Aliens? ALIENS??

 

The Daily Mail never misses an opportunity for a tabloid-level headline. Well, it is a tabloid, after all.

NASA spots 'spiderwebs' on never-before-explored region of Mars that could be linked to aliens

OK, let's take a look at what NASA really saw. That is described in the following article:

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Takes a Last Look at Mysterious Sulfur

"Viewed by MRO [Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter], the boxwork looks like spiderwebs stretching across the surface. It’s believed to have formed when minerals carried by Mount Sharp’s last pulses of water settled into fractures in surface rock and then hardened. As portions of the rock erode.

On Earth, boxwork formations have been seen on cliffsides and in caves. But Mount Sharp’s boxwork structures stand apart from those both because they formed as water was disappearing from Mars and because they’re so extensive, spanning an area of 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers)."

OK, so they are geological. So what about the aliens? Back to the Daily Mail:

"The likelihood that evidence of aquatic microbial life of Mars might be caught in this giant web as fossils 'makes this an exciting place to explore,' Dr Siebach noted.

This web of potential dead alien microbes and bugs rests in the shadow of a three-mile tall mountain, officially known as 'Aeolis Mon,' but nicknamed 'Mount Sharp.'

So they would be dead aliens, if they are there (or if they were there). '

What the boxwork looks like is shown below.  The blue star was just a reference point, but this picture provides a scale.

 

Losing the nightlights

 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which still exists as I write this, is proposing to list the Bethany Beach firefly as 'threatened'. It's the first firefly to be listed, if it happens.

I've been to Bethany Beach a few times. It's a nice place, a couple miles south of Rehoboth. I didn't know it had a firefly named after it, though.

So, as the article notes, like many other fireflies, its population is declining, for a lot of combined reasons that becomes more powerful as extinction pathways when combined. So the difficult problem is reducing their impact.

(This article is a bit old; I'm trying to address some backlog.)

This firefly delighted beachgoers. Now it’s flickering out of existence.

"Discovered in 1949, the Bethany Beach firefly is distinct from other fireflies for its telltale black head marking and its double flash of green light. Though named after the coastal Delaware town where it was discovered, the firefly also shines in low-lying marshes called swales along the shores of Maryland and Virginia.

But today, rising tides and stronger storms fueled by a human-induced climate change are poised to wash through those freshwater marshes as well as the coastal dunes that protect them. According to climate models, up to 95 percent of those low wetlands may be lost to high-tide flooding by the end of the century.

“These more severe storm events like we saw in Florida” are threatening the firefly, Slacum said, referring to the deadly Hurricane Helene, which made landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast last week. “Over the next 30 or 50 years, a lot of these swales are probably going to be underwater.”

Meanwhile, booming coastal development — and the steady glare from buildings and streetlamps that come with it — is beginning to outshine the insect, which courts its potential mates by flashing. Even the blinking lights from airplanes and broadcast towers can confuse fireflies."

Here's the Bethany Beach firefly, doing what it's known for.

I shouldn't be bothered by this ...

 

... but I am. 

In a First, Transgender Woman Wins Model of the Year

"For the first time in the three-decade history of the award, the honoree, Ms. Consani, was a transgender woman. She is a TikTok phenom with almost four million followers and a cavalcade of catwalk appearances (Chanel, Stella McCartney and, in another first, Victoria’s Secret in October) to her name since being signed to IMG Models in 2019."

So, I should be liberal and accepting, and it shouldn't bother me that a transgender woman is the Model of the Year -- in the normal category of female fashion models. Yes, there are male fashion models too. But it seems just strange to see a transgender woman win for modeling fashions that are intended primarily for non-transgender women.

Art can be unusual, and test both our perceptions and our boundaries. It can challenge us. So this haute couture breakthrough challenges us -- well, it challenges me, speaking for myself. I guess I will be old-fashioned and wish that the fashion models I admire and desire are natural women (for lack of a better term).

Oh, and not generated by AI, either.  Even though the AI versions can be pretty astonishingly too-perfect pretty.

Lighthouse of the Week, January 12-18, 2025: St. Augustine Light, Florida, USA

 

When I saw this lighthouse in a Google Maps exploration, I was surprised to find out I hadn't featured it before in my Lighthouse of the Week posts. When I checked the Lighthouse Directory, I then discovered it has one of the longest entries for a lighthouse that I had ever seen.  And then went image searching, I learned that there are several websites about it too, a few of which I'll feature after the main information.

As is my custom, the first thing I'll do is provide the location;  basically south of Jacksonville, Florida.

Now, just some of the information from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1874 (Paul J. Pelz, architect). Station established 1823. Active (privately maintained); focal plane 161 ft (49 m); continuous white light with a more intense flash every 30 s. 165 ft (50 m) round brick tower painted in a black-and-white spiral similar to Cape Hatteras Light; lantern painted red; original rotating 1st order Fresnel lens. Sibling of Bodie Island, North Carolina. 2-story brick and wood Victorian keeper's house (rebuilt after being gutted by fire in 1970). ... The present light station has been meticulously restored to its 1888 appearance. ... In 2002 the lighthouse was one of the first to be transferred under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. During Hurricane Frances in 2004 museum operations director Rick Cain valiantly kept the light on. In 2008-09 the exterior of the lantern was restored and its windows were replaced. In 2014 the museum paid $150,000 to purchase the keeper's house and the rest of the light station property, which had been leased previously from St. Johns County. In 2014-15 the lens and its rotating mechanism were cleaned and restored in place. In April 2015 the museum launched a crowdfunding campaign and sold T-shirts to complete the $280,000 needed for repainting and repairs to the tower. In 2016 work began to restore two Coast Guard buildings, a garage and a barracks, for expansion of exhibits on the station's history during World War II. This project was completed in 2018. In September 2017 the Maritime Archaeology and Education Center opened in new buildings on the light station grounds. The tower was repainted inside and out in 2021."

The websites (just a few):

 St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum (Visit St. Augustine)

St. Augustine, Lighthouse (Lighthouse Friends)

St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum (Official Website)

Visit St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum (The Club Continental)

Pictures and a video finish this post.

A true nature fact

 

If you live where it snows (in the USA), you know that northern cardinals stand out against the white snow quite markedly.  Lots of pictures, puzzles, sweaters, socks, towels, etc. all attest to this.

So it turns out that cardinals are really more red in the winter.

Are Cardinals Redder in Winter?

"Like many birds, Northern Cardinals molt their feathers and grow new ones in late summer and early fall, after the breeding season is over and at a time when food is abundant. During autumn people often comment about how ratty cardinals look. Molting cardinals commonly have areas of dark, exposed skin on their head or body, and some even molt their head feathers all at once, rendering the birds bald.

But even after its head is covered in feathers again, a newly molted male cardinal isn’t at his brightest. Many of his new feathers, especially on the neck and back, are tipped with gray. During fall and winter these dusky feather tips slowly wear off, revealing more and more brilliant red.

The birds reach the peak of brilliance by midwinter ahead of the spring breeding season. Against snow-covered conifers, it’s a feast for our eyes, too. The richness of a male’s red feathers may make a difference in his reproductive success: One study found that in rural areas, brighter red cardinals tended to mate earlier and nest in higher-quality habitat—factors usually associated with more offspring."

Noted in passing

 

Just happened to accidentally catch a glimpse of Anna-Lisa Christiane, and she's worth more of my time.

So where is Crystal Palace now?

 

OK, the Festive Fixtures are done, and it's time for a nearly mid-season update on Crystal Palace in the Premier League,2024-2025 season.  For many weeks early in the season, it looked like the team was committed to finally being relegated.  However, in December, they somehow found a way to win a couple of games, rather than continuing their dreary continuum of draws (though they did draw against Manchester City during City's major funk).

The main problem?  They don't have enough talent that is capable of scoring goals regularly. Scoring goals in soccer is like hitting baseballs in baseball -- it's the most difficult thing to do, of course, and thus the most prized skill that can be bought. And in the Premier League, it costs a lot.  Like most of the mid-tier clubs, Crystal Palace can't afford to have consistent top-line scoring talent. Occasionally they get lucky for a year or two. They also some to keep just enough veterans to maintain their Premier League presence.

So, I anticipate another bottom 10, but not relegated, finish for the Eagles.

Their current status is 15th in the league, with 21 points, five points above Ipswich Town, who are in the top relegation position. They did win their FA Cup match today, January 12, 2025, over Stockport (who?) after a fourth-minute goal by Eze, one of the few players on the team that knows how to score occasionally. The goalkeeper was Matt Turner, who happens to be the number one goalkeeper for the USA Men's National Team. Stockport is League One, the third level in the UK, and resides somewhere near Manchester. So if that result doesn't show that CP doesn't have a lot of scoring firepower, I don't know what else would.

Crystal Palace 1 --- Stockport County 0

Rah, rah.