At 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 UTC) on Sept. 11, the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite looked at Hurricane Florence in infrared light. MODIS found coldest cloud top temperatures around the eye, as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees (yellow) Fahrenheit (minus 112 degrees Celsius). Surrounding the eye were thick rings of powerful storms with cloud tops as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees (red) Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius). Credit: NASA/NRL
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, NASA, Stochastic Modeling, Research, Weather
Predictive Modeling: Another good reason why science is important.
NASA’s Aqua satellite provided an infrared look at powerful Hurricane Florence early on Sept. 11 that indicated it was likely undergoing eyewall replacement.
Intense hurricanes can and often undergo an eyewall replacement cycle. That happens when a new eyewall or ring of thunderstorms within the outer rain bands forms further out from the storm’s center, outside of the original eye wall. That ring of thunderstorms then begins to choke off the original eye wall, starving it of moisture and momentum. Eventually, if the cycle is completed, the original eye wall of thunderstorms dissipates and the new outer eye wall of thunderstorms contracts and replace the old eye wall. The storm’s intensity can fluctuate over this period, initially weakening as the inner eye wall dies before again strengthening as the outer eye wall contracts.
In a new study, Asst. Prof. Edwin Kite finds ocean planets could stay in zone of habitability longer than previously assumed. Copyright istockphoto.com
Topics: Astronomy, Astrobiology, Astrophysics, Exoplanet, Planetary Science, Space Exploration
The conditions for life surviving on planets entirely covered in water are more fluid than previously thought, opening up the possibility that water worlds could be habitable, according to a new paper from the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University.
The scientific community has largely assumed that planets covered in a deep ocean would not support the cycling of minerals and gases that keeps the climate stable on Earth, and thus wouldn’t be friendly to life. But the study, published Aug. 31 in The Astrophysical Journal, found that ocean planets could stay in the “sweet spot” for habitability much longer than previously assumed. The authors based their findings on more than a thousand simulations.
“This really pushes back against the idea you need an Earth clone—that is, a planet with some land and a shallow ocean,” said Edwin Kite, assistant professor of geophysical sciences at UChicago and lead author of the study.
As telescopes get better, scientists are finding more and more planets orbiting stars in other solar systems, called exoplanets. Such discoveries are resulting in new research into how life could potentially survive on other planets, some of which are very different from Earth—some may be covered entirely in water hundreds of miles deep.
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." Orange Satan, Snopes
Note: The disdain of a conman is he has no respect for his marks. If they fall for his shtick, he respects and fears them far less than the clear-eyed who won't be fooled.
Mutt without Jeff? Corn beef sans cabbage? Unthinkable. Knebel without Bailey? Well, it's hard to tell the difference. It's still the same sort of push button/panic button story about politics from the Pentagon to the Hill, only this time one of the levers got stuck close to the beginning. The one called Idea. This is, namely, that a president of the United States, and he's got his button (The Bomb), has lost his other buttons. He's mentally disabled. No one suspects that Mark Hollenbach, a figure of great rectitude and a strong drive for excellence, is paranoid. Except Jim MacVeagh, a senator, whom he has just tapped as his next running mate. Jim, young, attractive, but lazy, has a family. He also has had, on the side, Rita, ""the urgency and solace of sex."" As the F.B.I. investigates this, at Hollenbach's instigation, Jim tries to persuade others just before a private Summit meeting. They remain unconvinced, think Jim is disturbed, and only Rita can supply the evidence until the President's unreasonableness becomes apparent elsewhere, and action, sadly missing throughout the book, is finally taken...Let's see now -- it could be Fredric March, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner. Oh, no, that was Seven Days in May. This isn't.
There has been the flourishing of a cottage industry, from "Fire and Fury" by Mike Wolff; "A Higher Loyalty" by Former FBI Director James Comey; "What Happened" by Former Secretary and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton; "Unhinged" by Omarosa Manigault Newman and the soon-coming "Fear" by Bob Woodward. It's been a great year for authors; terrible for trees. He has been referred to as "a poor man's idea of what a rich man is like." He refers to himself in third person with the single syllable contraction of his name to invoke a Mafia kingpin. He's more a caricature of a caricature of actual mob bosses: imagining himself Vito or Michael Corleone of "The Godfather," when he's actually Fredo.
The New York Times Op Ed from a staffer that is internal to this "administration" is literally the icing on the cake. I am not sure if a five-deferment draft dodger, serial adulterer that pays off the silence of his mistresses and insults all of our allies, but routinely avoids insulting a foreign adversary with all the deference of a sex worker to a pimp can call the author "gutless." This is a Constitutional Crisis as David Frum, former speech writer for President George W. Bush (he was the "axis of evil" guy), opined such in The Atlantic. Real patriots step out of the shadows into the light. Real courageous actors don't "look the other way" and get tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation to the same Wall Street entities that caused the last Great Recessions (almost becoming a Great Depression). We appear determined to prove the definition of insanity.
Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes" has been shortened to a byword and pejorative "the emperor has no clothes," shouted originally from the mouth of a small child of his constituency in the story, saying what the more reserved adults around him dared not say. It is stating the blatantly obvious as the "Southern Strategy" grandparents of MAGA supporters once did, now parroted by their progeny:
"The Manchurian Candidate" as a movie came out in my birth year. It, like Knebel's Camp David is admittedly dystopian. It was a plausible thriller during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union that posited a hostile power could have unparalleled and unwanted influence on a political figure; the potential for controlling the office of the presidency. Plausible, but until recent events unthinkable. Life is stranger than art.
"Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over." Op Ed by Anonymous in the New York Times
The simulated radio images in this not-to-scale artist's illustration show superfast jets blasting from the black hole created by the merger of two neutron stars, a dramatic event observed in August 2017. In the 155 days between two observations, the jet appeared to move 2 light-years, a distance that would require it to travel four times faster than light. This "superluminal motion" is an illusion created as the jet is pointed nearly toward the Earth; it is actually moving at about 97 percent light speed. Credit: D. Berry, O. Gottlieb, K. Mooley, G. Hallinan, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Topics: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Einstein, Special Relativity, Star Trek
The dramatic neutron-star merger that astronomers spotted last year generated a jet of material that seemed to move at four times the speed of light, a new study reports.
"Seemed" is the operative word here, of course; the laws of physics tell us that nothing can travel faster through space than light. So, the superluminal motion was an illusion, which was caused by the jet's (still very fast) speed and the fact that it blasted almost directly at us, researchers said.
"Based on our analysis, this jet most likely is very narrow, at most 5 degrees wide, and was pointed only 20 degrees away from the Earth’s direction," study co-author Adam Deller, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, said in a statement from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), a facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).
Occasionally, I will alert fellow members to product updates by creators I have reviewed in the past year or so.
Here's what I found this week since I had extra time because it RAINED TOO MUCH!!!
Chessmasters by Insane Comics is gone. Even their back issues on Comixology are gone too. I was waiting for #6 to come out before buying the whole set. It's a shame. I think the writing crew is still active though at their facebook group Second Sight Studios.
Resistance: Battle of Philadelphia has finally past production! Releases Sept 7! Look for it at their site here. I was going to review it myself but someone else beat me to it.
Lawrence Johnson Sr. has made more stories (and audiobooks!) in the Da'quan detective story that continued in Murder on the Eros Star. They are up at Amazon and Smashwords. You can read the latest here.
Apparently, Marcus Stokes, director of The Signal, has worked on an episode of The Flash airing this winter? I think that's what his site says. You can see for yourself (and his other projects) here.
That's all I got this month. If you see a creator I've reviewed doing new stuff, post a comment down below.
As someone who recalls doing "duck and cover drills," I consider everyday a good day when this is not my sunrise.
The United States is not prepared to deal with the aftermath of a major nuclear attack, despite North Korea’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons and the increasing tensions between nations overall. That was the blunt assessment of public-health experts who participated in a meeting last week on nuclear preparedness, organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The gathering is “an acknowledgement that the threat picture has changed, and that the risk of this happening has gone up”, says Tener Veenema, who studies disaster nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-chaired the conference in Washington DC.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States’s research and preparedness efforts for a nuclear strike have focused largely on the possibility of a terrorist attack with a relatively small, improvised 1-kilotonne weapon or a ‘dirty bomb’ that sprays radioactive material.
But North Korea is thought to have advanced thermonuclear weapons—each more than 180 kilotonnes in size—that would cause many more casualties than would a dirty bomb (see ‘Damage estimates’). “Now that thermonuclear is back on the table, we’re back to people saying, ‘We can’t deal with this,’” says Cham Dallas, a public-health researcher at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Schematic illustration of charge carriers confined within a TMD flake comprising different thicknesses. Charge carriers in the ground state (blue) can be excited upon resonant light excitation to a higher state (pink). Credit: ICFO/Fabien Vialla
All deference to the Apostle Paul. It seemed an apropos title to the post.
Semiconducting heterostructures are key to the development of electronics and opto-electronics. Many applications in the infrared and terahertz frequency range exploit transitions, called intersubband transitions, between quantized states in semiconductor quantum wells. These intraband transitions exhibit very large oscillator strengths, close to unity. Their discovery in III-V semiconductor heterostructures depicted a huge impact within the condensed matter physics community and triggered the development of quantum well infrared photodetectors as well as quantum cascade lasers.
Quantum wells of the highest quality are typically fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy (sequential growth of crystalline layers), which is a well-established technique. However, it poses two major limitations: Lattice-matching is required, restricting the freedom in materials to choose from, and the thermal growth causes atomic diffusion and increases interface roughness.
2-D materials can overcome these limitations since they naturally form a quantum well with atomically sharp interfaces. They provide defect-free and atomically sharp interfaces, enabling the formation of ideal QWs, free of diffusive inhomogeneities. They do not require epitaxial growth on a matching substrate and can therefore be easily isolated and coupled to other electronic systems such as Si CMOS or optical systems such as cavities and waveguides.
Surprisingly enough, intersubband transitions in few-layer 2-D materials had never been studied before, neither experimentally nor theoretically. Thus, in a recent study published in Nature Nanotechnology, ICFO researchers Peter Schmidt, Fabien Vialla, Mathieu Massicotte, Klaas-Jan Tielrooij, Gabriele Navickaite, led by ICREA Prof at ICFO Frank Koppens, in collaboration with the Institut Lumière Matière—CNRS, Technical University of Denmark, Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, CIC nanoGUNE, and the National Graphene Institute, report on the first theoretical calculations and first experimental observation of inter-sub-band transitions in quantum wells of few-layer semiconducting 2-D materials (TMDs).
More information: Peter Schmidt et al. Nano-imaging of intersubband transitions in van der Waals quantum wells, Nature Nanotechnology (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-018-0233-9
Moving pictures: microscope image of a quasicrystal two days after release. The right half has been color coded. (Courtesy: Po-Yuan Wang and Thomas Mason/Nature)
A quasicrystal made from tiny Penrose tiles that undergo Brownian motion has been created by Po-Yuan Wang and Thomas Mason at the University of California-Los Angeles. The duo was able to track changes in the 2D structure as tiles moved around, observing a range of effects including melting. As well as shedding further light on the properties of quasicrystals, the new lithographic fabrication technique could be used to study a wide range of colloidal systems.
Until relatively recently, scientists had assumed that all crystals have translational symmetry. This means they comprise a periodically-repeating unit cell of atoms that fills space without any voids. In contrast, quasicrystals do not have translational symmetry – they possess rotational symmetry – but also fill space without any voids.
The unexpected discovery of quasicrystalline materials was made in 1984 by the Israeli materials engineer Dan Shechtman, who was later awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Although the discovery was first met with skepticism, hundreds of solid-state quasicrystals have since been discovered. Furthermore, researchers are looking at potential applications of quasicrystals that range from aerospace to coatings of surgical and kitchen utensils.
From Friday's post: “Putin’s thesis is that the American constitution is an experiment that will fail if it is challenged in the right way from within,” Mitchell continued. “Putin wants to break apart the American republic not by influencing an election or two, but by systematically inflaming the fault lines within our society. Accepting this fact is absolutely essential for developing a long-term response to the problem.”
Russian online users known as trolls are taking to social media to sow public conflict about vaccination, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
In what sounds like a hybrid story joining Star Trek and The Hobbit, US researchers from George Washington University, the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University found that bots, trolls, cyborgs, content polluters and other actors stimulate distrust in the efficacy of vaccination to prevent diseases.
Many of these actors spread false or misleading information, but sources identified as Russian in origin produce messages that argue on both sides of the discussion, with the aim, the researchers suggest, of “promoting discord”.
“Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination,” the report finds.
“These trolls seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society,” says Mark Dredze, one of the authors of the study.
If you are among the few that don't think our elections were compromised in a directed assault, this is more personal. Vaccinations impact what the CDC refers to as herd immunity. That has helped to eliminate diseases - mostly to children - that used to prove fatal to them.
This is something that I don't think is well known. It's a good example of the power of mathematics to students that may not see its value, or practical application. Feel free to use it in class.
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Human Rights, Politics
“Putin’s thesis is that the American constitution is an experiment that will fail if it is challenged in the right way from within,” Mitchell continued. “Putin wants to break apart the American republic not by influencing an election or two, but by systematically inflaming the fault lines within our society. Accepting this fact is absolutely essential for developing a long-term response to the problem.” The problem Mitchell was describing has a kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose quality to it as far as Putin is concerned: Not only has the Russian leader tried to exploit political polarization over issues like race and guns, his attempts to do so have themselves become deeply divisive—to the point where even Trump’s advisers frequently find themselves at odds with the man they serve.
Part of Mitchell’s argument—which might be viewed favorably by a president who has taken particular umbrage at the notion that Putin sought to help him defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race—was that the Russian government isn't necessarily interested in supporting a specific politician, party, or ideology. Instead, it simply wants to sow chaos in the United States to advance its own goals, which it sees as threatened by America’s preeminent position in the world. Mitchell cited the revelations on Tuesday that suspected Russian government hackers have been targeting conservative U.S. think tanks and promoting “fringe voices” on both the left and the right on social-media sites like Facebook.
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition Merriam-Webster
Racism (noun):
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. Dictionary.com
White supremacy (noun):
The belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society. Oxford Dictionaries
The radical and religious right had long ago convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin and Russia were their friends. Whereas I and more sane members of the human species look upon "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood as a fanciful dystopian novel, and highly imaginative rendition on Netflix (I'll reserve my commentary on the end of season 2). Other elements of our human family, more familiar with the fearful, reptilian portion of our evolved brains, look upon it, "1984" by George Orwell and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and Russia's methods...as blueprints.
The election of the first and only African American in the history of the republic, to that point 232 years in 2008, set up revulsion on the "white" right that culminated in racist birtherism, witch doctor bone-in-nose bigotry with respect to the Affordable Care Act; effigies of the 44th president either burned, hung (or, both) and the memorable "pray for the president" bumper stickers from a bizarre verse application of Psalms 109:8 - 10 (shortened to verse 8, but understood in total):
"8 May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. 9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. 10 May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes."
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 American 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
This is the metastasis of "The Southern Strategy" a rancid, racist tactic that was birthed on the heels of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. It was and is a desperate bid for power. It predates itself as the definition of "white" changed from excluding everyone except "Nordic stock" Europeans (the English, mostly) to eventually including the previously excluded: Italians, Jews [and ironically] Russians all had tiny quotas. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the nascent eugenics movement in the United States fueled and influenced immigration policy in the earlier part of the last century. Admittedly, despite its reprehensible aims, it worked remarkably well for quite a while.
A president with decidedly African features, he and his wife both educated at Ivy League schools and a pitch-perfect family did not personify the fictional "Huxtables" before the fall of Mr. Cosby to their many detractors. The continual reminder that the country is becoming browner only ignited more fear and resolve to fight a demographic shift not in their favor of continual predominance circa 2042 - 2045. Their resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue transmitted a well-worn, white supremacist trope regarding farmland in South Africa (it's returning the farmland to their original, African owners), but he needs a distraction since his former campaign manager and former personal lawyer were both found guilty on a total of 16 felony counts in a matter of minutes. Their visceral reaction to them was an existential crisis, a call to arms; a "white genocide," ironically feared by the descendants of those that caused it well before the "Trail of Tears" for Native Americans. It caused Roger Ailes to see the power of televised propaganda and cater to an audience that were well past facts post the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of listening to Rush Limbaugh on AM Talk Radio and his "ditto head" clones; well past reasoned discourse before Twitter came online. What facts can be revealed are rebuffed by an avalanche of lies, there are no "gotchas" for a party that with the help of Karl Rove started "creating their own realities" a long time ago. A sizable chunk of the electorate has been in this "post-truth" Twilight Zone for decades.
All they needed was a useful idiot avatar, and a master spy to push the republic over the precipice. Ironically, if successful, the 2nd Amendment along with all others in a theoretical fall of our republic would become meaningless as in Russia, there is no right to bear arms that "former Americans" would recognize or appreciate. The imagined confiscation by government "jackbooted thugs" may be under the flag of a foreign power that duped the gullible:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
An artist’s impression of the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which operated at Earth’s moon from 2008 to 2009. A new analysis of data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard the spacecraft has found evidence of exposed water ice in dark craters around the moon’s poles. Credit: NASA/Indian Space Research Organization
Deposited in perpetually dark craters around the poles, the ice could be a boon for future crewed lunar outposts
The view that Earth’s moon is a dried out, desolate world may be all wet.
A new analysis of data from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan 1 orbiter, which operated at the moon from 2008 to 2009, has revealed what researchers say is definitive proof of water ice exposed on the lunar surface. Gathered by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) spectrometer onboard the Indian probe, the data all but confirm extensive-but-tentative evidence from earlier missions hinting at water ice deposits lurking in permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s poles. Such deposits could someday support crewed lunar outposts while also revealing previously hidden chapters of the moon’s history. The results appeared in a study published August 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Based on M3’s measurements of water ice’s near-infrared absorption features at and around the lunar poles, the study’s authors concluded the ice is only exposed in around 3.5 percent of the craters’ shadowed area, and is intermixed with large volumes of lunar dust. Such sparse coverage and heterogeneity suggests this lunar ice has a substantially different history than similar deposits found on other airless rocky worlds, such as Mercury and the dwarf planet Ceres, where water ice in permanently shadowed craters is more abundant and of greater purity.
As of today Spacefans, the link above shows my new goal for my future in the 3D printing industry. 3D print farms are on the agenda for us to build our own, create our own, and own our own manufacturing methods and processes. After we meet the goal of 3D print farms, we should most definitely set our sights on using industrial articulating robots to "scale up" the manufacturing capability within the community.
A robot can cost anywhere between $25,000 and $100,000 but the industrious entrepreneur should be able to find one on the lower end of the spectrum. I'm not here to sell robots, just here to share vision with the visionaries. Stay tuned.
With that, can someone link a black owned robot manufacturer? There are a couple in the US and abroad.
Over Population Nightmare from 1960s - Star Trek's Mark of Gideon
Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Politics, Star Trek
It's rare I do a "twofer." However, in the absence of a Starfleet/"Space Farce" or warp drive, we have to start thinking about how we're going to feed, clothe and employ the yet-to-be-born since we've yet to establish interplanetary colonies, let alone interstellar ones. Our "leaders" won't discuss the coming conundrum, hence I can only assume they've got nothing but slogans, jingoism and empty rhetoric bandied to stoke our fears and keep them in their comfortable seats.
"The world is expected to add another billion people within the next 15 years, bringing the total global population from 7.3 billion in mid-2015 to 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to new estimates from the UN." Source: 5 ways the world will look dramatically different in 2100, Ana Swanson, Washington Post
Current assessments of climate change could overestimate the amount of carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere. That’s because models of photosynthesis often leave out a poorly-understood limit on the process. Now US researchers have calculated that if its representation is doubled, climate models predict an additional 9 Gigatonnes of carbon will still be in the atmosphere by 2100, instead of being locked away inside plants.
“Photosynthesis is the largest flux of carbon into terrestrial ecosystems, yet there is still uncertainty in our understanding of its physiological and environmental controls,” says Danica Lombardozzi from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. “Our findings suggest that TPU [triose phosphate utilisation] currently limits photosynthesis, and TPU limitation may become even more limiting to photosynthesis in the future. Yet TPU-limited photosynthesis is … poorly constrained by observations and is therefore not always included in photosynthesis models.”
One of Mother Teresa's favorite texts in the Bible, which she often quoted to support her ministry to the poor, is "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40, 45, NIV). Source: Timothy Lent, LinkedIn
Sadly, I think with the exacerbation of inequality; the Russian-installed occupant of the American Executive Mansion and the general disposition of self-absorbed humanity, these quotes by the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky encapsulates our current, pitiful state:
“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
I'm taking two weeks off before the fall semester and my sophomore year in graduate school. Tomorrow (Saturday, August 4th), I'll be giving a presentation on "How To Study" by Ron Fry, a book in its 25th edition that I still use to this day on how I get information in my brain "to stick." I'll apparently be speaking to two groups of millennials, and get a free lunch.
Definition of anarchy (Merriam-Webster)1a : absence of governmentb : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority the city's descent into anarchyc : a Utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government2a : absence or denial of any authority or established orderb : absence of order : disorder
Tampa, Fla. (AP) -- Amid the "Trump 2020" placards, the "Women for Trump" signs and the "CNN SUCKS" T-shirts, the most inscrutable message that came out of Donald Trump's Tampa rally on Tuesday evening was a letter.
Q.
People wore T-shirts with the letter emblazoned on the front. Others carried signs containing the letter: "Q WWG1WGA Trump 2020 Keep America Great! MSM is the enemy." Another held a dog-eared and slightly crumpled piece of paper in the air. It said, simply, "We are Q."
Q who?
The entire, loose movement has been called everything from "a deranged conspiracy cult" (The Washington Post) to a grassroots movement "about the covert battles being waged between the deep state and President Trump" (according to Tyler, a guy at the Tampa rally who held a metal coin emblazoned with the letter and showed it to WPLG, a TV station from Miami).
Here's a look at the trend that's sweeping certain dark corners of the Internet:
WHO IS Q?
In late October 2017, an anonymous user posted on 4chan, a shadowy site known for, among other things, cruel hoaxes and political extremism. Under the title "The Calm Before the Storm," the poster claimed to have a high-level government security clearance — Q clearance to be exact — and referred to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, political parties and former President Barack Obama.
Q gives readers "breadcrumbs" so they can ferret out details on their own. There's other lingo as well. Bakers are amateur sleuths who follow the crumbs. Anyone who tries to debunk Q is "a clown." (This includes CIA agents, shadowy operatives and most likely reporters, although there's separate terminology for them).Tamara Lush, Associated Press for Bloomberg News
Coincidentally, five years ago on August 1st, I posted Ab Absurdo. It was more about science denial in general, but two "tech" people fully convinced the moon landing was faked - which, I had the benefit of actually being on the planet to witness all of them, and they did not. I found it exhausting to discuss facts with them since like most cult members and social anarchists, facts are anathema to what amounts to their belief system.
"Q" is simply a continuum of anarchists that have a notion that the current situation we call governance is nonfunctional (in its current K-street lobbyist form, I would agree with that). Their action towards remedying that is to vote for and support of a conspiracy theory, barely literate or tethered to reality, tweeting nincompoop. An anarchist's general solution to anything is to tear the whole thing down, and then "magically" the plucky individual will work everything out - including, I assume food, labor, education, technology and infrastructure. Their *knowledge* amounts to a belief system cherry-picked from bits and pieces of information they have formed in dark corners of the Internet laced with bigotry, misogyny and antisemitism from like-minded addled individuals to reinforce their already ossified political beliefs. This is the same realm as abstinence-only vs. birth control and education; climate denial, "deep state" (replacing the previous "fill-in-the-blank" cabals, coined by the superior, perfect human specimen Steve Bannon); gun control opposition (but, not 3-D printed guns); science denial and ultimately, opposition to the continued, effective governance of a republic.
I will agree on ONE thing: it will be anarchy. And there is scant historical evidence anarchists have held together republics or sway in world order.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will search more than 85% of the sky.Credit: Leif Heimbold/NASA
Topics: Exoplanets, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration, Star Trek
"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before." (Star Trek: Into Darkness)
Filling the shoes of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft won’t be easy. Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has discovered nearly three-quarters of the 3,700-plus known exoplanets. And there are thousands more candidates waiting to be confirmed.
So NASA is taking a different approach with its next planet-hunting mission. On 16 April, the agency plans to launch the US$337-million Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which will scrutinize 200,000 nearby bright stars for signs of orbiting planets. TESS will probably find fewer worlds than Kepler did, but they will arguably be more important ones.
“It’s not so much the numbers of planets that we care about, but the fact that they are orbiting nearby stars,” says Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and deputy science director for TESS.
Topics: 3D Printing, Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Philosophy, Politics
I'm quoting the actress Alyssa Milano from the CNN article which went live today titled: "A 3D printed gun is downloadable death." Officially tomorrow, it's no longer fantasy.
Below is a repost of a Thursday, March 28, 2013 article "Yin and Yang." Even though the quotes attributed to Einstein I've seen questioned, please note the video embed below. It's no longer speculation. We're here now. The next mass shooting will be undetectable by standard systems; untraceable by serial numbers. Since a 3D printer is not an unsubstantial expense, it will likely be a white male, "lone wolf," but never a "thug" or "terrorist." Or maybe it will be, since an Amazon account can get you a descent one delivered to your doorstep in 2-5 days. It's just the carnage a hostile power bent to turning our daily crumbling republic into a wasteland would want.
Yin and yang are actually complementary, not opposing, forces, interacting to form a whole greater than either separate part; in effect, a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The concept of yin and yang is often symbolized by various forms of the Taijitu symbol, for which it is probably best known in Western cultures. (Wikipedia)
Star Trek Blog: Star Trek’s replicator is an amazing technology concept that has fascinated us for decades. Working at the molecular level to synthesize materials, the replicator is able to instantly produce nearly any object, food or medicine on demand. It is easy to imagine how the replicator would quickly change the world. Such a device could dramatically reduce or even eliminate the cost of most products. Hunger and poverty would be stamped out worldwide, and much of the time and energy spent working for a living could be used instead for pursuits of education, exploration and the advancement of society. Star Trek envisions the future of humanity to be one of incredible achievements made possible by evolved philosophies as well as technologies. This hopeful view of tomorrow is perhaps the reason so many have dreamed of inventing real-life versions of Star Trek tech -- from the transporter to the tricorder -- and the replicator is one of the most coveted. A process called “additive manufacturing,” or its more popular nickname, “3D Printing,” has captured the imagination of the tech industry. These machines work much like the two-dimensional printer you may have on your desk, but instead of printing a layer of ink, a 3D printer extrudes many layers of melted plastic to form a physical object. You can imagine this as similar to a hot glue gun, where the heated glue stick is carefully extruded from a nozzle. In the case of a 3D printer, that nozzle is controlled by software and digital design files that tells it how to form a shape. The comparisons between 3D Printing and the Star Trek replicator don’t end with plastic. Other materials like wood, metal and even some foods are now being extruded in similar ways to make on-demand creations. This has led to excited speculation that soon we may see the beginnings of a new era of manufacturing in America and around the world, where small-scale production is possible at very low costs. We may even “print” biotechnologies and human organs one day. Gene Roddenberry's underlying message of the future: eternal optimism. As much as I am a fan, I'm afraid I possess a healthy dose of skepticism. Even the Star Trek Memory Alpha Wiki mentions some rough roads prior to 1st Contact with Vulcan. I sincerely hope "life does [not] imitate art" in this case (the "rough road" part; 1st Contact would be OK). The last five mass extinction events were completely involuntary; unassisted since we hadn't showed up just yet. I end below the embed with two quotes from Einstein:
“I don't know what weapons will be used in world war three, but in world war four people will use sticks and stones.”
"We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."
An image to illustrate the concept of holographic duality between a graphene flake and a black hole. Physics World
Topics: Black Holes, Einstein, General Relativity, Graphene, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics
Much research on black holes is theoretical since it is difficult to make actual measurements on real black holes. Such experiments also need to be undertaken over decades or longer. Physicists are therefore keen to create laboratory systems that are analogous to these cosmic entities. New theoretical calculations by a team in Canada, the US, UK and Israel have now revealed that a material as simple as a graphene flake with an irregular boundary subjected to an intense external magnetic field can be used to create a quantum hologram that faithfully reproduces some of the signature characteristics of a black hole. This is because the electrons in the carbon material behave according to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model.
Some of the most important unresolved mysteries in modern physics come from the “incompatibility” between Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics. General relativity describes the physics of the very big (the force of gravity and all that it affects: spacetime, planets, galaxies and the expansion of the Universe). The theory of quantum mechanics is the physics of the very small – and the other three forces, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces.
“In recent years, physicists have gleaned important new insights into these questions through the study of the SYK model,” explains Marcel Franz of the University of British Columbia in Canada, who led this research effort. “This model is an illustration of a type of ‘holographic duality’ in which a lower-dimensional system can be represented by a higher dimensional one. In our calculations, the former is N graphene electrons in (0+1) dimensions and the latter the dilation gravity of a black hole in (1+1) dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS2) space.
