One would think that a threat to coffee would make some minds change about the serious threat that climate change poses to the world, both the natural environment and human society.
Well, maybe it will. I sure hope so.
Climate change is coming for our coffee
Spare the beans (seriously). Or this could get a lot more expensive.
If USA Swimming passes new eligibility criteria/rules that would keep Lia Thomas (the University of Pennsylvania's transgender swimmer) from competing in the NCAA championships, apparently the University of Pennsylvania will sue to allow her to compete.
I don't fault them for doing that. They have to.
Unfortunately.
A few more places in the Upper Peninsula final leg of the Streetview trek; a couple of them feature rocks. Because of the iron and copper ores up here, there may be some interesting minerals lying around.
We have to take a look at "Da Yooper's Tourist Trap Rock Shop". OK, we did.
In this case, really old. Late Cretaceous Period old.
Growing up, I was fascinated with dinosaurs (I guess a lot of us precocious types shared that). I had dinosaur toys and went to museums with dinosaur skeletons. I learned a lot of their fun scientific names.
One type in particular interested me; the ankylosaurs, which were like biological tanks, covered with hard plates on top, and carrying a bony club in back to whack any threatening predators. The standard ankylosaur looked like this:
In the news recently was the discovery and description of a new kind of ankylosaur that carried a tail weapon that looked more like an axe than a club. It was found in southern Chile and has been named Stegouros elengassen. Here's what this one looked like:
I recommend reading the New York Times article at the link; getting the bones out of the mountains and into the lab had some challenges.
These three pictures of lovely ladies -- Antje Utgaard, Katie Bell, and Lindsay Pelas, from top to bottom respectively -- have something in common.
See if you can figure out what it is.
This article in Salon seems fairly confident that the House committee on the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the planning for the attempt to overturn the results of the Presidential election by Trump and associates, is closing in on the top characters.
I certainly hope that optimism is justified.
With new subpoenas, Jan. 6 committee closes in on its ultimate target: Donald Trump
Here's an example of the optimism:
"Because the Supreme Court denied Donald Trump's claim of executive privilege on Wednesday, the committee will now have yet another trove of official documents, visitor lists, call logs, talking points and plans to challenge electoral ballots before they question Giuliani and his compatriots. White House documents released by the National Archives will also produce names of new witnesses the committee will want to question. One document received by the committee, and published by Politico on Friday, exposed a fantastical plan to use the military to seize voting machines and electoral records in all 50 states and have them "analyzed and assessed" by the — get this — director of national intelligence. It was, in effect, a plan for a military coup using a "national security emergency" as a pretext — the "emergency" apparently being Trump's loss in the election."Let the good times roll. And roll over everybody involved.
This article is about rocks that are like a rolling stone, Mars-style.
Bouncing boulders point to quakes on Mars
"A study of these ephemeral features on Mars, published last month in Geophysical Research Letters, says that such boulder tracks can be used to pinpoint recent seismic activity on the red planet. This new evidence that Mars is a dynamic world runs contrary to the notion that all of the planet’s exciting geology happened much earlier, said Ingrid Daubar, a planetary scientist at Brown University who was not involved in the study. “For a long time, we thought that Mars was this cold, dead planet.”
Now, if one of those big Martian volcanoes would erupt, we'd really have a show to watch.
Despite having a lot of coastline (it is a group of islands, after all), the state of Hawaii doesn't have a large number of lighthouses. And many of the lighthouses it has are rather simple metal frame towers or basic concrete structures with lights on top. There are definitely exceptions, to that, of course; Diamond Head on Oahu, Kilauea Point on Kauai, and a few others.
This is one of the others. Plus, it's probably the most notable lighthouse on Molokai, which rather than having coastline along much of the seashore, it has coastal cliffs with long sinuous waterfalls. This particular lighthouse is located on a small flat peninsular projection on the northern side of the island, which is mainly the location of a national historic park (this was the location of a leper colony). It is also next to a one-runway airport, which appears to be the only way to get to Kalaupapa, because you can't get anywhere else on Molokai from there.
So, now let's find out a bit about the Kalaupapa lighthouse from the Lighthouse Directory. (There are other places where you can find information and pictures of this one.)
"1909 (station established 1906). Active; focal plane 213 ft (65 m); white flash every 10 s. 138 ft (42 m) octagonal reinforced concrete tower; DCB-24 aerobeacon (1997). Lighthouse painted white, lantern red. The original 2nd order Fresnel lens, previously on display in the Lāhainā Restoration Foundation's musuem in Lāhainā, Maui, has been shipped back to Molokai for eventual display in a museum at Kalaupapa. Three original 1-1/2 story keeper's houses built of volcanic rock."
Below are four pictures of this notable and isolated lighthouse.
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| by Elyse Butler |
I like gruyère cheese. But now I've realized that I probably haven't been eating authentic gruyère from Switzerland.
OK, so I checked -- and it appears that I am eating Swiss gruyère. Yay.
But apparently there's a lot of gruyère in the marketplace that isn't authentic Swiss gruyère. And that has led to a legal entanglement of U.S. courts and European cheesemakers.
"In the ruling last month in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis III wrote, “Although the term gruyère may once have been understood to indicate an area of cheese production, the factual record makes it abundantly clear that the term gruyère has now, over time, become generic to cheese purchasers in the United States.” Under U.S. law, trademarks cannot be given to generic terms.
Gruyère producers in Switzerland and France, however, say that their cheese is anything but generic and that they will appeal the decision.
“We have a big problem,” said Philippe Bardet, the director of Interprofession du Gruyère, which represents gruyère producers in Switzerland. “With this decision, you can make a little cheese, a big cheese, a hard cheese, a processed cheese — and you can give the name ‘gruyère’ for all types of cheese.” "
Here's a look inside the Swiss cave where the authentic cheeses from Switzerland are aged.
Like me, if you are volcanologically-minded, when you first here the words "White Island", you may naturally think of the moderately active, and occasionally a little more (as a recent tragedy attests), volcanic island off the coast of New Zealand.
But this White Island is not that White Island. This White Island is off the coast of New Hampshire, where there's a group of islands named Isles of Shoals. So when you see White Island on the map, you'll also see many of those other isles, as seen here. Zoom in closer to see the Isles themselves.
So, because these are indeed hazardous to navigation, there has been a lighthouse at this location for quite a long time. I have two links from which I will derive information about it:
White Island Lighthouse (Isles of Shoals Lighthouse) from New England Lighthouses: A Virtual Guide.
Basic info from there:
Station established: 1821
Present lighthouse built: 1859
Automated: 1986
Construction material: Brick with cast iron lantern Other buildings still standing: keeper's house, covered walkway, two outbuildings
Height of tower: 58 feet
Height of focal plane: 82 feet
Optic: Second-order Fresnel (1855); DCB-224 (1986); VRB-25 (circa 2000); VLB-44 (2008)
Ironic as in "iron". You'll see.
From the Washington Post:
Distinguished pol of the week: Merrick Garland’s boldest move yet
... is the one we don't see coming.
This is the warning of NASA-funded experts who investigated how telescopes nearly missed a 328-feet-wide asteroid that came within 43,500 miles of Earth back in 2019.
The space rock, dubbed '2019 OK', was the first object of its size to get that close to our planet since 1908 — but it was only spotted 24 hours before its closest approach.
The reason, the team determined, is because it was moving towards us in such a way that its motion across the night sky was counteracted by the Earth's spin.
Just a brief note here; Ecuador has done a good thing for wildlife and nature preservation in the Galapagos Islands.
Ecuador expands protections around Galápagos, creating ‘a new highway’ for sea life
"On Friday [January 14, 2022], the government of Ecuador announced it will curb fishing in more than 20,000 square miles of ocean to the northeast of the archipelago, in essence erecting guardrails around an underwater animal freeway between the Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and Costa Rica’s Cocos Island. ... No fishing will be allowed in half of the newly protected area, while longline fishing will be banned in the other half."Thank you, Ecuador.
I read the news that right-wing talk show host and pundit Glenn Beck has been infected with COVID-19 a second time.
He wasn't vaccinated and isn't vaccinated. He also said that the infection is into his lungs, and he's getting treated with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
Good luck with that, Glenn.
'It's a little bit disturbing': Unvaccinated talk radio host Glenn Beck, 57, says he has COVID for a second time and it's moved to his lungs: Reveals he's being treated with ivermectin and hydroxy
Because winter is changing (basically getting shorter and warmer), skiing is changing too. This New York Times article covers the changes. There are also some changes due to COVID-19, of course.
First, the climate change indicator:
"Between 1982 and 2016, the American ski season shrunk by an average of 34 days annually, and levels of snow cover saw an average drop of 41 percent, according to a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters."
So there's an upswing in "ski touring" -- which essentially means hiking to and then up the mountain, and then skiing down it. And also not getting buried in an avalanche. That's important too.
Here’s How Climate Change and Covid Are Transforming Skiing
"In recent years, with snow cover diminishing and untouched powder increasingly difficult to reach, skiers like Ms. Backstrom have been pushed onto groomed trails more often. That increased visibility, combined with the pandemic shutdowns, she said, has prompted more skiers to try touring gear. “That always helps to have a visible example,” she said.
Ms. Backstrom also said more skiers are opting to avoid the backcountry and ski uphill on managed slopes because it’s “more safe given extreme changes in climate and weather.”
One of the main reasons is that, as weather becomes more volatile, avalanches are becoming more difficult to predict."
Rand Paul, medical expert (ha ha ha ha ha), has some numbers he'd like to share with the American public.
That would be the gullible American public that believes everything that is broadcast on the right-wing propaganda channel Fox "News".
We know they're out there. Sadly, we know that a lot of them are out there.
Anyway, "medical expert" Senator Rand Paul told Fox "News" that "that there is a probability of '90 to 10' that the COVID-19 virus was engineered through gain-of-function research in a lab in Wuhan, China and subsequently leaked from that lab." (Read it here, courtesy of Daily Mail.)
Seriously. And despite trying to ridicule Anthony Fauci because he said that attacks on him are attacks on science, "medical expert" Paul has not cited a single reference that backs up his numbers. That's what scientists would do, by the way.
So I ask again -- where is he getting those numbers? Basically, he's pulling them out of his excretory orifice.
IF YOU SEARCH, there is no evidence, no quantitative evidence, NOTHING, that indicates any statistical probability of the lab leak theory. Even I, as someone who is curious about it and who thinks that there is a chance that the virus could have escaped from the lab, know for certain that there is no statistical evidence or estimate regarding the actual probability of the "lab leak" theory.
On the other hand (this is from this article: The Mysterious Case of the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory
"More than one virologist reminded me that nature is the best bioterrorist. It’s far more creative than humans are. With enough time, evolution is capable of anything we can imagine, and everything we can’t. “If you look at a platypus, you can very clearly realize that that’s not something somebody would have designed, right?” Andersen said. “Because it’s too absurd. It’s a bit of a disaster. But it works pretty well.” It occupies its own ecological niche. Some of the notable features of sars-CoV-2, Andersen said, make it “the platypus of coronaviruses.”
So, Senator Paul, I don't believe you have any actual numbers, and therefore, I do not believe you.
(It's not the first time, jerkface.)
Yes, the act of coitus can be pleasurable. I guess that's not big news.
But maybe it is when scientists discover that dolphins like to get busy because it feels good, too.
"The final discovery was the genital corpuscles, which are sensory structures found in the human clitoris and penis. 'Those [the genital corpuscles] are there specifically for pleasure,' said Brennan. 'This is all pretty good evidence that dolphins are experiencing pleasure through clitoris simulation.'
The researchers note that there's been little study of the clitoris and female sexual pleasure in nature. In fact, even the human clitoris was not fully described until the 1990s."
We know already that they're trying to making it much harder for Democrat voters to vote for Democrat candidates, via changing voter laws, allowing legislatures to decide elections that they don't like the results of, cementing safe candidates in gerrymandered districts ... plus we know all the nasty tricks that Senator Mitch McConnell has played ... but he's not the only one.
Because, they also want to make it harder for the government to govern.
“You’re seeing a broken system breaking down even further, and in an election year it’s not going to get better,” said Max Stier, the Partnership’s chief executive. “We need a political Geneva Convention, to distinguish between legitimate partisan differences and the destruction of our core government infrastructure.”
“The truth is that some Republicans’ unprecedented obstructionism is straining the system to the breaking point,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor last month, adding that the situation was forcing the president to operate without critical national security officials in place, “leaving our nation weakened.”
And now, a visit to Marquette, Michigan, in the northern end of the Highway 41 end-to-end Streetview trek.
Above the city is Mount Marquette. It's up there.
There are still plenty of lighthouses in Quebec to visit for the Lighthouse of the Week, so I went back to Quebec for this week's featured phare. And that's what it is -- the Phare de Pointe-des-Monts, on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River, about where it turns into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
It's a very pretty / scenic location, as you'll see. First, we'll see what the Lighthouse Directory says about it. Pay attention, because this is a good one.
"1830. Inactive since 2000. 27.5 m (90 ft) round stone tower with a small square lantern room perched on a platform-like gallery. Lighthouse painted white with two broad red horizontal bands; lantern is also red. 1-1/2 story keeper's house and several other light station buildings. ... This magnificent lighthouse is one of Canada's oldest and most famous. The 7 floors of the tower are a museum; the keeper's house is operated as a restaurant. There is a bed and breakfast inn as well as cottages and camping facilities on site. The lighthouse was saved from demolition in 1964 by Jacques Landry and his wife, the final keepers; it was transferred to the government of Québec in 1965."
Below, various pictures and a short video:
Short video:
It's not fair to stunning model Aline Cara Luna (click to get to her Instagram) to only show pictures of her in lingerie, because she models high-fashion clothes as well.
So in this quick set of 3, I included one in which she isn't wearing lingerie.
It's pretty obvious that the island of Santorini, in its present form, is the rim of an ancient volcano that obliterated itself and turned a mountain into a caldera. And it's also been pretty conclusively proven that this eruption had a very depressive effect on the civilization of the Minoans, which was pretty dominant in the Mediterranean / Aegean Sea region in that era.
There's just been a new study published that discovered the effects of the eruption-generated tsunami in Turkey, at a considerable distance from Santorini. And they also discovered, for the first time, remains of one victim of this catastrophe. Despite all the evidence that it happened, no other actual remains of victims have been identified.
Here's a plain language article about the discovery.
First Human Skeleton From Bronze Age Tsunami Discovered in Turkey
Want to know how to tell a GOP politician is a hard right-wing ideologue, even if they've tried to avoid that tag?
They attack the environment every chance they get.
Newly-elected Governor Glenn Youngkin has been proving this even before he was sworn in. He already said he'd move to pull Virginia out of a Chesapeake Bay multi-state regional greenhouse gas control agreement (even thought it's not fully clear that he can).
Pardon me while I choke on that. Apparently the Virginia Senate, which still has a slight Democrat edge, could do something that they don't commonly do, which is to reject the appointment.
I vote aye on that nay.
Given everything that is happening politically; the sharp schism between the Democrat and Republican parties, the dirty tricks played by the Republican GOP to ram right-wing judges onto the Supreme Court, gerrymandering which will cement minority rule in Congress for white minorities in many states, voting "laws" that may allow the overturning of legitimate election results by conservative Secretaries of State or GOP-dominated legislatures, and voting restrictions of all kinds
and also, the idiocy of Senator Joe Manchin
then predicting that the U.S. will be under an essentially right-wing populist dictator by 2030 is not a far stretch at all.
Prepare for Right-Wing U.S. Dictatorship Before 2030, Scholar Urges Canada
I don't want him to be right about this. But he very well could be."In the op-ed, [Thomas] Homer-Dixon detailed his reasons for what he called the "unfolding crisis" in the U.S., writing that there had been multiple "warning signals" and reasons behind a changing political landscape.
Among them, he cited "stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality," and broadcasters such as the late Rush Limbaugh who he said had "hammered away" at the "moral authority of U.S. political institutions."
He also highlighted "right-wing ideologues" stoking fears of white "replacement," the unwillingness of the wealthy and powerful "to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility."
The Daily Mail (and many other venues, I'm sure) covered the wedding of a French "fashion influencer", the willowy Camille Charriere, noting her dress.
I noted what they noted. Clearly it wouldn't take the happy couple much time to get down to the basics for the wedding night's culminating consummation, as you can see below.
Heading to the northlands for a mug of coffee and a lighthouse in Sweden, the Hoburg lighthouse on the Gotland island, which lies south of Stockholm in the Baltic Sea.
And here's what the Lighthouse Directory informs us about it.
"1846. Active; focal plane 58 m (190 ft); white flash every 5 s. 22 m (72 ft) round stone tower with lantern and gallery. Lower 2/3 of the tower painted white, upper third black; lantern roof also painted white. Several 1-story keeper's houses. A rotating 1st order Fresnel lens (1915) is in use.And here are some pictures of it (including the mug).
This lighthouse marks the southwestern end of Gotland, but it is located about 2 km (1.2 mi) northeast of the cape."
I may have to discuss Brooks Koepka's fiancée further. For now, this will have to uncover it.
Showing off her back nine! Golfer Brooks Koepka’s fiancée Jena Sims puts her derrière on display in nude shot to celebrate her 33rd birthday
Striving northward to the end, that is. A few more views on the way.
Also inspired by the Tournament of Roses parade, I checked to see where a couple of bands in the parade came from.
O'Fallon, Illinois -- is basically an Illinois suburb of St. Louis.
Downington, Pennsylvania is one of the communities that lies west of Philadelphia; it's just a bit northwest of West Chester.
I watched the Tournament of Roses Parade this morning, and about the only participants who wore masks were the young ladies in the Rose Court. So, to see what they look like maskless, I went to the Rose Parade Web site. I hope they won't mind a repost of the court picture.
A couple of comments:
1) I wish that they had short profiles (and individual pictures) of each member. Seems like they deserve that. This article helps fill that gap.
2) I noticed in the eligibility requirements that participants in the court selection must "identify as female". That makes me wonder when the first transgender queen or princess will be seated.
