BLOGS

Topics: COVID-19, Existentialism, Research

I assure you, I have been affected by this pandemic more than most. I am in a demographic that can experience deleterious effects from this virus. I have had friends and family affected directly. I have classmates that are struggling to survive. This is no hoax: it's real.

My precautions are beyond anal.

I worked in cleanrooms in the semiconductor industry, the most stringent being Class 1. The old criteria meant 0.5 microns of particles per cubic feet of air. (The newest guidelines were adopted in 2001, metric and still pretty stringent.) Each employee passed through air showers to push off any particulates from their clothing. Smokers are encouraged not to indulge, and cologne was prohibited - smoke and scent are particles. We then put our street garb in a locker, putting on green hospital gowns and fab shoes that never left the site. Then we donned cleanroom gowns - "bunny suits" - before going into the alien, HEPA-filtered environment, protecting it from any hair, skin, sweat, or dirt we could shed that would inhibit the functionality of integrated circuits. I tried to drink as little water as possible before going on the floor. Going to the bathroom, or lunch was a pain.

I have developed a unique protocol for assaulting what used to be trivial things like getting the mail, mowing the lawn - grass grows as rains fall during pandemics - or, going to the grocers for supplies.

1. I fashioned a mask from my father's handkerchiefs and rubber bands per the CDC guidelines. (I now have a collection of 5).

2. I use cloth/rubber work gloves for mowing as the rubber is tactile enough for me to operate equipment and pay for items at the grocery store.

3. After I enter the house, I immediately put all clothing - including my gloves - in the washer. I proceed to the shower.

Source: https://physics4thecool.blogspot.com/2020/04/protocols.html

The confluence of misinformation and infectious disease isn’t unique to COVID-19. Misinformation contributed to the spread of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and it plagues efforts to educate the public on the importance of vaccinating against measles. But when it comes to COVID-19, the pandemic has come to be defined by a tsunami of persistent misinformation to the public on everything from the utility of masks and the efficacy of school closures, to the wisdom behind social distancing, and even the promise of untested remedies. According to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, areas of the country exposed to television programming that downplayed the severity of the pandemic saw greater numbers of cases and deaths—because people didn’t follow public health precautions.

In the United States, misinformation spread by elements of the media, by public leaders, and by individuals with large social media platforms has contributed to a disproportionately large share of COVID-19 burden: we house 4 percent of the global population but account for 22 percent of global COVID-19 deaths. With winter around the corner and people spending more time indoors, it is more imperative than ever that we counter misinformation and clearly communicate risks to the public; in addition, as we await the arrival of a vaccine, it is equally important to arm the public with facts. We have work to do: a recent poll found that just half of the American public plans to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

COVID Misinformation Is Killing People - This “infodemic” has to stop

Amir Bagherpour, Ali Nouri, Scientific American

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the Hepatitis C virus. Top right: the virus particle containing an RNA genome and the viral envelope glycoproteins E1 and E2 exposed on the surface. Bottom: the viral genome encoding a large polyprotein that is cleaved into multiple structural and non-structural proteins with 5’ and 3’ terminal untranslated regions.

Topics: Medicine, Nobel Laureates, Nobel Prize

The discovery of Hepatitis C virus
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis, from the Greek names for liver and inflammation, is a disease characterized by poor appetite, vomiting, fatigue, and jaundice – yellow discoloration of the skin and eyes. Chronic hepatitis leads to liver damage, which may progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Viral infection is the leading cause of hepatitis, with some forms persisting without symptoms for many years before life-threatening complications develop. Until the 1960s, exposure to blood from infected individuals was a major health hazard, with up to 30% risk of chronic hepatitis following surgery or multiple blood transfusions. This risk was only partially reduced by the discovery of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the eventual elimination of HBV-contaminated blood through testing. A more insidious form of hepatitis, characterized by very mild symptoms in the acute phase and a high risk of progression to chronic liver damage and cancer, remained. The work of Alter, Houghton, and Rice characterized this form of hepatitis to be a distinct clinical entity, caused by an RNA virus of the Flavivirus family, now known as Hepatitis C virus (HCV). This pioneering work has paved the way for the development of screening methods that have dramatically reduced the risk of acquiring hepatitis from contaminated blood and has led to the development of effective antiviral drugs that have improved the lives of millions of people.

Advanced information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Mon. 5 Oct 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2020/advanced-information/>

Credit: Johannes Zirkelbach/Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light

Topics: Applied Physics, Nanotechnology, Optics

At the focus of a laser, a 100-nm-wide gold nanoparticle can block more than half the light. If additional particles are added, the amount of blocked light increases exponentially, as modeled by the Beer-Lambert law. But theorists predict that in the right set of circumstances, the addition of a molecule would, counterintuitively, decrease the light blocked—that is, make the nanoparticle partially transparent.

Vahid Sandoghdar of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and his colleagues have now shown that predicted partial transparency for a near-field coupled dye molecule (red in image) and a plasmonic nanoparticle (gold). The phenomenon is a result of the interference between the light scattered from the two.

To achieve the required coupling, the dye molecule must be in a particular orientation and less than a wavelength away from the gold nanoparticle. Controlling those parameters is tricky, so Sandoghdar and his colleagues left them to chance. The researchers started with an array of nanoparticles and then coated it with a molten crystal doped with dibenzoterrylene (DBT) dye molecules. After the colorless crystal solidified, the result was a stochastic distribution of DBT molecules.

Their strong, distinctive fluorescence made the dye molecules easy to find optically. But the team members needed to verify that the molecule was near-field coupled to a nanoparticle. They identified a particle with two nearby DBT molecules and shined [a] tunable titanium: sapphire laser on it. The nanoparticle acts as an antenna, which enhances the molecules’ fluorescence. Relative to the other, one DBT molecule had telltale signatures of near-field interactions: enhanced and spectrally broadened fluorescence and a shorter excited-state lifetime—1.4 ns compared with the usual 8.1 ns.

Nanoparticle turns partially transparent, Heather Hill, Physics Today

Monkeyland: There's a website for everything.

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Dark Humor, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights

We started with Tuesday’s “debate,” where one candidate came for the debate, while the other as an orange primate slinging shit, trying to get his opponent to stutter and literally, “seeing what sticks.” Every post-debate analysis gave it to his opponent.

Now, he’s tested positive for the Coronavirus.

The sad part is, we’ve been lied to SO many times, we have a right to doubt the report.

It is a bit “convenient” after a disastrous debate, isn’t it? After 20,000+ lies, 200,000+ dead Americans, and counting, he’s caused us to question our reality.

He saw his internal polling numbers, and his howling, feces sling fest didn’t move the needle. He is a faux billionaire that played one on The Apprentice reality-TV show. He was so broke, the showrunners rented the furniture seen on the set because his office looked like the remains of "Sanford and Son." Methinks this is the Occam's razor reason why he's desperately terrified for anyone to see his taxes: his net worth is in the crapper.

He knew the employment numbers were going to be disappointing. Dow futures went negative at the news of his infection. He knew it as he went to a fundraiser in New Jersey. He knew it as shook hands with supporters. He planned a rally in Wisconsin, despite the protestations from the democratic governor. IF (& that’s a BIG if) he’s got it, he did it, I think, HOPING he contracted the virus from his previous super spreader events, so he could change the subject, and NOT have to debate further. He’s going for a medical resignation, and you can’t get called a quitter if you’re “legitimately” (wink, wink) sick.

Nuff said.

“Stand back and stand by” made the “Proud Boys” little mushrooms poke there rusty, racist zippers. He's disavowed them like he did his father's attendance at a Klan rally in New York City in 1927; as he did ever knowing David Duke, or what the Klan is; as he did after Charlottesville when he called Neo-Nazis "very fine people," making them equivalent to Antifa (which means, say it WITH me now: ANTI-fascist). He's disavowed them because that's just another crime he could be convicted for if he foments violence at what's looking to be a landslide defeat. He knows he’s losing, and losing means prison: the Manhattan DA, SDNY, the NYS DA Letitia James could give a shit about any pardon Mike Pence can worm out of his complicit, faux-Christian ass: no president, no matter how brief the tenure can do anything about state crimes. His best move in 2016 was to lose and inaugurate “Trump TV,” not this American Carnage of apathetic ineptitude he’s unleashed on this nation.

Speaking of Christians, what EXACTLY are white evangelicals going to do after this? WHO in their right minds would seek out their example? They couldn't even be street guards at an elementary after this debacle of epic hypocrisy. After decades of facade piety, they voted for the vagina grabber! Their median age is a matched set to Fox viewership: white and getting older. Religious organizations survive from the free-will charitable contributions ("tithes and offerings") from their congregations. Congregations only grow when YOUNG people join them, get married, have babies, and stay awhile. Good luck paying your mortgages. Hit up Franklin Graham or Paula White for a loan to float you.

A seventy-four-year-old racist (allegedly) has COVID-19, with associated morbidities: he’s overweight, his diet is disastrous, and yet he’s managed to fire off tweets with supposedly mild symptoms between the land of the living and the hereafter.

A malignant narcissist hates the idea of losing, or quitting while he’s clearly behind.

This is the equivalent of a more noble and honorable man falling on his sword.

I'm voting. I'm voting as SOON as the polls open. He can promise to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. He can promise to give us our "40 acres and a mule" WITH interest. None of these flaccid, half-assed, shoot-from-the-hip promises mean anything to the functioning of this republic, that since I'm LIVING in it, I desperately WANT to function.

I need him gone. Quoting his well-worn, rehearsed phrase that made him famous: YOU'RE FIRED. Because in the words of Joy Reid: I "really WOULD like to sleep at night!"

Firefighters and volunteers in the Pantanal, Brazil, have been scrambling to rescue jaguars from extreme fires. Credit: Andre Penner/AP/Shutterstock

Chaotic speckle: a pattern resulting from light being scrambled by a complex medium such as multimode optical fiber. (Courtesy: M Malik and S Goel)

Topics: Entanglement, Quantum Optics, Quantum Mechanics

Natalia Herrera-Valencia and colleagues have successfully unscrambled entangled light after it has passed through a 2 m long multimode fiber. Led by Mehul Malik, the team at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh tackled the challenge using entanglement itself. The research was done in collaboration with a colleague at the University of Glasgow and is described in a recent paper in Nature Physics.

Light passing through a disordered (or “complex”) medium like atmospheric fog or a multimode fiber gets scattered, albeit in a known manner. As a result, the information carried by the light gets distorted but is preserved, and extra steps are needed to access it. This gets especially tricky for the transport of entangled states of light because the medium muddles up the quantum correlations. The states get “scrambled” and “unscrambling” becomes necessary to retrieve the original entangled states.

Entangled light is unscrambled using entanglement itself, Lavanya Taneja, Physics World

Ancient Symbols: Ouroboros

WE'RE STARTING SOON SO STAY TUNED. 

Image Source: American Physical Society (APS) News

Topics: Astrophysics, Condensed Matter Physics, Diversity in Science, Women in Science

Dr. Joan Feynman was "Surely, You're Joking," Nobel laureate Dr. Richard Feynman's baby sister, and an impressive scientist in her own right. We lost her in July. She broke through a lot of barriers that her science progeny are now, rightfully, walking through.

Joan Feynman, an astrophysicist known for her discovery of the origin of auroras, died on July 21. She was 93.

Over the course of her career, Feynman made many breakthroughs in furthering the understanding of solar wind and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, a region in space where the planetary magnetic field deflects charged particles from the sun. As author or co-author of more than 185 papers, Feynman’s research accomplishments range from discovering the shape of the Earth’s magnetosphere and identifying the origin of auroras to creating statistical models to predict the number of high-energy particles that would collide with spacecraft over time. In 1974, she would become the first woman ever elected as an officer of the American Geophysical Union, and in 2000 she was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.

Feynman’s choice in pursuing a career as a scientist was often at odds with the expectations for women, especially the expectations for a wife and mother, but she persisted to become an accomplished astrophysicist. During the 2018 APS April Meeting, where Feynman spoke at the Kavli Foundation Plenary Session, she recalled her mother discouraging her childhood interest in science, calling “women’s brains too feeble,” likely a common belief at the time.</em>

For her fourteenth birthday, Richard gave Feynman a copy of Astronomy by Robert Horace Baker, a college-level physics text, that both taught her about physics and what was possible: Feynman credited a figure attributed to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin for proving to her that women could indeed have a career doing science.

As part of her research at JPL, Feynman identified the mechanism that leads to the formation of auroras and developed a statistical model to determine the number of high-energy particles expelled from coronal mass injections that would hit a spacecraft during its lifetime. After her retirement from a senior scientist position in 2003, Feynman continued to conduct research on the impact of solar activity on the early climate of the Earth and the role of climate stabilization in the development of agriculture.

Joan Feynman 1927–2020, Leah Poffenberger, APS News

Dark Spider and Ms. B. Haven a crossover art by Marcello Oliver Costa. 

Would be nice if contemporary Sci Fi did a better job of recognizing the presence of historically significant Black people within stories, but I guess that's why we write our own stuff!

Also, got to get caught up with DS9! I'm admittedly sleeping on Capt Sisco!! Shame this never happened!

Dope Design

Ruha Benjamin was the featured speaker on the DoSER webinar “Race to the Future? Values and Vision in the Design of Technology and Society.” | courtesy Ruha Benjamin

Topics: African Americans, African Studies, Futurism, Sociology

Technology is not unbiased, according to a scholar investigating the phenomenon of technological racism. As people recognize the embedded biases within technology, the growing and multifaceted tech justice movement is working to counter these biases, added the scholar.

Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist, and professor of African American studies at Princeton University whose work explores the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine, spoke during the “Race to the Future? Values and Vision in the Design of Technology and Society” webinar hosted on Aug. 13 by the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion program. DoSER facilitates dialogue between scientific and religious communities by hosting symposia and lectures on topics at the interface of science, ethics, and religion; training and supporting scientists on engagement with faith communities; and helping seminaries integrate science into their core curricula.

Webinar viewers were invited to consider which prejudices and values are incorporated into technologies such as search engines and AI algorithms and to identify methods to dismantle technological racism.

Technology is often spoken about as if it were a force separate from human influence, Benjamin said. Yet “human beings are behind the screen: our values, our ideologies, our biases, and assumptions.”

Benjamin also pointed out that the biases extend beyond individuals to the systems as a whole and the historical data inputted into the machines. Much in the way that racism exists in legal, educational, and health systems, it also becomes codified in computer systems, she said. For instance, searching for images of “professional hairstyles” and “unprofessional hairstyles” on Google brings up results that equate naturally Black hair with a lack of professionalism – search results that echo real-life biases, she said.

Technology’s Built-In Machine Bias Reflects Racism, Scholar Says, Andrea Korte, AAAS

Name: Docus lem Laurel ol Sulto
Occupation: Teacher / Royal of Sulto
Inner Strength: Laughter and Wisdom
Inner Weakness: Caring too deeply at times

- Docus is an MC from the worlds of Al Cir. Originally born in Proleeca, and raised to become a ruler for one of its three largest nations, she took after her mother in being rather unorthodox. This easily-excitable soul manages to balance the roles of teacher and mentor at Proleeca's Light Academy, being a ruling authority for Sulto, and being a front-line warrior and general in the fight against the draka.

- In the books of Al Cir, Docus introduces herself to Daiu (MC) as her personal mentor and whisks her away to Proleeca. She plays a crucial role in Daiu's development as well as in the war, but never loses her childish antics.

About Proleeca: The world Proleeca is an "outcast" world, claimed to be cursed by providence, evident by their "odd skin" and lack of hair. Otherwise, people of the five linked worlds of Al Cir have skin tones and hair similar to people of our Earth. Proleecan dominate skin tones are red, blue, and green, and they are the only world of the five that exclusively lives underground as it is too hot to live on the surface.

Chronicler Commentary: It honestly took me a long time to figure out what to put as her "weakness." She's not OP - she certainly has her own flaws and is not remotely immortal - but this woman is genuinely incredible. The very first stories in T'vanna that I witnessed originated in the five worlds of Al Cir - with the entrance of Docus. She grinned widely, spread her arms, and said "Wondrous day, is it not!" ... I was captivated by her in an instant, and continued to traverse Al Cir through Daiu's eyes, guided by her energy to experience just how "wondrous" everything truly is.

(Support development of these stories and their animations by joining my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/chronicler9 where I post exclusive stories and world insight, as well as artwork and coming merch. You can also visit my public site for a peek into the worlds' creation, links to published books, and older artwork and blogs www.c9prod.com )

Goddess Atomica herself, 

Quantum physics experiment has demonstrated an important step toward achieving quantum cryptography among many users, an essential requirement for a secure quantum Internet. Credit: ÖAW and Klaus Pichler Getty Images

A 3D illustration of the interstellar object known as ‘Oumuamua. Credit: Getty Images

Topics: Astrophysics, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

‘Oumuamua—a mysterious, interstellar object that crashed through our solar system two years ago—might, in fact, be alien technology. That’s because an alternative, non-alien explanation might be fatally flawed, as a new study argues.

But most scientists think the idea that we spotted alien technology in our solar system is a long shot.

In 2018, our solar system ran into an object lost in interstellar space. The object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, seemed to be long and thin—cigar-shaped—and tumbling end over end. Then, close observations showed it was accelerating as if something were pushing on it. Scientists still aren’t sure why.

One explanation? The object was propelled by an alien machine, such as a lightsail—a wide, millimeter-thin machine that accelerates as it’s pushed by solar radiation. The main proponent of this argument was Avi Loeb, a Harvard University astrophysicist.

Most scientists, however, think ‘Oumuamua’s wonky acceleration was likely due to a natural phenomenon. In June, a research team proposed that solid hydrogen was blasting invisibly off the interstellar object’s surface and causing it to speed up. 

Now, in a new paper published Monday (Aug. 17) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Loeb and Thiem Hoang, an astrophysicist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, argue that the hydrogen hypothesis couldn’t work in the real world—which would mean that there is still hope that our neck of space was once visited by advanced aliens—and that we actually spotted their presence at the time.

Here’s the problem with ‘Oumuamua: It moved like a comet, but didn’t have the classic coma, or tail, of a comet, said astrophysicist Darryl Seligman, an author of the solid hydrogen hypothesis, who is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

Mystery of Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua Gets Trickier, Rafi Letzter, Live Science, Scientific American

Image from GoComics.com and SpaceAndTime.com

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, COVID-19, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights

Public-opinion polling shows that Trump’s low opinion of American elections has practically become Republican Party orthodoxy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Republicans have an “unprecedented” level of “concern and mistrust in the system.” Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters believe that if Hillary Clinton wins the election, it’ll be due to fraud. In both this poll and an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, only half of Republicans say they’d accept a Clinton victory. (In the latter poll, by contrast, 82 percent of Democrats said they would accept a Trump victory.)

This suspicious Republican electorate is joined by growing ranks of conservative politicians, pundits, and intellectuals. They’re all increasingly willing to say that the existing American political system is hopelessly flawed and needs to be rolled back to the days before blacks and women could vote. On the most obvious level, this can be seen in moves by Republican governors all over America to make voting more difficult, through stringent voting ID laws, new hurdles to registration, and the curtailment of early-voting options. Equally significant has been the gutting of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act by conservative Supreme Court justices in the 2013 Shelby Country v. Holder ruling.

Suspicion of the democratic system is so pervasive on the right because it’s driven by the fear that white Christian America is facing demographic doom. The evidence is right there in the election results: Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, and if current polling trends hold, the GOP will be batting one for seven when the results come in on November 8. Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans may hold on to a U.S. House majority for a while, and they’ll remain competitive in state capitols in the near future. But a whites-only party can’t win national elections. And over time, the GOP’s congressional and state fortresses will crumble if the party doesn’t change dramatically. Or if the democratic system doesn’t change dramatically.

The Right Is Giving Up on Democracy, Jeet Heer, The New Republic, October 24, 2016

The 2008 electorate was on-record as the youngest and most diverse in Pew Research history. It's why I think the right had a visceral reaction to President Barack Obama. He was the seventh African American to run for president in the modern era, and the first one to actually win. The trial balloon of a "post-racial" society was floated (see? We're not racist, you finally have a negro president). The 2012 re-election sent them over a cliff of brief self-reflection with the post-election GOP Autopsy, officially the Opportunity and Growth Project. That revelation was short-lived, and with past indicative revelations as prologue, quite reasonable and sane. State media/Fox propaganda and other conservative outlets couldn't help themselves. The faux "controversies" from Michelle Obama's bare arms (but not Melania Trump's bare behind), Grey Poupon mustard on hot dogs and tan suits seems delirious, hilarious, and deranged. It was a parade of the insane.

There are a pro and con to whether racism qualifies as a mental disorder. To those recipients of its attacks and largesse, it seems to fit the bill. I was the victim of a "Zoom bombing" recently, pornographic materials, and the n-word repeated to an online crowd of African Americans in a Sunday School meeting studying the Book of James: We'd lean "pro."

This demographics time bomb was set off by the aftermath of 1865: no longer having free slave labor, many legal machinations were attempted to re-enslave previously free African Americans using vagrancy laws, see "Slavery By Another Name," by Douglas A. Blackmon. The American Prison System exploits a loophole in the 13th Amendment: anyone arrested by the system - state, federal or for-profit - according to The Constitution is technically a slave of the state. We have Asian citizens because Chinese immigrants were imported to replace freed slaves on plantations. ICE likes to raid Hispanics/Latinos at food processing plants, but are missing the bonanza of brown targets at home builders, who probably couldn't offer their great home prices without company owners paying undocumented immigrants cash off-the-books, so as not to incur tax liabilities. Not a single home builder, for example, has done a perp walk.

*****

Excerpt from "Black Labor, White Wealth: The Search for Power and Economic Justice," (August 1, 1994) Claude Anderson, Ed. D., Chapter 2: Power and Black Progress:

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 own 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 ethnics, 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: Sample chapter

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (Latin): after this, therefore because of this. It is an informal fallacy, meaning the fallacy originates in an error of reasoning rather than a flaw in the logical form of the argument. (Wikipedia) So, what WAS the original "argument"?

American mythology teaches that the early United States was founded by men of conscience who came to the "new world" in order to practice their religious convictions in peace and freedom. John Winthrop (1588–1649), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in particular, has been quoted as a source of inspiration by U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan.

Yet Winthrop did not represent a tradition of either democracy or religious tolerance. He hated democracy with a passion. The state he created did not hesitate to execute people like the Quakers and even brought to the "new" world the very popular tradition of medieval Europe, the trial and execution of witches.

"A Shining City on a Hill": Troubling information about a famous quote. The Puritan tradition of intolerance and John Winthrop, World Future Fund

We've taken The Constitution, our founding document, through historical apotheosis. Strict constructionists will say it is without flaw, and we should look for "original intent"; "breathing document" aficionados want constant change and continuous improvement, ever-becoming a "more perfect union."

The story we tell ourselves becomes muddled over time. This is similar to the game of "telephone," where my teacher whispered instructions to the first student in a line of fifth-graders from a 3 x 5 index card. Twenty-students deep, what we said and the meaning of what they said has irrevocably changed, similarly through essentially a 232-year relay.

We are here from Crispus Attucks to George Floyd, from sacrifices in revolts from England to knees-on-necks, no-knock raids, and killing teenagers carrying Arizona Tea and a bag of Skittles. We are here from Manifest Destiny, Trail of Tears, Black Wall Street-like genocides to Coronavirus pandemic. We are here because the original story of this country has become horribly distorted. That's not to say the original picture was perfect. For this republic's continuance, we desperately need to be honest with ourselves.

We're here because the country was based on slavery: the wealth of the nation built on the backs of free, uncompensated, kidnapped-from-Africa labor for generations.

We're here because those persons were described as a fraction, 3/5th's, and their children sold away like so much cattle.

We're here because the same slave owners defining us as inferior beings had unsolicited sex with us, siring Mulatto children in heterosexual rape of African women and "buck breaking" in homosexual encounters meant to emasculate African males in front of their females and families. Sally Hemings was not Thomas Jefferson's "lover": the relationship (or, the rape), started when she was fourteen. That is BY definition, pedophilia, and like all the aforementioned sexual acts above, sadistic.

We're here because the slaves, nor their descendants received reparations for years of enslavement, murder, and terrorism by the KKK, "sundown towns" requiring a Green Book to navigate around, and white citizen's councils.

We're here because such wealth exchange as reparations would dismantle the current biased system of white supremacy, and the reason it is opposed so strongly.

We're here because to justify the system, this nation built-in mythologies of superiority and inferiority, socially-engineered the society to self-fulfill the delusion, and codified it into laws. African Americans can be prejudiced, but they cannot be racist. Racism = prejudice + political power; the ability to codify your hatred with the strength of judiciary. Hitler did not "overthrow" the Weimar Republic: he won the election, seized control, and cloned Jim Crow on steroids in Europe, the only lesson the United States refuses to take ownership of.

We are here because unlike the logical fallacy: our current "this" is logically followed by the obvious "that." For us to have a new tomorrow - "[Built] Back Better," we're going to have to admit the sins of the nation's past, and in the vernacular of scripture: repent.

New Wing Based Plane Design

Reflective markers are attached to blue 3D-printed apparatus above and below the user’s knee as well as two metal plates on the exoskeleton leg. Researchers track and compare the movement of the markers to gain insight into how well the exoskeletons fit. In this composite photo, the bottom plate has been added after the original image was taken to show the entire configuration.
Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST

Topics: Applied Physics, NIST, Research, Robotics

A shoddily tailored suit or a shrunken T-shirt may not be the most stylish, but wearing them is unlikely to hurt more than your reputation. An ill-fitting robotic exoskeleton on the battlefield or factory floor, however, could be a much bigger problem than a fashion faux pas. 

Exoskeletons, many of which are powered by springs or motors, can cause pain or injury if their joints are not aligned with the user. To help manufacturers and consumers mitigate these risks, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a new measurement method to test whether an exoskeleton and the person wearing it are moving smoothly and in harmony. 

In a new report, the researchers describe an optical tracking system (OTS) not unlike the motion capture techniques used by filmmakers to bring computer-generated characters to life. 

The OTS uses special cameras that emit light and capture what is reflected back by spherical markers arranged on objects of interest. A computer calculates the position of the labeled objects in 3D space. Here, this approach was used to track the movement of an exoskeleton and test pieces, called “artifacts,” fastened to its user.

Exoskeleton Research Marches Forward With NIST Study on Fit, NIST