This is enough

 

This article about Grant Wahl, the unfortunately recently deceased sportswriter, has a priceless quote about vaccine denialism -- and denialism of all kinds, for that matter.

Even though I'm featuring the quote, I recommend reading the entire article.

Grant Wahl Was a Loving Husband. I Will Always Protect His Legacy.

His wife is "an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist."

Here's the quote:

"The vaccine disinformation playbook includes the use of fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry-picked data and conspiracy theories."

I know several people that I would like to lock in a room and play this quote repeatedly from the sound system, once a minute, until it drove them crazy. 

The problem with that idea is, most of them already act pretty crazy, and I'm fairly certain some of them are.

This could be bad, eventually

 

Astronomers recently described the discovery of two supermassive black holes that are located in the remarkably close proximity of 750 light years.

They are fated to eventually collide, which would cause an unimaginably catastrophic gravitic explosion which could swallow up light years of empty space around them.

In a few hundred million years or so.

Whew ... I was getting worried.

Supermassive Black Holes en Route to Cataclysmic Collision: Doomed Pair Closer Than Ever Observed

How an unhinged conservative pundit views Mitch McConnell

 

Republican (maybe) conservative (certainly) nutcase (definitely) pundit writer Kurt Schlichter is about as far out there as Steve Bannon and Alex Jones.  He writes for the far right-wing media dump called TownHall, which is an window into unhingedom.

But when you see what he says about Mitch McConnell, it gladdens the heart.

The Republicans’ Mitch McConnell Problem

"It’s time to face facts. The Mitch McConnell of today is not the savvy and savage killer of yesteryear. The Mitch McConnell of today is hapless and hated, weak and tone deaf, barely competition for the second-rate hack who is Chuck Schumer. He is perhaps the most unpopular major politician in America, a group that includes Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. It’s sad, but at 80 years old, Mitch McConnell is fading, and he is not going quietly. Instead, he is raging at the GOP base for daring to object to his increasingly opaque and bumbling schemes."

Lovely.

"Then there is Ukraine. Younger Mitch would never have been so insane as to announce that giving money to Ukraine to secure its border when ours is wide open is the Republican Party’s Number One priority. It is not our Number One priority. It is not even in the Top Ten. The base was disgusted and appalled. We just lost the midterms, and then this – anyone shocked that so many Republicans stayed home? But Mitch did not care – that turtle toughness again, yet where it is helpful when aimed at our opponents, it is self-destructive when aimed at our people."

Sublime.

"His decline can no longer be denied. Mitch is staggering. He’s past his prime and making rookie mistakes. Schumer and the Dems are laughing at him. His respect among his peers on both sides of the aisle and the base is circling the drain, and it’s sad – he deserves credit for the past, but in politics, the question is always, “What have you done for me lately?” Sadly, the answer today is “Nothing except fail.”

Transcendent. Like ayahuasca, but just for liberals.

 

Talented and ...

 

Over the Christmas holidays, I gained new respect for Katherine McPhee's high level of artistic talent as a singer.

And other things.

Katharine McPhee looks incredible as she flashes her cleavage in a chic little black dress

And here's a different holiday look:

We should pay attention

 

Gun violence recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children.

Childhood’s Greatest Danger:The Data on Kids and Gun Violence

"What is clear is that the United States is an extreme outlier when it comes to gun fatalities among children. When researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation recently compared a set of similarly large and wealthy nations, they found that among this group, the United States accounted for 46 percent of the child population but 97 percent of all child gun deaths."

Gosh, I wonder why that is.

 

Australian Open Women's Single Tennis 2023

 

I don't think I've had a tennis post here for awhile, so here's a quick one.  I didn't know how the interesting Australian Open would go on the women's side (it got interesting after Swiatek lost, because if she's winning, it's peak-Federer level boring, she's so good), but there's the prospect for a classic final.  I expect Sabalenka to blow right past Linette, who's having a career tournament but I think this is as far as she gets.  And I hope the lower-ranked than she should be Rybakina beats Azarenka.

Because that would set up a Rybakina - Sabalenka final, and that would be power vs. power.  Which could be a lot of fun to watch.

Rybakina slugging one back:

Is gun control (aka "gun safety") possible in the USA?

 

As I am writing this, there have been mass shootings and mass deaths from shootings twice in California in the past couple of days, and a school shooting in Des Moines, Iowa that killed two.  And there's still lots of talk about the six-year-old kid who brought a gun to school and shot his teacher, who fortunately survived.

America has a culture and love of guns.  Can that be broken?  

Maybe, according to this New York Times article, it already is breaking.  Slowly.  

Republicans Are Breaking With the N.R.A., and It’s Because of Us

There's this:

"The N.R.A. is not vanquished, but it is walking wounded. The primary battleground over gun legislation has been the statehouses, where Parkland set off a startling reversal. After decades of getting trounced by the N.R.A., activists saw 67 gun safety laws passed at the state level in 2019, compared with nine pro-gun laws. This year, 45 new gun safety laws have been adopted in states, while 95 percent of gun-lobby-linked bills have been blocked, according to an Everytown report."

And also this:

 "It’s why Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa — an N.R.A. darling who ran for office by firing a handgun in a major ad campaign — broke with the organization leading up to the June vote. She said her phone lines were swamped, with callers six to one in favor of the gun safety bill, urgently repeating: “Please do something.”

Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, reported calls 10 to one in favor. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia did not endorse the initial compromise, but then she met with Republican constituents. “Do something,” they also demanded. She voted yes."

So maybe there's a chance. Today I had an unthinkable thought about what would really change minds.  But I can't say it.

Unfortunately, I can't unthink it, either.

 

Lighthouse of the Week, January 22-28, 2023: Seru Bentana, Bonaire

 

I looked around for lighthouses on Caribbean islands, and found this interesting one, on the scuba diving paradise of Bonaire.  Most of Bonaire isn't very scenic, and I can't say that this one is a particularly scenic example of lighthouse magnificence, but it is a lighthouse on a Caribbean island.

So this one is the Seru Bentana lighthouse, and it is very isolated.  I'm not sure if the attached house was inhabited or not, but if it was, they were a long way from the store.

The Lighthouse Directory says this, after saying there isn't much information available about Bonaire lighthouses.

"Date unknown. Active; focal plane 44 m (144 ft); four white flashes every 22 s. 10 m (34 ft) square cylindrical masonry tower attached to a small service building. Lighthouse painted white. ... The lighthouse was rebuilt after being heavily damaged by fire following a lightning strike in 1954. In 1999 it was renamed for Ricardo Winkler, the keeper who lost his life in the fire. The lighthouse was restored and repainted in 2012."

So here are four pictures of this one.

Enter the Anthropocene

 

This article discusses the discussions about ending the Holocene Era and initiating the Anthropocene Era, i.e., the era in which human influence on the Earth is the dominant and signatory influence, creating geological and environmental markers distinguishing it from the Holocene.

For Planet Earth, This Might Be the Start of a New Age 

A panel of experts has spent more than a decade deliberating on how, and whether, to mark a momentous new epoch in geologic time: our own.

Let's learn a little about it:

"If it makes it all the way, though, geology’s amended timeline would officially recognize that humankind’s effects on the planet had been so consequential as to bring the previous chapter of Earth’s history to a close. It would acknowledge that these effects will be discernible in the rocks for millenniums."

and

"In a 29-to-4 vote in 2019, the [Anthropocene Working Group] group agreed to recommend that the Anthropocene began in the mid-20th century. That’s when human populations, economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions began skyrocketing worldwide, leaving indelible traces: plutonium isotopes from nuclear explosions, nitrogen from fertilizers, ash from power plants.

The Anthropocene, like nearly all other geologic time intervals, needs to be defined by a specific physical site, known as a “golden spike,” where the rock record clearly sets it off from the interval before it."

Unrelated to the article (as far as I know), here's a book about it.

The Anthropocene 

101 Questions and Answers for Understanding the Human Impact on the Global Environment

Merry sexy Christmas

 

Brooke Burke, 51, cancer survivor, mother of four, and one of the most beautiful Caucasian women ever to inhabit the Earth, wished everyone a very merry Christmas. 

Brooke Burke, 51, puts her fantastic figure on display in a red bikini top and floral briefs as she adds a Santa hat when on the beach in Malibu

I know it's late, but Merry Christmas to us!

This is sick

 

The Taliban has decreed that girls in the country can't go to school.

Any school at all, from whatever constitutes kindergarten/primary school all the way up to university level.  No education at all.  I.e., relegating women to secondary, servile status.

The way they want it, of course.

US threatens Taliban with 'costs' after ban on Afghan women and girls from school

"The Taliban returned to power over Afghanistan issuing public promises to preserve its people's basic freedoms. But just as swiftly as the group grasped control, it reneged on those guarantees -- completely blocking female students' access to education through a series of crackdowns culminating on Wednesday in a ban forbidding them from attending elementary school, setting the country's women back decades. 

 The decision to prohibit Afghan girls from receiving even a basic level of education outside of the home comes just a day after the Taliban announced that women would no longer be allowed to attend public or private universities."

Faced with international reaction (none of it good, except from the government of the Republic of Gilead, which commended the ruling), the Taliban relented and is now apparently going to allow girls to finish school up through sixth grade.  As long as they come to school clad completely in bedsheets (essentially). 

Afghanistan: Taliban allows education for girls up to Class 6, but with THIS condition

Just in case no one is paying attention, this is why theocracy is not a good form of government.  As if Irn hadn't already demonstrated that. 

A Cheryl sighting! (but not much of her)

 

Readers of this blog may know, or can determine (if you're new here), that I have been a long time admirer of the singer/dancer/entertainer/panelist known as Cheryl Tweedy/Cheryl Cole/Cheryl (and a few other names depending on who she was married to, briefly or extendedly). 

After having a baby named Bear with squeeze (but not husband) Liam Payne, most well-known as a member of One Direction, and then breaking up with him romance-wise, there hasn't been a lot of Cheryl news and features, let alone pictures.  So it's news, even if it was a couple of weeks ago, when Cheryl showed up in a Daily Mail article.  She used to be a regular, especially when she was getting married or getting divorced or getting fired or getting a multi-million dollar settlement from Simon Cowell for getting fired.

Video: Cheryl shares rare photo of son Bear, 5, as she dons a reindeer hat for a day out with Girls Aloud bandmate Kimberley Walsh at Lapland UK

(Look close;  she's at the end, in a red coat and antlers)

But wait, it's January, and there's more Cheryl!  And you can see her face!

Cheryl makes her big West End debut during first performance of Ghost Story: 2:22 - as she shoots down claims fans were left 'queuing in the cold due to a late start'

The play has an Instagram page with more pictures, including more pictures of Cheryl!

Maybe that's enough exclamation marks!

Dishonest Sean

Oh, we know all about Sean Hannity (at least, those of us on the Democratic liberal side do).  He doesn't tell the truth, or try, and he's an apologist and a propagandist of the highest order.  He's a Republican promoter masquerading as a reporter/journalist.  And he's a main reason so many people believe the mistruths and misinformation coming from the GOP leadership.

Why Sean Hannity’s dishonesty matters

Regarding his lack of candor:

"But it is consequential. Dominion Voting Systems, the company whose machines were identified by [Sidney] Powell as facilitating massive fraud in the presidential election, sued her and Fox News (and others) for defamation. In a deposition taken as part of the suit, Hannity reportedly admitted that he offered Powell a platform despite her lack of credibility.

“I did not believe it for one second,” he said, according to an attorney for Dominion.

Perhaps the Fox News host thinks this makes him look better; he wasn’t hoodwinked by this obvious nonsense! But, of course, he put Powell on the air anyway."

And people that watch Fox News still believe it.

Found and lost and found and ...

 

There's been a recent rediscovery of a bird that was feared lost to the wave of extinction.  But not yet.

Black-Naped Pheasant Pigeon: A Bird Lost To Science For More Than A Century

"Scientists know little about the Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon apart from two specimens collected in 1882, although the bird has been seen several times over the years by local [Papua New Guinea] hunters. Tapping into Indigenous knowledge was key to the expedition’s success. Augustin Gregory, a hunter from the village of Duda Ununa, advised the team on areas that were likeliest to hold a pheasant pigeon. Local bird expert Doka Nason set up the camera that eventually recorded the bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited,” he says. “I was jumping around yelling ‘We did it!’”

But there’s worry mixed with elation. The principal landowner of the forest where the bird was found told the search team that he’d just signed a deal with a logging company—a move that could threaten the Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon and its habitat."

It was camera-trapped:

 

It's time for a sonnet

 
Working on writing more sonnets this year.


Not all history is shown

It happened yet it never did; there will
be no recorded history, no lines
upon a page or a magnetic thrill
shall ever hold that this occurred. Yet mines
of fossils can discern an ancient past
and show the traces of uncounted lives --
so even if the memories don't last
their traces linger like the taste of chives
beyond the final fork. If you would look,
you'd find it somewhere in a log or in 
a flash of eyesight's insight, yet a book
will not contain a single word on thin
translucent parchment, nor a jot of ink
to remember what two minds can think.

Weird stuff

 

These videos of lights moving in the sky over Wisconsin are strange, to say the least.  Definitely unidentified, and I can't think of a good explanation.  See what you think of them.   One proposed explanation was cloud reflections from Christmas lights, and it's the right time of the year for that, but I don't feel too strongly that explains these.

EXCLUSIVE: Close encounters of the first kind? MULTIPLE witnesses share extraordinary videos of possible UFO sighting in rural Wisconsin where strange bright white lights were seen zipping across the night skies

Pretty girl post: Kelsey Farese

 

I came across Kelsey Farese by accident (can't remember exactly how), but I do know she was eye-catching.  Research revealed that she has both an Instagram page, and an IMdB page, and she's probably married.  She also has a Web page, but there's not much on it.

Oh well.  She appears successful and happy, and I hope she's getting all the enjoyment she can get.

Below are the pretty girl pictures.

This is a VERY nice Halloween costume.

Lighthouse of the Week, January 15-21, 2023: Reykjanesviti, Iceland

 

Sometimes, when a volcano is erupting, Iceland doesn't need a lighthouse, but most of the time it does.  This lighthouse is the oldest one on the land of fire and ice.

This is where it is.  It's right out on the end of the Reykjanes Peninsula, recently the site of eruptions, and the nearest town is all-shook-up Grindavik.   The Blue Lagoon isn't far away, either.  If I visit Iceland, this will be on my list of places to see.

So what needs to be known about this one?  The Lighthouse Directory provides:

"1929 (station established 1879). Active; focal plane 73 m (240 ft); two white flashes every 30s. 31 m (102 ft) round concrete tower with lantern and gallery. Tower painted white, lantern red. The modern 2-story keeper's house is occupied by a resident attendant. ... This light station, Iceland's oldest, is the landfall light for Keflavík and Reykjavík. The original lighthouse stood only eight years before being destroyed by an earthquake in 1887. Traditional in appearance, the current tower is probably Iceland's best known and most visited lighthouse. The area around the lighthouse is thermally active, and plumes of steam can often be seen in photos of the lighthouse. Located atop a hill (an inactive volcanic cone) near the southwestern point of the Reykjanes peninsula, about 16 km (10 mi) west of Grindavík and 20 km (13 mi) southwest of Keflavík."

And now, pictures!

Insights from Insight

 

Though the Mars Lander Insight has shut down due to power reduction (dust on the solar panels), it learned a lot and there's more to be learned

The Mars InSight Lander Is Powering Down. Here's What It Discovered Over its Lifetime

Here's one of the factual truths it discovered:

"The spacecraft measured the thickness of all of Mars’s layers by bouncing seismic waves into the interior and analyzing their reflection. The planet’s crust, InSight found, is thinner than scientists believed it would be—just 25 to 40 km (15 to 25 mi.) deep. Its molten core, on the other hand, is surprisingly large—about 3,600 km (2,240 mi.) in diameter—for a planet that measures only 6,779 km (4,212 mi.) across."

 

Happy hQlidays from Tom the Dancing Bug

 

Incredible satire.

I don't feel like I can post the whole thing, so here's a link to the whole thing.

This is my favorite of the five:

Save the whales, remove carbon

 

This is a real research paper, and this might be a real contribution to both the health of the oceans and the temperature of the planet.

Whales in the carbon cycle: can recovery remove carbon dioxide?

Abstract:

The great whales (baleen and sperm whales), through their massive size and wide distribution, influence ecosystem and carbon dynamics. Whales directly store carbon in their biomass and contribute to carbon export through sinking carcasses. Whale excreta may stimulate phytoplankton growth and capture atmospheric CO2; such indirect pathways represent the greatest potential for whale-carbon sequestration but are poorly understood. We quantify the carbon values of whales while recognizing the numerous ecosystem, cultural, and moral motivations to protect them. We also propose a framework to quantify the economic value of whale carbon as populations change over time. Finally, we suggest research to address key unknowns (e.g., bioavailability of whale-derived nutrients to phytoplankton, species- and region-specific variability in whale carbon contributions).

Diagram of the process (from a different source)

Yes, that one's a winner

 

Another photography contest highlighted in the Daily Mail -- and this one has a spectacular winning shot at the beginning. 

An electrifying Grand Canyon lightning strike and a rare snow leopard in the Himalayas: The astonishing winners of the Nature Photographer of the Year 2022 awards

Actually, this one taken by Raul Mostoslavsky, was only "Highly Commended", which astonishes me.

More on the picture, from the contest website

Here's the contest website:

Nature Photograper of the Year

And this is the page with the 2022 winners:

NPOTY Winners 2022

If it takes billions, then use them

 

This article from the Washington Post highlights how the world's wealthiest people are attempting to address the urgency of climate change. 

I say, if they want to spend their money addressing and potentially reducing the impact of climate change, then they should.  (Especially if it involves small modular nuclear reactors, which I still think is a great bridge technology.)

For better or worse, billionaires now guide climate policy

Some partial paragraphs from this article:

"Bill Gates-backed innovations are in line to receive potentially billions of dollars of U.S. subsidies and push the energy transition toward new hydrogen, nuclear and carbon-capture technologies after the climate package the Microsoft founder helped champion was signed by President Biden over the summer."

and  

"A clear example is Australian mining executive Andrew Forrest, a billionaire who says he personally met with Biden and the lawmaker key to pushing the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) to lobby for it. Forrest’s vision for solving the climate crisis leans heavily on green hydrogen, a technology still being developed, for gutting emissions from big industrial operations that analysts had warned was too costly to be used widespread before the end of the decade."

 Well, all I can say is, you've got to get started somewhere.

A couple more lovely backsides

 

Since I mentioned a book about butts slightly earlier, here are a couple more fine hind finds.

April Azalea:

Hope Beel:

A cartoony comment on George Santos

 

George Santos of New York is now in Congress.  We can hope that doesn't last very long.

Meanwhile:

Lighthouse of the Week, January 8-14, 2023: Marshall Point, Maine, USA

 

This week's lighthouse is a movie star, and it even has a Webcam.  We're back to Maine, this time in a relatively accessible location.

This is the Marshall Point Lighthouse, and when you read on, you'll see why it's a movie star, if you don't know already.   To mix things up, I'll put the video first.

Info from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1857 (station established 1832). Active; focal plane 30 ft (9 m), continuous white light, day and night. 31 ft (9.5 m) round tower with lantern and gallery, lower part granite blocks and upper part brick, connected to land by a wooden walkway; 300 mm lens (1981). Upper part of tower and walkway painted white, lantern and gallery black. Fog horn (blast every 10 s) on demand. 1-1/2 story wood keeper's house (1895); the lower floor houses the Marshall Point Lighthouse Museum, and the upper floor is a caretaker's residence.

The restoration effort began in 1986 when the Town of St. George leased the station from the Coast Guard. The St. George Historical Society restored the tower and keeper's house in 1988-89 and opened the museum in 1990. The lighthouse gained some notoriety when it appeared in the 1993 movie Forrest Gump as the eastern end of Gump's cross-country run.

The 5th order drum-style Fresnel lens removed from the lighthouse in 1971 was displayed for years at the Maine Lighthouse Museum in Rockport but has returned for display at the museum in 2020; also on display is the 300 mm lens used from 1971 to 2016."

Some links:

The Website

The Webcam

Lighthouse Friends

Maine Lights 

The pictures (note that there are many, several high quality artistic types, and paintings, etc., on the web):

New kind of water rocket

 

This is the old kind of water rocket (a toy from decades past, but versions can still be purchased now):

So, in this case, water is used to launch a rocket toward space (but not very far toward it).

Recently-released research has shown that when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted massively last January (wow, we're a week away from the one-year anniversary), it rocketed millions of tons of water into space.

The link above is to the Washington Post article; the link below is to the laboratory press release.

Making a Volcanic Splash: Tonga Eruption Blasted Water Vapor into Outer Space

"As it turned out, the gap the team saw in the FUV [far ultraviolet] observations came from water vapor that the volcano injected 93 miles (150 kilometers) above Earth’s surface — well beyond the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space (about 60 miles, or 97 kilometers). The impacted region was approximately 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) wide over the volcano, while the rest of Earth’s upper atmosphere remained unchanged."

So, yet another indication that this was BIG.

Christmas in Munich

 

Despite their proximity, it isn't easy to find a picture of the Christmas tree that is in the center of the Christmas Market in Munich's Marienplatz that also shows the recognizable twin domes of Munich Cathedral (the Frauenkirche).  But they are out there.

Lighthouse of the Week, January 1-7, 2023: Perkins Island, Maine, USA

 

This week's lighthouse is a little one, but well-located in Maine.

Perkins Island is an island in Maine's Kennebec River.  Because of the strangeness of Maine's geography, the nearest domicile of note is Bath, but that's about 8 miles upriver.

See where it is here.

This is a lighthouse that was somewhat degraded over time, but according to the esteemed Lighthouse Directory, it has been renovated fairly recently.  

So let's let the Lighthouse Directory provide more insight.

"1898. Active; focal plane 41 ft (12.5 m); red flash every 2.5 s; 2 white sectors cover clear channel. 23 ft (7 m) octagonal wood tower with lantern and gallery, painted white; 250 mm lens. Lantern painted black. Original 2 story wood keeper's house, pyramidal wood bell tower, brick oil house, and other buildings. The original fog bell is on display at Georgetown High School. The light station, except for the tower, was transferred to the state in the 1960s."   (The full description on this page details the restoration efforts.)

The only way to visit or see it is by boat; swimming isn't advisable. 

Pictures and video below.

Above:  From Flickr, by "davensuze"

Butts, seriously

 

A book published in December is all about butts, otherwise known as booty, derriere, rear, ass, posterior, fundament, bum, rump, fanny, tush, keister, and heinie.   (And that's not exhaustive.)

The New York Times magazine featured this look at the backside recently:

Will the Era of Butts Ever End?
A new book takes a look back at the posterior’s cultural role throughout history.

The book is authored by Heather Radke.

I admit to being a fan. 

Great photo contest results

 

The results of this photo contest come out several months after the year in which the contest takes place, because entries are open in to the next year.  So this article drew my attention when it came out in August 2022, for a contest attributed to the year 2021, and I'm just now getting to it, but the photos are great.  Entries close for the 2022 year on January 23, 2023.

The name of the contest was/is "One Eyeland", which I find clever.

Cuddling monkeys, 'Ghostface' in a frozen lake and spectacular surfing: The awe-inspiring winners of a prestigious photography contest revealed

Here's a direct link to the website:

One Eyeland

So what is "Ghostface"?  Well, it's a nature photograph reminiscent of Edvard Munch's "Scream", an aerial shot by Arkadiusz Dalak, actually entitled "Scream of the Forest". 

Aaron Lynton captured a terrific "Dance with Whales".

And Tomas Paule took a hot fine art nude, entitled "Yogin Candle".