Liz Cheney has it right

 

Republicans don't like Liz Cheney, by and large. Some Republicans with morals and rectitude like her and respect her, but there are very few of those (especially in politics).  When the Wyoming Republican party kicked her out for basically doing the right thing, it was an excellent demonstration of the problem.

So when Liz Cheney assesses her party's problems, she's a truth-teller.

Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’

OK, so she wasn't singling out the Republicans for this problem. But I think current events, and the current crop of idiots in Congress, demonstrate which party has the bigger infestation of idiots. 

"That prompted [moderator of the discussion] Rubenstein to ask whether Cheney would run for president as an independent next year if presented with polling data showing such a bid would damage Trump.

“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney responded. “And what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”

After laughter from the audience subsided, she continued: “And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do. I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

Got a short span here

 

Any way you examine it, this is not a very long period of time.

Physicists do amazing things, by the way.

Trillionths of a second

"Physicists at the University of Konstanz generate one of the shortest signals ever produced by humans: Using paired laser pulses, they succeeded in compressing a series of electron pulses to a numerically analyzed duration of only 0.000000000000000005 seconds."

For comparison, in case you were wondering, the "blink of an eye" takes between 0.1 and 0.4 seconds.

Just an article about Cheryl

 

Having frequently expressed my admiration for Cheryl Tweedy/Cheryl Cole/Cheryl in years past, I am aware of when the Daily Mail has an article featuring her.

As they recently did.

Cheryl looks effortlessly chic in a white linen waistcoat and matching smart trousers as she attends The Pillowman press night

Here's chic Cheryl. 

Unmanned and unforgettable

 

The 2023 Drone Photography Awards are in.

From a breathtaking Icelandic waterfall to a neighbourhood in Dubai where all the houses look IDENTICAL: The spectacular winners of the 2023 Drone Photo Awards revealed

The pictures featured in the article are remarkable.

Here's the website with all of them.

Drone Photo Awards 2023

Of course I chose this one, by Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove.

"Skýjasnúningur / Cloud Inversion"

What "2001: A Space Odyssey" told us

 

In the novel (not the movie) 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was a novelization of the movie by Arthur C. Clarke), a model of the rings of Saturn -- which is where the spaceship Discovery was bound, until the special effects of the rings didn't meet Stanley Kubrick's demanding specs -- indicated that the rings were quite young, in astronomical terms.

Now, even though the reasons are different than they were expressed in the novel, it turns out that the rings are young.

Saturn’s Shiny Rings May Be Pretty Young

"Because the rings don’t have a lot of silicate dust on them, they likely haven’t had a lot of time to collect it. Knowing the speed at which dust streams into the Saturnian system is therefore key to determining just how long the rings have been around.

Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer did just that. Over 13 years, it detected more than 2 million dust particles. The research team analyzed the trajectories of each particle and found only 163 dust particles that likely came from beyond Saturn.

“It was a real needle in a haystack problem,” [U. Colorado physicist Sarah] Kempf said.

Considering how small an area of the rings Cassini sampled, 163 dust particles over 13 years extrapolates to a lot of dust moving through the rings. The team found that at that rate, the barely dusty rings have likely been around for just 100–400 million years. These results were published in Science Advances.

Let it be noted that this is a lot older than the rings were in the novel. But that's a detail.

I did a quick search and found some art that shows Discovery at Saturn, where it should have gone in the first place.  Iapetus is still much brighter on one side of its orbit than the other (even though now it doesn't appear to have a monolith on it).

A married couple sighting!

 

Gorgeous Michelle Keegan and ... well, hunky Mark Wright are, well ... married.

However, they aren't seen a lot together.  That concerns me for a number of reasons, one that a married couple needs time together, and two, that Michelle Keegan deserves the best that life can provide, and Mark should be providing. All that a woman needs.

So, it's good to see them together. And it's always good to see Michelle in a bikini.

Bikini-clad Michelle Keegan and husband Mark Wright head out on a boat in Formentera after hitting back at trolls who claimed they 'don't see other'

The pictures in the article aren't that great, but there's good news, as Michelle's summer collection has been released. 

Here's a sample.

Lighthouse(s) of the Week, July 2 - 8, 2023: Lighthouses with fireworks

 

I've done this before, but since I'm starting off the week (and the month) with this post, I'm going to do lighthouses with fireworks again.  So check below for this year's installment.

Mukilteo Lighthouse

Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse

Biloxi Lighthouse

Fond du Lac Lighthouse

Happy Fourth of July!