BLOGS

10/10 – A Stunning Blend of Art, Romance, and Music

Entergalactic is an animated film that deserves all the praise for its fantastic blend of art, storytelling, and music. From start to finish, it kept me hooked with its vibrant visuals and deeply emotional narrative. What stood out to me right away was the unique animation style. It’s very much in the same vein as Into the Spider-Verse, with its bold, colorful aesthetic and eye-popping detail that makes every frame feel alive. Yet, despite its visually striking style, the heart of the movie is a love story that feels as genuine and soulful as Love Jones.

The acting in Entergalactic was exceptional. Each character came to life with distinct personalities and real emotional depth. You can truly feel the passion and care the voice actors put into their performances. Their chemistry was palpable, and it made the relationship between the characters feel both relatable and engaging. I found myself really rooting for them, which speaks to how well the performances were executed.

But what really elevated the movie for me was the soundtrack. It perfectly complements the movie’s tone, giving every moment an added layer of mood and emotion. Whether it’s the high-energy scenes filled with color and excitement or the quieter, more intimate moments between characters, the music enhances the overall experience. It has this ability to pull you into the story even more, making the emotional beats hit harder and the romantic moments more touching.

Entergalactic isn’t just an animated movie; it’s a visual and auditory experience. Its seamless integration of a heartfelt romance with a modern, urban aesthetic makes it stand out from other animated films. It’s a movie that celebrates love, art, and the power of connection, all while delivering stunning visuals and a killer soundtrack.

I really liked this movie and highly recommend it to anyone looking for something fresh and unique. If you enjoyed Love Jones and appreciate the animation style of Into the Spider-Verse, this is a perfect mix of both worlds. I give it a 10/10!! You should definitely give it a try!

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Diaspora, Existentialism, Fascism

Eugenics is the scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.

Eugenicists believed in a prejudiced and incorrect understanding of Mendelian genetics, which claimed abstract human qualities (e.g., intelligence, and social behaviors) were inherited in a simple fashion. Similarly, they believed complex diseases and disorders were solely the outcome of genetic inheritance.

The implementation of eugenics practices has caused widespread harm, particularly to populations that are being marginalized.

Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s, leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.

The genomics communities continue to work to scientifically debunk eugenic myths and combat modern-day manifestations of eugenics and scientific racism, particularly as they affect people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Eugenics, and Scientific Racism – The National Human Genome Research Institute. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism

Stare decisis was the Latin term for “precedent” that every Supreme Court Justice candidate invoked to assure their Senate inquisitors that any laws decided in the past were “on the books” and not up to modern interpretation, or revocation.

Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022, part of the “Stare decisis” precedent of previously passed laws. The approval of the Court is at the lowest in its history.

“There has to be some form of punishment,” someone said.

Without any data, we could only speculate that women without wealth, and women without means would bear the brunt of losing bodily autonomy more than women with means, which are usually, ethnographically, in the current white majority.

There are now casualties of this ethno-gender war.

*****

At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.

In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.

She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.

Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable. Kavitha Surana, ProPublica

*****

Candi Miller’s family said she didn't visit a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Maternal health experts deemed her death preventable and blamed Georgia’s abortion ban.

Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, that doctors warned having another baby could kill her.

“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.

But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.

At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes, and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So, she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.

Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.

Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.

Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died. Kavitha Surana, ProPublica

It took us two years to discover the victims’ identities of this judicial malpractice.

“There has to be some form of punishment,” someone said.

As hypothesized, the women affected are part of a marginalized demographic that could not fly out of Georgia and get sophisticated surgery in a “free” state that still allowed the medical procedure. It took months from the decision to murder these black women. It took two years for us to get the results of supreme spitballing.

There must be more who lost their lives in 2022. There must be more who lost their lives in 2023. There must be more who will lose their lives this year, and next year.

We are eighteen years from 2042 when for the first time in the history of the Census, the designed “white majority” will be numerically, in the minority.

The first census asked just six questions: the name of the (white, male) householder, and then the names of all the other people in the household, divided into these categories: Free white males who were at least 16 years old; free white males who were under 16 years old; free white females; all other free persons; and slaves. The census reflected the values of the United States in 1790: “Slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person. Indians weren’t counted until 1870,” Glass writes.

“The results were used to allocate Congressional seats… electoral votes and funding for government programs,” writes Jeremy Norman for HistoryofInformation.com. The United States Census Bureau also acknowledges that the precise enumeration of free white males was intended “to assess the country’s industrial and military potential.”

The First US Census Only Asked Six Questions

America’s founders agreed that the census was important, but it wasn’t long. Kat Eschner, Smithsonian

Chapter 2, page 33, subsection titled:

Numerical Population Power

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 numerical power. Word of black Haitians' successful slave revolt in the 1790s had spread across America and reportedly ignited several slave revolts in Southern states. The First U.S. Congress enacted the first naturalization law that declared America to be a nation for “whites only.” 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. The immigration quota for blacks remained zero until their total percentage of the population declined to nine percent. By making blacks a planned numerical minority, white society assured its dominance in a democratic society where the majority always wins. Source: Black Labor, White Wealth, Dr. Claude Anderson, 1991.

Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s, leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.

“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory? You think we’re so different. You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Trump’s ‘good genes’ speech echoes racial eugenicsm, Gregory J. Wallance, The Hill, September 25, 2020

White supremacy is demonstrably, historically, pathologically, and anxiously numerical.

I weep for Amber and Candi, two black women who were casualties in a war that preceded their births, and the births of their children, and came with our shackled ancestors on Jamestown shores in 1619. It is not just the nation’s “original sin,” it is the foundational framework of psychopathy, and we are trying to pretend that this is “normal,” like school shootings, we should redefine school shootings as “abortions after birth,” that doesn’t happen in similarly industrialized western nations. I am fighting for democracy, because in the never-ending pursuit of a “more perfect union,” we haven’t achieved it yet.

We are deluding ourselves that we have ever achieved the mythical utopia of the “promised land.” For a better future, for all that we now call Americans, we still have work to do.

Running on air Close-up of the air-powered sensing device. (Courtesy: William Grover/UCR)

Topics: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Microfluidics

A device containing a pneumatic logic circuit made from 21 microfluidic valves could be used as a new type of air-powered computer that does not require any electronic components. The device could help make a wide range of important air-powered systems safer and less expensive, according to its developers at the University of California at Riverside.

Electronic computers rely on transistors to control the flow of electricity. But in the new air-powered computer, the researchers use tiny valves instead of transistors to control the flow of air rather than electricity. “These air-powered computers are an example of microfluidics, a decades-old field that studies the flow of fluids (usually liquids but sometimes gases) through tiny networks of channels and valves,” explains team leader William Grover, a bioengineer at UC Riverside.

By combining multiple microfluidic valves, the researchers made air-powered versions of standard logic gates. For example, they combined two valves in a row to make a Boolean AND gate. This gate works because air will flow through the two valves only if both are open. Similarly, two valves connected in parallel make a Boolean OR gate. Here, air will flow if either one or the other of the valves is open.

Air-powered computers make a comeback, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World

A researcher holds the scaffolding with tiny copper foils attached. These copper pieces will be struck with lasers, heating them to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

Credit: Hiroshi Sawada

Topics: Applied Physics, Lasers, Materials Science, Plasma, Radiation, Thermodynamics

For the first time, researchers monitor the heat progression in laser-created plasma that occurs in only a few trillionths of a second.

A team of researchers supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation has developed a new method of tracking the ultra-fast heat progression in warm, dense matter plasmas — the type of matter created when metals are struck with high-powered lasers. Published in Nature Communications, the results of this study will help researchers better understand not only how plasma forms when metal is heated by high-powered lasers but also what's happening within the cores of giant planets and even aid in the development of fast ignition laser fusion with energy-generating potential here on Earth.

The research team aimed a high-powered laser at very thin strips of copper, which heated to 200,000 degrees Fahrenheit and momentarily shifted to a warm, dense matter plasma state before exploding. At the same time, the researchers used ultrashort-duration X-ray pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser to capture images of the copper's transformation down to a few picoseconds or trillionths of a second. By doing so, the researchers were able to observe the ultra-fast and microscopic transformation of matter.

"These findings shed new light on fundamental properties of plasmas in the warm dense matter state," says Vyacheslav Lukin, NSF program director for Plasma Physics. "The new methods to probe the plasma developed by this international team of researchers may also inform future experiments at extremely high-powered lasers, such as the NSF ZEUS Laser Facility."

Researchers track plasma creation using a novel ultra-fast laser method, National Science Foundation

Meinzahn/Getty Images

Topics: Applied Physics, Atmospheric Science, Chemistry, Climate Change, Global Warming

Note: It's disheartening that geoengineering, made popular by science fiction novels and plots in Star Trek, is being considered because we're too selfish to change our behavior.

More and more climate scientists are supporting experiments to cool Earth by altering the stratosphere or the ocean.

As recently as 10 years ago most scientists I interviewed and heard speak at conferences did not support geoengineering to counteract climate change. Whether the idea was to release large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to “block” the sun’s heating or to spread iron across the ocean to supercharge algae that breathe in carbon dioxide, researchers resisted on principle: don’t mess with natural systems because unintended consequences could ruin Earth. They also worried that trying the techniques even at a small scale could be a slippery slope to wider deployment and that countries would use the promise of geoengineering as an excuse to keep burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

But today, climate scientists more openly support experimenting with these and other proposed strategies, partly because entrepreneurs and organizations are going ahead with the methods anyway—often based on little data or field trials. Scientists want to run controlled experiments to see if the methods are productive, to test consequences, and perhaps to show objectively that the approaches can cause serious problems.

“We do need to try the techniques to figure them out,” says Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, chair of the international research partnership Global Carbon Project, and author of a book on climate solutions called Into the Clear Blue Sky (Scribner, 2024). “But doing research does make them more likely to happen. That is the knotty part of all this.”

As Earth’s Climate Unravels, More Scientists Are Ready to Test Geoengineering, Mark Fischetti, Scientific American

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Review of *Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

*Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire* is an exciting and fun continuation of the beloved franchise that absolutely delivers on the magic of the original films. I particularly loved seeing Earnest Lee Hudson shine in his role as Winston Zeddemore, the wealthy businessman who plays a key part in this new chapter. His performance brings a depth and charm to the character, especially as he navigates his new position of power while staying true to his Ghostbuster roots.

The casting in *Frozen Empire* and its predecessor is another highlight. It’s great to see such a diverse and talented group of actors contributing to the story, making the world feel more authentic and relatable. The inclusivity of the cast is a strong point that stands out, adding layers to the dynamic interactions between the characters.

The story is both entertaining and engaging, with just the right mix of comedy, action, and fantasy. The acting is solid throughout, and the special effects are impressive, seamlessly blending the supernatural elements with real-world settings. It’s a fantastic movie for both longtime fans of the Ghostbusters and newcomers alike. Highly recommended!

Portrait of Edward Bouchet and lithograph of early Yale College campus. Courtesy of Yale University. Via uniquecoloring.com

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diversity in Science, History, Physics

Authors: Bryan A. Wilson, Ph.D., M.B.A & Sierra A. Nance, B.S. (PhD Candidate - Univ. Michigan)

Abstract
Edward Alexander Bouchet was born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA in 1852 during a period of racial segregation and injustice. He overcame tremendous odds and obtained a quality education at Hopkins Grammar School, preparing him for Yale College. In 1876, Edward Bouchet became the first person of color to obtain a Ph.D. in any field, not only from Yale but in the United States. However, due to the disenfranchisement and discrimination against African Americans, Bouchet’s career advancement in Physics was stifled. Despite these challenges, Bouchet became a dedicated educator and advocate for the education of colored youth, until his death in 1918.
Keywords: Edward Alexander Bouchet; physics; history; black history; education; science, reconstruction era; graduate school

Meet America's First Black Ph.D. Scientist Who Turned Opportunity Into Academic Success - Edward Bouchet, Bryan A. Wilson, Ph.D., M.B.A, LinkedIn

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism

I read the poem "Seeds" at my wife's family reunion. For African Americans, reunions are a chance to connect with family members without associating it with a casket. Black life in general has always been dangerous and treacherous since 1619. Ripped from the African continent, the survivors of cargo vessels like "The Good Ship Jesus" lost their culture, languages, indigenous religious practices. As a culture, we had to reestablish this through being thrown together from different tribes with different customs, infusing what we found with distant memories reconstructed into the language of our oppressors, the religions that gaslit us into an Anglo "Imago Dei" to ensure that the enslaved "obeyed their [white] masters." Mother Dear and Paw-Paw were the culmination of this remarkable adjustment, despite a psychopathological caste system that would rather ban books than learn from its history. The secret weapon of all people in oppressive systems is joy.

The history of this reunion started with a story,

Repeated with many African American families,

The patriarch almost lost his life for the audacity of voting.

Assaulted by Klansmen,

Three years before the lynching of Emmitt Till in Mississippi.

The inspiration for the March on Washington, eight years later.

The cowardly Klansmen’s ancestors dressed in sheets,

Pretending to be malevolent spirits,

Attempting to frighten newly freed citizens from voting,

Helped by Poll Taxes, Constitutional Quizzes, and guessing the number of soap bubbles.

(They now use repealing parts of the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and voter purging.)

Paw-Paw was assaulted,

Eleven years before the assassination of a fellow Traveling Man, Medgar Evers.

Excerpted from "Seeds."

To survive, people of color had to find joy. Many times it was and is through what outsiders, particularly the dominant culture, think of as primitive, unsophisticated religious rituals. These rituals are our therapy before the invention of what we now know as psychology, our tribal gathering, our ministers the tribal leaders. Many gotten drunk on their power have abused the relationship with vulnerable congregants, but on the positive tip, they can provide centers for meetings that galvanize actions the Civil Rights movement, which in itself is a response to reparations given to former plantation oligarchs, and the formerly enslaved and their descendants never seeing "forty acres and a mule."

Can "Joy and Hope," the slogan of the Harris-Walz campaign, help Democrats to win the 2024 election? Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor of the New York Times, is doubtful. "I cringed a little in the convention hall Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Kamala Harris would be the 'president of joy'," Healy wrote in a recent op-ed, comparing the Democratic focus on joy to Donald Trump's embrace of his anointment as a divinity by his most fervent followers. "Joy is not a political strategy. And God is not a political strategy."  

I disagree. As I have written in Strongmen, positive emotions such as love, solidarity, and yes, joy, have been part of successful anti-authoritarian political strategies. Positive emotions motivate people to engage in politics when they might have grown apathetic or cynical about the possibility of change.

Why Joy is an Effective Anti-Authoritarian Strategy. Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid Substack

 Dear Mr. Healy: "Hope and change" wasn't a strategy either, but it worked.

‘A lot has changed in the past three hundred years,’ the ship’s captain Jean-Luc Picard tells him. ‘People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.’

Instead of working just to live, humans are free to spend their time exploring the cosmos, or inventing, or making art—and sometimes doing all three. This optimistic view of human nature is in stark contrast to films such as Pixar’s Wall-E, which follows the right-wing line of thinking that achieving a post-scarcity society (what Keynes calls the ‘economic problem') would lead to sloth and hedonism, and ultimately the demise of humanity.

The Radical Politics of Star Trek, Simon Tyrie

lthough it is Lucas’s much maligned 1999 prequel, Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which is usually thought of as the series’ most politics-heavy entry, I think there is something of value in looking at each film and trying to decode the way in which it reflects the world from which it emerged.  As much credit, and criticism, as George Lucas and his collaborators deserve, they were all products of a changing geo-political environment which helped to shape them even as they were creating and shaping these films.  George Lucas may have directed Star Wars, but it was real life that directed George Lucas.  Just as surely as the collapsing skyscrapers seen in the likes of The Avengers, Man of Steel, Transformers 4, and Star Trek into Darkness reflect the realities of our post-9/11 world, so too did the real world seep into Lucas’s magnum opus.

The Politics of Star Wars: Race and Resistance in American Popular Culture and Cinema, Dr. Darren Reid

September 10, 2001, in the world that existed before the Tuesday that changed the planet, you could walk your loved ones up to the door of an airplane to say goodbye. Your body wasn't imaged by a scanner, and your shoes and laptop did not go onto a conveyor belt for x-ray analysis. There had been a terror attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. We were not a "nonviolent" world, but we were less apocalyptic and "prepping for doomsday." September 11, 2001 brought with it depression, hopelessness, a dark existentialism that we (in my opinion), became addicted to and victim of its PTSD. Covid, the deaths of one million American citizens, isolation, social media and "Zoom fatigue" exacerbated it, and birth QAnon.

Kiefer Sutherland became the larger-than-life antihero of "24," and Hollywood dramatized torture before Abu Ghraib. Star Trek: The Original Series, saw a world that had somehow eliminated its attachment to racial hierarchies and "the affirmative action of generational wealth," and Luke Skywalker was introduced in Star Wars as a "New Hope."

An Army friend (I'm an Air Force vet) called me on November 5, 2008, and asked:

“Reg, did you ever think that we would live to see this?”

Of course not. As black men, we lived in the tyranny of low expectations. We were the textbook cases for which "Mis-Education of the Negro" was written by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The United States managed to have 43 white males as the chief executive from George Washington to George W. Bush. Other democratic nations like Denmark, England, Finland, India, Israel have managed to have women as chief executives, and a diversity of cultures at the helm of state power. We also tend to be the only democratic government with an "electoral college," that sounds academic until you realize it gives undue power to southern states that held human beings enslaved, and wrote laws to continue the "peculiar institution" of the antebellum South in perpetuity. The former enslaver's descendants would like some of those laws to make a comeback.

"Hope and change" and "joy" are not strategies, but it does give us something to live for.

“Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.”  Dr. Emmett Brown, "Back to the Future, Part III."

Hello every one if you look at the cover design coursty of David Yurkovich this is the cover design for my upcoming collection of short stories horror if you will in the sub-genre of occult detective featuring my characters Madison Cavendish & Sue Sunmountain private investigators of the stange and mudane. Both biracial ,Madison just happens to be a living vampire and Sue lycan, they grapple with the underworld of New York City starting in 1914 and through the decades, from nameless cosmic horrors to ghost trains to literary killer robots to Aztec devil dog strippers ther're on the case. With the help of a zombie detective, a Harlem alchemist and a vampire cow girl from Nebraska the private eye business is not boring for the duo. Publishing TBA this Fall by Current Words Press, stay tuned. 

Medical applications Laboratory tests showed how the 3D printed material molds and sticks to organs such as this porcine heart. (Courtesy: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)

Topics: 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Hydrogels, Polymer Science

A new method for 3D printing, described in Science, makes inroads into hydrogel-based adhesives for use in medicine.

3D printers, which deposit individual layers of a variety of materials, enable researchers to create complex shapes and structures. Medical applications often require strong and stretchable biomaterials that also stick to moving tissues, such as the beating human heart or tough cartilage covering the surfaces of bones at a joint.

Many researchers are pursuing 3D-printed tissues, organs and implants created using biomaterials called hydrogels, which are made from networks of crosslinked polymer chains. While significant progress has been made in the field of fabricated hydrogels, traditional 3D printed hydrogels may break when stretched or crack under pressure. Others are too stiff to sculpt around deformable tissues.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), realized that they could incorporate intertwined chains of molecules to make 3D printed hydrogels stronger and more elastic – and possibly even allow them to stick to wet tissue. The method, known as CLEAR, sets an object’s shape using spatial light illumination (photopolymerization) while a complementary redox reaction (dark polymerization) gradually yields a high concentration of entangled polymer chains.

3D printing creates strong, stretchy hydrogels that stick to tissue, Catherine Steffel, Physics World

Amanda Montañez; Source: “Slaveholder Ancestry and Current Net Worth of Members of the United States Congress,” by Neil K. R. Sehgal and Ashwini R. Sehgal, in PLOS ONE. Published online August 21, 2024

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Education, History

U.S. Senators and Representatives whose family had a history of enslaving others have greater present-day wealth.

Members of the U.S. congress whose ancestors enslaved people have had a higher median net worth than those whose ancestors did not, according to a new analysis published on Wednesday in PLOS ONE.

The analysis used genealogical data published last year by an investigative team at Reuters, which found that in 2021, at least 100 members of Congress were descended from enslavers. This included 8 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Republicans.

This reporting caught the eye of Neil K. R. Sehgal, a Ph.D. student and computational social science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He wondered what this unique genealogical data might reveal when combined with other publicly available information about members of Congress—particularly their financial disclosure forms.

“Just the fact that this was available—this detailed genealogical data and these financial disclosures for members of Congress—allowed us to explore this link,” Sehgal says.

The racial wealth gap in the U.S. is staggering. More than one in five white households have a net worth of more than $1 million, whereas more than one in five Black households have zero or negative net worth. This extreme imbalance began with slavery and has been perpetuated by racist policies and practices in housing, education, hiring, voting, and more that prevent many Black Americans from attaining and passing on generational wealth.

Wealthier Members of Congress Have Family Links to Slavery, Allison Parshall, Scientific American

Topics: Astrobiology, Biology, Instrumentation, James Web Space Telescope, Research, SETI

"The Secret Life of the Universe" by Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, the SETI Institute's chief scientist and Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, is coming out this week, both in the US (August 13, 2024) and in the UK (August 15, 2024). Scriber/Simon & Schuster publishes both editions. Cabrol articulates an overview of where we stand today in our search for life in the universe, what's coming, and how looking out for life beyond Earth teaches us about our place on our planet.

Here is an excerpt to inspire you:

On July 11, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) returned its first images, penetrating the wall of time to show us the universe just a few hundred million years after its formation. In a marvelous cosmic irony, this immersion into the depths of our origins propels us into the future, where a revolution looms large in astronomy, in cosmology, and in astrobiology—the search for life in the universe. JWST comes after a few decades of space and planetary exploration during which we have discovered countless habitable environments in our solar system—for (simple) life as we know it, but also thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy, some of them located in the habitable zone of their parent stars.

We are living in a golden age in astrobiology, the beginning of a fantastic odyssey in which much remains to be written, but where our first steps bring the promise of prodigious discoveries. And these first steps have already transformed our species in one generation in a way that we cannot foresee just yet.

Copernicus taught us long ago that the Earth was neither at the center of the universe nor the center of the solar system, for that matter. We also learned from the work of Harlow Shapley and Henrietta Swan Leavitt that the solar system does not even occupy any particularly prominent place in our galaxy. It is simply tucked away at the inner edge of Orion’s spur in the Milky Way, 27,000 light-years from its center, in a galactic suburb of sorts. Our sun is an average-sized star located in a galaxy propelled at 2.1 million kilometers per hour in a visible universe that counts maybe 125 billion such cosmic islands, give or take a few billion. In this immensity, the Kepler mission taught us that planetary systems are the rule, not the exception.

This is how, in a mere quarter of a century, we found ourselves exploring a universe populated by as many planets as stars. Yet, looking up and far into what seems to be an infinite ocean of possibilities, the only echoes we have received so far from our explorations have been barren planetary landscapes and thundering silence. Could it be that we are the only guests at the universal table? Maybe. As a scientist, I cannot wholly discount this hypothesis, but it seems very unlikely and “an awful waste of space,” and for more than one reason.

The Secret Life of the Universe, ?ETI Institute

EVIL STREAMING SERIES REVIEW

By Jarvis Sheffield

Evil is an outstanding series that masterfully blends supernatural elements with psychological drama, creating a viewing experience that is both thrilling and thought-provoking. The show stands out for its originality in both storytelling and character development, making it a refreshing addition to the genre. The narrative is artfully crafted, weaving together complex themes of faith, science, and the unknown, which keeps viewers hooked from the very first episode.

One of the most compelling aspects of Evil is the stellar performances by the cast, with Mike Colter leading the way as David Acosta. Colter's portrayal is nothing short of exceptional. He brings a deep sense of gravitas to the role, balancing strength and vulnerability in a way that makes his character incredibly relatable and engaging. His performance adds a layer of depth to the series that elevates it beyond typical supernatural dramas.

The supporting cast also delivers remarkable performances, each adding their unique touch to the show. Together, they create a dynamic ensemble that enhances the overall impact of the series. The chemistry among the actors is palpable, making their interactions feel genuine and compelling. 

The show’s ability to explore dark and complex themes while maintaining a sense of mystery and intrigue is what makes Evil truly special. It challenges viewers to think deeply while still delivering plenty of suspense and entertainment. If you are looking for a series that is both intellectually stimulating and genuinely entertaining, Evil is a must-watch.

Antiferromagnetically ordered particles are represented by red and blue spheres in this artist’s impression. The particles are in an array of optical traps. Credit: Chen Lei

Topics: Applied Physics, Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

Experiments on the Fermi–Hubbard model can now be made much larger, more uniform, and more quantitative.

A universal quantum computer—capable of crunching the numbers of any complex problem posed to it—is still a work in progress. But for specific problems in quantum physics, there’s a more direct approach to quantum simulation: Design a system that captures the physics you want to study, and then watch what it does. One of the systems most widely studied that way is the Fermi–Hubbard model (FHM), in which spin-up and spin-down fermions can hop among discrete sites in a lattice. Originally conceived as a stripped-down description of electrons in a solid, the FHM has attracted attention for its possible connection to the mysterious physics of high-temperature superconductivity.

Stripped down, though it may be, the FHM defies solution, either analytical or numerical, except in the simplest cases, so researchers have taken to studying it experimentally. In 2017, Harvard University’s Markus Greiner and colleagues made a splash when they observed antiferromagnetic order—a checkerboard pattern of up and down spins—in their FHM experiment consisting of fermionic atoms in a 2D lattice of 80 optical traps. (See Physics Today, August 2017, page 17.) The high-temperature-superconductor phase diagram has an antiferromagnetic phase near the superconducting one, so the achievement promised more exciting results to come. But the small size of the experiment limited the observations the researchers could make.

A 10 000-fold leap for a quintessential quantum simulator, Johanna L. Miller, Physics Today.

Power with a twist: Twisted ropes made from single-walled carbon nanotubes could store enough energy to power sensors within the human body while avoiding the chemical hazards associated with batteries. (Courtesy: Shigenori UTSUMI)

Topics: Applied Physics, Battery, Carbon Nanotubes, Chemistry, Materials Science, Nanoengineering

Mechanical watches and clockwork toys might seem like relics of a bygone age, but scientists in the US and Japan are bringing this old-fashioned form of energy storage into the modern era. By making single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) into ropes and twisting them like the string on an overworked yo-yo, Katsumi Kaneko, Sanjeev Kumar Ujjain , and colleagues showed that they can store twice as much energy per unit mass as the best commercial lithium-ion batteries. The nanotube ropes are also stable at a wide range of temperatures, and the team says they could be safer than batteries for powering devices such as medical sensors.

SWCNTs are made from sheets of pure carbon just one atom thick that have been rolled into a straw-like tube. They are impressively tough – five times stiffer and 100 times stronger than steel – and earlier theoretical studies by team member David Tománek and others suggested that twisting them could be a viable means of storing large amounts of energy in a compact, lightweight system.

Twisted carbon nanotubes store more energy than lithium-ion batteries, Margaret Harris, Physics World.

 Video Source: Quanta Magazine

Topics: Astrophysics, High Energy Physics, Particle Physics

Each week, Quanta Magazine explains one of the most important ideas driving modern research. This week, physics staff writer Charlie Wood explains why many researchers are looking to outer space for signs of “new physics.”

Fundamental physics has a problem. Some researchers say the field faces a “nightmare scenario.” Some say it’s “in crisis.” To others, it’s merely “stuck.” Whatever word they use, most particle physicists acknowledge that progress has slowed. After a rip-roaring 20th century that saw the discovery of general relativity, quantum theory, and a dozen or so fundamental particles, the first quarter of the 21st century has mainly brought further confirmation of those theories.

Physicists know their hard-won understanding of nature’s laws is incomplete. They don’t know why certain particles have mass, what sort of invisible stuff seems to be holding galaxies together, or what sort of energy is driving the universe’s expansion. But their biggest blind spot is one of scale. Physicists have equations that predict how molecules zig and zag, how atoms split, and how the heart of the atom holds together. They can continue zooming into the sub-sub-subatomic world for quite a while, but eventually — for any event playing out on a stage roughly 10⁻³⁵ meters across — they run out of equations. The universe seems to have rules that tell it what to do in those situations (it follows them during black hole formation, for instance), but physicists are ignorant of these instructions.

Particle physicists have pushed their frontier of ignorance back to this minuscule realm by repeatedly crashing particles closer and closer together, watching what happens, and developing the mathematics to capture the strange and surprising behaviors they witness. This strategy has culminated in Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer ring that can summon the energies needed to collide protons and study nature at 10⁻¹⁹ meters. The international physics community aims to build a next-generation collider — perhaps with a 100-kilometer circumference — this century. But the money, time and technology required to go much further boggles the mind. Numerous clever non-collider experiments are searching for subtle deviations from predictions and could lead to a major discovery any day, but researchers are ultimately facing similar problems as their experiments grow more and more intricate. Particle physicists are approaching a technological and financial wall as they attempt to probe ever deeper layers of reality.

One of the most promising avenues for new discoveries is the detection of ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. Researchers have now racked up dozens of chirps originating from cataclysmic crashes between black holes, and they are rapidly developing ways of picking up cosmic clangs indicative of even more dramatic events. Particle physicists are anxiously awaiting the 2030s, when they hope to see a trio of satellites known as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) go into operation. If it flies, LISA will be capable of picking up gravitational waves generated during the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang, an intense era in cosmic history at the frontier of the known laws of physics. In those early moments, some physicists expect, the universe existed in multiple phases at once — like a pot of boiling water. If so, the bubbling would have set off space-time ripples that LISA will be listening for.

Why the Next Physics Revolution Might Come From Above, Charlie Wood, Quanta Magazine

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Existentialism, Fascism

Tech bros (n): someone, usually a man, who works in the digital technology industry, especially in the United States, and is sometimes thought to not have good social skills and to be too confident about their own ability. Source: Cambridge Dictionary

“The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity,” Carlo M. Cipollo, UC Berkley, Economist, Historian

5 basic laws:

1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. (E.g., Nazi Germany)
2. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristics of that person. (E.g., economics, education level, skillset)
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. (E.g., authoritarian governments who destroy their countries, financial meltdowns, etc.)
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances, to deal with and (or) to associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. (E.g., downplaying their impact, giving them the benefit of the doubt)
5. A stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager. (E.g., Bandits act typically in self-interest. Stupid people don’t consider collateral damage, even to themselves.)

Call it "Dunning-Kruger" on steroids. The lead description on Amazon is ominous:

An economist explains five laws that confirm our worst fears: stupid people can and do rule the world

Throughout history, a powerful force has hindered the growth of human welfare and happiness. It is more powerful than the Mafia or the military. It has global catastrophic effects and can be found anywhere from the world's most powerful boardrooms to your local bar.

It is human stupidity.

I apply stupidity not to intelligence but to behavior that, once achieving arguable success in an area of life, empowers said person to feel they have a right, and in their mind, a duty, to pontificate on other areas of life that they have no experience in, or clue.

 In 1862, a famous Irish physicist and mathematician, Lord Kelvin, estimated that Earth was between 20-million and 400-million years old. While that is an enormous span of time, even an age of 400 million years would make the planet quite young in relation to the rest of the universe. Lord Kelvin based his conclusion on a calculation of how long it would have taken Earth to cool if it had begun as a molten mass. While his estimate was wrong by a significant margin, his technique of drawing conclusions based on observations and calculations was an accurate scientific method. How Did Scientists Calculate the Age of Earth? NatGeo Education

Suffice it to say, Lord Kelvin, for whom the Kelvin scale in Thermodynamics is named for reflecting a "complete absence of thermal energy," was WAY out over his skis!

Lord Kelvin, God bless him, exhibited the logical fallacy called "appeal to authority." He appealed to the fact that he was a superstar in thermodynamics (KNIGHTED, for crying out loud), so he had to be right! The geologists, ahem, the people who study the structure and composition of the Earth, in his mindIn his mind, the geologists, ahem, the people who study the structure and composition of the Earth, were wrong.

So, the "bros" (and most of them are male), have the unfortunate habit of assuming after they conquered the hill in Silicon Valley and became "new money" millionaires and billionaires, they have a right and an obligation to pontificate on matters in society they have no experience in, or clue. The bros might spread misinformation online on a platform they bought that arguably fails to attract other customers and might sue those who have left. They might use their leverage to turn over precedents in our nation's highest court. They are Einstein in their areas of expertise, but Fredo in all others. They are over their skis. They read the Cliff Notes to Atlas Shrugged, and forgot that Ayn Rand ended up on the collectivist scheme she railed against in her latter years: Social Security. For the bros, the government is daddy bailing them out of a jam of their creation usually, and everyone else isn't "special" or daddy's favorite: they are. And they want what they want, damn the economy, the environment, and the planet—he who dies last with the gold wins.

The "bros" should study earnestly the real and fictional outcomes of Boesky and Gekko.

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