OneZoom

Learn about evolution from the digital perspective. Interactive and extremely cool, OneZoom does the deed in making science fun and informative to folks like yours truly. :)

Teetering on the Brink

BRT has talked often about collapse with four factors being the prime driver of same.

1. Corruption of the state, dictated and run by the upper 1/10 of 1% and the banks and corporations that represent, as George Carlin said, The Real Owners of the Country.
2. Inept leadership. Congress & the Presidency, bought and paid for by the elites.
3. Environmental degradation whereby resources are plundered non-stop as seen by the depletion of food stocks in the oceans and continued pollution of the land/sea and food as seen by fracking and the introduction of GMOs into the food supply.
4. Destruction of infrastructure, driven by the moving of monies to the parasitic military/industrial/congressional complex dictated by the same elites who run the country.

This is not unique as this collapse phenomenon has happened many times over the course of history. The only difference now is Global Warming, the 900lb gorilla driven by fossil fuel production, that will change our world in ways never seen by the kin of man.

Sound familiar? America has witnessed a similar cycle of oligarchic corruption[1] starting in the 1760s, 1850s, 1920s, and 2000s:

Economic Royalists infiltrate critical institutions and rig political and economic systems to favor elites. 1760s: Royal governors run roughshod over colonial farmers; The East India Company, whose investors were primarily wealthy aristocrats, is given monopoly trading rights in the colonies. (The Tea Act was basically a corporate tax break for it.) 2000s: Vice President Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton is given no-bid contracts to handle military services in Iraq; American taxpayers bail out failed banks; Billionaire Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary; America’s medical system is dominated by profit-maximizing, health-minimizing insurance companies.

Rigged systems erode the health of the larger society, and signs of crisis proliferate. Developed by British archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew in 1979[2], the following “Signs of Failing Times” have played out across time in 26 distinct societies ranging from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the collapse of the Soviet Union:

1. Elite power and well-being increase and is manifested in displays of wealth;
2. Elites become heavily focused on maintaining a monopoly on power inside the society; Laws become more advantageous to elites, and penalties for the larger public become more Draconian;
3. The middle class evaporates;
4. The “misery index” mushrooms, witnessed by increasing rates of homicide, suicide, illness, homelessness, and drug/alcohol abuse;
5. Ecological disasters increase as short-term focus pushes ravenous exploitation of resources;
6. There’s a resurgence of conservatism and fundamentalist religion as once golden theories are brought back to counter decay, but these are usually in a corrupted form that accelerates decline.

The crisis reaches a breaking point, and seemingly small events trigger popular frustration into a transformative change. If the society enacts effective reforms, it enters a new stage of development. If it fails to enact reforms, crisis leads to regression and possibly collapse.

Remember, phase transitions are never linear. The French revolution started when 7 prisoners were liberated from the Bastille. 

Self Assembly ... At a Distance

On the cusp of something amazing is Teslaporeisis or the art of self assembly conducted at a distance, something Nikola Tesla would have understood without question. :)

Cherukuri sees this research as setting a clear path toward scalable assembly of nanotubes from the bottom up.

The system works by remotely oscillating positive and negative charges in each nanotube, causing them to chain together into long wires. Cherukuri’s specially designed Tesla coil even generates a tractor beam-like effect as nanotube wires are pulled toward the coil over long distances.

Rice University chemist Paul Cherukuri, left, Texas A&M graduate student Lindsey Bornhoeft, center, and Rice research scientist Carter Kittrell show the power of Teslaphoresis, which wirelessly lights their fluorescent tubes. Tests with a customized Tesla coil revealed that nanotubes within the field self-assemble into wires. 

This force-field effect on matter had never been observed on such a large scale, Cherukuri said, and the phenomenon was unknown to Nikola Tesla, who invented the coil in 1891 with the intention of delivering wireless electrical energy.

“Electric fields have been used to move small objects, but only over ultrashort distances,” Cherukuri said. “With Teslaphoresis, we have the ability to massively scale up force fields to move matter remotely.”

Schematic illustration of the Teslaphoretic (TEP) system consisting of a primary coil energized by an RF plasma generator (not shown), which creates a magnetic field (B- field) that inductively couples to the secondary coil, resulting in a high-voltage RF signal that terminates into a hollow disk-shaped antenna. The gradient electric field (E-field) projected into free space from the antenna creates a TEP force that polarizes and self-assembles carbon nanotubes into long wires. Courtesy: ACS Nano

A Missed Chance

Everybody who reads this "wonderful" blog knows that BRT wants Bernie to be president but he won't and possibly the reason why center's on Matt Taibbi's perceptive take as to why. 

Earlier this year, at a union rally in Henderson, Nevada, Hillary Clinton introduced a new theme in her stump speeches.

"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow," Clinton asked, "would that end racism?"

Logically, it was an odd thing to say. After all, lots of things worth doing, even political things, won't "end racism."

But from a practical point of view, Clinton's gambit was brilliant politics. It effectively caricaturized Sanders as a one-note candidate too steeped in attacking billionaires to see the problems of people down on Main Street. And the line fit in a tweet, making it perfect for rocketing around the Internet.

Clinton probably also understood that most people don't draw a connection between Wall Street corruption and race. Although the first victims of the financial crisis tended to be poor, nonwhite and elderly, tales of iniquity in the billionaire class tend instead to resonate with a different audience — specifically, the white liberals and college students who flocked to the Sanders campaign.

There was a political cliché behind this disconnect. When most people hear the words "Wall Street," they think of the stock market. And since African-American voters have traditionally distrusted and avoided the stock market, at least in comparison to white investors, there is a perception that "Wall Street" is an issue that doesn't really concern black people.

In the subprime era, though, banks actually used this cliché to their advantage. They profited immensely from a real-estate operation that specifically targeted people who stayed away from the financial markets, and carefully guarded their money by putting it in their homes.

According to one study, about two-thirds of all subprime loans between 2000 and 2007 were made to people who already owned their homes. The targets were often elderly, in particular men and women of color. Visiting loan officers convinced these borrowers to use the homes they'd poured their savings into their whole lives as ATM machines.

The pitch was: refinance your home, and get a little extra spending money each month! Lots of people went for it. But there was mischief hidden in the fine print of many of these "refi" deals, which often quickly exploded. Before long, the now-departed agent's promises would evaporate into a toxic quicksand of debt, unforeseen penalties and foreclosure.

Like a lot of reporters who covered the crash era, I initially misunderstood the profound racial element in the subprime drama. This wasn't the S&L crisis or the Enron-era accounting scandals or even the Internet bubble, a speculative craze that devoured the savings of white Middle America.

Subprime was different. It was fueled by a particular kind of predatory lending that targeted a very specific group of people.

Read his post as it rings true to the max. 

The Delusional Hawk

This terrific graphic from the NY Times article titled How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk says it all in terms of how delusional she is and was regarding foreign policy as seen by the US generated fubars in the Middle East, the Ukraine and relations with China and Russia, in which she played a significant role as Secretary of State and now as the Democratic Presidential candidate. Libya anyone? 

As Hillary Clinton makes another run for president, it can be tempting to view her hard-edged rhetoric about the world less as deeply felt core principle than as calculated political maneuver. But Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone — grounded in cold realism about human nature and what one aide calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.” It set her apart from her rival-turned-boss, Barack Obama, who avoided military entanglements and tried to reconcile Americans to a world in which the United States was no longer the undisputed hegemon. And it will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election. For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.

Furthermore ...

The Times story explores Clinton’s close relationship with the military. One of the many military officials Clinton befriended was Army Gen. Buster Hagenbeck, who turned out to be even less hawkish than she is. The general warned Clinton that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be like “kicking over a bee’s nest.” It’s safe to say Clinton did not heed his warning.

She also befriended former general and CIA Director David Petraeus, infamous for his links to torture and death squads. In 2014, Petraeus insisted Clinton would “make a tremendous President.” A year later, he proposed that the U.S. government use “moderate” members of al-Qaeda to fight ISIS.

No longer needing to moderate her views for election, Clinton did not miss the next opportunity to support a troop surge. In 2009, the Obama administration was debating sending more soldiers into Afghanistan. The president and Vice President Biden were wary of an expansion. Clinton sided “with Gates and the generals,” the Times reports.

“She gave political ballast to their proposals and provided a bullish counterpoint to Biden’s skepticism.” In February, less than a month into office, President Obama announced a troop surge in Afghanistan.

Summing it up BRT style. The US blew 4 trillion dollars on failed projects including the following:

1. Destroyed Syria, Libya and Iraq, thus turning them into sectarian nightmares and, in the case of Libya, did the deed for the oil and gold in that country. Hillary's emails & "We Saw, We Came, He Died."
2. Displaced millions  of people from their respective countries. Rampant emigration anyone? 
3. Needlessly killed thousands of young Americans with thousands more forever physically and mentally damaged. 
4. Has continued the Bush started Afghan war, a slow motion failure in the making and ... is the longest US war in history. 
5. Has plunged relations to Russia and China to their lowest levels since the end of the cold war in the 1980s.
6. Created ISIS, due to the fact American Viceroy Paul Bremer did NOT HIRE THE PEOPLE WE CONQUERED (Saddam's troops) under the worst strategic blunder this nation has ever done, Bush's illegal war with Iraq. And the course, according to General Zinni, that we're on, is taking us over Niagara Falls.

Outside of that, Clinton's position (she supported "W"s fiasco as NY Senator) is pretty stellar, don't you think?

Addendum: Finding common ground.

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has vowed to seek improved relations with Russia and China if he is elected to the White House, saying Washington and Moscow "should seek common ground based on shared interests."

In an April 27 foreign-policy speech, Trump said that while the United States and Russia had "serious differences," he believes it is "absolutely possible" to ease current tensions with Moscow if Washington approaches the relationship "from a position of strength."

"Common sense says this cycle -- this horrible cycle of hostility -- must end, and ideally it will end soon," Trump said as Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, sat in the front row for the candidate's wide-ranging speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.

U.S.-Russian ties have plunged to levels of acrimony unseen since the end of the Cold War following Russia's military seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and an ensuing war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists that has killed more than 9,100 people.

Both U.S. President Barack Obama's administration and the European Union have slapped several rounds of sanctions on Moscow in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, punitive measures that have angered the Kremlin.

Trump, who described Obama's overall foreign policy as "a complete and total disaster," said Washington and Moscow can find common ground, in part, because Russia "has also seen the horror of Islamic terrorism."

Sounds like a plan to me.

The Simpsons Rule :)

Eric Goldberg is a master. :)

The Big 6

This wonderful antique art piece of birds, not of a feather, reminds me on how radically differing political viewpoints can come together when grave injustices happen to us all, something BRT has talked about quite often as this blog thinks the US is on the precipice of a revolution given just how bad things are becoming for the middle class & poor. To that end, Robert Reich, a guy yours truly respects a great deal, just posted 6 principles us rubes of different political persuasions want to have happen now, something akin to Nightmare on Elm Street on what would happen to the status quo and the 1/10 of 1%  if the big 6 jumps off, a notion that needs to happen if this nation is to survive as a viable entity as we move further into the 21st century. 

The big 6, items covered in past BRT blurbs, is due for a refresh and R.R's take is succint and to the point. :) Read Reich's post. Excellent without question.

1. Cut the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where they’re no longer too big to fail.

2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking and thereby preventing companies from gambling with their depositors’ money. 

3. End corporate welfare – including subsidies to big oil, big agribusiness, big pharma, Wall Street, and the Ex-Im Bank.

4. Stop the National Security Agency from spying on Americans. 

5. Scale back American interventions overseas. 

6. Oppose trade agreements crafted by big corporations. 

Wes Craven lives. :)

Beware the Ides of March

Even though it's late April, the Ides of March regarding Hillary and the Dems looms large without question.

The many high-level officials in the Democratic Party, including super delegates, who strongly support Hillary Clinton, are extremely confident that she will become their party’s nominee and then win in the general election. But they would be wise to hold off on their celebrations because dark, menacing clouds continue to loom over her candidacy.

Sure, she was a big winner in New York but her huge disapproval rating still represents a major liability; far too many Americans just don’t like or trust her.  So even if she beats Sanders, which might be a safe bet at this point, she will, thereafter, come under a withering, relentless attack in the general election when Republicans take aim at her political baggage and the many skeletons in her closet.

Those Establishment backers of Hillary who dismiss Sanders’ chances are ignoring those dark clouds and don’t realize how easily things could unravel for Hillary. They need to pay attention to the succession of polls which measure how the current candidates of each party would do against each other in the general election. They consistently indicate that Sanders would beat any of the three Republicans quite handily.

BRT has talked about Clinton's problem from the vantage point she's perfect fodder for Trump while Bernie is not. Read the Nation of Change piece in it's entirety. It's the smart thing to do.

Caesar se Mort/March 15 44BC/The Ides of March

Brought to you by Monsanto

Roundup aka glyphosate in your breakfast anyone? Well, this is what's happening 24/7 in the good ole USA, the province of Monsanto, the purveyor of GMO goodness along with Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world.

Today, the Alliance for Natural Health-USA released the results of food safety testing conducted on an assortment of popular breakfast foods. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing revealed the presence of glyphosate—the most widely used agricultural herbicide—in 10 of the 24 food samples tested.

Analysis revealed the presence of glyphosate in oatmeal, bagels, eggs- including the organic variety, potatoes and even non-GMO soy coffee creamer. 

Glyphosate is an herbicide developed in 1970 by Monsanto, who began developing genetically modified (GMO) crops designed to withstand high doses of Roundup. Today, these seeds account for 94 percent of all soybeans and 89 percent of all corn being produced. The prevalence of these crops means that hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate are dumped onto the land every year.

It gets better

One year ago, an agency of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) declared that glyphosate (or Roundup), the world’s most widely used herbicide, probably causes cancer. Then, in the fall, the European Food Safety Agency’s (EFSA) responded with an assessment that disagreed with the WHO’s findings.

In response, 94 scientists came out in support of the IARC’s original findings. This week, the group—which includes scientists from around the world—released their article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health saying:

The most appropriate and scientifically based evaluation of the cancers reported in humans and laboratory animals as well as supportive mechanistic data is that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. On the basis of this conclusion and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to conclude that glyphosate formulations should also be considered likely human carcinogens.

And their endorsement is no small matter. In fact, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reassesses the safety of glyphosate, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin testing food for its residue, this volley has important implications.

Countries are waking up to this and ... it's about time.

France already banned the sale of Roundup from garden centers last June due to its link to cancer. Royal has since urged for an outright ban on glyphosate herbicides across the EU.

Thinking of Ulysses

Leave it to Twistedswifter to find extraordinary high res pictures of Dublin taken way back when. This particular gem is Sackville Street ca. 1905, shot just one year after Leopold Bloom & company caroused around Dublin on June 16, 1904 in James Joyce's Ulysses, a yearly event forever commemorated as a joyous literary paen forever known as Bloomsday. :)

The journey. :)

To yours truly, who actually read the book twice, the most amazing part is Molly Bloom's Soliloquy, a description of love, lust and remembrance, distilled to a lyric essence by a writer at the absolute top of his game.

Another Notion of Surveillance

Interesting take on surveillance/drone style or ... just another example of why tech has no morality.

"It explores a world where the ‘network’ begins to gain physical autonomy. Drones become protagonists, moving through the city, making decisions about the world and influencing our lives in often opaque yet profound ways," the video's description says.

Kinda like Stasi, 21st century style.

One day in September 1987, the phone rang at the headquarters of the Volkspolizei, East Germany's police force, in the town of Döbeln, not far from Dresden. On the other end of the line was the voice of an unknown man.

"Good evening. I have some information for you. Grab a pen!"
"I'm listening."
"Ms. Marianne Schneider is traveling on Wednesday, Sept. 14, to West Berlin for a visit. She doesn't intend to return."
"And who are you?"
Silence.
"You would like to remain anonymous?"
"Yes."
"What is the basis for your information?"
"She said so, to her closest friends."

Then, the mysterious caller hung up. And Marianne Schneider* had a problem. Officials immediately revoked her travel permit and began monitoring her phone and mail in addition to questioning her neighbors and friends.

The former Stasi prison in Berlin. New research shows that East German authorities did all they could to make it easy for citizens to snitch on their neighbors and colleagues. It was a finely woven web of surveillance and contributed greatly to the country's stability, say historians.

A Tragedy of Our Own Making

The Great Barrier Reef is dying, due to Global Warming, the man made disaster propelled by the use of fossil fuels. The unfolding of this tragedy of our own making is heartbreaking to see while the reef slowly dies, a natural wonder our grandchildren will never see if we don't change our ways before it's too late.

Large sections of the Great Barrier Reef, the Earth’s largest living structure, are dying before our eyes. Sustained high sea temperatures have stressed the corals to the point where they expel the brightly coloured algae that live within their tissues. This process is aptly named bleaching as it removes all pigment and exposes the shocking white calcium skeleton of the reef structures.

The coral can survive in this state for up to a few weeks. Thereafter, if temperatures do not decrease then they will die.

The Great Barrier Reef has experienced bleaching events twice before. The first, in 1998, was bad enough, with 50% of the reef affected. 2002 was even worse with 60% of the reef bleached. Recent aerial surveys of the northern 1000km of the reef evaluated 500 different sections – 95% were bleached.

With our survey work still ongoing, a bleak picture is emerging: more than 1,000 km of the Great Barrier Reef shows signs of significant bleaching. In the worst-affected areas, in the GBR’s previously pristine far north, many corals are now expected to die.

VR from a different perspective

Lytro Cinema from Lytro on Vimeo.

The future of cinema is here as seen by the new Lytro Cinema Camera, a 755mb/40K recording beast that will eliminate the green screen as we know it due to it's ability to capture 3D data in realtime with their Light Field imaging system. (Using ray tracing, in part, to capture and manipulate the data in 3D space.)  

Things like changing the depth of field, focus position, shutter speed or dynamic range can now take place after the fact thanks to the truly dynamic data being captured. Lytro believes that this tech is going to make the merger of CGI images and real-world footage even more seamless, and I believe it too.

A hefty portion of films today rely heavily on green screen technology to turn studio backlot environments into magical worlds. Lytro Cinema is implementing light field technology to create something called a “depth screen,” which allows filmmakers to capture green screen shots without actually having to place actors in green screen environments.

Because light field technology senses depth so accurately, the Lytro Cinema camera can just capture the world out to a certain distance and is essentially able to leave the rest of the shot transparent, allowing for post-production wizardry to seamlessly put an actor on the surface of the moon when they’re actually standing in a room surrounded by camera equipment.

Obviously this tech is beta, ridiculously expensive with storage requirements beyond the kin of man but 10 years from now, this approach to doing immersive video will be commonplace if tech continues to accelerate at the same rate it has  for the past 30 years. (I'm betting it does.) The video's just a taste of what's coming so enjoy this beta from a company that has something truly special in the way of capturing image data in ways never been done before.

Addendum: Here's a quick take on how CG (Computer Graphics) will integrate with this tech. Interesting to say the least.

Rather than render out a CGI background to convert it into a 2D backdrop, Lytro has written drivers and plugins for many of the well known CGI applications, that allows them to output into the Light Field domain. All the information is there in the CGI programs to do this. Once everything - live action and CGI backgrounds - is in the same conceptual space, the magic can start. CGI artists will have as much control over the Light Field domain Live Action as they do over their CGI models. Which means they can manipulate and blend them perfectly. As a bonus, because of the maximum 300fps frame rate of the Lytro Cinema Camera, it’s possible to derive any lower frame rate from the master recording - even ramping up and down on demand.

It’s hard to even begin to imagine what this will lead to in the future.

1/2 Moons rule 1/2 the time. :)

Had to do a pix on a wonderful night of the 1/2 moon. More to come. :) Enjoy. 

We Have Liftoff

Watch Zapata Racing founder, Franky Zapata, take an incredible test flight on his company’s Flyboard® Air prototype. While the company claims the machine is capable of 10 minutes of autonomous flight up to 10,000 ft and a top speed of 150 km/h (93.2 mph), the figures have not been independently verified.

Gotta admit this tech's pretty damn cool.

NY State of Mind/Rev II

Another trip to NYC to see, in part, the NY Antiquarian Book Fair, one of the el primo exhibits of its kind in the world, courtesy a good friend of mine who turned me onto it in order for yours truly to see old, rare and precious work of impeccable taste, quality and interest.  Enjoy.

Thanks Tony for sharing this gem with me. :)

Break on Through to the Other Side

View this clip to see an absolutely incredible implementation of 2D to 3D reconstructions of DNA using Voxels, in large part, to make it happen. Revolutionary without question with tech being done at the highest level. Enjoy.

In a Berkeley Lab-led study, flexible double-helix DNA segments (purple, with green DNA models) connected to gold nanoparticles (yellow) are revealed from the 3D density maps reconstructed from individual samples using a Berkeley Lab-developed technique called individual-particle electron tomography (IPET). Projections of the structures are shown in the green background grid. (credit: Berkeley Lab)

An international research team working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has captured the first high-resolution 3D images of double-helix DNA segments attached at either end to gold nanoparticles — which could act as building blocks for molecular computer memory and electronic devices (see World’s smallest electronic diode made from single DNA molecule), nanoscale drug-delivery systems, and as markers for biological research and for imaging disease-relevant proteins.

The researchers connected coiled DNA strands between polygon-shaped gold nanoparticles and then reconstructed 3D images, using a cutting-edge electron microscope technique coupled with a protein-staining process and sophisticated software that provided structural details at the scale of about 2 nanometers.

“We had no idea about what the double-strand DNA would look like between the gold nanoparticles,” said Gang “Gary” Ren, a Berkeley Lab scientist who led the research. “This is the first time for directly visualizing an individual double-strand DNA segment in 3D,” he said.

Break on Through to the Other Side says it all.

The Doors version

Rider's on the Storm's better but hey, who's complaining.

Back in 2011

Back in 2011, Bernie talked about Panama and offshore money laundering. Nothing more needs to be said. As stated by others, the more you research Bernie, the more impressive he becomes. Pretty stellar without question.

Unlike most politicians, Bernie Sanders becomes increasingly impressive the more you learn about him. Forget for a moment whether you think the tax dodging strategies popularized by the Panama Papers are ethical or not, it’s important to note that Bernie Sanders publicly warned about an expansion in such behavior all the way back in 2011. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pushed for legislation that made such controversial strategies easier, under the guise of “free trade” with Panama.

It gets better.

Years before more than a hundred media outlets around the world released stories Sunday exposing a massive network of global tax evasion detailed in the Panama Papers, U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for a Bush administration-negotiated free trade agreement that watchdogs warned would only make the situation worse.

Soon after taking office in 2009, Obama and his secretary of state — who is currently the Democratic presidential front-runner — began pushing for the passage of stalled free trade agreements (FTAs) with Panama, Colombia and South Korea that opponents said would make it more difficult to crack down on Panama’s very low income tax rate, banking secrecy laws and history of noncooperation with foreign partners.

Even while Obama championed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy, he pursued and eventually signed the Panama agreement in 2011. Upon Congress ratifying the pact, Clinton issued a statement lauding the agreement, saying it and other deals with Colombia and South Korea "will make it easier for American companies to sell their products." She added: "The Obama administration is constantly working to deepen our economic engagement throughout the world, and these agreements are an example of that commitment."

Any questions as to why Bernie makes eminent sense?

Motion 2 Step

Motion, subtle & otherwise is the focus of this short clip. Enjoy. 

Planet Nine

Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist

Well, it seems NASA, and significant others, are getting serious about Planet Nine, a conjectured yet unseen entity that perturbs the solar system is specific and subtle ways.

Astronomers are trying to take the measure of Planet Nine before the hypothesized world has even been discovered.

Earlier this year, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both of whom are based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, proposed that a large planet lurks undetected in the outer solar system, far beyond Pluto's orbit.

Batygin and Brown didn't spot this prospective Planet Nine; rather, they inferred its existence based on the orbits of a half-dozen objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. [Planet Nine: The Evidence for a New Giant Planet in Pictures]

These objects' orbits suggest that Planet Nine may be about 10 times more massive than Earth, and may circle the sun at an average distance of 600 astronomical units (AU) or so, Batygin and Brown said. (One AU is the average distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

Now, a new study models what Planet Nine might look like if those parameters are on the money.

Astrophysics professor Christoph Mordasini and his Ph.D. student Esther Linder, both of the University of Bern in Switzerland, assumed that Planet Nine — if it exists — is basically a smaller version of the "ice giants" Uranus and Neptune, with an atmosphere dominated by hydrogen and helium.

The duo then calculated that such a 10-Earth-mass Planet Nine would be about 3.7 times wider than our planet, with a surface temperature of minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 degrees Celsius; 47 degrees Kelvin).

How cool is that? :)

All Along the Watchtower

Alongside the greatest cover of Dylan's classic, courtesy Jimi Hendrix, is Dylan's mono recording of same where the guitar sounds like a 12 string married to a didgeridoo, thus driving home the fact this is one bodacious piece with lyrics both mysterious and powerful.

"There must be some way out of here"
Said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth"

"No reason to get excited"
The thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely, now
The hour is getting late"

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside, in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl

Here's Dylan's from the 1965 John Westley Harding masterpiece.

IMHO, Camus would relate to this without question.

The Didgeridoo, something altogether on the other side. :)

Woodstock yet again. :)

Woodstock ... yours truly and future wife are in this picture, somewhere. Amazing event, horrible weather, amazing vibes. Click the pix to see some rare gems from the summer of 1969, the last gasp of the unreal 60's, the best time for jazz, pot, rock and sex without question. :)

The film really captures what went down as Santana, Sly and the Who were unconscious. We left, totally exhausted while listening to Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner in the AM as the weather took it's toll on the participants as seen by the sparse audience in the movie while Jimi did his thing. 

Addendum: I saw Hendrix twice, with his original group, with the biggie @ MG. Unreal says it all. :)

4K

4K is coming as can be seen by the expensive 4k screens one sees at places like Best Buy and B&H from the usual suspects like Sony, LG, Sharp and Samsung. More to come while 8K looms in the near background. Like rust, tech never sleeps. :)

Face2Face in Real Time

Watch the video and be amazed and scared sh*tless in terms of how easy it is to manipulate a real or digital person in real time. 21st Century Manchurian Candidate anyone?

We present a novel approach for real-time facial reenactment of a monocular target video sequence (e.g., Youtube video). The source sequence is also a monocular video stream, captured live with a commodity webcam. Our goal is to animate the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-render the manipulated output video in a photo-realistic fashion. To this end, we first address the under-constrained problem of facial identity recovery from monocular video by non-rigid model-based bundling. At run time, we track facial expressions of both source and target video using a dense photometric consistency measure. Reenactment is then achieved by fast and efficient deformation transfer between source and target. The mouth interior that best matches the re-targeted expression is retrieved from the target sequence and warped to produce an accurate fit. Finally, we convincingly re-render the synthesized target face on top of the corresponding video stream such that it seamlessly blends with the real-world illumination. We demonstrate our method in a live setup, where Youtube videos are reenacted in real time.

Click here for the Stamford paper describing this amazing and disturbing tech. The clinical take on all of this is even more startling.

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

Going Dark ,,, Yet Again

What's truly amazing is the fact the Senate, in the form of WTF is The Matter With Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, has the right to try to pass the Dark Act Bill yet AGAIN while 89 - 90%% of us rubes want to know what's in our food, a rather important want if you know what I mean.

Last week Agriculture Chairman Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), introduced new legislation that is once against being labeled the Denying Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act.

The new bill is an attempt to preempt state GMO labeling laws by preventing states from requiring labeling of GMO foods. The bill would also stop pending state laws that require labeling from going into effect.

According to polls conducted by the Washington Post, New York Times, and Consumer Reports, 9 out of 10 Americans want genetically engineered foods to be labeled.

Despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans want GMO foods labeling, and despite the fact that 64 other nations require GMO labeling, the Senate still insists on introducing legislation preventing it from happening.

This is similar to the 90% that wants guns registered when the Senate denied the public's will, yet again, in deference to the NRA.

We need to end gerrymandering, to enact term limits and to demand the right of referendum to enable citizens to directly vote on bills that impact the entire country like the two stated in this blurb as these issues, like that of "W's" disastrous 2003 Iraq invasion and Johnson's escalation of Vietnam vis a vis the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, are too important to leave to the fools in congress given the sorry track records both houses have had on decisions as important as these truly are.

End of Rant, for now.