A gift

 

For the final post of the year, I'll provide a link to the website of a gifted photographer. And one of the gifts he has is artistic nude photography of lovely women.

Randall Hobbet Photography - Work

He has an Instagram account, and takes chances with it, so I'm surprised I've seen what I've seen of his work there. Searching his name can find other instances of unedited / uncensored work, and I haven't checked out his Flickr yet.  He can do glamour/boudoir, and also nudes in nature (see below), and also does dance and other various topics.

Here's a nude-in-nature shot reminiscent of Ansel Adams, except for the nude part:

So, yes, he does great work.  Have a Happy New Year (and I hope this made a few readers happy).

Lighthouse of the Week, December 24-30, 2023: French Pass, New Zealand

 

For this final Lighthouse of the Week in 2023, I've gone to one of the places that greets the New Year the earliest -- New Zealand.  (By the way, have you ever wondered where "Old Zealand" is?  It's actually from Zeeland, in Holland, because Dutch explorer Abel Tasman found the islands.)

But back to our lighthouse. As you hopefully know, New Zealand has two main islands, aptly named the North Island and the South Island. This lighthouse is a small and cute one, located on French Pass, which lies at the north end of the South Island.  So the nearest major city is Wellington, on the North Island. 

It's easier with the map of where it is located. You'll note that the map says "French Pass Lighthouses", plural, because there is also one in the channel (pass) itself, which is the French Pass Reef light.

Let's get the pertinent information (Lighthouse Directory is the source):

"1884. Active; focal plane 3 m (10 ft); continuous light, red or white depending on direction of approach. 5 m (17 ft) round lantern, painted white, mounted on a round stone pedestal. Red filters on adjustable panels are used to set the sector boundaries precisely. A wooden bridge connects the tower to the shore. ... This tiny lighthouse, built to mark the difficult channel, was tended by a keeper until 1967. Located on the mainland (south) shore of the pass."

Before the pictures, here's a great story about French Pass and the first successful (barely) passage through it by a French explorer, D'Urville (who later on came to a historic end - read the whole story.)

The forgotten history of French Pass

Now the pictures. The first one gives an impression of the strong tidal current flow through the pass.

Just found this place

 

On the seashore at Calpe, Spain, there is a large peak called the  Peñón de Ifach (alternatively, the Penyal d'Ifac). It's basically a large rock outcropping, made of limestone.  I have a decent memory for landmarks like this, so I was somewhat surprised I had never seen or heard of it before.

Wondering where it is?  As I do for lighthouses, here's a link to a map of the location. You have to zoom out a bit to see that it's between Murcia and Valencia, and not too far from Benidorm, a popular Spanish beach town.

It looks a lot different on one side compared to the other (which is the more popular view from Calpe and the beach). 

The peninsula that the rock sits on is a small national park. Here's a page about it.

I'll just take a quick nap

 

The phrase in the subject line is what chinstrap penguins must be saying regularly -- literally all the time.

This penguin survives on 4-second microsleeps — thousands of times a day

(That's the link to the actual paper, which you would have to pay for.)

Here's a popular science summary:

10,000 naps a day: how chinstrap penguins survive on microsleeps

“Sleep in breeding chinstrap penguins was highly fragmented under all conditions and positions on land,” researchers wrote in the paper, published in the journal Science. The findings suggest “microsleeps can fulfil at least some of the restorative functions of sleep”. The penguins studied could sleep standing up or lying down."

 This one's lying down. Might even be sleeping for a minute or two.

Back in black

 

A couple of nice shots with the same basic theme.

Anna Tsaralunga

Rosa Brighid

Pay attention to her

 

Have to admire former U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She's sticking to her message. And sadly, she's probably right. We don't want to find out if she is right.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney warns in new book that if Donald Trump is reelected it could spell the 'end of the US Republic'

" 'You say Donald Trump, if he is re-elected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?' -[ [CBS reporter John] Dickerson asked.

'He's told us what he will do,' Cheney said. 'People who say, 'Well, if he's elected, it's not that dangerous, because we have all of these checks and balances,' don't fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted.'

'One of the things that we see happening today is sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States,' she explained. "

The saddest aspect of this is that the people who are supporting him WANT him to do what he's saying (even though half the time it's impossible to figure out what he's actually saying).  But they want an authoritarian leader, though they don't know what that really means -- and how bad it could be for the USA.

Cheney does know. 

Not a good sign (and climate change is involved)

 

Rockfish aka striped bass, is one of the important sportfishes in the Chesapeake Bay and the coastal Atlantic Ocean. And I've seen some nice fishing contests featuring rockfish.

They're fun to catch, especially the big ones. But the more people keep doing that, the more the prime breeding stock gets reduced.

So this doesn't make me happy at all. 

As rockfish population shrinks, Maryland shortens the fishing season
The stock of Maryland’s state fish, also known as the striped bass, is troublingly low along the Atlantic coast

And what, aside from popularity, do you think part of the problem might be?

" “We need the colder winter,” said Michael Luisi, associate director for tidal and coastal management and science for the Department of Natural Resources. “We need a snow melt in the spring that produces the right water quality and conditions in the bay.”

Good guess. 

Lighthouse of the Week, December 17-23, 2023: Cape Spencer Light, Alaska, USA

 

For this week's lighthouse (which as I write this is really last week's lighthouse), I ventured to the cold climes of Alaska.  Seems appropriate to go near to the North Pole. This lighthouse in reality guards the entrance to Glacier Bay.

(Note: there's also a Cape Spencer lighthouse on the Bay of Fundy.  Maybe I'll do that next week, which is actually this week.)

See where that is -- Cape Spencer in Alaska. To find the lighthouse, switch to satellite view, and look for a white spot on an island that is slightly north north-east of where the pin is on the map.  Or click here. 

So, what can we find out about this remote lighthouse from the Lighthouse Directory?

"1925. Active; focal plane 105 ft (32 m); white flash every 10 s. 25 ft (7.5 m) square cylindrical reinforced concrete tower with lantern and gallery, centered on the roof of a square concrete keeper's quarters and fog signal building; solar-powered VRB-25 aerobeacon (1998). The original 3rd order Fresnel lens, removed in 1974, is on display at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau. Lighthouse painted white, lantern and gallery black; the keeper's house roof is a conspicuous red."

Another site with a page about this lighthouse:

Cape Spencer Lighthouse at Lighthouse Friends, with great views of the island that is located on.  It also has a picture of the Fresnel lens that used to be in the lighthouse (see above for where it is now, if you missed that). 

And now the pictures; there are a few, not a lot.

What the well-dressed woman isn't wearing

 

Kate Beckinsale is a star, and I think she enjoys being one. While I'm hoping she has another first-class movie role coming up, to further advance her stardom, she's still a star in fashion and on red carpets around the world.

And she's not shy about showing what God gave her to work with, to whit, a lovely slender body. I'm sure the designers she works with don't mind dressing her in high fashion.

Recently, she went to a fete given by Paris Hilton in a dress that a only a woman confident in herself, particularly her attractiveness and sensuality, could wear.

And she wore it well.

Braless Kate Beckinsale, 50, leaves little to the imagination in a sheer underwear-flashing gown as she poses for a racy shoot with cat Willow

1 ... 2 ... 3 ... SUE !

 

While parts of this are still being litigated, I'm pretty sure (though with the conservative crusaders on the SCOTUS, you can never be fully sure) that they'll find the President does not have absolute immunity for anything he does in office, that supposedly are part of his "official duties". 

But it's pretty clear that he can be sued.

OK, everyone ... on your marks ... get set ... SUE!

Trump not immune from criminal, civil liability over Jan. 6, judges rule

"The appellate court in the civil case relied on U.S. Supreme Court precedent set 40 years ago that presidents cannot be sued over actions within even “the outer perimeter” of their duties as the chief executive. The novel question raised by the police officers and Democratic lawmakers who sued Trump was whether telling supporters the election was stolen and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” fell within that boundary. While he could still try to convince a lower court judge his conduct was presidential, they said “Trump … has made no argument as to why his actions alleged here should be treated more like the State of the Union than [a] campaign ad.” "

Bi-what?

 

Lobster fishermen in Maine recently found a very, very rare genetically or developmentally confused lobster.  The lobster is definitely two different colors.  Looking at the tail fins, it's also apparently a male and a female sharing the same carapace.

So it's bi-color and bi-sexual. I think. Definitely showing both sides of the binary. 

Rare lobster found in Maine is two sexes and two colors
The online sensation has been named ’Bowie’ by fans, after rocker David Bowie

Another article about this truly unusual crustacean:

Meet Bowie, The Super Rare Half-Male, Half-Female, Half-Blue, Half-Orange Lobster

Excellent expectance

 

Australia's current most beautiful model -- and I say this unreservedly -- Simone Holtznagel -- is pregnant, and she looks great in the gravid state.

Models Simone Holtznagel and Georgia Fowler show off their baby bumps as they lead celebrity arrivals at star-studded Meshki birthday party in Sydney

Here's Simone not-pregnant, a couple of times.

They've done this before

 

Supermodel Heidi Klum and her curvaceous daughter Leni recently posed together AGAIN wearing only their pretty holiday underwear.

I don't think there's anything about this to complain about, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Heidi Klum, 50 and mini-me daughter Leni, 19 pose in lingerie AGAIN! Pair don festive underwear for new campaign - after the pair received FURIOUS backlash for stripping off

Now there's a dilemma

Most Republicans, particularly the very conservative ones, are pro-life (aka anti-abortion, but definitely in favor of living healthy babies) and also have a very negative view of COVID-19 vaccines.

So this study is bound to cause them a dilemma, both intellectually and morally.

Impact of COVID-19 infections and vaccines on preterm birth

Put simply, COVID-19 infection in a pregnant woman increased the risk of pre-term (aka premature) birth. And premature birth is associated with a greater risk of infant death. So, pregnant women who were vaccinated and either infected or exposed to COVID  had/have a much better chance of giving birth to a full-term healthy baby, while pregnant women who weren't vaccinated had a greater chance of premature birth and associated infant health problems.

A couple of excerpts from the article linked above:

A. "To tease out the effect of vaccination, the researchers compared the impact of COVID-19 infection on preterm births between areas with the fastest vaccine uptake and those with the slowest. Zip codes with the fastest uptake had an 86% vaccination rate by March 2022. Those with the lowest rates reached 51% during the same time period. Until May 2021, the impact of COVID-19 infection on preterm birth rates was similar between areas. They then dropped sharply in high-vaccination areas, while staying high in low-vaccination areas until almost a year later. This strongly suggests that vaccination accounted for the difference in the rate of preterm births."

B. " “We already know there is very little evidence of adverse effects of vaccination on fetal development. The results here are compelling evidence that what will actually harm the fetus is not getting vaccinated,” Nobles says. “By increasing immunity faster, early vaccination uptake likely prevented thousands of preterm births in the U.S.”

So, pro-life, anti-vaxxers:  what's it going to be? Healthy vaccinated mothers and healthy babies, or unvaccinated mothers and less healthy babies (with a greater chance of those babies dying in infancy)? 

Have fun with that one.

Another point to ponder:

It's real, and it's frightening

 

It's old news now, but having Mike Johnson as an incompetent and unrepetantly extreme conservative Speaker of the House is frightening.

Trumpism Is Running the House

("ruining" could place "running")

"A party that once cared deeply about America as the leader of the free world — and believed in the strength, dependability and bipartisan consensus that such a role required — has largely given way to a party now devoted to an extremism that is an active threat to liberal values and American stability.

It’s obvious why the former president was so supportive of the new speaker. Mr. Johnson was “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” to Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020, as a New York Times investigation found last year. He made unfounded arguments questioning the constitutionality of state voting rules; he agreed with Mr. Trump that the election was “rigged,” cast doubt on voting machines and supported a host of other baseless and unconstitutional theories that ultimately led to a violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021."

 

A few good reasons to have sex

 

The Daily Mail had an article by their sex expert explaining why it's good to have sex and why it's not as good to not have sex. 

What celibacy REALLY does to you! Tracey Cox reveals the bad things that can happen to your body (and your relationship) when you stop having sex

Here's an example:

"Sex relieves anxiety and stress by triggering 'feel good' hormones like oxytocin and dopamine. These relax our body, boost bonding and lift our mood. Sex also decreases levels of cortisol and adrenaline (stress hormones). Add a healthy dose of happiness-inducing endorphins and you start to see why sex feels so good in our brain.

It also provides a positive distraction: a 2021 study found people who had active sex lives during the pandemic had significantly lower scores on anxiety and depression."

"Yes, honey, it's very healthy" !

Space is the place with the orbiting hardware bag

 

I had to write this post just to use that subject line.

Yes, while spacewalking, the ISS astronauts dropped a bag full of hardware. In a couple of years, it will become a bright streak across the sky. 

NASA astronauts drop tool bag during spacewalk – and it is now orbiting Earth

Lost in space!

Hoping, hoping, hoping

 

Glamour model Rhian Sugden has a curvy figure, and has shown it off for profit and for play numerous times, in lingerie, swimsuits, and also lacking either.

That's very good.

However, she is also married and has been trying with rounds of IVF to get pregnant. She almost gave up, but gave it one more try. And it took.

Having followed the sage (and the lingerie) via the Daily Mail for a few years, I am very glad she's pregnant, and I'm hoping x3 that she makes it all the way to the delivery room with a successful birth.

Here's the most recent Daily Mail update as of December 2, and she's still pregnant.

Pregnant Rhian Sugden cradles her growing bump on a beach day in Majorca after revealing she's expecting her first child after spending £150k on eight rounds of IVF

Here's Rhian, pre-pregnancy. 

A wedge gets thicker

 

The "wedge strategy" describes a multi-part way to address climate change. It's been around awhile, to the point that I'm not sure who else remembers where and when it started. (But I do; the original article was in Science, but it's described elsewhere, like here, which is an open-access update, which at the time of writing in 2021, was not very optimistic. The COP28 agreement might help.)

So, with that introduction, there might be some progress on one of the wedges, specifically carbon capture. This particular wedge hasn't seemed too promising, given the technological challenges. However, this recent article describes a potential low-tech approach.

The Lego-like way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere
A company says that it has found a way to remove CO2 from the air for less than $100 per ton

"Graphyte, a new company incubated by Bill Gates’s investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced Monday that it has created a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dehydrated chunks of plant matter. Those blocks of carbon-laden plant matter — which look a bit like shoe-box sized Lego blocks — can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years."

" “The simplicity of the Graphyte approach is so exciting,” said Daniel Sanchez, who runs the Carbon Removal Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, and serves as a science adviser for Graphyte. “You don’t need very expensive equipment or processes. And it locks up a lot of the carbon in the wood — nearly all of it.” "

Here's the company Web site.

Graphyte.com

My question is: rather than just burying the blocks underground, why can't they build something with them underground?   I'm not sure what, but my first thought is -- housing for homeless people. 

It does say this on the website:

"Blocks are stored in state-of-the-art sites with sensors and tracers, enabling robust long-term monitoring. Storage sites can then be used as solar farms or working agricultural land."

OK, even though I advocate using parking lots for solar panel deployment, I guess this would work too.  And there are many abandoned industrial sites that could be repurposed.

Lighthouse of the Week, December 10-16, 2023: Gibraltar Point, Toronto, Canada

 

I've returned to the Great Lakes for this Lighthouse of the Week; specifically, a lighthouse in the city of Toronto but not on the mainland part of the city. "How is that possible?" I'm sure you're asking. It's possible because right off the downtown waterfront, there's an island. The island is part park, part airport (and I've landed there twice). In the park part of the island, on the lakeshore, stands this stony lighthouse. 

So, this is where that is.

I'll provide the basics from the Lighthouse Directory, then some historical detail from a murder mystery that involves the lighthouse.

"1808. Active (inactive officially since 1958); focal plane 20 m (66 ft); continuous red light. 19 m (62 ft) hexagonal stone tower with lantern and gallery. The tower is unpainted gray stone; lantern and gallery painted red. ... The height of the tower was raised from 16 m (52 ft) in 1832. This is the oldest lighthouse in Ontario and second oldest in Canada, one of the oldest buildings in Toronto, and the oldest lighthouse on either side of the Great Lakes. It is famous as being haunted by the ghost of its first keeper, who died mysteriously in 1815."

Now, about that mysterious disappearance (they're pretty sure he died, but hey, ghost story!)

Remembering Gibraltar Point's grisly past

"Despite ushering countless ships away from ruin, the lighthouse is perhaps best known for the mysterious disappearance of its first keeper, J. P. Rademuller (sometimes spelled Raden Muller.) Leaving behind only bloodstains and speculation, the accepted story of grisly murder leaves more questions than answers." (Read the blog article at the link for the rest of what's known and what's unknown.)

So, picture time!

And actually real

 

This is the Temple Seiganto-Ji, in English the Temple of the Crossing of the Blue Shore (or Temple of the Blue Waves).  Behind the temple is Nachi Falls.

This is a place that seems too stunningly beautiful to be real, but it is.

The nearest major city is Osaka, but it's on a coastal peninsula, and is very close to the ocean shore.

Not necessarily easy

 

Sasha Digiulian is one of the world's best rock climbers. She happens to be female, so certainly she's one of the world's best female rock climbers, but seriously, she's just one of the best, period.

First of all, she recently got married. The New York Times covered it:  

They Climbed a Frigid Mountain to Meet Each Other

The Daily Mail also had a recent article about her. Both articles mentioned that she had hip dysplasia and needed double hip reconstruction surgery, which she had, and it was successful, and she's still doing world-class climbing.  But she had more than just that.

EXCLUSIVE: World champion rock climber Sasha DiGiulian opens up about the horrifying injuries that forced her to have FIVE surgeries in just nine months - revealing fears that broken back would destroy her career

And in addition to that fun, she's also torn a lateral collateral ligament (LCL) and a finger pulley, which is something I didn't even know existed until I read about the injury, which I don't want to ever have. Apparently it's a fairly common climbing injury.  I'm certain that I won't get it that way.

It seems clear that world-class climbing is not particularly easy, skill-wise, fitness-wise, and body damage-wise.

Here she illustrates why hip injuries can be a problem.

When more relaxed, she's also quite cute, an attribute that I think is likely not overlooked by her new spouse.

Somebody ought to model this visually

 

Not long ago the incredible James Webb Space Telescope turned itself to take a look at the Crab Nebula.

If you will remember (or if you don't), the Crab Nebula is the expanding cloud that is in the location of a supernova, aka an exploding star. And the really cool thing about the Crab Nebula is that it is known when the star exploded, which is approaching its 1000-year anniversary. While it's possible I'll be here for that anniversary, it's doubtful.  But still, there ought to be a parade or something.

In any case, the star from whence came the Crab exploded in 1054 A.D., and the Chinese saw it and noted it in their astronomical journals. Apparently there are records of it elsewhere (Japan, Korea, the Middle East), too. 

Here's the new image from JWST.

Now I was thinking, someone should have done a simulation of the Crab Nebula star explosion, hence the title of this post, written before I checked if there was one.  And as you might anticipate, yes, there is.

Be patient, it's only 40 seconds long, and remember that in real-time it took nearly 1,000 years to get to this point.

PSA about supervolcanoes

 

Well, it's possible that a supervolcano could erupt in my lifetime (which clearly most of my span has passed) or this century.

But either is really unlikely.

This Washington Post article breaks it down.

What are supervolcanoes and should we really be worried about them?

"Scientists can’t see what is stirring below the surface of Campi Flegrei with their naked eyes, but Kilburn said the recent activity could be underground molten rock and fluids readjusting themselves. Those movements appear as earthquakes on the surface.

“This, by itself, doesn’t mean there’s going to be an eruption,” Kilburn said. The volcano has shown land deformations and earthquakes in the past, but eruptions didn’t follow. But because the activity is stirring after a long time, “it’s natural just to be a little bit concerned that this might be happening.”

Out of more than 1,000 known volcanoes in the world, only about 20 are supposedly supervolcanoes. Technically, they are defined as those that register the highest on the volcanic explosivity index, which runs from V0 (nonexplosive) to V8 (colossal eruptions). Such a super eruption ejects a volume of around 1,000-cubic kilometers or more — about a thousand times bigger than Mount St. Helens (V5), which caused mudslides, fires, floods and more than 50 deaths in 1980."

I thought that was quite informative. The summary of the threat is this: once a supervolcano has erupted, there's no reason to think that it's going to do it again.

It might. But the much higher probability is that it won't.

However, any eruption in the Campi Flegrei, or Vesuvius (and that WILL happen again, I'm sure) will make the news.  And that could happen while I'm still alive.

CNN sure thinks it could.

‘Be prepared for all outcomes’: Inside the saga of a supervolcano that’s waking up

And if Monte Nuovo is in your backyard, you have to be aware it could happen again. Feel free to pan around in the image below.

Slowly they pass

 

I was old enough, though still young, to remember when Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon, just before Christmas in 1968.  

Now one of the three crew members, Frank Borman, has passed away. Remarkably, both James Lovell (95 years old) and William Anders (90 years old) are still alive.

Frank Borman dead: Astronaut who commanded Apollo 8 has passed away at age 95 - decades after leading first manned mission to orbit the moon and return safely to Earth

Lassen Volcanic Park recovery from Dixie Fire

 

Though there was lots of damage and destruction of the forests, The Guardian reports that Lassen Volcanic Park is recovering from the effects of the Dixie Fire in August 2021.

‘There’s still beauty’: a national park bounces back after California’s biggest single fire

"The blaze, California’s largest ever single fire, burned almost 70% of Lassen. A third of the burn area saw the sort of high-severity fire that kills most trees and bakes the nutrients from topsoil.

However, there is evidence of resilience among the devastation – sprouts emerging from the scorched soil and the black and green mosaic of the mountains. The recovering ecosystem in this off-the-beaten path national park serves as a reminder of the threats to the US’s wild places and offers lessons about how to protect public lands in an era of climate crisis."

A note on nihilism

 

Looking back a bit, but not too far, this op-ed by Peter Wehner in the New York Times has some pithy truth to tell.

Republicans have chosen nihilism

Referring to Trump: 

"No other president has been as disdainful of knowledge or as untroubled by his benightedness. No other has been as intentional not just to lie but to annihilate truth. And no other president has explicitly attempted to overturn an election and encouraged an angry mob to march on the Capitol.

In other words, no matter how much wrongdoing Mr. Trump engages in, however outrageous and brutish his conduct, he remains wildly popular. His indecency and sulfuric rhetoric are a plus; his most loyal supporters are galvanized by the criminal charges against him, which they consider political persecution."

And about conservatives, especially the far-right ones:

"Many of those on the right, dependent on the web of lies and the nihilism, have twisted themselves into knots in order to justify their behavior not just to others but also to themselves. It’s too painful for them to acknowledge the destructive movement that they have become part of or to acknowledge that it is no longer by any means clear who is leading whom. So they have persuaded themselves that there is no other option but to support a Trump-led Republican Party, even one that is lawless and depraved, because the Democratic Party is, for them, an unthinkable alternative. The result is that they have been sucked, cognitively and psychologically, into their own alternative reality, a psychedelic collage made up of what Kellyanne Conway, a former counselor to Mr. Trump, famously called “alternative facts.”

OK, so now it's my turn. Those "alternative facts" are dangerous. Not only do people believe things that are wrong, they act on those beliefs. And Trump and all of those who surround him KNOW this. They are using lies and misinformation to organize their followers behind them.

I'm not the first to say that democracy is in danger.

Lighthouse of the Week, December 3 - 9, 2023: Ra's Serani Range Rear Light, Kenya

 

I checked back in my history of posting Lighthouses of the Week, specifically for Africa, and determined that I had featured lighthouses from South Africa (several) and Senegal (1).  So I focused in on Kenya. Kenya has several lighthouses, but only one classic style lighthouse. That one is this one.

The lighthouse is the Ra's Serani Range Rear Light, in Mombasa. Mombasa is a fairly famous place in Kenya, as it's the only significant coastal community on the Kenyan coast. It's been mentioned more than once in movies and books. 

It's not too hard to find; this is where it is. 

The Lighthouse Directory has this information about it:

"Date unknown (1920s?) (station established 1902). Active; focal plane 45 m (148 ft); white flash every 5 s. 33 m (108 ft) round stone tower with lantern and gallery, painted with black and white horizontal bands."

In addition to the Lighthouse Directory entry, World of Lighthouses also has a page for it.

Most of the pictures of it are from either of those two sources. So don't be surprised if you've seen these if you have visited the links.

Postcard view from Huelse, noted and linked in the Lighthouse Directory.

Because this is the lighthouse that looks the most like a lighthouse in Mombasa, by searching with "Mombasa lighthouse", I found a couple of others.

The third one is from this TikTok video.

It's not like it's going to blow anywhere

 

Yes, since they and their space-machines got there, humans have   been leaving stuff behind. This article goes into detail about the nature of that stuff, so I will be discreet.

But this is what has happened everywhere humans have gone. Antarctica and the Arctic, Africa and the bottom of the oceans. There are molecules of Earth-based machines that have burned up in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn.  We began exploring the Moon by crashing things into it.  Then we left behind machines, and refuse, as well as some science experiment instrumentation. 

Fortunately, as least on the Moon, it will stay right where we left it. So, in the distant future, we could go back and clean up what we probably should clean up.  After all, it's possible to envision future tourists visiting the first places humans landed on the Moon.  We wouldn't want them to step on something.

What we left behind: how human activity has already littered the Moon

Well, we left footprints too.

This is a LOT (but fortunately less than thought before)

 

A short science article puts the amount of plastic in, and going into, the oceans in a fascinating and frightening perspective.

A new census of plastic debris entering the ocean

"On the basis of observational data of the amount of plastics entering the ocean each year and model predictions of the rate at which that debris disappeared over time, Kaandorp and his collaborators concluded that about 500 million kilograms of initially buoyant plastic debris are entering the ocean each year. That’s less than a tenth of some of the most extreme previous estimates, the researchers noted. “We come up with quite different numbers,” Kaandorp said."

So let's be clear on this;  all that plastic of many different colors in the ocean is a major problem.

Lighthouse of the Week, November 26 - December 2, 2023: New Cape Henry Lighthouse, Virginia, USA

 

First of all, after I posted the LoTW for last week, the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, I discovered that I had featured both of the lighthouses (in a single post) several years ago.  

Lighthouse(s) of the Week, January 1-7, 2017: Cape Henry, VA, old and new

Given that I included both of them in one post, I didn't cover either of them with a lot of information, so I think this revisit is justified.

To review, the Cape Henry Lighthouses are located on Cape Henry, Virginia.

So now I'll provide more information on just the new Cape Henry lighthouse. According to a public television show about the lighthouses of the Chesapeake Bay, the light from this tall structure can be seen 20 miles out to sea.

From the Lighthouse Directory:

"1881. Active; focal plane 164 ft (50 m); three flashes every 20 s: two short flashes followed by one long (7 s) flash; red sector covers dangerous shoals. 164 ft (50 m) octagonal cast-iron-clad brick tower, original 1st order Fresnel lens. Unusual daymark: alternating black and white vertical bands; lantern is black. The 2-story brick principal keeper's house and two 1-1/2 story wood assistant keepers' house buildings are all standing; one is currently in use as an Army residence."

The striping is a bit disconcerting. But it's unique.

To show where the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse is