus dies while peering into the spring.</em> <a href="https://www.historicmysteries.com/narcissus-myth-version-poets/" target="_blank">Historic Mysteries</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The danger of echo chambers is adherence to narratives that do not exist in the real world. It is allegiance to "alternative facts," crackpot conspiracy theories, Big Lies, horse manure, hoopla, and hogwash. It says climate change doesn't exist in a deluge of evidence on a warming globe annually breaking its previous records. It is saying the Affordable Care Act was destined to "kill grandma," when four years ago, we had refrigerator trucks as mobile morgues by ignoring a pandemic and promoting quackery like drinking bleach, shining lights up our rectums, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine. It is putting on a Batman suit and thinking yourself an undefeatable martial artist, or a Superman suit and thinking you can fly. "Try that in Gotham," or leap from the roof of a short house: the acceleration due to gravity is still 9.81 m/s<sup>2</sup>. Physics is reality, and it cannot be gaslighted.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Things like the Orwellian <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained" target="_blank">Citizen's United</a> have guaranteed that every election until capitalism is reformed is the "election of our lifetimes." The American oligarchs today are the spiritual descendants of the fascists who tried to prop up Smedley Butler as their dictator. He balked, realizing that he was a "gangster for capitalism" and that "<a href="https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societies/ebooks/pdf/butler_racket.pdf">war is a racket</a>."</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Time travel is a popular sci-fi trope, but backward travel is impossible due to the <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#c1">Second Law of Thermodynamics</a>. But it is possible to <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/03/08/its-on-us/" target="_blank">shape the future</a> we want to see for our children. To do that, we can't listen to nymphs reflecting echoes.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air, water, and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human beings and living creatures.”</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”</em></span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">― <strong>Gaylord Nelson</strong>, former Republican Governor and Senator of Wisconsin, Founder of Earth Day, April 20, 1970, which led to the formation of the U.S. EPA, December 2, 1970.</span></p><p> </p><p> </p></div>
Spongy Narks...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/spongy-narks
2024-02-27T10:00:00.000Z
2024-02-27T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12389875456,RESIZE_1200x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12389875456,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12389875456?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">Scientists used samples from sclerosponges off the coast of Puerto Rico to calculate ocean surface temperatures going back 300 years. Douglas Rissing/iStockphoto/Getty Images</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Research, Thermodynamics</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>CNN</strong> <em>— Using sponges collected off the coast of Puerto Rico in the eastern Caribbean, scientists have calculated 300 years of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/world/ocean-heat-temperature-record-climate/index.html">ocean temperatures</a> and concluded the world has already overshot <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/climate/paris-climate-goal-threatened-intl/index.html">one crucial global warming limit</a> and is <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/02/27/spongy-narks/" target="_blank">speeding toward another</a>.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>These findings, published Monday in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01919-7" target="_blank">journal Nature Climate Change</a>, are alarming but also controversial. Other scientists say the study contains too many uncertainties and limitations to draw such firm conclusions and could end up confusing public understanding of climate change.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Sponges — which grow slowly, layer by layer — can act like data time capsules, allowing a glimpse into what the ocean was like hundreds of years ago, long before the existence of modern data.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Using samples from sclerosponges, which live for centuries, the team of international scientists was able to calculate ocean surface temperatures going back 300 years.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>They found <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/world/global-climate-change-report-un-ipcc/index.html">human-caused warming</a> may have started earlier than currently assumed and, as a result, global average temperature may have already warmed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/climate/paris-climate-goal-threatened-intl/index.html">more than 1.5 degrees Celsius</a> above pre-industrial levels. Researchers say the results also suggest global temperature could overshoot 2 degrees of warming by the end of the decade.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Under the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/19/politics/what-is-paris-climate-agreement/index.html">2015 Paris Agreement</a>, countries pledged to restrict global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, with an ambition to limit it to 1.5 degrees. The pre-industrial era — or the state of the climate before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels and warming the planet — is commonly defined as 1850-1900.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/05/climate/sponges-climate-limit-study/index.html">Data from centuries-old sea creatures suggest the world is warming faster than scientists thought</a>, Rachel Ramirez, CNN</span></p><p></p></div>
Origin...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/origin
2024-02-09T10:00:00.000Z
2024-02-09T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12376113060,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12376113060,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="556" alt="12376113060?profile=RESIZE_584x" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">Image source: <a href="https://pittsburghlectures.culturaldistrict.org/production/75020/isabel-wilkerson-virtual-event">Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures</a> - Isabel Wilkerson, Livestream (2022)</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Fascism</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"While I was at the hotel today, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know <strong>whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people.</strong> [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that <strong>I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]</strong>—that <strong>I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people;</strong> and I will say in addition to this that there is <strong>a physical difference between the white and black races</strong> which I believe <strong>will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.</strong> And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, <strong>there must be the position of superior and inferior, </strong>and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion, I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything.<strong> I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] </strong>My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied with its correctness—and that is the case of Judge Douglas’s old friend, Col. Richard M. Johnson. [Laughter.] I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject) that <strong>I have never had the least apprehension that my friends or I would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, [laughter]</strong> but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might if there were no law to keep them from it, [roars of laughter] <strong>I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. [Continued laughter and applause.] </strong>I will add one further word, which is this: [that] I do not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of the negro and the white man can be made except in the State Legislature—not in the Congress of the United States—and <strong>as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the Judge be kept at home and placed in the State Legislature to fight the measure. [Uproarious laughter and applause.]</strong> I do not propose dwelling longer at this time on this subject</em>.<em>"</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-lincoln-douglas-debates-4th-debate-part-i/">Teaching History</a>, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, 4th Debate, Part 1.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The man who would be known as "the great emancipator" could turn a phrase at an event at the time that would dwarf our current 1-1/2 hour modern performances: they were hours in duration. People brought lunches and took notes. Old Abe appeared to have been the "George Carlin" of his day. He was exploitative in his digs, not knowing at the time the same people he derided he would need fighting for him to win the war of secession.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Lincoln exploited <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/02/09/origin/" target="_blank">racist tropes</a> to make Judge Douglas - his Democratic (the conservative party then) opponent, look like a conspiratorial fool. As we look to history, we see the pedestals that our heroes occupy are made of cracked porcelain; their balance isn't steady because human bodies aren't perfectly proportioned, and they often fall from their lofty perches after scrutiny.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Despite this obvious bias Lincoln had towards "his tribe," another Douglass, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-frederick-douglass-relation">Frederick Douglass</a>, would petition him for the involvement of our ancestors on the side of the Union in the Civil War as well as make the case for the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite the many docuseries with them briefly onscreen together generally getting along, Frederick Douglass wasn't an initial fan of the 16th president:</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Douglass was concerned about the unequal pay of Black soldiers, who received $3 dollars less per month than white privates. He was also incensed by the Union government’s response to the Confederate treatment of Black prisoners of war, who were being tortured, killed, and sometimes sold into slavery. He focused his anger on President Abraham Lincoln. “The slaughter of Blacks taken as captives,” wrote Douglass in his <strong>Douglass’ Monthly,</strong> “seems to affect him [Lincoln] as little as the slaughter of beeves [cows] for the use of his army.”</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-frederick-douglass-relation">Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: Inside Their Complicated Relationship</a>, History.com</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">So, when I hear people saying they're tired of voting for "the lesser of two evils," their naivete seems to reflect back to halcyon days that never existed, not realizing African Americans have voted that way since we were allowed to vote without interference (poll taxes, lynching, cross burnings, voter purges). As long as a caste system of complexion has existed on these shores, there has never been a conservative or liberal "great again."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The following (or a version of this) I posted on Rotten Tomatoes after seeing the movie:</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">"I read “<a href="https://www.nationalbook.org/books/caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents/">Caste: The Source of Our Discontents</a>” by Isabel Wilkerson before I saw “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13321244/">Origin</a>,” directed by Ava DuVernay. I highly recommend reading the book, seeing the movie, and staying for the after-the-credits discussion by the director. It is POWERFUL and relevant to the times we all find ourselves in. Seeing the reenactment of Nazi book burning has a modern analogy in practice.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">"The Caste System in America is based on skin color and the debasement of people who have no control over how they present themselves or how they are perceived. This extends easily to other groups under the boot of patriarchy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">"See it while it is available. It is a threat to patriarchal oligarchy and for the downcast, the Dalits, the under-the-boot marginalized: the relieving breath of being seen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">"I recommend this movie, seen with a group, and a discussion at a coffee shop or a restaurant afterward. You will need to decompress."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">*****</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">A caste system, whether divinely inspired, fueled by American slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, eugenics, or Europe, Italian and Nazi fascism, in India, Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers, administrators, warriors), Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen, farmers), Shudras (laborers) Dalits (Harijans or Untouchables), propped up by myth, superstition, and pseudoscience, is about resources and power, who "deserves" to have it, and who those deeming themselves deserving, deeming others as <em>not</em> deserving.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">We can see the effects of the caste system in everything:</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The <a href="https://carnegieeurope.eu/2022/04/25/coronavirus-and-widening-global-north-south-gap-pub-86891">global south</a> suffered more from the pandemic than the global north.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The deleterious effects of climate change also <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01778-2#:~:text=The%20Global%20South%2C%20which%20hosts%20the%20majority,and%20its%20heavy%20dependence%20on%20climate-sensitive%20sectors." target="_blank">affect the Global South</a> more than it does the North. Our apathy for solving it lies in arrogance, caste, and xenophobia.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The Nazis plagiarized the South's black codes <a href="https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/pjhr/chhre/pdf/sjc-comparing-nuremberg-laws-and-jim-crow-laws.pdf">for the Nurenberg Laws</a> to oppress the Jews.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It would <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/08/31/still-just-a-dream-60-years-later-racial-wealth-disparities-remain-wide/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20if%20we%20keep,National%20Community%20Reinvestment%20Coalition%20says.">take 500 years</a> for African Americans to catch up to their (currently) majority neighbors. The March on Washington was on the eighth anniversary of the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/same-date-8-years-apart-from-emmett-till-to-i-have-a-dream-in-photos">lynching of Emmett Till</a>, but the essence of the assembly was a demand for reparations. We're still cashing a check returned, as Dr. King said, for "<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/i-have-a-dream-speech">insufficient funds</a>."</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">For Europeans, the outsiders are from the African continent (Akebulan), driven by conflicts supplied by European and American military-industrial complexes, STARTED by European and American business interests for one-sided extraction profits.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">There's a scene in Sean Penn's "<a href="https://youtu.be/wL85y1h5AGc?si=WKhIpueM0dWBqQwm">Superpower</a>" documentary where Volodymyr Zelinzky and Vladimir Putin occupy the same stage. Putin glares at Zelinsky for contradicting him in a question-and-answer session with the press. In the obvious two-tier caste system, Russian pride cannot suffer his Ukrainian lesser upstaging him on camera. The motivation for the war, in a wounded strongman's twisted mind, might be as simple as that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">China is on Akebulan to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/china/china-african-loans-development-belt-and-road-intl-hnk/index.html">extract the abundant resources</a> from the continent to fuel what is arguably a communist-capitalist system. Their underdogs are Uygers, and they are treated like Dalits and Dr. Martin Luther King.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>In fact, when King visited a local school for Dalit children in the southern Indian state of Kerala in 1959, the principal introduced him thus: <strong>"Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America."</strong> Although King was initially shocked by this introduction, he later understood the deeper connections of oppression, exclusion, and exile that African Americans in the US and Dalits in India shared. The broader Black freedom struggle has continued to inspire Dalit struggles in this region, from the formation of the Dalit Panthers in the 1970s to the recent emergence of Dalit Lives Matter groups in Nepal and India.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://udayton.edu/blogs/internationalud/22-01-12-mlk-global.php#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20when%20King%20visited,by%20this%20introduction%2C%20he%20later">MLK and the Civil Rights Movement’s Global Perspective</a>, University of Dayton blogs</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In Israel-Palestine, the caste system also has only two tiers, as did its WWII analog. There will always be a "two-state solution" in Israel-Palestine because it is <a href="https://chomsky.info/20131024/">never meant</a> as a problem to solve. The two-state solution is meant to <strong><em>sound</em></strong> reasonable because it IS reasonable, but part of a two-state solution would mean returning lands seized since 1948 (or at least 1967). That has another word in America: reparations. If you can do it in the Near East, the fear is the clamor to do it in the United States couldn't justifiably be resisted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Power and resources, hoarded to the one percent of any nation's pyramid, are imbalanced, and it is a caste system that is unsustainable.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">A caste system is a societal pathology, and I don't see such a society lasting long enough to build interplanetary or interstellar vessels. "<a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/the-fermi-paradox-where-are-all-the-aliens">Fermi's paradox</a>" may have a grim answer.</span></p><p></p></div>
Brookhaven and Fake News...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/brookhaven-and-fake-news
2024-01-23T10:00:00.000Z
2024-01-23T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12364614287,RESIZE_1200x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12364614287,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12364614287?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Climate of fear</strong> Anti-science protestors led to the closure of the High Flux Beam Reactor at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US 25 years ago using tactics that are widespread today. (Courtesy: iStock/DanielVilleneuve)</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Topics: Biology, Cancer, Carl Sagan, Civilization, Climate Change, Philosophy, Physics</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">I typically don't comment on articles, but this one resonated with my memories of Carl Sagan desperately trying to raise the critical thinking skills of an entire essential nation with "<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/159731/the-demon-haunted-world-by-carl-sagan/">The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark</a>." The host of Cosmos would <a href="https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sagan/#:~:text=Carl%20Sagan%20passed%20away%20on,colleagues%20on%20the%20Galileo%20project.">succumb to pneumonia</a> as a consequence of bone marrow disease. I will be the age Carl was when he passed away this year, 62, but not as accomplished as he did in the six decades we all had access to him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">The framework of <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/01/23/brookhaven-and-fake-news/" target="_blank">our current duress</a> was already here in the form of celebrity worship, gossip columns, and talk shows where sensationalism equaled eyeballs, just as the Internet rouses the primitive lizard portion of our brains to be afraid, get angry, and "buy-purchase-consume" products (a friend who's a sound engineer likes to say that a lot).</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>Underhand tactics by environmental activists led to the closure of a famous physics facility 25 years ago. We can still learn much from the incident, says Robert P Crease.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>Fake facts, conspiracy theories, nuclear fear, science denial, baseless charges of corruption, and the shouting down of reputable health officials. All these things happened 25 years ago, long before the days of social media, in a bipartisan, celebrity-driven episode of science denial. Yet the story offers valuable lessons for what works and what does not (mostly the latter) for anyone wanting to head off such incidents.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>The episode in question concerned one of the more valuable scientific facilities in the US, the <a href="https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/">High Flux Beam Reactor</a> (HFBR) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. As I mentioned <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/life-after-the-leak-lessons-from-the-closure-of-the-high-flux-beam-reactor/">in a previous column</a> and in my book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710593/the-leak-by-robert-p-crease-with-peter-d-bond/">The Leak</a>, the HFBR was a successful research instrument that was used to make medical isotopes and study everything from superconductors to proteins and metals. “Experimentalists saw the reactor as the place to go,” recalls the physicist <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/william-d-magwood-iv-still-fighting-for-nuclear/">William Magwood IV</a>, then at the US Department of Energy.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>But in 1997, lab scientists discovered a leak of water from a pool located in the same building as the reactor, where its spent fuel was stored. The leak contained tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that decays with a half-life of about 12 years, releasing low-energy electrons that can be stopped by a few sheets of paper. The total amount of tritium in the leak was about that in typical self-illuminating “EXIT” signs.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>The protestors’ tactics are a familiar part of today’s political environment: tell people they are in danger and insist that anyone who says otherwise is lying.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">The article goes on to recount the actor Alec Baldwin using his celebrity to put a ten-year-old child on the Montell Williams Show to claim that the tritium and the research facility caused his cancer. It wasn't true, but it was LOUD, drowning out the experts who are used to spirited peer review and erudite discussions of research, not tears and gnashing of teeth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Montell Williams ended his talk show after announcing that he had multiple sclerosis. Alec Baldwin, though I enjoyed his SNL skits, has other pressing issues.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">I have a physicist friend who's using tritium in his research with optical tweezers, separating isotopes to detect and treat cancers, among other applications. I am opting not to give his website as those same elements described in the article about Brookhaven National Labs have metastasized into our current societal mass psychosis. If his research leads to your cancer cure, you can thank him later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Twenty-five years ago, we weren't as far along in climate disruption as we are now. Twenty-five years ago, CNN was 19 years old, and its clones, Fox and MSNBC, were 3 years old. Five years after the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/Y2K-bug/">Y2K scare</a> (exquisitely setting us up for election 2000 and 9/11), humanity further siloed itself into warring tribes, first posting on Internet bulletin boards, MySpace. Then, the logical progression was to Facebook, Twitter (now X), and its myriad progeny.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">A side note: CERN would go on to discover the Higgs Boson because we, in the spirit of fiscal stewardship, closed the superconducting collider in <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supercollider-that-never-was/">Waxahachie, Texas</a>, 48 kilometers south of Dallas. Peter Higgs and François Englert owe their <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/">2013 Physics Nobel Prize</a> to Switzerland. U-S-A. U-S-A.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">How much further along in cancer research and nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels would we be if, prior to Facebook and the former Twitter, we exercised a little critical thinking and common sense? I'm not talking about tritium, but fission reactors, which we know how to build (fusion, though cleaner and less radioactive, is still far off), but the environmental activists have terrorized anyone from building newer and safer facilities that might have had some positive impact on our warming climate. To paraphrase a famous saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Our <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8570089/#:~:text=An%20increasing%20amount%20of%20discussion,et%20al.%2C%202020%3B%20Wang">air quality improved</a> during the pandemic, so the logic leads to upgrading public transportation to something matching other countries that rely on it more than we do, or within our borders, the subway systems in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC. You end up doing nothing of any importance. We could replace the fission reactors one by one as fusion comes online.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;">That is what enrages and disappoints me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/the-american-reactor-that-was-closed-by-fake-news/">The American reactor that was closed by fake news</a>, Robert P Crease, Physics World</span></p><p></p></div>
Fast Charger...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/fast-charger
2024-01-16T10:00:00.000Z
2024-01-16T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12359976866,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12359976866,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12359976866?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">Significant Li plating capacity from Si anode. a, Li discharge profile in a battery of Li/graphite–Li<sub>5.5</sub>PS<sub>4.5</sub>Cl<sub>1.5</sub> (LPSCl1.5)–LGPS–LPSCl1.5–SiG at current density 0.2 mA cm<sup>–2</sup> at room temperature. Note that SiG was made by mixing Si and graphite in one composite layer. Inset shows the schematic illustration of stages 1–3 based on SEM and EDS mapping, which illustrate the unique Li–Si anode evolution in solid-state batteries observed experimentally in Figs. 1 and 2. b, FIB–SEM images of the SiG anode at different discharge states (i), (ii), and (iii) corresponding to points 1–3 in a, respectively. c, SEM–EDS mapping of (i), (ii), and (iii), corresponding to SEM images in b, where carbon signal (C) is derived from graphite, oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N) signals are from Li metal reaction with air and fluorine (F) is from the PTFE binder. d, Discharge profile of battery with cell construction Li-1M LiPF6 in EC/DMC–SiG. Schematics illustrate typical Si anode evolution in liquid-electrolyte batteries. e, FIB–SEM image (i) of SiG anode following discharge in the liquid-electrolyte battery shown in d; zoomed-in image (ii). Credit: <em>Nature Materials</em> (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01722-x</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Applied Physics, Battery, Chemistry, Climate Change, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times—more than any other pouch battery cell—and can be recharged <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/01/16/fast-charger/" target="_blank">in a matter of minutes</a>.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>The research not only describes a new way to make solid-state batteries with a lithium metal anode but also offers a new understanding of the materials used for these potentially revolutionary batteries.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-023-01722-x">The research</a> is published in <strong>Nature Materials.</strong></em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"Lithium metal <a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/anode/">anode</a> batteries are considered the holy grail of batteries because they have ten times the capacity of commercial graphite anodes and could drastically increase the driving distance of electric vehicles," said Xin Li, Associate Professor of Materials Science at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "Our research is an important step toward more practical solid-state batteries for industrial and commercial applications."</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>One of the biggest challenges in the design of these batteries is the formation of dendrites on the surface of the anode. These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the <a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/battery/">battery</a> to short or even catch fire.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>These dendrites form when lithium ions move from the cathode to the anode during charging, attaching to the surface of the anode in a process called plating. Plating on the anode creates an uneven, non-homogeneous surface, like plaque on teeth, and allows dendrites to take root. When discharged, that plaque-like coating needs to be stripped from the anode, and when plating is uneven, the stripping process can be slow and result in potholes that induce even more uneven plating in the next charge.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://techxplore-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techxplore.com/news/2024-01-solid-state-battery-minutes-thousands.amp">Solid-state battery design charges in minutes and lasts for thousands of cycles</a>, Leah Burrows, <a href="https://www.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences</a>, Tech Xplore</span></p><p></p><p></p></div>
Bedlam, Swatting, Terrorism...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/bedlam-swatting-terrorism
2024-01-12T10:00:00.000Z
2024-01-12T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12357085067,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12357085067,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12357085067?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="678" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"> Image source: CSO online - <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/569815/what-is-swatting-unleashing-armed-police-against-your-enemies.html">Swatting</a></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Fascism, Star Trek</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Bedlam is <strong>a scene of madness, chaos, or great confusion</strong>. The term <em>bedlam</em> comes from the name of a hospital in London, “Saint Mary of Bethlehem,” which was devoted to <strong>treating the mentally ill</strong> in the 1400s. Over time, the pronunciation of “Bethlehem” morphed into <em>bedlam,</em> and the term came to be applied to any situation where pandemonium prevails. Source: <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/bedlam#:~:text=Bedlam%20is%20a%20scene%20of,mentally%20ill%20in%20the%201400s.">Vocabulary.com</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Swatting is a criminal act that involves <strong>making hoax phone calls</strong> to emergency services to trick them into sending a response team to a person's address. The goal is to trick the emergency services into sending a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team to a supposed emergency, such as a shooting or hostage situation. Source: Google generative AI</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">According to <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/terrorism">Dictionary.com</a>, terrorism is the use of violence or threats to <strong>intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population.</strong> The goal of terrorism is to achieve political, social, or ideological objectives.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2009-title18/html/USCODE-2009-title18-partI-chap113B-sec2331.htm" target="_blank">International terrorism</a>: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals or groups inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored). Source: <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism">FBI.gov</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf/view">Domestic terrorism</a>: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. Source: <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism">FBI.gov</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">I grew up in an era of possibilities, of the struggle for rights by African Americans through Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Hispanic Americans through Casar Chavez, the LGBT community after the attack on <a href="https://thestonewallinnnyc.com/#the-stonewall-story-2">Stonewall Inn</a> in Greenwich Village, New York. The year after the assassination of three black Civil Rights leaders, we did what John F. Kennedy inspired us to do one year later, and Dr. King, the Star Trek fan who talked Nichele Nichols out of quitting the show, never lived to see.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">But we live in now, where in the early 2000s, a younger man who wasn't on the planet tried to convince me that my Saturday morning cartoons the day before hadn't been interrupted by an important event: the Moon Landing of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/history/apollo-11-mission-overview/">Apollo 11</a> on July 20, 1969 (Sunday). His evidence was, of course, a grainy video on YouTube. I'm certain that the conspiracy theorists are already gearing up for <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-shares-progress-toward-early-artemis-moon-missions-with-crew/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CArtemis%20is%20a%20long-term,future%20human%20missions%20to%20Mars.">Artemis</a>. "Deep fake" has probably improved the tech for denial.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The president who inspired the mission, John F. Kennedy, led the sad cavalcade of assassinations rash in the 1960s. The president who spoke to the astronauts was Richard Nixon, the same who ran on a "law and order" platform, scaring the bejesus out of citizens he wanted to govern because of the bedlam, the chaos, the great confusion on college campuses like Kent State and NC A&T as students protested the Vietnam conflict that nobody understood, and no one wanted, and for the words in our founding documents that stated, "all men are created equal." The president who saluted astronauts would win reelection in a landslide and lose his job due to Watergate larceny.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The revered founders were, of course, referencing only themselves and their progeny. They had no concept of descendants of their chattel workforce becoming lawyers, engineers, educators, scientists, astronauts, mayors of towns, governors, state representatives, congressional representatives, senators, presidents of universities that directly benefited from slavery, or President or Vice President of the United States. Some of their jurists would obfuscate this possibility and give the interpretation of The Constitution by grammatically spitballing the pious-sounding, pseudo-academic name of "originalism."</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/01/12/bedlam-swatting-terrorism/" target="_blank">We are here now</a>, at the dawn of the second quarter of the 21st century. Nothing like September 11, 2001, was conceivable to a child in 1969 in the last year of a novel science fiction series called "Star Trek" where it seemed, 200 years into the future, we had "figured it out," we had put down the rocks of racism, sexism, silliness and decided to work together towards a common goal of survival on Earth and among the stars. Superluminal speeds and Heisenberg-defying transporters were plot devices; everyone was in on the joke.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Nothing like January 6, 2021, twenty years from an international terrorist assault on our shores that domestic terrorism would bring bedlam to the U.S. Capitol, medieval jousting and bludgeoning Capitol and Metro Police officers, tasing them, bear-spraying them, killing them, urinating and spreading feces, which in and of itself is a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17299177/">sign of mental illness</a> Saint Mary of Bethlehem was constructed to mitigate. Then, poof! It would go away, redefined from insurrection to tourists gone bad (when no tours were scheduled during the pandemic), Antifa (ahem: anti-fascists) to finally "a beautiful day, full of love."</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Towards the end of the second quarter of the 21st Century, we will likely see climate disruption at an irreversible, unpredictable pace. The <a href="https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population#:~:text=The%20world%20population%20is%20projected,surrounding%20these%20latest%20population%20projections.">world population</a> will be increased to ~9.7 billion, and by 2100, ~10.4 billion. There are a few new posts in 2023, but a lot of inoperable links on the 100-year starship <a href="https://100yss.org/">website</a> (like "mailing lists" and "contact us"). From here until 2100, it doesn't give us a century to construct a generation's vessel or to solicit and train a crew for a one-way trip on the culturally narcissistic need for humans to survive their hubris expressed on this planet since the dinosaurs were too dumb to have scientists.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It would seem, though, even <em>with</em> the scientists and experts, we have allowed the know-it-alls, who know nothing, primacy because they're so <strong>loud.</strong> They demand attention to feed a narcissistic ego, blustering and ever-terrified that we will realize that they are nincompoops with no applicable skillsets. Conspiracy theories are tailor-made for people who won't read, study, or take the time to comprehend hard subjects and are rewarded lucratively for slavish devotion to bull crap. We have allowed <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/brain-the-inside-story/your-emotional-brain/beyond-our-lizard-brain">our lizard brains</a> to lead and the blowhard simpletons to rule us to ruin. They alone cannot fix or build a starship.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">We are here now as the "rule of law" is being tested as it has never been before, to the point that we're being gaslit to ask if such a thing ever existed and if we can get by with WHATABOUTISM instead of democracy, tyranny instead of freedom.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Judges, Special Councils, Clerks, and politicians are being swatted doxxed; elected officials are receiving death threats because misinformation is being spread on social media like feces to infect the lizard portion of our brains, where fear and anger dwell, exploited for ratings, votes, and to sell products online and between archaic commercials. The only thing on the other side of bedlam is anarchy. That is a poor substitute for a federal republic that has existed for over 246 years and could easily be gone in a fortnight.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">June: We have to run.</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Luke: What?</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">June: We waited last time. We waited too long, and we didn't see how much they hated us. I lost you, and then we lost Hannah.</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Luke: Are we just gonna forget about her now?</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">June: We will never ever forget about her, but we cannot help her if we are dead. It's changing, Luke. This country is changing.</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Luke: No, Canada's not Gilead.</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">June: <strong>America wasn't Gilead until it was, and then it was too fuckin' late. </strong>Luke, we have to go. We have to run. <strong><em>Now.</em></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Source: <a href="https://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/america-wasnt-gilead-until-it-was-and-then-it-was-too-fuckin-lat/" target="_blank">TV fanatic</a>, "The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood on <a href="https://www.hulu.com/series/the-handmaids-tale-565d8976-9d26-4e63-866c-40f8a137ce5f">Hulu</a></span></p><p> </p></div>
Curated, Created Realities...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/curated-created-realities
2024-01-05T10:00:00.000Z
2024-01-05T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p> </p><p><img class="wp-image-7136 align-center" src="https://physicsandnano.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/img_1855.jpg?w=630" alt="" /></p><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;">Image source: Facebook meme</p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">What is lost in the above Facebook meme: 5:00 - 5:30 pm was typically your local news. 6:00 - 6:30 pm, before “Bewitched,” was your international news, the Walter Cronkites, Mike Wallaces, and Harry Reasoner’s time to scare the living crap out of you that the world beyond our borders, during and post-Vietnam, was still going over a cliff. Hence, there is a serial lineup of sitcom talent for an obvious purpose. We also got cut off at midnight, white noise after the anthem, and a nation avoided insomnia because no 24-hour options existed.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Dr. Neil Postman was a Professor of Journalism at NYU. I will recommend two books in this post: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X">Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Watch-News-Neil-Postman/dp/1721309209">How To Watch TV News</a>.” Both are essential in an era of gaslighting and misinformation.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Above, you peer a lineup that existed on network television in the early 1970s and continued throughout the Reagan era. It went essentially unchanged until the early 2000s.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Though I enjoy watching Star Trek on streaming services, this is recent. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244365/">Enterprise</a>, like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112178/">Voyager</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106145/">Deep Space Nine</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/">The Next Generation</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060028/">The Original Series</a> were all available on standard channels and cable television. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5171438/">Discovery</a> and <a href="https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-strange-new-worlds/">Strange New Worlds</a> were first launched by CBS Streaming and then bought out/transferred to Paramount Plus. Nostalgia requires a checking account.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Saturday morning cartoons ENDED in <a href="https://www.mtv.com/news/z9f8m4/saturday-morning-cartoons#:~:text=We're%20talking%20Saturday%20morning,that%20spanned%20over%2050%20years.">September 2014</a>. I can at least see Bugs Bunny on YouTube. Occasionally, Facebook brings up Tom and Jerry, The Roadrunner, etc., on my newsfeed because the algorithms have read my desires and given me what I would most likely wish to see. In this case, nostalgia is free, but now, more than ever, I am the product.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer</em> (Internet history), <em>the purpose of which is to <strong>keep the viewers watching</strong> so that they will be exposed to the commercials”</em> (bots and propaganda).</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Neil Postman, Steven Powers, “How to Watch TV News.”</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">ABC, CBS, and NBC are running game shows and reality shows in prime time where sitcoms, dramas, actors, and writers used to be employed. As “Amusing Ourselves to Death” puts it, the news, 24-7-365 (366 on leap years), has become our entertainment. How did this happen?</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In 1972, Richard Milhouse Nixon won a <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1972_Election/">landslide election</a>, winning 49/50 states and 520 electoral votes to his Democratic opponent, George McGovern’s 17. “Other” received one electoral vote. Judging from the redness of the map, a lot of African Americans voted for “law and order” or did not bother to show up at the polls. The Vietnam War trudged on, and the body count approached a staggering 282,000 U.S. and allied military deaths.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Two years later, in 1974, Nixon resigned in disgrace after the revelations of the <a href="https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00365">Watergate burglary investigation</a> by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the subsequent investigations, and the relentless media coverage that swayed a nation from electoral route to, maybe we need to get rid of the president who emphatically stated “<em>I am not a crook”</em> might be a crook. In <em>this</em> case, presidential larceny could not be tolerated.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">This was possible because Americans had a <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2024/01/05/curated-created-realities/" target="_blank">shared reality</a> innocently framed by what we viewed for entertainment: as many kids in Rural Hall watched Archie Bunker and Saturday cartoons as my neighbors did in East Winston. Although we were in the throws of forced busing due to the 9-0 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board Decision in 1954 (“all-deliberate speed” came about 20 years later in North Carolina), these shows gave us a framework for conversation, jokes, laughter, and community. The above shows weren’t the bastions of diversity - only “Room 222” had a diverse cast - but a shared entertainment experience made us feel more “united” than we do now.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Roger Ailes was an aide in the Nixon administration. After Nixon’s ouster, Ailes wanted a news network that was friendly to conservatives and biased against liberals. According to a Rolling Stones <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-244652/">article</a>, he created a propaganda network and a fear factory. The fear seems to be in the workplace and projected to its audience, absorbing propaganda nightly. After his death, it still runs top-down, like Pravda, not like a news organization. Since it’s profitable, even after the Dominion lawsuit and the upcoming lawsuit with Smartmatics, the network thinks it can absorb the legal losses of billion-dollar settlements and survive. That is frightening power and reach.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">I cannot leave their rivals out of this. CNN was the first parent cable news network that “birthed” Fox and MSNBC from “Crossfire” (Paul Begala on the left, and Tucker Carlson on the right). They all follow a framework of “what should you fear of the ‘other.’” Television networks have always competed for viewership through television shows staffed by writers who create content. <a href="https://movieweb.com/shonda-rhimes-shows/#bridgerton">Shonda </a>Rhimes’ “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and “How To Get Away With Murder” on the public airwaves are distant memories. You need a streaming subscription now. I pay for several, but it’s not normal, nor should it be seen as normal.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">What happens when your “United States” has no framework for a shared reality?</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The Republican frontrunner/former reality TV huckster has not debated in the primary and doesn’t need to. He probably won’t in the general election either. He presided over the deaths of <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2791213" target="_blank">1.13 million Americans</a> due to the botched handling of the Coronavirus that, arguably, his Republican predecessor (43) put the medical professionals in place, and his Democratic successor (44) continued and expanded. Forty-five pulled them out of China to “own the libs” and found himself and the country flatfooted to identify whether the virus came from a food market or a lab leak. The U.S. had the worst performance of Western nations, exacerbated by not promoting masks and pushing non-cures like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">But, the party and a sizeable amount of the nation want to give him the nuclear codes again because, heck, he's entertaining, in a perverse, psychotic sense. For example, the fictional Batman is grim, determined, disciplined, and rarely smiles in the comics. His nemesis, Joker, is a murdering psychopath, but Jack Nickelson and Heath Ledger made him "entertaining." We all watched both versions of Mayhem. </span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">If you can sell soap to 1950s housewives, you can sell racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia to the rubes who can’t, or won’t, afford streaming alternatives. And sell soap.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">You “keep the viewers watching” not with clever sitcoms and nighttime dramas like “Dallas” and “Dynasty,” but anger at the “other.” Who is “other?” The people who don’t watch your network share your curated views. One side is “woke,” the other is fascist. No one talks.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">We’ve had decades of Civil War reenactments in city parks, and no one died. Therefore, there is no appreciation that in an actual, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-us-civil-war-wont-look-like-last-one-historians-2022-8">modern Civil War</a>, the death toll would likely overrun the hospitals more than Sars-CoV-2 did with the alpha through delta variants. The U.S. dollar would cease to be the currency of global trade, and world order would collapse into fiefdoms, dictatorships, and warlords, which would be fine to oligarchs who separated themselves from society generations ago and only come down from Mount Olympus to influence/bribe our politicians. Homo Sapiens (Latin: “wise men”) should choose a more apropos name: Homo Stultus (“stupid men”), and fully own <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/">Idiocracy</a>. It didn’t need 500 years.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Humans are storytelling creatures. We need entertainment in the form of books, poetry, well-acted plays, movies, and television shows. We also need knowledge, facts, and accurate history to make a collective assessment of where we’ve been collectively as a nation and a species and where we’re going as a nation - perfecting The Union or over a cliff. Karl Rovian “<a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/karl-roves-prophecy-were-an-empire-now-and-when-we-act-we-create-our-own-reality/5572533" target="_blank">created realities</a>” nor Neo-Nazi book bans accomplish either necessity.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">“Infotainment” is neither news nor entertaining, and Dr. Postman’s warning about the parent of this debacle, Ted Turner’s HBO-inspired infotainment, CNN, rings from his grave:</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“What <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> feared were those who would ban books </em>(well?)<em>. What <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> feared those who would deprive us of information. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> feared that the truth would be concealed from us. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> feared we would become a captive culture. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny <strong>“failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”</strong> In 1984, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a> feared that what we fear will ruin us. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a> feared that what we desire will ruin us.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“This book is about the possibility that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Huxley" target="_blank">Huxley</a>, not <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.Orwell" target="_blank">Orwell</a>, was right.”</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Neil Postman, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74034.Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death" target="_blank">Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">(The parenthesis in both Postman quotes are my adds for emphasis, as are any bold type.)</span></p><p> </p></div>
All-Solid-State Batteries...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/all-solid-state-batteries
2023-12-19T03:22:28.000Z
2023-12-19T03:22:28.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p style="text-align:left;"> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12330404055,RESIZE_1200x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12330404055,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12330404055?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"> Comparison of cathode volume changes in all-solid-state cells under low-pressure operation. Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Batteries, Chemistry, Climate Change, Lithium, Materials Science, Nanomaterials</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Often referred to as the "dream batteries," all-solid-state batteries are the next generation of batteries that many battery manufacturers are competing to bring to market. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which use a liquid electrolyte, all components, including the electrolyte, anode, and cathode, are solid, reducing the risk of explosion, and are in high demand in markets ranging from automobiles to energy storage systems (ESS).</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>However, devices that maintain the high pressure (10s of MPa) required for stable operation of all-<a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/solid-state+batteries/">solid-state batteries</a> have problems that reduce the battery performance, such as <a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/energy+density/">energy density</a> and capacity, and must be solved for commercialization.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Dr. Hun-Gi Jung and his team at the Energy Storage Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have identified degradation factors that cause rapid capacity degradation and shortened lifespan when operating all-solid-state batteries at pressures similar to those of lithium-ion batteries. The research is <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202301220">published</a> in the journal <strong>Advanced Energy Materials</strong>.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Unlike previous studies, the researchers confirmed for the first time that degradation can occur inside the <a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/cathode/">cathode</a> as well as outside, showing that all-solid-state batteries can be operated reliably even in low-pressure environments.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>In all-solid-state batteries, the cathode and anode have a volume change during repeated charging and discharging, resulting in interfacial degradation, such as side reaction and contact loss between active materials and solid electrolytes, which increase the interfacial resistance and worsen cell performance.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>To solve this problem, external devices are used to maintain <a href="https://techxplore.com/tags/high+pressure/">high pressure</a>, but this has the disadvantage of reducing energy density as the weight and volume of the battery increase. Research is being conducted on the inside of the all-solid-state cell to maintain the performance of the cell, even in low-pressure environments.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://techxplore-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techxplore.com/news/2023-12-degradation-mechanism-all-solid-state-batteries-commercialization.amp">Investigation of the degradation mechanism for all-solid-state batteries takes another step toward commercialization</a>, National Research Council of Science and Technology.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p></div>
Power and Resources...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/power-and-resources
2023-12-08T10:00:00.000Z
2023-12-08T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p> </p><p><img class="wp-image-6964 align-center" src="https://physicsandnano.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/screenshot-2023-12-07-234124.png?w=339" alt="" width="452" height="375" /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2014/04/thomas_piketty_wealth_gap_capi.html">French economist Thomas Piketty compares the US economy to Europe in the Gilded Age</a>. Oregon Live, 2014</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Thomas Piketty wrote "<a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century_arthur-goldhammer_nick-costes/3188189/item/6319854/?mkwid=%7Cdc&pcrid=77447028765180&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=6319854&plc=&pgrid=1239149900900141&ptaid=pla-4581046492312221&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping+-+High+Vol+Frontlist+-+Under+%2410&utm_term=&utm_content=%7Cdc%7Cpcrid%7C77447028765180%7Cpkw%7C%7Cpmt%7Cbe%7Cproduct%7C6319854%7Cslid%7C%7Cpgrid%7C1239149900900141%7Cptaid%7Cpla-4581046492312221%7C&msclkid=296d41577d9b1fb087582425f5810d33#isbn=067443000X&idiq=6319854&edition=13637856">Capital in the 21st Century</a>" in 2013 centered on the wealth inequality we can see all around us. I can see more house-less citizens on the streets of North Carolina and Texas (on a recent visit) than I can remember from my youth because back then, we didn't have 8 billion inhabitants on the planet. There is a documentary of the same title on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/B08BCSX79B">Amazon Prime video</a>. The premise is ominous, and it <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/12/08/power-and-resources/" target="_blank">bears witness</a> to the stress that our world system is undergoing.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Dr. Piketty suggests that the rise of fascism around the world is because of income inequality. The climate crisis only exacerbates the supply chain, as thousand-year weather events are now more frequent than we would like.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Fascism is on the rise globally, but it is for lazy people. Propping up a so-called "strongman" gives a fall guy: if he (usually a "he") is right, he gets all the praise. If he's wrong, there can be one of two reactions: a coup (a coup, political, physical, or both is usually how they came to power in the first place), or a flaccid, impotent collective powerless shrug by the populace. So-called "strongmen" (an ever-oxymoron) are preferred when there is uncertainty, supplies are scarce, and people are fleeing wars, biblical tsunamis, and isolated by pandemics. When people are afraid, they are ripe for conmen and charlatans who will "fix" what is wrong and reflect back to halcyon days that never existed.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Democracy requires a shared reality, upon which sides debate and come to a consensus for the betterment of the electorate. Consensus means that you and your side won't get your "laundry list" after laying out your arguments, at least in that particular debate. It requires compromise and logic to be successful. It also helps that you are sane.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Whether you set your government framework on capitalism, communism, republicanism, or socialism, the divine right of kings, each has a hierarchy decided long ago of those who deserve the wealth and riches, and those pariahs at the base of the pyramid that do not.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Russian aggression in Ukraine, Hamas attacks in Israel; and Somali refugees in Europe are all because we are on the same volume of a planet that existed 43 years ago when we were only 4.4 billion people, and the American military after Vietnam was licking its wounds, reframing around an "all-volunteer force." The Soviet Union still existed as an existential boogie-man. Now, that remnant interferes in democratic elections worldwide, because the notion of participation in a stable world order is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/16/putin-rejecting-rules-based-global-order-makes-world-more-dangerous/">anathema</a> to a kleptocracy.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Modern-day robber barons are no different than their ancestors, who met untimely ends in the French Revolution. Since we fought a Revolutionary War to depart the authoritarian crown of King George, the word sounds adventurous, avant-garde; "cool." Revolutions are bloody, and they aren't always for noble reasons.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian."</em> Adolph Hitler, 1928, <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hitler-our-movement-is-christian/">Snopes</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The current status quo is unsustainable. We can't keep siphoning up ("trickledown" is gaslighting) tax breaks to American oligarchs and tax shelters in America and Europe for Russian oligarchs. It is thermodynamically impossible to "consume our way to utopia," and colonizing Mars is a <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-elon-musk-says-we-could-make-mars-liveable-with-thermonuclear-bombs">pipedream</a> by Elmo Musk, whose plan to terraform the Red Planet is impractical, impossible, unworkable, and dangerous. I'm not against space exploration. Far from it. Seeing the runaway Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Venus informed our models on Earth. Mars at one time probably had an atmosphere, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039288432/mars-liquid-water-surface-size-potassium-mass-space">water</a>, and life about four billion years ago. The point is, the planet doesn't have either <strong><em>now,</em></strong> and the closest planet to terraform is right under our feet, without a requirement of VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing), rockets, or superluminal star drives. It merely requires something we should have learned to do in kindergarten: sharing resources with one another for the "common good" of continuance.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Cooperation is survival. Hoarding is death.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“Last year, I had a life-changing experience at 90 years old. I went to space, after decades of playing an iconic science-fiction character who was exploring the universe. I thought I would experience a deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"I was absolutely wrong. The strongest feeling, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting so starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realized that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside. I did my share in popularizing the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable."</em></span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">-- William Shatner, actor</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Credit goes to the respective owners.</span><br /> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Follow <a href="https://birdsandanimals.com/">Birds and Animals</a></span></p><p> </p></div>
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/everything-everywhere-all-at-once
2023-11-08T10:00:00.000Z
2023-11-08T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12287926495,RESIZE_1200x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12287926495,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12287926495?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;">The Flood by Antonio Marziale Carracci</p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Existentialism, Global Warming</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Another week, another catastrophic, record-setting, history-making flood, this time in Kentucky.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Preliminary assessments indicate rainfall in Graves County last week likely set <a href="https://www-washingtonpost-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/weather/2023/07/19/kentucky-flooding-mayfield-paducah-emergency/" target="_blank">a new record</a> for most precipitation in a 24-hour period, with <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/11/08/everything-everywhere-all-at-once/" target="_blank">11.28 inches</a> of rain. This would make it yet another “1,000-year” flood event, which had, according to historical projections, less than a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. One of the towns that experienced flash flooding was Mayfield, a community still rebuilding from a 2021 tornado that killed 57 people.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>This was just one of the 11 flash flood emergencies in as many days in the United States, <a href="https://twitter.com/HeatherZWeather/status/1681668141867315201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1681668141867315201%7Ctwgr%5E44e2578065172ecbc92eed6bc365024733a0e92e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww-washingtonpost-com.proxy.uchicago.edu%2Fweather%2F2023%2F07%2F19%2Fkentucky-flooding-mayfield-paducah-emergency%2F" target="_blank">according to</a> Weather Channel meteorologist Heather Zons. These events have claimed multiple lives: 2-year-old Mattie Shiels, 9-month-old brother, Conrad, and their mother, Katie Seley drowned after getting swept away by flash flooding in Pennsylvania, during an event that <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/search-resumes-2-missing-children-washed-mom-deadly/story?id=101340127" target="_blank">killed at least four others</a>. In New York earlier this month, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rare-flash-flood-warning-issued-new-york-woman-dies-trying-evacuate-rcna93346" target="_blank">43-year-old Pamela Nugent</a> was swept away trying to evacuate a flooded area; 63-year-old Stephen Davoll <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-drowns-home-vermonts-1st-recorded-flooding-death-rcna94274" target="_blank">drowned in his home</a> in Vermont.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Other catastrophic, deadly flooding events have occurred almost simultaneously around the globe. Just this weekend, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/atlantic-canada-province-wrestles-with-aftermath-devastating-floods-2023-07-23/" target="_blank">10 inches of rain fell on parts of Nova Scotia, Canada</a>, which is about as much as the region experiences over a period of three months. Four people, including two children, are still missing.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://thebulletin.org/2023/07/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-the-great-floods-of-2023/">Everything, everywhere, all at once: The great floods of 2023</a>, Jessica McKenzie, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 27, 2023</span></p><p></p></div>
A Cult of Ignorance...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/a-cult-of-ignorance
2023-09-29T21:28:39.000Z
2023-09-29T21:28:39.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12236332883,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12236332883,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12236332883?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Asimov image: <a href="https://karsh.org/isaac-asimov/" target="_blank">https://karsh.org/isaac-asimov/</a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"> </p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Sagan image: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0755981/" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0755981/</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Note: The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/">Nobel Prize</a> will be awarded starting Monday in Physiology, then Physics (my admitted favorite), Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Economics the following Monday. Thus, the concentration of the postings will be Nobel as they post. I will be “nerding out.”</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“There is <strong>a cult of ignorance</strong> in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding [its way] through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/674728243/A-Cult-of-Ignorance" target="_blank">Isaac Asimov</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">This is an often-used quote for memes from a <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/09/29/a-cult-of-ignorance/" target="_blank">longer essay</a> by Isaac Asimov, who was at the time a professor of biochemistry at Boston University and the author of 212 books of science and science fiction (an interesting “side hustle”). I provided the link above and below, highlighted with his name. Dr. Asimov had much to say about the state of affairs as he saw it during my freshman year at North Carolina A&T State University in 1980. It was also the year the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/us/study-finds-big-increase-in-black-men-as-inmates-since-1980.html#:~:text=By%20contrast%2C%20the%20study%20said,enrolled%20in%20colleges%20or%20universities.">New York Times</a> reported more black males in college than in the prison industrial complex. It was an election year and the year for the inaugural of 24-hour news media in Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN), which birthed copycats Fox and MSNBC in 1996. It’s hard to imagine that before Ted’s innovation, television wasn’t a profit-making enterprise as much as a public service. Pundits didn’t wear their party affiliations on their sleeves or give “opinions” on the “news.” Mostly, they did not lie to their audiences to goose ratings either.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Asimov’s poignant observation of the phrase <em>“Don’t trust anyone over 30”</em> had to morph to <em>“Don’t trust the experts”</em> since Neverland never existed. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (the “<a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#:~:text=Since%20entropy%20gives%20information%20about,state%20came%20later%20in%20time.">arrow of time</a>”) does, and did, meaning that those who gave that warning eventually would be untrustworthy after the “big 3-0.” Therefore, <em>“Don’t trust the experts”</em> became the foundation for railing against elites, which means anyone who goes to a library, pursues an education up to a terminal degree, or reads a book.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Experts created the <a href="https://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml#:~:text=DARPAnet%3A%20The%20Defense%20Department%20Takeover&text=The%20Defense%20Department%20adminstrated%20the,Department's%20willingness%20to%20sponsor%20it.">Internet</a>. Experts like “<a href="https://family.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/hidden-figures">Hidden Figures</a>” Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan enabled the United States to get to the Moon (there would be no “SpaceX” without them). Experts like <a href="https://abc7news.com/black-scientist-dr-kizzmekia-corbett-praised-covid-vaccine-kizzy-facui/8794247/">Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett</a> were one of many who helped to create the mRNA technology for the vaccines used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">But <em>“Don’t trust the experts,”</em> a vapid slogan or talking point if there ever was one.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Sloganeering in the <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sloganeering">Cambridge Dictionary</a> has a succinct and to-the-point definition: <em>“trying to persuade people by repeating phrases instead of explaining your ideas.”</em> It means the absence of an argument. Thus, there is a deliberate absence and avoidance of thinking or outlining to formulate a cogent framework, relying on volume and repetition so that others will begin following your “lead” from the sheer exhaustion of gaslighting.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">*****</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>The dumbing down of Americans is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of <strong>celebration of ignorance</strong>.”<br /> </em>― <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World">Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">*****</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Dr. Sagan published these words in 1995. Both authors’ works are still available years after their deaths.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Celebrating ignorance invariably leads to a cult of ignorance.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It is a cult of ignorance when expertise is assailed as bullying.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It is a cult of ignorance when your side can’t admit to losing the Civil War or a presidential election.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It is a cult of ignorance when Dr. Fauci, Senator Romney, the FBI, the CDC, elected officials, and VOLUNTEER election workers must shell out dollars to protect their families from raving lunatics who believe every conspiracy tall tale printed, uttered, tweeted, or truth-ed.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Source material: <a href="https://griotpoet.blogspot.com/2023/09/cult-of-ignorance.html">Cult of Ignorance</a></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Climate scientists are experts, yet they cannot be believed if the stupefying mantra is to be obeyed. The war against experts has always baffled me. No couple during Braxton Hicks contractions wants an Appalachian folk medicine doctor like Granny from the “Beverly Hillbillies” applying moonshine and a hacksaw or Norm, the mailman from the sitcom “Cheers” to start spitballing and wing it through the full delivery.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">But, “it’s<a href="https://www.tpr.org/podcast/the-source/2023-07-17/why-climate-change-denial-is-still-working"> the weather</a>,” following the <em>“Don’t trust the experts”</em> mantra, despite new Hurricane Katrinas repeated since 2005 across the globe, fire seasons in California and Canada, and women never having complications from <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ectopic-pregnancy/symptoms-causes/syc-20372088">ectopic pregnancies</a>, high blood pressure, depression, stillbirths that need intervention by what is now illegal in most neo-confederate states (“conservative” they are not) because of the “sanctity of life” until the children are old enough to be lead-sprayed by psychopaths. Because in terms of climate, some wish to induce the apocalypse, and because in terms of bodily autonomy, the stork brings all babies alive and well as requested to cisgender parents, and no “others.”</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">*****</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>I contend that the slogan “America’s right to know” is [a] meaningless one when we have an ignorant population and that the function of a free press is virtually zero when hardly anyone can read.</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>What shall we do about it?</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>We might begin by asking ourselves whether ignorance is so wonderful after all and whether it makes sense to denounce “elitism.”</em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>I believe that every human being with a physically normal brain can learn a great deal and be surprisingly intellectual. I believe that what we badly need is [<strong>a] social approval of learning and social rewards for learning.</strong></em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>We can <strong>all</strong> be members of the intellectual elite, and then, will a phrase like “America’s right to know” and, indeed, <strong>any true concept of democracy have any meaning.</strong></em></span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/674728243/A-Cult-of-Ignorance" target="_blank">Isaac Asimov</a></span></p><p> </p></div>
Pools, Climate Change and Miscegenation...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/pools-climate-change-and-miscegenation
2023-09-09T20:39:16.000Z
2023-09-09T20:39:16.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12220063478,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12220063478,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="558" alt="12220063478?profile=RESIZE_584x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Taken at <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/9060990/4144517955171088705#">Bethlehem Community Center</a> by the author, spring 2023</p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">© August 30, 2023, the Griot Poet</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“<u>Too few public pools</u></em></span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“There are more than 10 million private swimming pools in the United States, according to a C.D.C. estimate, compared with just 309,000 public ones. That figure includes pools that belong to condo complexes, hotels, and schools, so the number of pools truly accessible to the public is even smaller. The biggest reason so many Americans can’t swim is that they have too few places to learn to do so.</em></span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“Then the expansion stopped. In the 1960s, many towns across the South **<u>filled or destroyed their public pools</u>** rather than allow Black Americans to swim in them. Northern cities, strapped for resources amid suburbanization and white flight, struggled to maintain their pools. This is how public investment in pools withered, one more ghastly sacrifice America has laid at the altar of anti-Black racism and twisted fears about <a href="https://griotpoet.blogspot.com/2023/09/pools-climate-change-and-miscegenation.html" target="_blank">miscegenation</a>.”</em></span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Mara Gay, New York Times</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Source: <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/9060990/4144517955171088705#">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/drowning-public-pools-america.html</a></span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I came to Earth via Kate Bitting Hospital,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Now, Reynolds Clinic,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">On what used to be <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/9060990/4144517955171088705#">Seventh and Cleveland</a>, now Cleveland and Martin Luther King Avenue.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The segregated hospital was named after the wife of RJ Reynolds, the tobacco magnate,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">One of 12 hospitals for African Americans,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">It’s where my mother worked as a nurse,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">It, and all the others, no longer exists.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I attended Bethlehem Community Center for preschool and kindergarten.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">It was, and is, right up the street from the hospital,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">It was, and is, predominantly minority, with some immigrants,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">We once had a pool where I learned to swim, to my big sister’s chagrin (she found out abruptly after I dove into the deep end of a then-segregated pool).</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">That pool is now closed.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">On a recent visit to Bethlehem earlier this year, I saw the site where the pool once was now a surface cemented over.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">My old neighborhood is still De Facto segregated.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I being a rare exception, some have been trapped in “The Racist Matrix” for generations.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">A ghetto was brought over from Germany to the US.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">After Germany put on steroids, American eugenics.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">A place exquisitely designed to sequester possibilities and shatter dreams.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Black children are more likely to die from drowning,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Because if they HAD any pools in their neighborhoods, they’re cemented over.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">If you’re lucky, someone’s dad (like mine) erects one of those plastic above-ground, temporary pools and invites your friends to come over, play, and cool off in it.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Occam’s razor:</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Pair ceiled public pools with climate change,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The fear of water in black children,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The fear of miscegenation with white women,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Society has designed a slow crucifixion.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">We’re barreling towards <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/9060990/4144517955171088705#">3 degrees Celsius</a>,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">And the need for humans to keep cool in an ever-warming environment.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Who wins?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Which group has a survival advantage: 10 million private pools or 309,000 public ones?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Which groups are disadvantaged?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Are pools and universal healthcare inalienable human rights?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Or is this some National Security Study Memorandum 200/Thomas Malthus Eugenics strategy?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Or is their plan to keep a numeric majority to cook us before heaven or hellish eternities?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Who knows?</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I just know that my granddaughter can swim because her parents can afford her lessons at a swim club [for] it.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">It used to be that learning to swim didn’t require a middle-class wallet.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I just know that I attended,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Bethlehem Community Center from pre-k to kindergarten,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">I learned how to read, how to swim, and how to grieve our loss of Dr. Martin Luther King,</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">As rifle shots rang out [and] confederate flags in the parking lot passed by our windows.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">They were thrilled. We were devastated.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The same flag of insurrection was carried by their grandchildren at the US Capitol on January 6th.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The city of Winston-Salem left a cement surface like it was a marker to a tomb.</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Even pre-k, to kindergarten:</span></p><p style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Even there, in that innocence,</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">They couldn’t leave us <em>alone</em>...to swim.</span></p></div>
Until the Next July...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/until-the-next-july
2023-08-22T10:00:00.000Z
2023-08-22T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12201892655,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12201892655,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12201892655?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p>This map shows global temperature anomalies for July 2023 according to the GISTEMP analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperature anomalies reflect how July 2023 compared to the average July temperature from 1951-1980. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, NASA</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em><strong>Editor's Note: This release has been updated to add additional graphics and captions and to spell out the words degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius.</strong></em></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/08/22/until-the-next-july/" target="_blank">July 2023</a> was hotter than any other month in the global temperature record.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“Since day one, President Biden has treated the climate crisis as the existential threat of our time,” said Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor. Against the backdrop of record-high temperatures, wildfires, and floods, NASA’s analysis puts into context the urgency of President Biden’s unprecedented climate leadership. From securing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history, to invoking the Defense Production Act to supercharge domestic clean energy manufacturing, to strengthening climate resilience in communities nationwide, President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history.”</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Overall, July 2023 was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.24 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other July in NASA’s record, and it was 2.1 F (1.18 C) warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980. The primary focus of the <a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/">GISS analysis</a> is long-term temperature changes over many decades and centuries, and a fixed base period yields anomalies that are consistent over time. Temperature "normals" are defined by several decades or more - typically 30 years.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3279/nasa-clocks-july-2023-as-hottest-month-on-record-ever-since-1880/">NASA Clocks July 2023 as Hottest Month on Record Ever Since 1880</a></span></p><p></p></div>
Cartoon Network...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/cartoon-network
2023-08-14T10:00:00.000Z
2023-08-14T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12188414485,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12188414485,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12188414485?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Mick Fleetwood's Maui Restaurant destroyed in Maui fire. Allison Rapp, <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/mick-fleetwood-maui-restaurant-destroyed/">Ultimate Classic Rock</a></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Battery, Chemistry, Civics, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism</span></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12188414697,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12188414697,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="12188414697?profile=RESIZE_400x" width="353" /></a></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061262/?ref_=tt_mv_close">The Herculoids</a> were a Hanna-Barbara cartoon that only ran for two seasons, from 1967 to 1969. From ages five to seven, I didn't demand much from my Saturday morning viewing pleasure: good guys, bad guys, action, good guys pummel bad guys, in this case, casting them off the planet. We landed on the Moon in their last year of air (it's a shame that history is now controversial). Dr. King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated <em>In Medias Res</em>. My understanding of Physics and STEM came much later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Zandor, Tara, and Domo were the human protagonists defending planet "Amzot" (the writers threw spaghetti at the wall on <em>this</em> name). In a tepid reboot, they called it Quasar, a little more astrophysical but nonetheless kooky. They had a laser ray dragon (Zot), a rock ape (Igo), and a ten-legged rhino/triceratops hybrid that shot energy rocks from his snout (Tondro, the Terrific, because, yeah). Gloop and Gleep were human-sized, protoplasmic creatures called <em>"the formless, fearless wonders,"</em> with <strong>eyes,</strong> and Gleep, was somehow the "son" of Gloop, without genitalia or gender (go with the bit?). The humans also shot energy rocks from slingshots at the foes too dumb to leave Zandor and his jungle planet alone. If the rocks were made of <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/3/lithium">Lithium</a>, they shouldn't have lasted too long: one of its properties is its volatility in oxygenated atmospheres.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In 1967, I would have been five years old and not too demanding of my visual entertainment on <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/08/14/cartoon-network/" target="_blank">Saturday Morning Cartoons</a>, as this old form pastime was called.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Taking a few courses in Physics drives a probing question and observation:</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Where were the flocks of laser ray dragons, the congress of rock apes, the herds of rhino/triceratops hybrids, and what marshy bog did the "formless, fearless wonders" ascend from? It seemed Zot, Igo, Tondro, Gloop, and Gleep were the only ones of their kind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In "Sarko: The Arkman," Sarko kidnaps Domo, Igo, and Tondro for his "collection" on another planet. Zandor rides Zot with Gloop to ANOTHER PLANET without the need of a spaceship, escape velocity, pressurized spacesuits, protection from radiation, or the friction of reentry to Sarko's world. Even if the planet was in the same orbital plane as Amzot, it didn't appear to take him long, and he wasn't bruised by a single meteor during the trip nor tanned from radiation burns (or dead). Gleep clones five copies of himself to protect Tara then turns up in a scene making himself a pillow on Sarko's world to catch Domo. Zot flew escort to Sarko's ship on the way back to Amzot again, with no loss of life. <em>Did you follow all that?</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Five-year-olds don't need Physics lessons, just a simple plot, a lot of action, and taking care of "evil-doers" before you play outside after Saturday cartoons.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">It's magical thinking, but not a way to run human society.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"The human understanding is no dry light but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called <strong>'sciences as one would.'</strong> For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes. Therefore, he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of the deference to the <strong>opinion of the vulgar.</strong> Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding."</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Sir Francis Bacon, NOVUM ORGANON (1620)</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Maui is a dystopian hellscape. It is now the deadliest wildfire in American history: until the <em><strong>next</strong></em> one. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-did-hawaii-wildfires-start-what-know-about-maui-big-island-blazes-2023-08-11/">Reuters</a> reports the cause of the fire is unknown, but 85% of all wildfires are caused by humans, as is the anthropogenic climate disruption that helped light the match. Hurricane Dora energized the spread, fanning the flames across the island that was experiencing a drought. Part of Maui's problem is prior to the predictions of climate scientists coming true in recent real-time, Maui never had to prepare for drought conditions or massive wildfires. Did I mention the island chain is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean?</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Maui was the Capitol of the old kingdom of Hawaii before colonization. It was a tourist attraction and the seat of culture. Maui is the place where the Hula dance and the Samoan language were reconstituted and practiced. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2023/aug/11/maui-wildfire-burns-beloved-150-year-old-banyan-tree-hawaii-video">150-year-old banyan tree</a> burned in the flames. It will survive IF the roots survived the savage flames.</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>"Some 271 structures were destroyed or damaged, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser said, citing official reports from the U.S. Civil Air Patrol and Maui Fire Department."</em> Reuters</span></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">There is a throughline from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Hurricane Dora in Maui. That throughline is climate change, gestated into the climate crisis, birthed into climate catastrophe. In eighteen years, we have shuffled, obfuscated, and kicked the can down the road right into our children's and grandchildren's future. We have allowed political operators and lobbyists for the fossil fuels industry to quote their <strong>"science as one would"</strong>: <em>"It's summer." "There is no climate change." "It's a (fill in the blank) hoax." "How can there be global warming if New York is blanketed in snow?"</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-industries-used-same-researchers-to-sway-public1/">tobacco and fossil fuels industry</a> used the same researchers and <a href="https://law.yale.edu/fossil-fuel-industrys-tobacco-moment-has-arrived">same lawyers</a> to sway public opinion and sell their products. It is a myopic concentration on quarterly profits, not looking at the damage to the planet beneath them going forward. If Adam Smith's capitalism is our "salvation," there should be market-based solutions to ensure a functional civilization as corporations pursue profits and bought and paid-for politicians pursue policies that sustain both commerce and civilization.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Otherwise, their <strong>vulgar opinions</strong> have not offered solutions nor modeled societal collapse.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/more-than-half-of-earths-species-live-in-the-soil-study-finds-aoe?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=f53070c104-briefing-dy-20230809&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-f53070c104-43256685">The Guardian</a> reported from the National Academy of Science that more than 50% of life is in the soil beneath us. Life on Earth may survive our own hubris. It likely won't be intelligent or anything resembling human civilization.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Cartoon Network Physics is only good for five-year-olds on Saturday morning cartoons. There are no laser dragons, rock apes, rhino/triceratops-hybrids, and energy rocks to deploy to our rescue. It fails humanity in the long term. <strong>"Sciences as one would"</strong> has led us to this precipice. <strong>"Sciences as one acknowledges"</strong> will lead us away from it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Note: The blog will resume Monday - Friday postings on August 21st (traveling for work).</span></p><p> </p></div>
Change, Crisis, Catastrophe...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/change-crisis-catastrophe
2023-07-28T10:00:00.000Z
2023-07-28T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qoy9GJ63fPA" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></center><p> </p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Global Warming</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In my post on Friday, <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/07/14/thermodynamics/">two weeks ago</a>, I compared the Earth to a plastic or glass bottle in a microwave. Of course, YouTube has an example of someone not taking Thermodynamics seriously. After a LONG two minutes and some change, the explosion is a sad but apt metaphor for the climate change that we have allowed to become a crisis, barreling forward into a full-blown catastrophe. It’s dystopian what’s going on. A short list:</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In Italy, they’re discussing “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12332693/We-critical-situation-Crisis-talks-held-Italian-city-brought-knees-power-cuts-caused-scorching-47-6C-heatwave-half-million-people-affected.html">underground climate change</a>” as the summer is so hot it melted the insulation on their power grid underground. They’re also evacuating for wildfires.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">If you fall on the pavement in Phoenix, Arizona, you’re taken to the burn unit, as asphalt in Arizona has been measured at <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/its-so-hot-in-arizona-doctors-are-treating-patients-burned-by-falling-on-the-ground/">180-degree temperatures</a>. Well, it's below boiling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Off the coast of climate change-denying Florida, the ocean temperatures are <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/25/florida-ocean-temp-tops-over-101-degrees-fahrenheit-possible-record.html">101.4 degrees</a> Fahrenheit, balmy for a jacuzzi but catastrophic for coral that acts as a natural barrier to hurricanes and “us,” as it is in our food chain. Their death is the bellwether of coming food shortages, which of course, usually precipitates armed conflicts, either internal or international.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">At the behest of a classmate from NC A&T, my wife and I attended her family reunion in Fayetteville, NC, a week and weekend before my family reunion in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The similarities I recall were striking (they’ll make sense as to how this relates to our current situation):</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Good food! African American Family Reunions are legendary for spreading food, including fried chicken, baked beans, homemade macaroni and cheese, and potato salad.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Fellowship. I saw cousins I hadn’t seen in years. I did a “paint and sip” party, where I hadn’t painted ANYTHING in decades. It was a cathartic activity led by a therapy artist for people suffering from mental health crises like PTSD.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The purpose of the business meeting, in my friend’s and my family’s case, was the discussion where to have the NEXT family reunion. For my family, 2025 will be in California (Columbia, SC as a backup), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2027, and Greensboro, NC, in 2029.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In each case, planning for the NEXT family reunions assumes we have a functional planet to plan and experience them on.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Mathematics is said to be applied philosophy, physics applied mathematics, and engineering applied physics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">In America, policy is applied physics coupled with political realities.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Currently, in certain democracies, we have parties that concede to the reality of climate change and those obliged to the Fossil Fuels Industry, which is likely the most destructive industry, only second to military contractors.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Fossil Fuels has known about the effects of their product <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063#:~:text=In%202015%2C%20investigative%20journalists%20discovered,effects%20before%20the%20year%202050.%E2%80%9D">since the late seventies</a> when I was in high school. They <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4yxv/fossil-fuel-industry-opposing-climate-change-lawsuits-defended-big-tobacco">hired the same lawyers</a> who obfuscated the effects of cigarette smoking, enabled by spineless politicians who themselves, like drug dealers, weren’t smokers. The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm#:~:text=Cigarettes%20and%20Death,-Cigarette%20smoking%20causes&text=Cigarette%20smoking%20is%20estimated%20to%20cause%20the%20following%3A&text=More%20than%20480%2C000%20deaths%20annually,including%20deaths%20from%20secondhand%20smoke)">body count</a> rivals the holocaust.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">That body count was in the millions of humans volunteering to pollute their bodies. The coming body count will number in the hundreds of millions of climate refugees fleeing from coastal cities and the house-less dying from heat exhaustion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">The hoarding of wealth does not consume me, which is the basis of our <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/07/28/change-crisis-catastrophe/" target="_blank">current crisis</a>: industries and individuals who are too selfish to think beyond the current business quarter and the next quarter. That’s the span of their attention, and the only thing that will spark their attention is if any action they take is profitable and they can avoid paying taxes that help the rest of humanity they’re a part of.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">What is happening astonishes climate scientists. This dystopian hellscape was to occur in the year 2050: a twenty-seven-year acceleration.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Part of planning family reunions is the notion that there is a future and a hope to have children and add to the legacy of families.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations-2/">Millennials and GEN Z</a> are starting out living longer with their parents than previous generations, not purchasing their first home, not attending worship services, delaying or opting to NOT have children because they’re bereft of a future, or hope, stolen from them by a generation in its twilight, that doesn’t care about the wanton destruction they leave in the wake of their grandchildren due to mental depravity and greed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>“People with hoarding disorder have persistent difficulty getting rid of or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items. Attempts to part with possessions create considerable distress and lead to decisions to save them. The resulting clutter disrupts the ability to use living spaces (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).”</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Source: <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/hoarding-disorder/what-is-hoarding-disorder#:~:text=People%20with%20hoarding%20disorder%20have,to%20decisions%20to%20save%20them" target="_blank">https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/hoarding-disorder/what-is-hoarding-disorder#:~:text=People%20with%20hoarding%20disorder%20have,to%20decisions%20to%20save%20them</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">If you’re not used to sharing, you’re likely to use phrases like “socialism” and “communism” (or woke) when the fact is, you don’t care about anyone or anything other than yourself. This self-absorption will only buy them a few weeks at best after a full societal collapse. At that point, “billionaire” and “millionaire” are irrelevant titles with no places to spend.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><em>Part of planning family reunions is the notion that there is a future and a hope to have children and add to the legacy of families.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;">Because of the avarice of evil men (mostly), I’m starting to have my doubts.</span></p></div>
Megalomania...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/megalomania
2023-06-30T10:00:00.000Z
2023-06-30T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/09maaUaRT4M" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p><p style="text-align:center;">You’re going to have to pay me… One Billion Dollars! … Sorry, One Hundred Billion Dollars! Photo: Warner Bros; Getty Images, Jonathan Chait, <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/trumps-usd1-billion-china-demand-supposed-to-be-usd100-billion.html" target="_blank">NY Mag</a>, March 8, 2018</p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Diversity in Science, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights, Women in Science</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Megalomania:</strong> a mania for great or grandiose performance; a delusional mental illness that is marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Narcissistic Personality Disorder:</strong> a personality disorder characterized especially by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, persistent need for admiration, lack of empathy for others, excessive pride in achievements, and snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitudes </em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Useful Idiot:</strong> a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda. E.g., It is one task of the KGB [in 1982] to apply its skills of secrecy and deception to projecting the Soviet party's influence. This it does through contacts with legal Communist Parties abroad, with groups sympathetic to Soviet goals, with do-gooders of the type that Lenin once described as "useful idiots" ….</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">—The Wall Street Journal, all the above from Merriam-Webster.com</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Are we suffering from mass psychosis? Does it explain January 6, 2021, and the insanity that has descended from it? Was a substantial fraction of our nation led astray by a megalomaniacal, narcissistic useful idiot?</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>"A flood of negative emotions"</strong></em> is the business model of a lot of news outlets on the right. Determined to regain the audience lost after the Dominion settlement, Jesse Watters succeeds Tucker Carlson at the 8:00 hour, launching into a racist diatribe against the 44th president because they have to get their viewers back to repocket the $787.5 million dollars they had to pay out. Jesse, the "stable genius," forgot that Hawaii <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jesse-watters-barack-obama-american-perspective_n_649aa8aae4b0ccfd6dbe8e85" target="_blank">is our 50th state</a>, but that occurred almost immediately after November 4, 2008.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">When I was a senior in high school, 150 businesses owned everything we saw in print, on television, and heard on AM or FM radio. Now, with the expansion of the Internet, that ratio reduced EXPONENTIALLY to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6" target="_blank">six corporations</a>. With the expansion of the Internet, propaganda can be projected without a filter. Hitler deftly used radio to reach his masses, our current demagogue used Twitter until he was kicked off, and he was so devoted to this avenue he had to generate a knockoff to continue the conversation with his cult. <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/06/30/megalomania/" target="_blank">Megalomaniacs</a> never had it so good.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"Dr. Evil" was the antagonist in the Bond derivative "<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118655/" target="_blank">Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery</a>" and its natural sequel, "<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145660/" target="_blank">The Spy Who Shagged Me</a>." It's the type of flippant character that makes "team normal" think that no one could possibly be that over-the-top. Then, the year 2016 said, "Hold my beer."</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>Menticide:</strong> a systematic and intentional undermining of a person's conscious mind: BRAINWASHING - <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/menticide" target="_blank">Merrian-Webster.com</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Ms. Senko’s groundbreaking film examines the rise of right-wing media through the lens of her father, whose immersion in its daily propaganda had radicalized him. His new fanaticism rocked the very foundation of their family. She discovered that this phenomenon was occurring with alarming frequency in living rooms across America. The film reveals the consequences that this radicalized media is having on people, families, America, and the world.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/" target="_blank">The Brainwashing of My Dad (2015)</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Rush Limbaugh, of stogies, four traditional marriages (I guess he needed practice?), bombast and blatant racism (I guess why Clarence Thomas <em>liked</em> him?), was the Grand Pooh-Bah/Grand Dragon of an echo chamber that still persists long after his transition. Under the attack of menticide, 24/7 fearmongering on "the border," "CRT," "DEI," "Immigrants," "LGBT," "People of Color," and "Women with bodily autonomy" are the substitutes for "young bucks," "welfare queens," and "Barack the Magic Negro." Rush and his Zombie clones are ginning up fear on a regular basis, hacking everyone's reptilian brain stem made into mountains of gold and an unstable society. There must always be enemies for those who fear change and shadows.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">At its core, this is about resources. Resources are subdivided by hierarchies so that certain universities that are "elite" (and <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2017/09/04/shackled-legacy#:~:text=Profits%20from%20slavery%20and%20related,and%20served%20faculty%20and%20students." target="_blank">beneficiaries of enslaved peoples</a>) are picked first for employment after graduation. Most academic positions at universities seek the same graduates from the same elite PWI schools. Once the dust settles, universities will resegregate, and sadly will Fortune 500 businesses. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion only mattered as slogans to avoid lawsuits post-George Floyd. With the end of Affirmative Action, what holds them accountable if, like campuses, the diversity among the workforce declines? Who would care?</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Hierarchies have allowed societies from Egypt to England to rank and rate their populations into the worthy and the unworthy, the Brahmin and the Dalits, and the haves and the have-nots. "Occult" typically refers to magic, but it means hidden, and hiding knowledge is what gives a group self-designated as rulers of the rest their edge. "Conserving" the status quo allows for the continued acquisition of wealth beyond avarice and passing it on to their progeny. That means ignoring inequities, and climate crises, particularly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/06/27/extreme-heat-texas-heatwave/" target="_blank">heat waves</a> in Texas's case since most of the workers affected happen to be BIPOC. The "Supreme Court" repealed Roe vs. Wade, Affirmative Action yesterday. What was left untouched: athletic programs, legacy enrollments, the children of employees, and millionaire gifts by benefactors like Fred Trump, that got his <a href="https://theweek.com/speedreads/851585/may-explain-how-trump-got-into-penns-wharton-school" target="_blank">stupid son into Penn</a>, and Jared Kushner, who, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard" target="_blank">by his grades</a>, couldn't have gotten into Harvard without daddy-the-jailbird's help. Roe and Affirmative Action were both decided by the Warren Court, an Eisenhower appointee. The Roberts "Court," appointed by "W," who lost the popular vote in 2000, and his Republican successor, who appointed three justices, losing the popular vote in BOTH elections, is determined to repeal the 20th Century and is coming for the 21st in LGBT rights. I use quotes in that the Roberts junta is neither supreme in the practice of law nor a court of jurisprudence. It is the extension of libertarian billionaires, the mythology propagandists of "reverse discrimination," and thus fascistic.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Ayn Rand, for the moment, has won. Welcome to 1953.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">This paradigm of looking back to "great again" is unsustainable. We cannot solve income disparities going back to the fifties. No new technical designs will come from the back of the bus. The LGBT will not be returning to the closet to make closeted, cisgender couples feel comfortable in their camouflage bigotry, nor has a single-banned drag show stopped a single gun massacre in America. Women will not be returning to the kitchen and the state of barefoot and pregnant because that idyllic "Leave it to Beaver" Levittown never existed, except in "master-planned communities." <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/4073556-read-jackson-dissent-supreme-court-affirmative-action/" target="_blank">Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson's dissent</a> is poetry.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We're not going back.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We have to figure out climate change, sustainability, and feeding eight billion souls that are growing at an exponential pace that will take us to <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-projections/" target="_blank">nine billion in 2037</a> and ten billion in 2057. I won't be here, but my granddaughter will be. A lot of grandchildren will be. Hoping for starships is like wishing on magic lanterns.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">There is no functional analog in nature to a billionaire. Insects run their colonies via pheromones, and the most significant member of the colony is the Queen: males are drones and sperm donors. Patriarchy is a human construct.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) nevertheless estimates that annual investments of $39 billion to $50 billion would be required to achieve a world without hunger by 2030.</em> Source: <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/elon-musk-billionaires-and-the-united-nations-the-1-solution-to-global-development/#:~:text=The%20U.N.'s%20Food%20and,world%20without%20hunger%20by%202030." target="_blank">Brookings Institution</a>.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">But they won't. The core of their <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hoarding-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20356056#:~:text=Hoarding%20disorder%20is%20an%20ongoing,regardless%20of%20their%20actual%20value." target="_blank">Hoarding Disorder</a> is maintaining the inequity that puts them at the apex of society's pyramid; they've mistaken a designed system as "natural," making them apex predators. Only the second part is correct.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Overcoming poverty is <a href="http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/2005/050203_poverty.htm">not a gesture of charity</a>. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.”</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>— Nelson Mandela</strong></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I'm revamping the SAT program, which ended during the pandemic, for as long as it lasts, with an online component. We'll also discuss strategies to apply to the colleges and universities they desire. The youth are relevant to our shared future and survival.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">On a dysfunctional planet, billionaire status is irrelevant.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won; you earn it and win it in every generation.”</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>— Coretta Scott King</strong></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">― <strong>Thomas Paine, </strong><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/154165">The American Crisis</a></span></span></p></div>
Lived Well...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/lived-well
2023-06-27T10:00:00.000Z
2023-06-27T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12127175664,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12127175664,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="489" height="443" alt="12127175664?profile=RESIZE_400x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Positive (+): LiMO<sub>2</sub> <--> Li<sub>1-x</sub>MO</span></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Negative (-): xLi<sup>+</sup> + xe<sup>-</sup> + C <--> Li<sub>x</sub>C</span></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">M = transition metal</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">NANO 761: Introduction to Nano Energy, Lecture 4 - Lithium Ion Battery, Cathode to Anode, Spring 2018, JSNN</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Battery, Climate Change, Green Tech, History, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>John B. Goodenough, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin who is known around the world for the development of the lithium-ion battery, died Sunday at the age of 100. Goodenough was a dedicated public servant, a sought-after mentor, and a brilliant yet humble inventor.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>His discovery led to the wireless revolution and put electronic devices in the hands of people worldwide. In 2019, Goodenough made national and international headlines after being awarded the <a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2019/10/09/nobel-prize-in-chemistry-goes-to-john-goodenough-of-the-university-of-texas-at-austin/" target="_blank">Nobel Prize in chemistry</a> for his battery work, an award many of his fans considered a long time coming, especially as he became the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“John’s legacy as a brilliant scientist is immeasurable — his discoveries improved the lives of billions of people around the world,” said UT Austin President Jay Hartzell. “He was a leader at the cutting edge of scientific research throughout the many decades of his career, and he never ceased searching for innovative energy-storage solutions. John’s work and commitment to our mission are the ultimate reflection of our aspiration as Longhorns — that what starts here changes the world — and he will be greatly missed among our UT community.”</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2023/06/26/ut-mourns-lithium-ion-battery-inventor-and-nobel-prize-recipient-john-goodenough/" target="_blank">UT Mourns Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor and Nobel Prize Recipient John Goodenough</a>, UT News</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Until the announcement of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/science/nobel-prize-chemistry.html">his selection as a Nobel laureate</a>, Dr. Goodenough was relatively unknown beyond scientific and academic circles and the commercial titans who exploited his work. He achieved his laboratory breakthrough in 1980 at the University of Oxford, where he created a battery that has populated the planet with smartphones, laptop, and tablet computers, lifesaving medical devices like cardiac defibrillators, and clean, quiet plug-in vehicles, including many Teslas, that can be driven on long trips, lessen the impact of climate change and might someday replace gasoline-powered cars and trucks.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Like most modern technological advances, the powerful, lightweight, rechargeable lithium-ion battery is a product of incremental insights by scientists, lab technicians, and commercial interests over decades. But for those familiar with the battery’s story, Dr. Goodenough’s contribution is regarded as the crucial link in its development, a linchpin of chemistry, physics, and <strong>engineering on a molecular scale.</strong></em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/science/john-goodenough-dead.html" target="_blank">John B. Goodenough, 100, Dies; Nobel-Winning Creator of the Lithium-Ion Battery</a>, Robert D. McFadden, New York Times</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Before I met Professor Steve Wienberg, I had read my cousin Wilbur's copy of "The First Three Minutes." Little did I know that he would <a href="https://physics4thecool.blogspot.com/2015/06/to-explain-world.html" target="_blank">autograph it for me</a> or that I would meet him, along with his former student (and my friend, Dr. Mark G. Raizen), at the National Society of Black Physicists in the <a href="https://physics4thecool.blogspot.com/2011/09/thursday-night.html" target="_blank">fall of 2011</a> in Austin, Texas.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I never met <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/06/27/lived-well/" target="_blank">John B. Goodenough</a>, but I did study his theories in a class on battery nanomaterials at my <a href="https://jsnn.ncat.uncg.edu/" target="_blank">graduate school</a>. "Engineering on a molecular scale" is essentially what I studied in Nanoengineering, as batteries will only store charges longer and get better at the nanomaterials level. This is the way we will make the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner, more income-equitable options.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Ph.D. seemed so far away until the Hooding Ceremony. A few things about the tributes struck and moved me deeply:</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">He and his wife had no children, but Dr. Goodenough was enthusiastic about teaching, mentoring, and giving back. UT said he often donated any honorarium to the university.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">He was from a home that, from the NY Times, was neglectful to him and indifferent.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">He suffered from dyslexia and overcame it to achieve a Ph.D. in 1952 and a Nobel Prize at 97 in 2019. Everyone has their struggles, but for the love of science, he overcame them without excuses. A HUGE part of obtaining a degree in a STEM field is pure <strong>grit. </strong>Some of us quit too early from our dreams or debase our abilities before we even try.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The modern age we take for granted is possible because of humble spirits in laboratories, coding software, at dry erase boards full of equations who pushed a little further than any of their self-doubts. We are fortunate they pressed forward.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes</strong></em> - First recorded by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. Also commonly known by the letters of Isaac Newton: <em><strong>"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."</strong></em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12127178263,RESIZE_1200x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12127178263,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="12127178263?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">John B. Goodenough in 2017. Two years later, when he was 97 and still active in research at the University of Texas at Austin, he became the oldest Nobel Prize winner in history. Credit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times</span></span></p></div>
Critical, or Magical...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/critical-or-magical
2023-06-23T10:00:00.000Z
2023-06-23T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}12126818500,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}12126818500,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="698" alt="12126818500?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Science Fiction, Star Trek</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Critical thinking</strong> is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Source: <a href="https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766" target="_blank">The Foundation for Critical Thinking</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Magical thinking</strong></em> is <em>the belief that one’s ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s inner, personal experience and the external physical world. Examples include beliefs that the movement of the Sun, Moon, and wind or the occurrence of rain can be influenced by one’s thoughts or by the manipulation of some type of symbolic representation of these physical phenomena.</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Source: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/magical-thinking" target="_blank">Britannica Online</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Testifying before Congress, Carl Sagan called out the mainstream media of his day as to why there was (and still is) a daily horoscope, but not even a <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/rHg1sgjAKHo?feature=share" target="_blank">weekly science column</a>. When the Nobel Prizes come out - I try to post them all: science categories, Economics, Literature, and Peace - you're likely going to see more here than you will on traditional media. It is still now rare, as it was during Carl's crusade for science literacy. I can remember when "A&E" and "TLC" were the acronyms for Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel, not the homes of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Dynasty" target="_blank">Duck Dynasty</a>, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Honey_Boo_Boo" target="_blank">Honey Boo-Boo</a>. Sagan would be woefully disappointed.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Which is more likely a problem that can be tackled and solved: <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/06/23/critical-or-magical/" target="_blank">climate change or warp drive</a>? Granted, I'm a <a href="https://www.startrek.com/" target="_blank">Trekkie</a> from TOS days, The Animated Series (TAS), TNG, DS9, VOY, Enterprise, Discovery, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds. As much as I enjoy the storytelling, similar to Ali Baba, or Aladdin, I'm not interested in the physics of flying carpets, because that is a plot device, like <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InertialDampening" target="_blank">inertia dampeners</a> or <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-Heisenberg-compensator" target="_blank">Heisenberg compensators</a>. Yes, there's a lot of theoretical research on <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110015936/downloads/20110015936.pdf" target="_blank">warp field mechanics</a> since the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013" target="_blank">1994 paper by Miguel Alcubierre</a>. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, the efforts will likely yield <em><strong>something</strong></em> close to 0.1 - 0.25c, which is pretty fast, leagues beyond our <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/466711main_AP_ST_ShuttleAscent.pdf" target="_blank">current rocket speeds</a>. The reason Trek did a LOT of time travel is, superluminal speeds would <em>permit</em> it, and eventually the Grandfather Paradox: A begets B, B begets C, but if C travels back in time, and kills A, did C ever make the trip if he never existed (see: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/definition/causality/" target="_blank">Causality</a>)?</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We will probably "boldly go" to the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/asteroids/in-depth/" target="_blank">Asteroid Belt</a>, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. With eight billion souls and climbing, we have a lot of physics problems to solve on Gaia.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">However, exploration of our solar system cannot happen if, beyond sense, we allow the planet's temperatures to continue to climb.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>A.1 Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with the global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals (high confidence). {2.1, Figure 2.1, Figure 2.2}</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>A.1.1 Global surface temperature was 1.09°C [0.95 to 1.20] °C5 higher in 2011-2020 than 1850-19006, with larger increases over land (1.59 [1.34 to 1.83] °C) than over the ocean (0.88 [0.68 to 1.01] °C). Global surface temperature in the first two decades of the 21st century (2001-2020) was 0.99 [0.84 to 1.10] °C higher than 1850-1900. Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years (high confidence). {2.1.1, Figure 2.1}</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>A.1.2 The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850-1900 to 2010-20197 is 0.8°C to 1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C. Over this period, it is likely that well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs) contributed a warming of 1.0°C to 2.0°C8, and other human drivers (principally aerosols) contributed a cooling of 0.0°C to 0.8°C, natural drivers changed global surface temperature by –0.1°C to +0.1°C, and internal variability changed it by –0.2°C to +0.2°C. {2.1.1, Figure 2.1}</em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">There's more: <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/" target="_blank">AR6 Synthesis Report - Climate Change 2023 | Summary for Policymakers</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Our science focus should be here on Terra Firma and the pursuit of continuing human civilization. Without it, civilization, sustainability, and space travel is impossible.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Critical thinking will help us all survive. We will have to cooperate, make lasting changes, reduce income inequality; eliminate global poverty, remediate houseless citizens, and proceed forward, changing the very structure of our civilization, what we focus on as important and esteem as admirable. Billionaires are not superheroes, and beyond fantasy roles, have no function or analog in nature.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Magical thinking, believing that the climate crisis does not exist, hoarding resources while refusing to pay taxes in one's home country and hiding it in shelters overseas from yours, whistling past the climate graveyard, won't.</span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em></em></span></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"></span></span></p></div>
X-rays, Bond Breaks, and Climate…
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/x-rays-bond-breaks-and-climate
2023-06-06T02:10:45.000Z
2023-06-06T02:10:45.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11433450673,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11433450673,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="657" alt="11433450673?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">An X-ray flash illuminates a molecule. Credit: Raphael Jay</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Chemistry, Climate Change, Green Tech, High Energy Physics, Research, X-rays</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The use of short flashes of X-ray light brings scientists one big step closer to <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/06/05/x-rays-bond-breaks-and-climate/" target="_blank">developing better catalysts</a> to transform the greenhouse gas methane into a less harmful chemical. The result, published in the journal <strong>Science</strong>, reveals for the first time how carbon-hydrogen bonds of alkanes break and how the catalyst works in this reaction.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, is being released into the atmosphere at an increasing rate by livestock farming and the unfreezing of permafrost. Transforming methane and longer-chain alkanes into less harmful and, in fact, useful chemicals would remove the associated threats and, in turn, make a huge feedstock for the chemical industry available. However, transforming methane necessitates, as a first step, the breaking of a C-H bond, one of the strongest chemical linkages in nature.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Forty years ago, molecular metal catalysts that can easily split C-H bonds were discovered. The only thing found to be necessary was a short flash of visible light to "switch on" the catalyst, and, as by magic, the strong C-H bonds of alkanes passing nearby are easily broken almost without using any energy. Despite the importance of this so-called C-H activation reaction, it remained unknown over the decades how that catalyst performs this function.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The research was led by scientists from Uppsala University in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, Stockholm University, Hamburg University, and the European XFEL in Germany. For the first time, the scientists were able to directly watch the catalyst at work and reveal how it breaks those C-H bonds.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>In two experiments conducted at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the researchers were able to follow the delicate exchange of electrons between a rhodium catalyst and an octane C-H group as it gets broken. Using two of the most powerful sources of X-ray flashes in the world, the X-ray laser SwissFEL and the X-ray synchrotron Swiss Light Source, the reaction could be followed all the way from the beginning to the end. The measurements revealed the initial light-induced activation of the catalyst within 400 femtoseconds (0.0000000000004 seconds) to the final C-H bond breaking after 14 nanoseconds (0.000000014 seconds).</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/phys.org/news/2023-06-x-rays-visualize-nature-strongest-bonds.amp" target="_blank">X-rays visualize how one of nature's strongest bonds breaks</a>, Uppsala University, Phys.org.</span></span></p></div>
A Charge for all Seasons...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/a-charge-for-all-seasons
2023-05-18T10:00:00.000Z
2023-05-18T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11129074899,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11129074899,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11129074899?profile=RESIZE_584x" width="534" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">The new composition for fluorine-containing electrolytes promises to maintain high battery charging performance for future electric vehicles even at sub-zero temperatures. (Image by Shutterstock.)</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Battery, Chemistry, Climate Change, Global Warming, Lithium, Materials Science</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Scientists developed a <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/05/18/a-charge-for-all-seasons/" target="_blank">new and safer electrolyte</a> for lithium-ion batteries that work as well in sub-zero conditions as it does at room temperature.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Many owners of electric vehicles worry about how effective their batteries will be in very cold weather. Now new battery chemistry may have solved that problem.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>In current <a href="https://www.anl.gov/science-101/batteries" target="_blank">lithium-ion batteries</a>, the main problem lies in the liquid electrolyte. This key battery component transfers charge-carrying particles called ions between the battery’s two electrodes, causing the battery to charge and discharge. But the liquid begins to freeze at sub-zero temperatures. This condition severely limits the effectiveness of charging electric vehicles in cold regions and seasons.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>To address that problem, a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories developed a fluorine-containing electrolyte that performs well even in sub-zero temperatures.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Our research thus demonstrated how to tailor the atomic structure of electrolyte solvents to design new electrolytes for sub-zero temperatures.” — John Zhang, Argonne group leader.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Our team not only found an antifreeze electrolyte whose charging performance does not decline at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, but we also discovered, at the atomic level, what makes it so effective,” said Zhengcheng “John” Zhang, a senior chemist and group leader in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>This low-temperature electrolyte shows promise of working for batteries in electric vehicles, as well as in energy storage for electric grids and consumer electronics like computers and phones.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.anl.gov/article/an-electric-vehicle-battery-for-all-seasons" target="_blank">An electric vehicle battery for all seasons</a>, Joseph E. Harmon, Argonne National Labs</span></span></p></div>
The Illusion of Perfection...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/the-illusion-of-perfection
2023-05-07T20:00:43.000Z
2023-05-07T20:00:43.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11072547697,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11072547697,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11072547697?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="640" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Source - Jati: The Caste System in India, <a href="https://asiasociety.org/education/jati-caste-system-india#:~:text=The%20caste%20system%2C%20as%20it,them%20in%20order%20of%20status." target="_blank">Asia Society</a></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, COVID-19, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“In America, this battle to wipe out whole ethnic groups was fought not by armies with guns nor by hate sects at the margins. Rather, this pernicious white-gloved war was prosecuted by esteemed professors, elite universities, wealthy industrialists, and government officials colluding in a racist, pseudoscientific movement called eugenics. The purpose: create a superior Nordic race.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“To perpetuate the campaign, widespread academic fraud combined with almost unlimited corporate philanthropy to establish the biological rationales for persecution. Employing a hazy amalgam of guesswork, gossip, falsified information, and polysyllabic academic arrogance, the eugenics movement slowly constructed a national bureaucratic and judicial infrastructure to cleanse America of “the unfit.” Specious intelligence tests, colloquially known as IQ tests, were invented to justify the incarceration of a group labeled “the feebleminded.” Often the so-called feebleminded were just shy, too good-natured to be taken seriously, or [simply] spoke the wrong language or were the wrong color. Mandatory sterilization laws were enacted in some twenty-seven states to prevent targeted individuals from reproducing more of their kind. Marriage prohibition laws proliferated throughout the country to stop race mixing. Collusive litigation was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sanctified eugenics and its tactics.”</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">“<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/war-against-the-weak-edwin-black/1114018698" target="_blank">War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race</a>,” Edwin Black, page xv, Introduction (paperback edition)</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I purposely did not watch the coronation of now King Charles and his former mistress Camilla. Many tuned in for the “Pomp and Circumstance” of the ceremony. As a descendant of kidnapped Africans, thus far, uncompensated in the form of reparations, it was antithetical for me to celebrate the origins of the global slave trade that displaced so many for the enrichment of so few.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">It was also interesting to see how they managed the public relations fiasco of Harry and Meghan, the former Duke and Duchess of Winsor. Giving their estate to Jeffrey Epstein, associated with Prince Andrew, both virtue-signaled to the intolerant in the United Kingdom and pedophiles that “happy ever after” was always a facade of mind and propaganda.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/05/07/the-illusion-of-perfection/" target="_blank">The illusion of perfection</a> is pursued first by setting up a hierarchy, a societal pyramid that, at its apogee, are the humans who, by political fiat and outright brutality, have set themselves apart from the rabble as the elite, the wealthy, the one-percent: the closest things to gods in the flesh the rabble can think of.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">In India, the illusion takes the form of the Caste System:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">At the apogee are the Brahmin, the Priest, the closest to the gods; therefore, the closest things to gods the people below the apogee have ever seen.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Below that is the warrior caste, Kyshatriyia. In a human body analogy, the Brahmin is its head, and Kyshatriyia is its arms.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Vaisya is the merchants and landowners – the torso.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Commoners, peasants, and servants are called Sudra – the feet.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Beneath the feet are the outcasts, the untouchables, the unredeemable called Dalets. Their lot is the clean the streets and latrines.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Within the caste system or Jati, individuals cannot raise themselves in the societal pecking order. Still, the entire GROUP can by emulating another group above it (no explanation given at the link as to who, or what judges an entire group rising from mediocrity in the pecking order).</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Isabelle Wilkenson based her book, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653196/caste-by-isabel-wilkerson/" target="_blank">Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents</a>,” first on the Indian System, then compared it to the German System during WWII, and finally to the American System that seems self-reinforcing by inertia, almost perpetual.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The illusion of perfection debases the lives of the Indigenous: the Aborigines in Australia and the First Nation Peoples in North, Central, and South America. Continents populated with peoples who have a culture, languages spoken and written, historical records, and civilizations are raized out of existence because if they don’t worship the same as Europeans if they don’t speak like Europeans, if they don’t particularly look like Europeans, they are irrelevant, they are unpersons, Aborigines, African Americans, Dalets. In this case, “black lives don’t matter” because they never did.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">As I type this, the illusion of perfection has visited an outlet mall outside of Dallas, Texas, in Allen, where I have close relatives. We now have more gun massacres than we have days in the year, and the only way it will improve is if it suddenly stops tomorrow. Newsflash: It won’t. The illusion of perfection can only be reinforced by violence. Showing facts, history, and scientific data invites backlash and a brutally efficient gaslighting operation through Secretary Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy.”</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The illusion of perfection punches down at the weak (fill in the blank for any outgroup you might know or belong to) because it always has. It’s “easy” to punch down on immigrants because the “gang of eight” proposed the only solution before Marco Rubio ran for president. It’s “easy” to lambast the LGBT community because the “solution” they won’t vocalize would sound a lot like German concentration camps or the <a href="https://youtu.be/u47-Dz83Oq4" target="_blank">hanging wall</a> in “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/9780771008795" target="_blank">The Handmaid’s Tale</a>” by Margaret Atwood. If the "horse is out of the barn," then the original door was opened by the Brown vs. Board of Education 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court (1954), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Richard and Mildred Loving vs. Virginia, 1967, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Roe vs. Wade, 1973 (repealed in 2023), Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015: if you repeal one part of the 20th and the early part of the 21st Century, you must using the darkest, cynical logic, repeal it all.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">In the illusion of perfection, Dr. Edwin Black focuses on eugenics, but isn’t eugenics a form of secular religiosity? Both have an elite, the chosen, the pure: the elect who deserve, and the "others" who are damned. As he pointed out, whole universities and academic tomes devoted themselves to reinforcing what amounted to a lie. Still, like any broadcast on Fox Propaganda, it was a lie that a large swath of people wanted to believe.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The illusion of perfection has the same septuagenarian running against the same (now) octogenarian who repaired the damage post-COVID the septuagenarian caused. The octogenarian is trailing the septuagenarian because the octogenarian – four years senior to the septuagenarian, isn’t “entertaining” (or racist). I guess they never saw the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/GfdC5Pn5kCY?feature=share" target="_blank">White House Correspondence Dinner</a> the septuagenarian avoided due to a lack of a sense of deprecating humor and an easily bruised ego (the octogenarian killed it, by the way). The octogenarian was VP to the first and only African American president, and his VP is the descendant of an African American father and an Indian mother. I'm glad he's not racist.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">In a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/06/shooting-allen-texas-mall/?fbclid=IwAR2Hh0T_XwPxF79dxMRwH7wL1wDYLzOWqGb2IMIgQBSi4J1Tgec_l8YS_-M" target="_blank">Washington Post</a> article about the latest sacrifice to American Moloch, the congressional representative for the mall ended with this vapid statement because the gun lobby and NRA made him memorize the script like an automaton:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Rep. Keith Self (R), who represents the Allen area in Congress, said on CNN that people who were calling for gun control, rather than just thoughts and prayers, ‘don’t believe in an almighty God … who is absolutely in control of our lives.’</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“’[People] want to make this political, but prayers are important,’ he said.”</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>Allen, Texas</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">© May 7, 2023, the Griot Poet</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">“Thoughts and prayers” means</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I refuse to legislate</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">While the gun lobby pays!</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I have a sneaking suspicion that Representative Keith Self(ish) doesn’t believe in any other almighty God in his particular religion other than Mammon.</span></span></p></div>
Green Transition...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/green-transition
2023-04-11T10:00:00.000Z
2023-04-11T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11026284883,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11026284883,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="11026284883?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Photo: Getty Images</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Battery, Chemistry, Climate Change, Economics, Global Warming</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Welcome back to The Green Era, a weekly newsletter bringing you the news and trends in the world of sustainability. Click subscribe above to be notified of future editions.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The shift to renewable energy has caused consternation over the fate of workers in the fossil fuel industry. Those same concerns are hitting the automotive sector as U.S. demand for electric vehicles grows.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>EVs require not just new assembly lines and parts but also factories to build the batteries that power them. The president of one of the biggest unions <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/business/energy-environment/ohio-electric-vehicles-jobs.html">called the transition</a> the largest in the industry’s history.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The automotive sector and its workers are not new to factory closures. The Great Recession brought the big three automakers to their knees, forcing the federal government to bail them out, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/detroits-comeback-slipped-away-can-small-businesses-save-jordyn-dahl/">leaving cities like Detroit</a> and large swaths of the midwest with car workers out of a job.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>This time could be different. Many factories are being converted and are investing in <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/04/11/green-transition/" target="_blank">retraining</a> their workers. The batteries and charging infrastructure required present another opportunity. Ford, General Motors, and Volkswagen are all building new battery manufacturing plants or expanding existing ones in Tennessee.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ev-transition-changing-workers-skills-state-economies-jordyn-dahl/" target="_blank">The EV transition is changing workers’ skills and state economies</a>, Jordyn Dahl, LinkedIn</span></span></p></div>
Innocence...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/innocence
2023-04-07T10:00:00.000Z
2023-04-07T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11022029255,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11022029255,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="11022029255?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="640" /></a></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: African Americans, Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Diversity in Science, Environment, Existentialism, Fascism, Global Warming, Human Rights</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>Trauma at 55</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">© April 3, 2023, the Griot Poet</span></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Graduation day.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">No child smiling because we</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Lost Martin Thursday.</span></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">April is <a href="https://poets.org/national-poetry-month" target="_blank">National Poetry Month</a>. This photo of five-year-old me inspired my haiku about my kindergarten graduation. It should have been a happy day with parents in the audience.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on Thursday, <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/04/07/innocence/" target="_blank">April 4, 1968</a>. Our graduation was scheduled for Friday at Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">All thirty-six students were blissfully unaware of the political earthquake that this was or that it had occurred. As we all aged, we probably learned of the death threats and the near assassination by a deranged woman at a book signing. We were unaware of the "Missiles of October" in 1962, barely scratching the planet's surface or taking our first steps before potential Armageddon. Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi in June of 1963, and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November of the same year in Dallas when we were a little over a year old. Brother Malcolm was assassinated in February 1965 when we were almost three. I don't recall the University of Texas. Clock Tower shooting in 1966, but we were four then. My classmates, like me, probably heard a program on the local radio station, WAAA-AM, on Sundays from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "Martin Luther King Speaks." At that time, the caveat was that he spoke, addressing his audience directly over AM, the complete analog of today's social media. What are now tapes or YouTube videos for later generations: it was him, alive, breathing, and speaking. Martin, then Robert F. Kennedy, June 6, the president's brother <em>running</em> for president, fell that year.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I recall my mother kissing me profusely, promising to be there for the graduation, and saying "I love you" repeatedly. I had no doubts about that.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I also remember my father's eyes: red with bloodshot, dried tears on his cheeks. To that point in my brief existence, the thought of him crying was alien, foreign.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The kindergarten teachers sat us down. We assumed to prepare us for the costumes we would wear – white shorts, shirts, and bow ties for the boys, and skirts for the girls.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>"Children, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot yesterday and died."</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Stunned silence.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I am on the front row, the photo's first student on the left. The eighth student on that row is a girl who I recall having a crush on: she has her right knee pointing towards her left leg. She would break the silence before our ceremony with an ear-piercing screech, repetitive, inconsolable grief beyond her years, perhaps mimicked from a funeral. We all knew what "died" meant. In some form or fashion, by five, you have lost beloved pets or relatives that you never thought would leave the Earth.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The seed from her grief cascaded through the graduates like a malignant vine. The time was 9:00. We cried for two hours, during which someone with a pickup truck, a rebel flag flying, drove through the parking lot, yelling over and over so our young ears and teachers could hear him, <em>"Martin Luther Coon's dead! Yahoo! The South will rise again!"</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I lay on the linoleum, palm heels in my eye sockets, wailing my [own] notes. The teachers were crying with us, trying to console themselves and us, allowing us our grief. We went down for a nap at 11:00. Perhaps our teachers did too.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We went out for a brief recess, probably to clear the fog from our brains, but as I recall, we moved like zombies, with no one on the seesaw, children sitting, staring numbly on the swings, and no action on the monkey bars. Then we went in and got dressed.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Our parents would be there at 1:30 pm. I have described why not a single child graduating in the photo was smiling. Staring at my unsmiling, well, forced smiling parents, I remember this poignant thought post-grief beyond my brief years:</span></span></p><p> </p><p><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"We're not kids anymore!"</span></span></em></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We would all start first grade in the fall without him.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I hugged my big sister tightly that evening, a student activist in the Civil Rights Movement attending Winston-Salem State University, because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what "died" meant.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">*****</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>Devolution</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">(Post-Cold War and 9/11)</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">© April 4, 2023, the Griot Poet</span></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I did duck-and-hide</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Drills, kids as cold warriors:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Now, active shooter.</span></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">My employer hosted an Active Shooter/Stop the Bleeding training at my facility on probably the most insensitive date they could pick on the calendar: the 55<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King. As the first haiku eludes, time does not heal trauma. For the first half, both instructors had experience in law enforcement and the military. The second set of three instructors from a local trauma center featured a combat medic, who taught us through a cadaver dummy to stuff gauze from a "stop the bleeding kit" (there is a <a href="https://www.stopthebleed.org/" target="_blank">website</a> to order directly).</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I participated in the class vigorously to fight the "sugar crash" from the doughnuts offered.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">We saw a lot of videos, one featuring the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/newss-footage-of-washington-navy-yard-shooter/view" target="_blank">shooter</a> in the Naval Shipyards gun massacre. The other was the <a href="https://youtu.be/Z4g3ZiyZYoo" target="_blank">bodycam video</a> from the recent incident in Tennessee at a Christian School where three adults in their early sixties (around my same age) and three nine-year-old children were sacrificed on the altar of American <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/molech#:~:text=Definition%20of%20'Molech'&text=1.,Word%20origin" target="_blank">Moloch</a>. The original intent of particularly white evangelical Christian schools was to protect the "<a href="https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-private-schools-and-race-in-the-american-south/" target="_blank">innocence</a>" of their children from sitting next to someone like me. Somehow "thoughts and prayers" for a Christian school, no doubt inspired by Brown vs. Board of Education being actualized in the South, seemed oxymoronic.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"Duck-and-hide," or more accurately, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/duck-cover-drills-cold-war-arms-race" target="_blank">duck-and-cover</a>, where drills were part of civilian preparedness in the event World War Three spontaneously broke out. They gave us manuals we should read (I still have mine). The teachers and manual said that getting under the desk was the best way to survive the nuclear fallout if you were not the center of the blast radius. Preconscious and curious, my parents had bought the complete volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Internet of its day. Foreshadowing my eventual STEM majors in Engineering Physics, Microelectronics, and Nanoengineering, I read the "Nu" volume on nuclear weapons. I sadly concluded after my research that the drills were government-sanctioned gaslighting, a word I now use. The word I used then is a two-syllable word with the popular abbreviation "B.S." Plutonium 239, the ore of choice for thermonuclear weapons, has a half-life of <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html" target="_blank">24,100 years</a>, meaning that it would be half as radioactive in about 24 millennia. This drill wasn't to save lives but to reduce panicked stampeding that, I admit, would help no one. The official nuclear doctrine of deterrence is <a href="https://www.livescience.com/mutual-assured-destruction" target="_blank">M.A.D.</a>: mutually assured destruction. We'll see if Russia in Ukraine remembers this at all.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The United States has been in some war 93% of the time from 1775 (before its existence) to 2018. This factum is according to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/america-at-war-introduction-180971014/" target="_blank">Smithsonian Magazine</a>. The article's caveat is how to interpret "war": declared congressionally, unilaterally by the executive, or (in my opinion) upon one's citizens.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I will attend my precocious granddaughter's fourth birthday party this National Poetry Month. She is one year younger than my five-year-old image. After getting her a "Dr. McStuffin's Medical Kit" for Christmas, she immediately assigned herself as her grandparents' doctor. She even does televisits when we chat on Google Hangout.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Yet she grows up in a world of the continuous threat of Armageddon. Add to that designed scarcity, economic <a href="https://youtu.be/aL3XGZ5rreE" target="_blank">Disaster Capitalism</a> cum neoliberalism, rising global temperatures, and active shooter training when she starts kindergarten in the fall, minus the "stop the bleeding kits," even with her Dr. McStuffin credentials. Because of the malaise of government and gun lobbyists, we've reduced her citizenry to becoming a combat medic in the future, whether she wants to or not.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I bought a "stop the bleeding" kit. It should be here before Easter.</span></span></p><p><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"We're not kids anymore!"</span></span></em></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">None of us are.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> </p></div>
Zombie CFCs...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/zombie-cfcs
2023-04-06T10:00:00.000Z
2023-04-06T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11021613101,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11021613101,RESIZE_584x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="567" alt="11021613101?profile=RESIZE_584x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Researchers detected a surprising rise in levels of chlorofluorocarbons between 2010 and 2020 using a monitoring network that includes the Jungfraujoch research station in Switzerland. Credit: Shutterstock</p><p></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"> Topics: Chemistry, Civilization, Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming</span></span></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">From my resume: "I eliminated ozone-depleting materials using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Taguchi Methods of Quality Engineering - using an <a href="http://reliawiki.org/index.php/Taguchi_Orthogonal_Arrays">L16 Orthogonal Array</a> - in the Poly Silicon etch substituting out CFCs in manufacturing processes." <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/04/06/zombie-cfcs/" target="_blank">How I did it</a>: I substituted our CFC with Sulfur Hexafluoride and Nitrogen (SF6/N2). On the negative photoresist product, the CFC over-etch was 50 seconds. For the positive photoresist, CFC had a 25-second process. I was able to reduce each product line to <strong>two</strong> seconds, increasing throughput, and the process increased die yields. It is possible to balance the positive impact of product improvement and the environment. I did it in the 90s, so the following report is disappointing.</span></span></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">*****</span></span></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The Montreal Protocol, which banned most uses of ozone-destroying chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and called for their global phase-out by 2010, has been a great success story: Earth’s ozone layer is <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132277">projected to recover by the 2060s</a>.</span></span></em></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">So atmospheric chemists were surprised to see a troubling signal in recent data. They found that the levels of five CFCs rose rapidly in the atmosphere from 2010 to 2020. Their results are published today in Nature Geoscience<sup><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00940-2#ref-CR1">1</a></sup>.</span></span></em></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">“This shouldn’t be happening,” says Martin Vollmer, an atmospheric chemist at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Dübendorf, who helped to analyze data from an international network of CFC monitors. “We expect the opposite trend. We expect them to slowly go down.”</span></span></em></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">At current levels, these CFCs do not pose much threat to the ozone layer’s healing, said Luke Western, a chemist at the University of Bristol, UK, at an online press conference on 30 March. CFCs, once used as refrigerants and aerosols, can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Given that they are potent greenhouse gases, eliminating emissions of these CFCs will also have a positive impact on Earth’s climate. The collective annual warming effect of these five chemicals on the planet is equivalent to the emissions produced by a small country like Switzerland.</span></span></em></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><em><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">It’s highly likely that manufacturing plants are accidentally releasing three of the chemicals — CFC-113a, CFC-114a, and CFC-115 — while producing replacements for CFCs. When CFCs were phased out, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were brought in as substitutes. But CFCs can crop up as unintended by-products during HFC manufacture. This accidental production is discouraged by the Montreal Protocol but not prohibited by it.</span></span></em></p><p class="has-text-align-center"><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00940-2" target="_blank">‘This shouldn’t be happening: levels of banned CFCs rising</a>, Katherine Bourzac, Nature</span></span></p><p></p></div>
Less Than A Decade...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/less-than-a-decade
2023-03-21T10:00:00.000Z
2023-03-21T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}11000666079,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}11000666079,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="603" alt="11000666079?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, speaking at the global climate talks on Nov. 6 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Climate Change, Democracy, Environment, Existentialism</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>A new report says it is still possible to hold global warming to relatively safe levels, but doing so will require global cooperation, billions of dollars, and big changes.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/" target="_blank">a major new report released on Monday</a>.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, offers the most comprehensive understanding to date of ways in which the planet is changing. It says that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s” as humans continue to burn coal, oil, and natural gas.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>That number holds <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/climate/cop27-global-warming-1-5-celsius.html">a special significance in global climate politics</a>: Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, virtually every nation agreed to “pursue efforts” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that point, scientists say, the impacts of catastrophic heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures, and species extinction become significantly harder for humanity to handle.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>But Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age, and with global fossil-fuel emissions setting<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/climate/carbon-dioxide-emissions-global-warming.html"> records last year</a>, that goal is quickly slipping <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/03/21/less-than-a-decade/" target="_blank">out of reach</a>.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>There is still one last chance to shift course, the new report says. But it would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, guaranteeing a hotter, more perilous future.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“The pace and scale of what has been done so far and current plans are insufficient to tackle climate change,” said Hoesung Lee, the chair of the climate panel. “We are walking when we should be sprinting.”</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc-earth.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank">World Has Less Than a Decade to Stop Catastrophic Warming, U.N. Panel Says</a>, Brad Plumer, New York Times</span></span></p></div>
Ninety Seconds...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/ninety-seconds
2023-03-02T10:00:00.000Z
2023-03-02T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10978604255,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10978604255,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10978604255?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Octavia Butler, Star Trek</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Life imitates art far more than art imitates life</em>—Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying”</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely been held since the end of World War II are at stake. Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/" target="_blank">A time of unprecedented danger: It is 90 seconds to midnight</a>. Editor, John Mecklin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The above is a publication from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, trying to warn us away from the precipice since mankind opened the proverbial nuclear Pandora's box.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>It's easy to assume that Earth's history in Star Trek is the same as the real world before Vulcans made First Contact with humanity in 2063, but there are numerous unique divergences. Star Trek: The Original Series established that a devastating global conflict called the Eugenics Wars gripped the Earth in the 1990s, which was followed by World War III in the 21st century. TOS and Star Trek: Enterprise episodes touched upon aspects of World War III, which led to 600 million deaths and the capitals of every major country on Earth destroyed. Star Trek: First Contact showed the aftermath of <a href="https://screenrant.com/star-trek-world-war-3-discovery-season-2/" target="_blank">World War III</a> as the human race was still picking up the pieces a decade after the war ended. Further, the Star Trek: Discovery season 2 episode "New Eden" revealed that the Red Angel (Sonja Sohn) transported a group of World War III survivors to a planet in the Beta Quadrant.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>After Captain Pike realized that Kiley 279 reverse-engineered Starfleet's warp technology to build a warp bomb to use against each other in their civil war, he broke General Order One and used Earth's World War III history as a cautionary parable in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' premiere. In perhaps the most significant download of information about past wars in Star Trek, Pike revealed that the United States of America actually had a second Civil War at some point in the late 20th century, which erupted over freedoms and rights. The second Civil War was soon followed by the <a href="https://screenrant.com/picard-season-2-mistakenly-makes-khan-more-sympathetic/" target="_blank">Eugenics Wars in the 1990s when genetic engineering</a> created Augments who became global warlords, chief among them Khan Noonien-Singh (Ricardo Montalbán). After the Augments were defeated, there was a period of peace, as seen in <a href="https://screenrant.com/tag/star-trek-picard/" target="_blank">Star Trek: Picard</a> season 2, before World War III erupted in 2026 and lasted for thirty years.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Pike further revealed that World War III was a nuclear holocaust that resulted in the death of 30% of the Earth's population. In addition, 600 million lifeforms were lost on the planet, which consists of untold flora and fauna. In order to preserve nature that would be lost on a planet irradiated by nuclear weapons, scientists launched seedpods into space that eventually grew in orbit. Amazingly, when the human race became a spacefaring society, <a href="https://screenrant.com/star-trek-picard-deep-space-12-starbases-explained/" target="_blank">Starfleet built Starbase One</a> around the seed pods, which explains the domed forests surrounding the space station. Thankfully, Pike's Earth history lesson had the desired effect on Kiley 279's leadership and population. The Enterprise's Captain brokered peace on Kiley 279 so that they didn't repeat the Terran homeworld's tragic mistakes.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://screenrant.com/star-trek-world-war-3-strange-new-worlds/#:~:text=Star%20Trek%3A%20The%20Original%20Series,III%20in%20the%2021st%20century." target="_blank">Strange New Worlds Solves Star Trek’s World War III Mystery</a>. John Orquiola, Screen Rant</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The above is <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/?p=5041" target="_blank">fiction</a>. 30% of the Earth's population is 2.4 billion souls wiped out, in addition to the disease, death, and wholesale dystopia that would be the planet post-civilization.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Caveat: It doesn't appear that Zephram Cochrane <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=warp+drive&btnG=&oq=wa" target="_blank">has been born yet</a>. There are no Vulcans to <em>Deus ex Machina</em> [rescue] us from ourselves. We're on our own to survive or become extinct in societal suicide like Octavia Butler's "smooth dinosaurs."</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>We need the stars… We need purpose! We need the image of Destiny to take root among the stars and give us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than <strong>smooth dinosaurs</strong> who evolve, specialize, and die, we need the stars…. When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"Octavia Butler." AZQuotes.com. Wind and Fly LTD, 2023. 02 March 2023. <a href="https://www.azquotes.com/quote/998876">https://www.azquotes.com/quote/998876</a></span></span></p></div>
Intersectionality and 53%...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/intersectionality-and-53
2023-02-24T10:00:00.000Z
2023-02-24T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10969449854,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10969449854,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10969449854?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Image Source: <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/" target="_blank">U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050</a>, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, Pew Research, February 11, 2008</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Excerpt from “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Labor-White-Wealth-Economic/dp/0966170210" target="_blank">Black Labor, White Wealth: The Search for Power and Economic Justice</a>,” (August 1, 1994) Claude Anderson, Ed. D., Chapter 2: Power and Black Progress:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Chapter 2, page 33, subsection titled:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>Numerical Population Power</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>In a democratic society, the numerical majority wins, rules, and decides. The theoretical rights of a minority may or may not be respected, especially if they are a planned minority. Numerical population power is the power that comes to those groups that acquire power through their sheer size. The black population peaked in the 1750s when slaves and free blacks accounted for approximately 33 percent of the total population. The high numerical strength of blacks caused fear and concern among whites. They feared the loss of their own numerical power. <strong>Word of black Haitians’ successful slave revolt in the 1790s had spread across America and reportedly ignited several slave revolts in Southern states.</strong></em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The First U.S. Congress enacted the first naturalization law that <strong>declared America a nation for "whites only."</strong> The naturalization act and other income incentives attracted a mass influx of legal and illegal European ethnicities, followed by Asian and Hispanic immigrants a century later. <strong>The immigration quota for blacks remained zero</strong> until their total population percentage <strong>declined to nine percent.</strong> By making <strong>blacks a planned numerical minority,</strong> white society assured dominance in a democratic society<strong> <u>where the majority always wins</u></strong>.</em> Source: <a href="https://issuu.com/iesu9/docs/blacklabourwhitewealth_part1" target="_blank">Sample chapter</a></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">*****</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>If current trends continue, the demographic profile of the United States will change dramatically by the middle of this century, according to new population projections developed by the Pew Research Center.<sup><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/#fn-85-1">1</a></sup></em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The nation's population will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and <strong>82% of the growth during this period will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050</strong> and their descendants. (Figure 1)</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves, 47 million will be their children, and 3 million will be their grandchildren.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The Center’s projections indicate that nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be foreign-born in 2050, well above the 2005 level of 12% and surpassing the historical peaks for immigrants as a share of the U.S. population—14.8% in 1890 and 14.7% in 1910. (Figure 2)</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>By 2050, the nation’s racial and ethnic mix will look different than it does now. <strong>Non-Hispanic whites, who made up 67% of the population in 2005, will be 47% in 2050. Hispanics will rise from 14% of the population in 2005 to 29% in 2050.</strong> <strong>Blacks were 13%</strong> of the population in 2005 and <strong>will be roughly the same proportion</strong> in 2050. <strong>Asians, who were 5%</strong> of the population in 2005, <strong>will be 9% in 2050.</strong></em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">If you do the math: the BIPOC in these statistics adds up to ~51 to 53%, a clear majority.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>What is intersectionality?</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The concept of intersectionality describes how systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class, and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects. For example, when a Muslim woman wearing the Hijab is being discriminated against, it would be impossible to dissociate her female* from her Muslim identity and to isolate the dimension(s) causing her discrimination.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Source: <a href="https://www.intersectionaljustice.org/what-is-intersectionality" target="_blank">Center for Intersectional Justice: What is intersectionality?</a></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">“Race,” as we have been conditioned to understand it, is a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/" target="_blank">social construct</a>. Yet, every employment application asks me to choose a category that best describes me: I chose Black/African American because that is my culture. I am a human being, a terrestrial inhabitant born on planet Earth. We fill out the Census because it is our “civic duty” and our habit, born of ignorance and not questioning why things are the WAY they are.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>So racial capitalism was basically built based on the idea that capitalism itself is not distinct from racism. The way we think of racism is that racism is a by-product of capitalism. That is, capitalism emerges, and racism is a way to divide workers. It’s a way to extract greater value from enslaved people, Indigenous people, etc. But Cedric argued that the grounds of the civilization in which capitalism emerges are already based on racial hierarchy. If you think of race as assigning meaning to whole groups of people, ideologically convincing others that some people are inferior to others, that some people are designed as beasts of burden, then what you end up getting is a system of extraction that allows for a kind of super-exploitation of Black and brown people. And racial capitalism also relies on an ideology or racial regime. The racial regime convinces a lot of white people, who may get the crumbs of this extraction through slavery, through Jim Crow, convince them to support or shore up a regime that seems to benefit whiteness based on white supremacy but where their own share of the spoils <strong>is actually pretty minuscule.</strong></em> Slam poet Saul Williams commenting on the Intercept Podcast: The Rebellion Against Racial Capitalism. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/23903715309/posts/-so-racial-capitalism-basically-was-built-based-on-this-idea-that-capitalism-its/10158174994835310/" target="_blank">Facebook</a></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">*****</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The Census is crafted from the <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/02/24/intersectionality-and-53/" target="_blank">same crucible</a>. Every <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/01/21/race-and-the-census-the-negro-controversy/" target="_blank">ten years</a>, we count the number of citizens, or residents, in the nation. We craft, actually, gerrymander districts based on these demographic numbers. The absurdity is evident not too far from me: my Alma Mater, North Carolina A&T State University, the largest Historically Black College and University in the nation, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/01/republican-north-carolina-sixth-district-gerrymandering" target="_blank">split in two</a> to dilute the impact of student voting and participation in the franchise. That was thankfully remedied, and students are voting in record numbers. It is thus important which party controls the White House (I think it should be called the Presidential Mansion) during the ten-year cycle. We’re looking at the next election in 2024. What will be of paramount importance is which party gets to draw congressional districts after the election of 2028.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Fifty years of precedent were repealed in jettisoning Roe vs. Wade: why? Perhaps it is that <em>“for the last 70 years, fertility rates have decreased worldwide, with a total 50% decline. Reasons include women’s empowerment in education and the workforce, lower child mortality, and the increased cost of raising children. Lower fertility rates, coupled with increased life expectancies worldwide, create an aging population, putting pressure on healthcare systems globally.”</em> (World Economic Forum) Comparing national birthrates in 2020:</span></span></p><table style="width:137px;"><tbody><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;"><strong>Nation</strong></td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;"><strong>Birthrates</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">Niger</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;text-align:left;">6.7</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;text-align:left;">Nigeria</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;text-align:left;">5.2</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">Senegal</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">4.5</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">Ghana</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">3.8</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">Pakistan</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">3.4</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">World</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">2.4</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">Mexico</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">2.1</td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;"><strong>The U.S.</strong></td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;"><strong>1.8</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:74px;">South Korea</td><td class="block-editor-rich-text__editable wp-block-table__cell-content rich-text" style="width:63px;">1.1</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Source: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/global-decline-of-fertility-rates-visualised/#:~:text=For%20the%20last%2070%20years,increased%20cost%20of%20raising%20children." target="_blank">World Economic Forum: Ageing and Longevity, June 17, 2022</a></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">It makes sense, in a macabre, sociopathic, psychopathic “logic.” If your birthrates are falling, you open the floodgates to all births by repealing abortion rights; the health and career aspirations of women be damned. Similarly, for the LGBTQ community, the right to marry "who you love" contradicts the desires of capitalism: replacement workers, which can be done through surrogate parenthood. Still, these are Neanderthal minds crafting our society. The closet was valuable to them because you could, in sham marriages, procreate in public and copulate in secret. Dr. Claude Anderson stated in "<a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Black-Labor-White-Wealth-Economic/dp/0966170210/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2S5NJA83FPRHX&keywords=black+labor+white+wealth+by+claud+anderson&qid=1676774694&sprefix=black+labo%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Black Labor, White Wealth</a>" that enslaved Africans and their descendants were a "planned numerical minority." "<a href="https://bigthink.com/videos/the-expanding-definition-of-whiteness/" target="_blank">White</a>" is a fungible concept: as numbers declined in America, Czechs, Italians, Jews, and Russians were added to the "white" column and instructed how to address the designated pariah "others." This façade would inevitably crash on the weight of its own hubris.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">"Race" is a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/" target="_blank">social</a> and political construct. Suppose you happened to have won the "sperm lottery" and were born in "<a href="https://untappedcities.com/2020/07/31/the-controversial-history-of-levittown-americas-first-suburb/" target="_blank">Leave it to Beaver Villes</a>" with a prepondering lack of Melanin (and lack of empathy for those possessing it). In that case, you're likely comfortable with the status quo as it is; reducing inequality doesn't interest you in the slightest; therefore: you want to "conserve" what you know and are comfortable with it. And if you can't gerrymander, voter suppress, or intimidate "others" into their diminished places, January 6, 2021, showed us conclusively that their last ditch, "in case of democracy, break glass" last move, they will resort to deadly violence to uphold a chimera. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158805129/democrats-are-warning-against-the-release-of-jan-6-tapes-to-a-fox-news-host" target="_blank">40,000+ video security footage</a> given to the <a href="https://theweek.com/speedreads/689969/tucker-carlson-tried-join-cia" target="_blank">CIA reject</a> at Fox Propaganda ensures the next coup will have a roadmap to once-secret places. The Capitol is the scene of past and future crimes.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Intersectionality is another word for cooperation. We will have to cooperate to address the challenges of climate change, to take the mythology out of it, "it's THOSE people, not US," to solve the problem together. It's not Ron DeSantis-Stan <a href="https://theweek.com/feature/briefing/1018352/what-climate-change-will-mean-for-the-future-of-florida#:~:text=Florida%20is%20%22uniquely%20at%20risk,that%20sweep%20across%20that%20area." target="_blank">at risk of higher water levels</a> due to climate change: it is an American state, American citizens, and, as illustrated in 2005 with <a href="https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/hurricane-katrina#:~:text=An%20estimated%201%2C833%20people%20died,the%20costliest%20hurricane%20on%20record." target="_blank">Hurricane Katrina</a>, American climate refugees and, sadly, casualties.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech on April 4, 1967, "<a href="https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1261#:~:text=On%20April%204%2C%201967%2C%20Martin,democratic%2C%20impractical%2C%20and%20unjust." target="_blank">Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence</a>." He condemned the Vietnam War, which would result in over 50,000 American casualties, as immoral and unjust. He was assassinated, supposedly by James Earl Ray, on April 4, 1968.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Dr. King was in Memphis, Tennessee, for the rights of Sanitation Workers, carrying signs stating the obvious, "<a href="https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/i-am-a-man-dr-king-and-the-memphis-sanitation-workers-strike?locale=en_us#:~:text=Martin%20Luther%20King%20Jr.%2C%20went,equality%2C%20dignity%2C%20and%20respect." target="_blank">I am a man</a>," that wasn't at the time (and since the public execution of Tyre Nichols feet from where King was assassinated) being respected. It was an extension, or arm of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/poor-peoples-campaign" target="_blank">Poor People's Campaign</a>, an effort to unify the poor in urban cities and Appalachia, in other words: intersectionality.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">So, it's not a fear of Black History/CRT, or drag queen story hour (if you don't support it, don't go), Hispanic Heritage Month, Queer History Month, Women's History Month: it's the Venn Diagram that intersects each of these groups under a common foe that is determined to maintain that status quo by closing polling booths, voter purging, voter suppression. Book bans discourage intersectionality through ignorance, such that each can build coalitions to the point they could become the 53% voting majority in a majoritarian nation.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">South African Apartheid existed as "white" Afrikaans declined to a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12321499/" target="_blank">numerical minority</a>.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">America might try something like this for 47%, and the continuously psychopathic 1% would like to maintain.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">There is another formula:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">99% = 46% + 53%, which is > 1%.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The old world had castles, kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses, with serfs willing to subjugate themselves to a monied elite because of "divine will," not sociopathy.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The new world has mansions, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and corporations, with a bewildered herd willing to subjugate themselves to a monied elite because the propaganda they pump them says <em>they</em> are "blessed," not kleptomaniacs.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Intersectionality = cooperation = survival. Authoritarian autocracy does not.</span></span></p></div>
Nanowires and Climate Change...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/nanowires-and-climate-change
2023-02-23T10:00:00.000Z
2023-02-23T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10971726475,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10971726475,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="622" alt="10971726475?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Image Credit: <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/973066" target="_blank">Down to the wire (IMAGE)</a>, Yale University</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Biotechnology, Civilization, Climate Change, Nanotechnology</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><a>Accelerated climate change is a major and acute threat to life on Earth. R</a>ising<strong> </strong>temperatures<strong> </strong>are<strong> </strong>caused by <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/02/23/nanowires-and-climate-change/" target="_blank">atmospheric methane</a>, which is 30 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. Microbes are responsible for generating half of this methane. Elevated<a> temperatures are also accelerating microbial growth and thus producing more greenhouse gases than can be used by plants</a>, thus weakening the earth’s ability to function as a carbon sink and further raising the global temperature.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>A potential solution to this vicious circle could be another kind of microbes that eats up to 80% of methane flux from ocean sediments that protect the Earth. How microbes serve as both the biggest producers and consumers of methane has remained a mystery because they are very difficult to study in the laboratory. In Nature Microbiology, surprising wire-like properties of a protein highly similar to the protein used by methane-eating microbes are reported by the Yale team led by Yangqi Gu and <a href="https://malvankarlab.yale.edu/" target="_blank">Nikhil Malvankar</a> of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Microbial Sciences Institute.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The team had previously shown that this protein nanowire shows the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-020-0623-9" target="_blank">highest conductivity</a> known to date, allowing the generation of the highest electric power by any bacteria. But to date, no one has discovered how bacteria make them and why they show such extremely high conductivity.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/978039" target="_blank">An ultra-stable protein nanowire made by bacteria provides clues to combating climate change,</a> Yale University.</span></span></p></div>
Silicon Gaslighting...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/silicon-gaslighting
2023-02-17T10:00:00.000Z
2023-02-17T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10968566679,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10968566679,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="10968566679?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;">Image source: Black Planet dot com</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Note: I had my bridge removed by a periodontist. That's not as trivial as I thought it would be, recalling me pulling my baby teeth at the age of six. My pain management regimen consisted of 600 mg of Motrin and 500 mg of Tylenol four times a day for two days, plus lots of rest. I guess losing a tooth at six is remarkably different than losing one at sixty. For the sake of public safety, I opted to telework as much as I could that week. I will have posts for Tuesday - Friday next week, taking President's Day off.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>*****</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Sematech was a consortium of semiconductor industry giants on Ben White Boulevard in Austin, Texas. The taxpayers paid their land expenses through a ten-year tax abatement. Sematech promised Austin jobs. So in the spirit of fairness, Austin obviously wanted Sematech to start paying their taxes, and repaying the homeowners who footed the bill for a decade.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>May 9th, 2007</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>Sematech leaving Austin for Albany</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>Abstract:</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong><em>International Sematech will move its headquarters from Austin, Texas, to Albany, N.Y., state officials said May 9.</em></strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>New York will spend $300 million to provide the buildings and infrastructure required to accommodate the headquarters of Sematech, a consortium of microchip manufacturers and semiconductor research operations, said Alain Kaloyeros, the chief administrative officer of the state University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, located at Albany NanoTech.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The money will go to the University at Albany, which now hosts Sematech's existing research operation. The deal is still being finalized, although Sematech will begin moving some personnel to Albany in July, Kaloyeros said.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Source:</strong></em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">phoenix.bizjournals.com</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=22519" target="_blank">http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=22519</a></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>*****</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">I worked for Applied Materials at the IBM research facility in Fishkill, New York, from 2011 to 2017 and, ironically, with Albany Nanotech/Sematech on many occasions since my company had equipment installed there. I often passed the photo in Fishkill of the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, taken in 2005 with Governor George Pataki and IBM executives. IBM promised jobs. The company <strong>needed ten years of tax abatements</strong> to grow, and they <strong>promised job nirvana. </strong>The ten-year clock was UP in 2015. Fishkill wanted their money. IBM wanted another decade-long tax abatement. There was an obvious impasse. Something had to give.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">(Reuters) - <em>IBM Corp <a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/IBM.N">IBM.N</a> said it would hive off its loss-making semiconductor unit to contract-chipmaker Globalfoundries Inc to focus on cloud computing and big data analytics.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>IBM will<strong> pay Globalfoundries $1.5 billion in cash over the next three years </strong>to take the chip operations off its hands, the companies said in a statement on Monday.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>IBM took a related pre-tax charge of $4.7 billion in its third quarter. It also reported a 4 percent drop in revenue on Monday, hurt by weak sales in its software and services businesses.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>IBM’s shares fell 8 percent to $167 in premarket trading.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-divestiture/ibm-to-pay-globalfoundries-1-5-billion-to-take-chip-unit-idUSKCN0I908320141020" target="_blank">IBM to pay Globalfoundries $1.5 billion to take chip unit</a>. Abhirup Roy, Reuters, October 20, 2014</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">If $1.5 billion dollars paid is saving, what in Heaven's name did they OWE Fishkill, NY?</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">So, color me not exactly nonplussed when I read this article on CNN:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">CNN Business — <em>When Microsoft President Brad Smith announced in February 2021 that the tech giant had purchased a 90-acre plot of land in Atlanta’s westside, he laid out a bold vision: The company, he said, would <strong>invest in the community</strong> and put it <strong>“on the path toward becoming one of Microsoft’s largest hubs” </strong>in the United States.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The<strong> </strong><a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2021/02/11/investing-to-grow-in-and-with-atlanta/" target="_blank">announcement</a>, which was met with <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/microsoft-says-it-plans-significant-atlanta-expansion/APQ4X5RDIFGOFJLSNCT6MCE2N4/" target="_blank">enthusiastic coverage</a> in local media, promised the construction of <strong>affordable housing, programs to help public school children develop digital skills, support for historically Black colleges and universities,</strong> new funding for local nonprofits, and affordable broadband for more people in Atlanta.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>“Our biggest question today is not what Atlanta can do to support Microsoft,” Smith wrote. “It’s what Microsoft can do to support Atlanta.”</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>Two years later, </strong>Microsoft announced a series of cost-cutting efforts, including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/18/tech/microsoft-layoffs/index.html" target="_blank">eliminating 10,000 jobs</a>, making changes to its hardware portfolio, and consolidating leases. As part of those moves, Microsoft put the development of its Atlanta campus on pause this month, a spokesperson confirmed to CNN.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>The decision to pause plans feels like a <strong>“broken promise”</strong> that caught many residents of the predominately Black neighborhood where Microsoft<strong> </strong>planned to build the campus off-guard, according to<strong> </strong>Jasmine Hope, a local resident and chair of her neighborhood planning unit.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/tech/tech-industry-real-estate-pullback" target="_blank">‘Broken promises.’ Tech industry’s real estate pullback leaves communities reeling.</a> Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business, February 14, 2023</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><strong>*****</strong></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">In the book and 2003 documentary, "<a href="https://youtu.be/Y888wVY5hzw">The Corporation</a>" by Professor Joel Bakan, he looked at the legal fiat during the Robber Baron era using the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which conferred birthright citizenship for formerly enslaved peoples to corporations, hence making them legal "persons."</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">So, Dr. Bakan asked the question, "what kind of person would this entity be?"</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The chilling and provocative answer: the closest person to a corporation would be a psychopath.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em><strong>The Corporation</strong> likewise forces viewers to ponder key philosophical questions about the role of science and entrepreneurship and who should own knowledge and life. Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, introduces the complexities of intellectual property by outlining the history of patenting knowledge and life forms. Here, the film pushes our sensibilities of entrepreneurship and patenting. Patenting is intended to encourage innovation by ensuring that the innovator profits from the discoveries. But indiscriminate patenting can lead to “biopiracy,” –– a recently-coined term for the activities of corporations, universities, and governments that patent the medicinal or therapeutic properties of plants or animals used in traditional and indigenous medicines. The film also discusses the ethics of genetically-modified foods, which dramatically increase food production and change farming practices. For example, “terminator technology” in rice prevents farmers from saving and re-sowing seeds because the seeds have been genetically modified to produce only one crop. Perhaps most disturbing, the film raises the specter of corporations’ owning the entire human genetic code, as well as that of all other species on the planet.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>In summary, The Corporation contends that today’s ubiquitous corporations are <strong>designed to behave like psychopaths</strong>—a provocative premise likely to polarize viewers and invite debate. The film has insights for people on all points of the political spectrum. It is useful for managers who struggle with issues of ethics and corporate social responsibility and for trainers, instructors, and researchers in the fields of strategy, ethics, governance, labor-management relations, and sustainable development.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="" target="_blank">The Corporation - The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power: Movie Review</a></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>About 1.2% of U.S. adult men and 0.3% to 0.7% of U.S. adult women are considered to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. Those numbers rise exponentially in prison, where 15% to 25% of inmates show these characteristics (Burton, B., & Saleh, F. M., <a href="https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/psychopathy-insights-general-practice" target="_blank">Psychiatric Times</a>, Vol. 37, No. 10, 2020). That said, psychopathy spans socioeconomic status, race, gender, and culture, and those who score high on psychopathy scales range from high-functioning executives to prison inmates to people whose psychopathic symptoms may reflect difficult life circumstances more than anything else.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>One effort to coordinate thinking in the field is Patrick’s “triarchic model,” which posits three separable trait constructs underlying psychopathic symptoms: “disinhibition,” which includes tendencies toward impulsiveness, irresponsibility, difficulty regulating one’s emotions and behavior, and mistrust of others; “meanness,” which involves deficits in empathy, contempt toward and inability to bond with others, and predatory exploitativeness; and “boldness,” which includes dominance, social assurance, emotional resilience, and adventurousness. Each of these traits has unique developmental features and neurobiological correlates. Patrick developed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure to assess these trait constructs (<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/abs/triarchic-conceptualization-of-psychopathy-developmental-origins-of-disinhibition-boldness-and-meanness/172BC63ED5C4C4C295C47DDCB01E838D" target="_blank">Development and Psychopathology, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2009</a>; <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jopy.12119" target="_blank">Journal of Personality, Vol. 83, No. 6, 2015</a>).</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy" target="_blank">A broader view of psychopathy.</a> Tori DeAngelis, the American Psychological Association</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Wafer fabs are complex places in need of specific technical STEM backgrounds. Local colleges and universities can tailor curriculums so that their graduates "fit the mold" of what XYZ employer is looking for. There are often collaborative research efforts between academia and industry that are encouraged and pursued.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Not all of the jobs are technical. If you have a cafeteria on-site, you need to staff it. Janitorial services are needed for the offices and bathrooms. You need painters, masonry workers, plumbers, and electricians.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">All, from the cook to the engineer, are subject to layoffs at the whims of management and shareholders who never met them or care how such a move impacts their families. It is a string of broken promises and shattered dreams.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">It's a tax dodge. It's grifting. It's <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/02/17/silicon-gaslighting/" target="_blank">Silicon gaslighting</a>.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">So, let me get this straight:</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The tobacco industry paid lobbyists to promote the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7532322/" target="_blank">false narrative</a> that smoking wasn’t as bad for your health as the Surgeon General reported. Mike Pence (not a smoker) endorsed in an OpEd that <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/27/pence-smoking-cancer-donald-trump-coronavirus-response/4890066002/" target="_blank">resurfaced</a> after helming the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/10/7/21504186/mike-pence-coronavirus-covid-vice-presidential-debate-trump" target="_blank">disastrous response</a> to the Coronavirus pandemic (and he wants to run for president, presumably getting the votes from the same people who <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/28/jan-6-hearing-trump-thought-pence-deserved-chants-to-hang-him-aide-says.html" target="_blank">wanted to kill him</a> on January 6, 2021). Smokers like my father were gaslighted, and paid for this lie with their lungs and lives.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">The fossil fuels industry paid those <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-industries-used-same-researchers-to-sway-public1/" target="_blank">same lobbyists</a> to do their magic, promoting the false narrative that climate change wasn’t as dire as they were already aware of in the late 1970s. Instead of information we could have acted on, we were gaslighted.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">A lot of American oligarchs: Bezos (Washington Post), Bloomberg (Bloomberg News), Murdoch (Wall Street Journal, Fox Propaganda), Musk (Twitter), Trump (Twitter knockoff, the Orwellian “Truth Social”), and Zuckerberg (Facebook) are heavily involved in controlling the narrative of what we believe and know as reality. The previous “off the dome” isn’t even an exhaustive list. AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, Newscorp, and Viacom are the <a href="https://pwestpathfinder.com/2022/05/09/the-big-sixs-big-media-game/#:~:text=Just%2037%20years%20ago%2C%20there,%2C%20Disney%2C%20Newscorp%20and%20Viacom." target="_blank">six corporations</a> that own 90% of all the media that we consume: radio, television, print, and the Internet. Thirty-eight years ago, it was fifty. We believe what we're fed: "corporate citizens" is a term the corporations lob at us through various forms of media. We believe also from the media that billionaires/oligarchs are "blessed," "geniuses," "highly favored," not tax dodging criminals because that's what their media tell us to believe.</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">If corporations "are people," are the organizations clinically psychopaths?</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Are their minions in lobbying firms and congress merely servile sociopaths?</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">But this isn’t gaslighting?</span></span></p></div>
Small Steps, Large Changes...
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blogs/small-steps-large-changes
2023-02-01T10:00:00.000Z
2023-02-01T10:00:00.000Z
Reginald L. Goodwin
https://blacksciencefictionsociety.com/members/ReginaldLGoodwin
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10952388074,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10952388074,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="356" alt="10952388074?profile=RESIZE_400x" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>A vertical shock tube</strong> at Los Alamos National Laboratory is used for turbulence studies. Sulfur hexafluoride is injected at the top of the 5.3-meter tube and allowed to mix with air. The waste is ejected into the environment through the blue hose at the tube tower’s lower left; in the fiscal year 2021, such emissions made up some 16% of the lab’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The inset shows a snapshot of the mixing after a shock has crossed the gas interface; the darker gas is SF<sub>6</sub>, and the lighter is air. The intensities yield density values.</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;">Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Global Warming, Research</span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Reducing air travel, improving energy efficiency in infrastructure, and installing solar panels are among the obvious actions that individual researchers and their institutions can implement to reduce their carbon footprint. But they can take many other <a href="https://physicsandnano.com/2023/02/01/small-steps-large-changes/" target="_blank">small and large steps</a>, too, from reducing the use of single-use plastics and other consumables and turning off unused instruments to exploiting waste heat and siting computing facilities powered by renewable energy. On a systemic level, measures can encourage behaviors to reduce carbon emissions; for example, valuing in-person invited job talks and remote ones equally could lead to less air travel by scientists.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>So far, the steps that scientists are taking to reduce their carbon footprint are largely grassroots, notes Hannah Johnson, a technician in the imaging group at the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht and a member of Green Labs Netherlands, a volunteer organization that promotes sustainable science practices. The same goes for the time and effort they put in for the cause. One of the challenges, she says, is to get top-down support from institutions, funding agencies, and other national and international scientific bodies.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>At some point, governments are likely to make laws that support climate sustainability, says Astrid Eichhorn, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark whose research is in quantum gravity and who is active on the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities committee for climate sustainability. “We are in a situation to be proactive and change in ways that do not compromise the quality of our research or our collaborations,” she says. “We should take that opportunity now and not wait for external regulations.”</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><em>Suppose humanity manages to limit emissions worldwide to 300 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO<sub>2</sub>e). In that case, <strong>there is an 83% chance of not exceeding the 1.5 °C</strong> temperature rise above preindustrial levels set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to a 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report. That emissions cap translates to a budget of 1.2 tons of CO<sub>2</sub>e per person annually through 2050. Estimates for the average emissions by researchers across scientific fields are much higher and range widely in part because of differing and incomplete accounting approaches, says Eichhorn. She cites values from 7 to 18 tons a year for European scientists.</em></span></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;"><a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.5154" target="_blank">Scientists take steps in the lab toward climate sustainability</a>, Toni Feder, Physics Today.</span></span></p></div>