I am so honored to be a part of another great convention. Come out and be a part of the awesome Multiversecon 2019! https://www.multiversecon.org/
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| The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Roger Ebert 1988 review |
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Politics
"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12, ESV
I was so incensed Wednesday that a sitting president would accept help from a hostile foreign government if it helped him win, I penned a 5-page letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, six pages with references I cited.
I then emailed it (the memory cut off six of my eleven references). I posted it on Scribd.com. I then tweeted it to her @SpeakerPelosi. I snail mailed it from the local Post Office and bought Marvin Gaye stamps, finally. Tracking has her office getting it on Tuesday of next week.
The grave disappointment came when I called her number in DC: 202-225-4965. You can try, but you're given three options:
Option 1
You could leave a message to "voice your opinion, or pass on a personal story," except her mailbox is full. You're given the option to dial "0" and "someone will assist you." After a LONG radio silence, the call was summarily dropped.
Option 2
This gives you instructions of how to email the Speaker at Speaker.gov/contact. See first statement, second paragraph above.
Option 3
This gives you a guide to go to Speaker.gov to view her latest policy statements as well as her Twitter feed. See first sentence, second paragraph for which I would have had to GO to her website to do in the first place!
My letter, emailed, tweeted and snail mailed is at the link below. Depending on the platform, it either appears as an embed or a link. Each version will likely be read by a staffer and responded to with a form letter, restating the positions she's taken publicly and stamped with her mimeographed signature. Perhaps we've always been like this: instead of a "separation of powers," there's a separation of the people from the representatives we elect to power, No matter the outcome of the 2020 election, Nancy Pelosi will still be, from her service since the first wave of the "year of the woman" that brought her to prominence, quite wealthy - her children and grandchildren in a class mine probably will never enjoy. This is the kind of result that depresses voter turnout, as votes are a "hope" for a better future as well as an expression of desire by the governed. It is not surprising we are not being listened to, that the "mailbox is full."
And I sincerely hope, in my lamentations regarding this post, that I am horribly wrong.
The bottom line: we're the Calvary. Our last real president said: "we're the ones we've been waiting for." Granted, he failed Ferguson quite spectacularly, but he didn't require help from the Chinese et al to win either of his elections, he didn't solicit it publicly on TWO occasions, nor did his party give him cover as he actively subverted democracy.
If we want this republic, one nation, indivisible to stand and survive this present darkness: we may have to actually fight for its very life.
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| Salt-laden water welling up from below gives Europa’s fissures and cracks their distinctive color. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech and SETI Institute |
Topics: Astrobiology, Exoplanets, Planetary Exploration, SETI
The sea sloshing beneath the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa just might be the best incubator for extraterrestrial life in our solar system. And yet it is concealed by the moon’s frozen outer shell—presenting a challenge for astrobiologists who would love nothing more than to peer inside. Luckily they can catch a partial glimpse by analyzing the flavor of the surface. And the results are salty.
A new study published this week in Science Advances suggests that sodium chloride—the stuff of table salt—exists on Europa’s surface. Because the exterior is essentially formed from frozen seawater, the finding suggests that Europa’s hidden sea is drenched in table salt—a crucial fact for constraining the possibilities for life on the alien world.
Not that scientists have tasted a slice of the distant moon. To analyze Europa’s composition, astronomers study the light emanating from its surface, splitting it into a rainbow-like spectrum to search for any telltale absorption or emission lines that reveal the world’s chemistry. There is just one problem: Ordinary table salt is white and thus gives off a featureless spectrum. But harsh radiation—which exists at Europa’s surface in abundance—just might add a dash of color. That much was realized in 2015 when two NASA planetary scientists Kevin Hand and Robert Carlson published a study suggesting the yellowish-brown gunk on Europa might be table salt baked by radiation. To reach that conclusion, Hand and Carlson re-created the conditions on Europa within vacuum chambers—or as Hand calls them, “stainless steel shiny objects that are humming and whizzing.” Next, they placed table salt into those chambers, lowered the pressures and temperatures to simulate Europa’s surface, and blasted the samples with an electron gun to simulate the intense radiation.
Water on Europa—with a Pinch of Salt, Shannon Hall, Scientific American
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| Credit: Shutterstock |
Topics: God Particle, Higgs Boson, Large Hadron Collider, Standard Model, Theoretical Physics
c. 1400, "having power to control fate, from weird (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic *wurthiz (source also of Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from PIE *wert- "to turn, to wind," (source also of German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend." For sense development from "turning" to "becoming," compare phrase turn into "become."
Etymology online: Weird
We all know and love the Higgs boson — which to physicists' chagrin has been mistakenly tagged in the media as the "God particle" — a subatomic particle first spotted in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) back in 2012. That particle is a piece of a field that permeates all of space-time; it interacts with many particles, like electrons and quarks, providing those particles with mass, which is pretty cool.
But the Higgs that we spotted was surprisingly lightweight. According to our best estimates, it should have been a lot heavier. This opens up an interesting question: Sure, we spotted a Higgs boson, but was that the only Higgs boson? Are there more floating around out there doing their own things?
But the Higgs that we spotted was surprisingly lightweight. According to our best estimates, it should have been a lot heavier. This opens up an interesting question: Sure, we spotted a Higgs boson, but was that the only Higgs boson? Are there more floating around out there doing their own things?
Physicists Search for Monstrous Higgs Particle. It Could Seal the Fate of the Universe.
Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist, Live Science
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| Silicon chips similar to those that would be used in the detection process. Credit: Vanderbilt University/Heidi Hall |
Topics: Applied Physics, Medical Physics, Nanotechnology, Star Trek
The simplest home medical tests might look like a deck of various silicon chips coated in special film, one that could detect drugs in the blood, another for proteins in the urine indicating infection, another for bacteria in water and the like. Add the bodily fluid you want to test, take a picture with your smart phone, and a special app lets you know if there's a problem or not.
That's what electrical engineer Sharon Weiss, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and her students developed in her lab, combining their research on low-cost, nanostructured thin films with a device most American adults already own. "The novelty lies in the simplicity of the basic idea, and the only costly component is the smart phone," Weiss said.
"Most people are familiar with silicon as being the material inside your computer, but it has endless uses," she said. "With our nanoscale porous silicon, we've created these nanoscale holes that are a thousand times smaller than your hair. Those selectively capture molecules when pre-treated with the appropriate surface coating, darkening the silicon, which the app detects."
iPhone plus nanoscale porous silicon equals cheap, simple home diagnostics
Heidi Hall, Vanderbilt University, Phys.org
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| Physics World: A brief history of timekeeping |
Topics: Atomic Physics, Laser, NIST, Quantum Mechanics, Research
By confining single ions of aluminum and magnesium in an electric trap, cooling them to near absolute zero and probing them with laser beams, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado have built what is in effect the world’s most accurate clock. Having fractionally improved on the performance of another clock at NIST, the researchers have shown that their device would neither gain nor lose a second in 33 billion years (if it could run for that long). Such accurate timekeeping, they say, could boost geodesy and lead to new insights in fundamental physics.
The clocks that currently underpin atomic time rely on precisely measuring the frequency of microwaves emitted during a specific transition in cesium atoms. But such devices are limited by the relatively low frequency of that radiation. To keep time even more accurately, and eventually introduce a new definition of the second, physicists are developing clocks based on higher-frequency optical transitions.
The latest work at NIST features what is known as a quantum-logic clock. Built by Samuel Brewer and colleagues, it uses a positive ion of aluminum-27 as its timekeeper. When exposed to ultraviolet laser light at wavelength 267 nm, the ion undergoes a transition with a very narrow line width – making its frequency very well defined. What is more, that transition is largely immune to sources of external noise – such as blackbody radiation – that in other types of optical clock shift the frequency away from its true value.
A magnesium-25 ion is used to cool the aluminum down to the very low temperatures needed to minimize thermal noise. Cooling involves the absorption of photons at another specific frequency, but practical limitations mean that this cannot be done using the aluminum itself. This is because the required frequency in is too high for any practical laser. By entangling the two ions, the magnesium cools the aluminum via Coulomb interactions. This process also allows the quantum state of the aluminum ion to be read-out following exposure to the clock laser.
Entangled aluminum ion is world’s best timekeeper, Edwin Cartlidge, Physics World
A Time Traveler from the future arrives in present Alabama to be captured by uber-billionaire, The Salesman, who is rumored to be almost 200 years old. The Time Traveler must seek help from the superhero group called The Talented Tenth. Can the Human Pearl, The Buffalo Soldier, Milk Maiden, Fiery Furnace, Zara, The Mysterious Maestro, Black Butterfly, Alien Ambassador and John Henry 2.0 rescue the Time Traveler and save the Past, Present and Future?The Talented Tenth Saga will be an 8 issue limited run comic book series.
This is a Live Action Comic book that will be released Netflix-style meaning all at once.
https://www.facebook.com/Talentedtenthsaga/
Check out the Character Posters/Bios.
-Chris
Heroes Like Me Entertainment is proud to present the covers for all 8 issues of The Talented Tenth Saga. Be apart of this epic adventure. Actresses and Actors within Alabama joined together to tell a Astonishing Tale. They did it because they believe that everyone deserves heroes that look like them.
All 8 issues will be released Netflix style. It will all be made available INSTANTLY to be enjoyed immediately. No WAITING
Stay Tuned to this page and....SHARE
Coming Soon.
https://www.facebook.com/Talentedtenthsaga/
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| David Lewicki, Twitter |
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Human Rights
The Power of Positive Thinking is a self-help book by Norman Vincent Peale, originally published in 1952. It makes use of positive case histories and practical instructions to propose the method of positive thinking. Peale's work describes how to achieve a permanent and optimistic attitude through unending positive conscious thought, usually through affirmations or visualizations. Peale writes that such techniques will give the reader a higher satisfaction and quality of life. Though negatively reviewed by scholars and health experts, The Power of Positive Thinking became popular in public opinion when first published and continues in popularity today.
Source: Wikipedia
*****
Liars for Jesus debunks many of the historical lies invented and used by the Christian nationalist history revisionists in their efforts to further their far right political agenda and destroy the wall of separation between church and state in America. Liars for Jesus is not a book about religion. It is a history book, presenting and fully documenting the true stories and historical facts that are distorted in the "Christian nation" pseudo-history promoted by the religious right. Chris Rodda, August 10, 2006, Amazon, Volume 1
Liars for Jesus debunks many of the historical lies invented and used by the Christian nationalist history revisionists in their efforts to further their far right political agenda and destroy the wall of separation between church and state in America. Liars for Jesus is not a book about religion. It is a history book, setting the record straight by presenting and fully documenting the true stories and historical facts that are distorted in the "Christian nation" pseudo-history of our country. Chris Rodda, January 6, 2016, Volume 2
*****
Come 1953, this legal prodigy was named McCarthy’s boy-wonder chief counsel, and the news photos told the tale: the sharp-faced, heavy-lidded 26-year-old with cherubic cheeks, whispering intimately into the ear of the bloated McCarthy. Cohn’s special skill as the senator’s henchman was character assassination. Indeed, after testifying in front of him, an engineer with the Voice of America radio news service committed suicide. Cohn never showed a shred of remorse.
You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence you were in the presence of pure evil,” said lawyer Victor A. Kovner, who had known him for years. Cohn’s power derived largely from his ability to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits. And the fee he demanded for his services? Ironclad loyalty.
For author Sam Roberts, the essence of Cohn’s influence on Trump was the triad: “Roy was a master of situational immorality . . . . He worked with a three-dimensional strategy, which was: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.” As columnist Liz Smith once observed, “Donald lost his moral compass when he made an alliance with Roy Cohn.”
How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America, Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair
*****
Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Our national embarrassment managed to be an embarrassment on the world stage. What I thought was missing was any discussion of the African American soldiers and sailors that sacrificed for this nation during that war, specifically to show their worth as citizens and as human beings. We've fought in every war this nation has prosecuted in its history, yet the descendants of the African Diaspora are still fighting for their rights in this country. I found the absence of any discussion ironic and disturbing under current circumstances.
I cannot attest Donald Trump ever HAD a moral compass to lose. His father was arrested at a Klan rally in NY city, 1927; he and his father discriminated against people of color in their rental apartment buildings; the Central Park 5, for which he refuses to apologize: Charlottesville. He has divided the nation with a racist jigsaw. He's more Darth Vader to Emperor Palpatine, Darth Maul to Darth Sidious; under demon to Lucifer. The degree of evil doesn't matter: it's just evil.
Norman Vincent Peale's philosophy has had it's supporters and critics, both in science and clergy. Marble Church - the spiritual descendant of Peale's philosophy - is claimed by the Trumps, the pathological liar referring in the past to Peale as his pastor. A lot of Norman Vincent Peale's method have other names: "name it and claim it"; "new thought" and "positive mental attitude." It's the kind of thing a sales representative reads to pump up their egos to press on. It is the kind of philosophy an urban youth might use to motivate their enthusiasm to overcome their economic circumstances. It is ripe for warping by a demagogue.
Chris Rodda responded to the pseudo-historical polemics published by David Barton, a "historian" who possesses no PhD in the field as most historians do. He is the go-to "expert" for talk show hosts like Glenn Beck et al to tell their audiences kind fables that comfort their angst regarding the changing demographics of America. He tries to rewrite actual history to fulfill the fables of a group he hucksters, where "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams But those "stubborn things" are of no consequence to Christian fascists.
The only way to see the Venn diagram merger of religion and pathological lying is the nexus formed in the mind of an addled man between these two men: Norman Vincent Peale and Roy Cohn, Yin and Yang; light and darkness. A brain that can only hold onto "Two Corinthians" as a biblical verse he MIGHT have heard in the scant attendance he's logged at the Crystal Cathedral, for his thus far dedicated following, his voluminous tableau of lies doesn't matter. He fulfills what Christian nationalists cum evangelicals and white nationalists the world over want more than eternal salvation - power. The ends justify the means: voter suppression, resistance to "advise and consent" Merrick Garland's appointment to the Supreme Court (a stolen seat); Russian interference so long as white privilege, white supremacy - white power continues to rule. Our bent away from democratic norms predates the Russian attack on our elections in 2016.
The soul of a republic is apparently a small price to pay for this idolatry. It will be the death of our country...and the world.
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| Two views of galaxy Markarian 1216. The red image on the left shows X-ray observations conducted by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the yellowish image on the right is composed of optical observations taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The brighter colors at the center of the Chandra image represent the increased density of hot gas in the galaxy's core. |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter
X-ray observations of a peculiar galaxy deep within the constellation Hydra (the Sea Serpent) have revealed more dark matter at its core than expected.
The galaxy is almost as old as the universe itself, representatives from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory said in a statement published Monday (June 3). This celestial body, Markarian 1216, went through a different evolution than typical galaxies and is home to stars that are within 10% of the age of the universe.
To study the dark matter within this compact, elliptically shaped galaxy about 295 million light- years from Earth, researchers conducted new observations with the Chandra spacecraft. Markarian 1216 is packed with more dark matter in its core than researchers expected, according to their findings published June 1.
Ancient Galaxy in the 'Sea Serpent' Has More Dark Matter Than Expected, Doris Elin Salazar, Space,com
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| Plan for Tokyo Bay by Kenzo Tange, 1960. Wikimedia |
Topics: Architectural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Climate Change, Global Warming
The main problem I see: the seeking of public funding for a Utopian project could easily benefit the well-healed instead of the needy many. It would be cynical to use government funds, first gaining public support, then diverting funds but not unlikely. The wrong-type of people being preserved after the earth is ravaged by our environmental hubris is the main plot of the movie Elysium.
Humans have a long history of living on water. Our water homes span the fishing villages in Southeast Asia, Peru and Bolivia to modern floating homes in Vancouver and Amsterdam. As our cities grapple with overcrowding and undesirable living situations, the ocean remains a potential frontier for sophisticated water-based communities.
The United Nations has expressed support for further research into floating cities in response to rising sea levels and to house climate refugees. A speculative proposal, Oceanix City, was unveiled in April at the first Round Table on Sustainable Floating Cities at UN headquarters in New York.
The former tourism minister of French Polynesia, Marc Collins Chen, and architecture studio BIG advanced the proposal. Chen is involved with the Seasteading Institute, which is seeking to develop autonomous city-states floating in the shallow waters of “host nations”.
While this latest proposal has gained UN attention, it is an old idea we have repeatedly returned to over the past 70 years with little success. In fact, the Oceanix City proposal has not reached the same level of technical sophistication as previous models.
Floating cities: the future or a washed-up idea? Cosmos magazine
Brydon T. Wang, Research Assistant and PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology
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| Sound image: the acoustophoretic display reproduces the logo of the University of Bristol. (Courtesy: A Marzo, B Drinkwater and colleagues) |
Topics: Acoustic Physics, Holograms, Research, Star Trek
A midair visual display that uses a single acoustically-levitated particle has been unveiled by researchers in Spain and the UK. Dubbed an “acoustophoretic display”, the image is created by using two ultrasound transducer arrays to levitate the particle and manipulate it to trace out the desired graphic at high speed.
In 2015, Asier Marzo at the Public University of Navarra and Bruce Drinkwater at the University of Bristol created a sonic tractor beam that used ultrasound to levitate, rotate and move objects. Using a single grid of 64 off-the-shelf loudspeakers controlled by a programmable array of transducers the device created 3D fields of sound – acoustic holograms – that could hold and manipulate a small polystyrene particle in mid-air.
Since then, the field has progressed and earlier this year Marzo and Drinkwater revealed an acoustic levitation device that used two grids of speakers to hold and individually manipulate up to 25 polystyrene balls at the same time. This opened up the possibility of new applications for sonic tractor beams, including visual displays created with multiple levitated particles.
According to Marzo, such acoustic generated images, which he calls acoustophoretic displays, would offer an advantage over current holograms as they would not suffer from clipping. “[With holograms] the image can only be viewed from determinate angles and the frame of the display occludes the image, it is like looking inside a window,” he explains. “With the acoustophoretic displays the images reside in the physical space and can be observed without clipping from 360°.”
Ultrasound guides particle in a midair display, Michael Allen, Physics World
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| A transparent human brain by Dr. Ali Ertuerk, Munich, Germany, April 23, 2019. |
Topics: 3D Printing, Biomedicine, Research
MUNICH (Reuters) - Researchers in Germany have created transparent human organs using a new technology that could pave the way to print three-dimensional body parts such as kidneys for transplants.
Scientists led by Ali Ertuerk at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich have developed a technique that uses a solvent to make organs such as the brain and kidneys transparent.
The organ is then scanned by lasers in a microscope that allows researchers to capture the entire structure, including the blood vessels and every single cell in its specific location.
Using this blueprint, researchers print out the scaffold of the organ. They then load the 3D printer with stem cells which act as “ink” and are injected into the correct position making the organ functional.
German scientists create see-through human organs, Ayhan Uyanik, Reuters
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Human Rights
“Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mueller said, and he sketched out briefly what his investigation alleged: that Russian intelligence officers “launched a concerted attack on our political system,” and released information in a scheme “designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.” Meanwhile, “a private Russian entity engaged in a social-media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election.” He added, “The matters we investigated were of paramount importance.”
A few minutes later, as he finished up, Mueller returned to the theme. He said it even after thanking members of his team (and, in what truly did sound like a rebuke to the president, noting, “These individuals who spent nearly two years with the special counsel’s office were of the highest integrity”). For his final public words in a decades-long life in government, he chose to say this:
I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interference in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.
No One Wants to Talk About Mueller’s Most Definitive Conclusion, David A. Graham, The Atlantic
Whether the motivation is treason or narcissistic ego: the Russians also have their cyber fingers into our infrastructure and power grids, which means we could literally be held hostage and not able to fight back. Maybe for a reelection campaign that didn't go well for their chosen candidate? Our federal elections are covered by The Constitution. It is our unique ability to select our own leaders, the "peaceful transition of power" as an example to the world. The Russians are sowing distrust, racial discord, tribalism and animus on a platform supposedly a road map to true, representative democracy. The Arab Spring started in Tunisia with a vendor's self-immolation, spread by Social Media. We were on our way to utopia, before this detour to dystopia.
Utopia to those in power is the opposite: dystopian. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Franklin Leonard
If you make money with tobacco, you might fund an effort to broadcast misleading information about the health impact of smoking. If you make money with fossil fuels, you might sabotage electric cars, or publish quackery on doubting climate change and global warming. If you make money publishing "alternative facts" to a largely WASP-C, septuagenarian audience, if you're Saudi Prince Alwaleed or Australian Rupert Murdoch, Fox News is your Pavlov's dinner bell.
Atticus Finch and Robert Mueller are the same type of lawyer: steadfast and by-the-book, with an almost unshakable faith in the system of jurisprudence each officer of the court - fictional and real - serves. They are from a time where Winston-Salem had a morning Journal and evening Sentinel newspapers: all your news, "breaking" or otherwise; advertisements for cars, clothing, apartments and homes were there and those adds paid for most newsrooms to do their jobs as members of the fourth estate that held power accountable, and did not practice "access journalism" where they now or seldom do not. They came from a time where there were three major news networks and radio programs with audiences and followers (millennial translation: pod casts). Adults read large novels, books of poetry and plays for entertainment and children inhaled comic books for shear pleasure. It was a time when the terms "moderate republican" and "conservative democrat" weren't pejoratives. It was a time a 448-page Mueller Report would have been read in about a week. It was a time before our technological distractions made us all attention-deficit, and with that lack of clarity, a democracy is for the ripe picking for Putin and his puppet. Our continued freedom never depended on elected officials that work for us: the continued existence of this democratic republic always has depended ON us.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass
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| Murray Gell-Mann won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics.Credit: Santa Fe Institute |
Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Particle Physics, Quarks, Standard Model, Theoretical Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1969 was awarded to Murray Gell-Mann "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions."
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1969. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Wed. 29 May 2019. < https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1969/summary/ >
Murray Gell-Mann, one of the founders of modern particle physics, died on 24 May, aged 89. Gell-Mann’s most influential contribution was to propose the theory of quarks — fundamental particles that make up most ordinary matter.
To bring order to a plethora of recently discovered subatomic particles, in 1961 Gell-Mann proposed a set of rules based on symmetries in the fundamental forces of nature. The rules classified subatomic particles called hadrons into eight groups, a scheme he named the eightfold way in a reference to Buddhist philosophy.
In 1964, he realized that such rules would naturally arise if the particles were composed of two, three or more fundamental particles, held together by the strong nuclear force. (US–Russian physicist George Zweig came to the same conclusion independently in the same year.) Protons and neutrons, for example, would be made up of three of these more fundamental particles, which Gell-Man named quarks, inspired by a quote — “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” — from James Joyce’s 1939 novel Finnegan's Wake. [1]
Quarks and Leptons are the building blocks which build up matter, i.e., they are seen as the "elementary particles". In the present standard model, there are six "flavors" of quarks. They can successfully account for all known mesons and baryons (over 200). The most familiar baryons are the proton and neutron, which are each constructed from up and down quarks. Quarks are observed to occur only in combinations of two quarks (mesons), three quarks (baryons). There was a recent claim of observation of particles with five quarks (pentaquark), but further experimentation has not borne it out. [2]
1. Murray Gell-Mann, father of quarks, dies - US physicist was one of the chief architects of the standard model of particle physics. Davide Castelvecchi, Nature
2. Hyperphysics: Quarks
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| The Meaning of War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength in Orwell's "1984", Natalie Franks, PhD, Owlcation |
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Existentialism, Politics
Note: Please forgive the midweek rant but...this...is...insane.
Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.
As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.
The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.
Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science
Coral Davenport and Mark Landler, New York Times
It's insane, but cynical: the current Russian-installed occupant of the Oval Office is 72, meaning by 2040 if the afterlife doesn't want to screw with him, he'd be 93, still Virtual Reality tweeting his inane thoughts further rattled by Entropy, Alzheimer's and Dementia while firmly encompassed in adult pampers on his sixth trophy wife from whatever is left of the Czech Republic! We're personally causing the extinction of millions of species, and one of them might be the linchpin break in our own food chain.
NONE of the morons making these decisions will live to see the impact of them. They will cash in and peace out to the planet richer than Solomon, fiddling like Nero as the world burns. The end of white Christian Evangelical America occurred rather quietly around 2017, only noted by demographers, authors that notice such things...and white Christian Americans! This is why they could vote for the vagina gripper without a hint of pious hypocrisy, literally 81% of them selling what's left of their souls. This is why they're in a wholesale panic in Texas...TEXAS could turn blue by 2045! This is a naked power grab masquerading in choir robes that are demonstrably, decidedly Klan white. The other impact other than the lack of coitus would likely be the proliferation of readily available guns for violence, the opioid crisis and farmers affected by the trade tariffs committing harikari. But we won't talk about that because...logic (or, lack thereof).
They don’t even WANT you to vote a week from Tuesday. They hate voters and they hate voting. They have worked with a religious fervor to game voting tallies in Missouri, and Tennessee, and North Dakota, and Ohio (we can thank the Supreme Court for that), and Florida, and North Carolina, and most notably in Georgia, where elderly black people were literally pulled over for trying to vote, and where Republican gubernatorial candidate and current secretary of state Brian Kemp purged over 300,000 people from the voter rolls. They don’t want you voting, and they don’t particularly care if it’s fair or not. And if you happen to resist, the president already tacitly endorsed violence against you.
This is because Republicans hate a true representative democracy. And if they hate that, then they hate America. And if they hate America, then they hate you. I know Republicans say they LOVE America. They love it so much they wanna marry it. But that’s not true. They only love using America, mostly as a means of engineering hate.
They also hate your kids. If they liked your kids, they would support paid maternity leave, free health care, free child care, better public schools, and they would do everything in their power to enact stricter gun control laws so that schoolchildren don’t get routinely slaughtered en masse. They hate all of those ideas. They even hate teachers. You ever meet a teacher? They’re fucking saints, man. It doesn’t matter. Republicans hate them and would rather die than pay teachers a living wage.
In fact, they don’t just hate your kids, they hate your grandchildren as well. If Republicans gave the thinnest of shits about your grandkids, they would act with incredible haste on every Defcon 1 climate report that says we’re doomed if we don’t stop humping carbon to death. But they don’t. They hate the Earth, they hate the future, and they HATE any report that might dare ask them to take a break from pillaging the lands. Those reports go right into the shredder.
And they hate reporters too. Of course they hate reporters. A reporter just got kidnapped, tortured, and dismembered by Saudi Arabia (the country that was home to the majority of 9/11 hijackers, mind you). Did Republicans give a shit? Of course not. This is because they hate reporters. They get so much mileage out of hating reporters, it’s almost impressive. Why, it’s as if breeding hate and resentment is the only thing they do competently! They hate facts. They hate whistleblowers. They hate the truth. They don’t even like QUESTIONS. How dare you ask a Republican a question? That’s really rude. The president thinks you should be body slammed. If Republican leaders liked answering for shit, they would hold more town halls. Instead, they fuck off back to their home states and huddle up with their donors.
Republicans Hate You, Drew Magary, GQ
"War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength." George Orwell, 1984, Spark Notes
These words are the official slogans of the Party, and are inscribed in massive letters on the white pyramid of the Ministry of Truth, as Winston observes in Book One, Chapter I. Because it is introduced so early in the novel, this creed serves as the reader’s first introduction to the idea of doublethink. By weakening the independence and strength of individuals’ minds and forcing them to live in a constant state of propaganda-induced fear, the Party is able to force its subjects to accept anything it decrees, even if it is entirely illogical—for instance, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of waging war, the Ministry of Love is in charge of political torture, and the Ministry of Truth is in charge of doctoring history books to reflect the Party’s ideology.
That the national slogan of Oceania is equally contradictory is an important testament to the power of the Party’s mass campaign of psychological control. In theory, the Party is able to maintain that “War Is Peace” because having a common enemy keeps the people of Oceania united. “Freedom Is Slavery” because, according to the Party, the man who is independent is doomed to fail. By the same token, “Slavery Is Freedom,” because the man subjected to the collective will is free from danger and want. “Ignorance Is Strength” because the inability of the people to recognize these contradictions cements the power of the authoritarian regime.
This is insane...and terrifying.
...and we are all living through a tweet-created, GOP-enabled dystopian nightmare.
This is terrifying as we might be staring down the barrel of our own extinction.
At least there will be no billionaires,..
...or assholes (not that for most, there isn't much of a difference).
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| When I test a vacuum, I just sprinkle oats all over the floor. When NASA tests one, you get this. NASA/JPL-Caltech |
Topics: Mars, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight
NASA will leave no Martian rock unturned as it prepares the next Mars robot for the chaos of space travel and landing on the red planet.
Over the last two months, the Mars 2020 spacecraft has been subjected to a number of extreme tests designed to ensure it can withstand an intense rocket launch and the extremes of space. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has put the futuristic craft through "acoustic and thermal vacuum" testing -- and it has passed with flying colors.
The test involve blasting the spacecraft with sound levels as high as 150 decibels -- the type of levels you'd hear standing next to a jet at take-off -- to replicate the environment of a launch, according to Andy Rose, manager of JPL's environmental test facilities.
After the sound blast tests were performed six times, NASA put the Mars 2020 rover through a brutal test that replicates the vacuum of space. That required the spacecraft to be transported to the Space Simulator Facility and suspended in midair, as seen in the above image.
Mars 2020 spacecraft subjected to brutal tests as it prepares for launch, Jackson Ryan, CNET
(excerpt)
The next day, was the strangest Dumas ever had. He’d just come home from work and opened the door to the cramped, one bedroom flat he shared with his father: Wilton2. He changed out of his work clothes, and then went into the kitchen to warm their dinner of beans and rice.
His father was dying of cancer, caused by the pollution and lack of fresh oxygen in the underground. The disease had whittled his robust 250 pound frame to a frail 115 pounds. Wilton’s hair was gone, he had trouble breathing. His once rich, black skin was now gray with illness.
And he was in constant pain when not medicated by the drugs, verma and placid—both supplied by Doc Bona. It was the same disease that had taken Dumas’s mother three years ago.
He chopped Wilton’s dinner into fine bits and set the plate before him. Dumas fixed his own plate, and sat down across from his father. Wilton picked morosely at his food.
“You need to eat pop.”
“I ain’t hungry.”
“Come on, I slaved all night fixing that. Try to get a little of it down.”
The old man smiled wryly. “Death is coming for me. You think he care if I got a full stomach or not?”
Dumas looked up from his plate, his eyes both angry and sad. “I wish you’d stop talking like that,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry son.” Wilton reached over and patted Dumas hand. His skin felt leathery and dry. “But I’m tired. . . I got something to tell you too.”
“Oh yeah? More cheerful dinner conversation?”
Wilton smiled, and his son managed a small grin in return. “Even better, I had me a vision.”
Drug induced hallucination is more like it. “Really?”
“I know you don’t believe me— not yet— but listen anyway. They came for me last night.”
“Who?” Dumas asked, interested now despite his cynicism.
Wilton’s voice slowed, taking on the measured cadence of a storyteller. “Your mama came first, and she was young and pretty, just like the first day I met her. I jumped out of bed — didn’t need no help, ’cause my body was young again like it was before I got sick. I jumped out of bed and hugged your mama real tight.”
Wilton was grinning widely now, a faraway look in his eyes. “I cried I was so happy to see her! I said: ’Lucretia baby, I missed you!’ And she said: ’I know daddy, I missed you too. But we ain’t got time for that now! They coming!’ She grabbed my hand and dragged me outside.”
“Then they came. At first they was just few of our folks... your uncle Potsi — you’d a liked him — and some more of our cousins. And then the rest of ’em showed up. The Others. Son they was folks, our folks, from hundreds — thousands of years ago. They was walking with us. So many I couldn’t see ‘em all, but I could feel ‘em.”
Dumas leaned forward, his dinner forgotten. “Then what?” he whispered.
“We walked past the houses—everybody was sleep you see and even if they weren’t they wouldn’t see us—to where this man was standing. He wasn’t human, don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew.”
“He had real dark skin, the color of coffee, and his hair was salt-and-pepper lying over his shoulders. He was holding something in his hands...At first I thought it was a colored ball. But when I looked closer I saw it was energy—all different colors of energy—floating between his hands.”
“He had his hands cupped around it, all the lights from that ball was reflected in his face. All a sudden, the light shinned out from that ball, melting everything around us, the buildings, the pipes...opening up space so everybody could breath.”
“And I could see more, more like him floating in that light. I knew then, we all knew, that they next generation would be free.” Now Wilton’s eyes were burning and alive. “So that plan you got cooking, it’s gonna work. Don’t you give up on it! And remember, if you ever meet an old man with coffee-colored skin and long hair, why you do what he asks. You hear me?”
Dumas stared hard at his father and swallowed. “Yeah, sure.” How did he know? How could he?
Cover art by Quinton Veal
Available at: www.vjeffersandqveal.com Smashwords
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| A novel, highly sensitive molecular sensor together with a first-of-its-kind histamine detector comprise abbieSense, a device that can diagnose and assess the severity of an allergic reaction within five minutes. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University |
Topics: Applied Physics, Fluid Mechanics, Microfluidics, Nanofluidics, Nanotechnology
The need for an inexpensive, super-repellent surface cuts across a vast swath of societal sectors—from refrigeration and architecture, to medical devices and consumer products. Most state-of-the-art liquid repellent surfaces designed in the last decade are modeled after lotus leaves, which are extremely hydrophobic due to their rough, waxy surface and the physics of their natural design. However, none of the lotus-inspired materials designed so far has met the mark: they may repel water but they fail to repel oils, fail under physical stress, cannot self-heal – and are expensive to boot.
‘SLIPS’ technology, inspired by the slippery pitcher plant that repels almost every type of liquid and solid, is a unique approach to coating industrial and medical surfaces that is based on nano/microstructured porous material infused with a lubricating fluid. By locking in water and other fluids, SLIPS technology creates slick, exceptionally repellent and robust self-cleaning surfaces on metals, plastics, optics, textiles and ceramics. These slippery surfaces repel almost any fouling challenge a surface may face—whether from bacteria, ice, water, oil, dust, barnacles, or other contaminants.
Wyss Institute, Harvard: Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surfaces
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| Image Source: Gizmodo and originally, Wait, But Why |
Topics: Astrobiology, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Drake Equation, Existentialism, Fermi Paradox, Nuclear Power
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Carl Sagan
My First Contact scenario doesn't involve Vulcans, warp drive or impossible scenarios: it involves radio transmissions, as communication is a big part of the Drake Equation. Specifically audio, video and digital data (Internet?) of extraterrestrial origin as we would confirm before announcing to the world. Assuming the aliens developed their technology in an oxygen-nitrogen environment, the language we could hear might amount to a lot of "clicking" noises, that mathematicians - specifically specialists in cryptography, and linguists - would dive into deciphering. Eventually after coming up with a Rosetta Stone of syntax, we could translate what would amount to news, drama and sitcoms. Of specific interest might be their political climate and sectarian strife (if any). More particularly, did they successfully translate through their "Great Filter"...
...or, if they did not.
*****
I'm a big fan of Jordon Peele's incarnation of The Twilight Zone, particularly the sixth episode: "Six Degrees of Freedom." It is unfortunate that popular show title describes our current political climate.
I won't give away the intriguing ending, but Peele has mastered the macabre plot twist of Rod Serling's writing style, and (my opinion) his surreal monologue delivery. It's streaming, so you may have to pay less than you would for a single movie ticket per month to view it. I've enjoyed it andother shows so far, and I get no monetary gain for the endorsement.
"The Great Filter, in the context of the Fermi paradox, is whatever prevents dead matter from undergoing abiogenesis, in time, to expanding lasting life as measured by the Kardashev scale.[1][2] The concept originates in Robin Hanson's argument that the failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies the possibility something is wrong with one or more of the arguments from various scientific disciplines that the appearance of advanced intelligent life is probable; this observation is conceptualized in terms of a "Great Filter" which acts to reduce the great number of sites where intelligent life might arise to the tiny number of intelligent species with advanced civilizations actually observed (currently just one: human).[3] This probability threshold, which could lie behind us (in our past) or in front of us (in our future), might work as a barrier to the evolution of intelligent life, or as a high probability of self-destruction.[1][4] The main counter-intuitive conclusion of this observation is that the easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are.
The idea was first proposed in an online essay titled "The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?", written by economist Robin Hanson. The first version was written in August 1996 and the article was last updated on September 15, 1998. Since that time, Hanson's formulation has received recognition in several published sources discussing the Fermi paradox and its implications.
Using extinct civilizations such as Easter Island as models, a study conducted in 2018 posited that climate change induced by "energy intensive" civilizations may prevent sustainability within such civilizations, thus explaining the lack of evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life.[5]" Source: Wikipedia/The Great Filter
The Great Filter is alluded to in science fiction with or without warp drive: Star Trek described global wars on Earth and the fictional Vulcan that involved their respective nuclear holocausts. For the Vulcans, recovery involved a relentless embrace of logic, or as I recall reading in a Trek novel, "reality-truth." For Earth, it essentially involved accepting help from the Vulcans after the human species was discovered warp capable through a singular genius with a funny name post self-induced Apocalypse, a Deus ex Machina plot device used since publicly performed Greek and Roman plays. We don't have warp drive, but we do have thermonuclear devices poised for Armageddon. We don't have Vulcans, but we once did have the Easter Islanders, just as once we had the Dodo.
I've often encapsulated The Great Filter in my own dictum: "intelligence is its own Entropy." I think when Carl Sagan was alive, the regressive forces we see now denying science, climate change; verifiable facts and reality were well engaged in his day of the original COSMOS. Slowly, shows like COSMOS lost their appeal to Game Shows cum Reality Shows, and as a country we reveled in our distractions, added as channels on cable and Internet multiplied like E. coli. and measles resurgence as well as our grasp of what is real and verifiable. In fact, we seek distractions in gadgets and online machinations in the constant need to fill "horror vacui."
In the east, nothing meant something, particularly in clarity of thought: Mu Shin No Shin - "the mind without mind" or more colloquially, "no mind." As translated from the martial battlefield to artists both martial and objective; and Zen philosophers, it offers a certain clarity that can be attained when not focused on minutiae detail, but accepted reality "as-is" after diligent practice. A practice like karate forms that takes years of repetition, dedication and study. That is the key to mastering anything, from martial arts to science to civics.
The stars are silent. Intelligence may be rare. Vulcans if existing may not be benevolent, and in the myopic attention span of the erect species of which I am member - "wise men"...fleeting in longevity.
We hope we're past The Great Filter. I'm not sure we are.
Related links:
The Great Filter Might Be What's Preventing Aliens from Reaching Us,
Joanie Faletto, Curiosity
The Reason We've Never Found Intelligent Life Might be Because We Are Already Going Extinct,
Climate change might be humanity’s "Great Filter." Karla Lant, Futurism
The Great Filter, a possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox – interview with Robin Hanson
Science, Technology, Future
