Category: News

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Earthquake!!!!

While the local news people were losing their minds over a 4.x that was more of a roller than anything else. The dogs didn’t even look up.

The glass ornaments on the Christmas tree didn’t even tinkle together.

In other words Big Deal! So What?

When I first moved here 4.x was not even anything to bat an eye about. But it’s been so long since we had regular quakes folks are easily freaked out about it now.

Good! maybe there will be an exodus from California and the freeways will open up.

The REAL issue is the weather in the middle of the country.

Their llittany of problems reads like Elmer Fudd’s lyrics in What’s Opera Doc.

Norf winds bwo, Sowf winds bwo, Storms, Thunder, lightening strike, SMOOOOG!

It would be funny were it not so unbelievably tragic.

Those folks went from rain and being in shorts, to tornados, then sleet, then snow and their neighborhoods were wiped out.

Merry Christmas!

Meanwhile our talking heads blather on and on and on about a little shaking that may have done a little damage.  As always California newscasters need to have a little perspective.

For New Years all I want is newscasting that is factual, accurate, and not spun for entertainment.

I’m not holding my breath!

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Briny Water on Mars!

Mars

This is very cool. The remote sensing work to confirm the hypothesis is elegant.

I wonder, if the hypothesis is actually proven, or do we only call it proven when one of our machines or a human takes a physical sample and confirms water and perchlorate salts.

This makes me wonder if future explorers could, as part of a water production facility, use the extracted salts as a component for fuel for the return trip to Earth.  I suppose it would depend on the source of the water (underground versus atmospheric) the exact composition of the salts and how easily they can be extracted. 

This discovery gives me hope that we will go to Mars, and that someday we’ll have self sustaining colonies there.

This is progress and perhaps this discovery will spark a whole new generation of scientists.

Yes, I’m a geek, I love science and NASA!

Marvin

I also learned something else during this morning’s announcement.

Under no circumstances should you monitor the Twitter #askNASA hashtag during the announcement of a discovery.

You’re suddenly exposed to a planet full of (paraphrasing Marvin here) “depressingly stupid people.”

Honestly, some of the questions were so stupid as to actually cause brain damage, which is a mercy since the damage occurs in the hippocampus and effectively erases the memory of the question instantly.

The effect leaves a trace of revulsion and disgust, which I suspect is the brain’s way of preventing further assault,without having to process the stupidity again.

The Keeper

In my case I shut down Twitter and the feeling passed immediately.

What was it The Keeper of Talos IV said? “Punishment and Reward, you’ll find it’s an effective combination.”

Reward your favorite Scientist with a hug or compliment today.

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Whew, a week got by me.

HillaryOrange

Well, there isn’t much I wanted to comment on.

Hillary? NO! I mean where to start? Her lies? The media’s refusal to really cover the email scandal. Her campaign poll numbers tanking? The fact that so many people being polled say flat out they don’t trust her? The FBI investigation? At least she’s already got the orange pant suit.

Trump? OH HELL NO! He’s probably right about a lot of things, even if he’s not,  he’s serving a useful purpose. What purpose you ask? He’s saying the emperor has no clothes, Trump is proving that the American People are tired of Politically Correct speech. I defend that statement by pointing to Trumps poll numbers among the people he’s supposedly offended. BUT, and I can’t stress this enough, he’s not presidential material. Hell I’m more presidential than he is and I’m a broke redneck.

Glenn Beck’s flame out? I dimly know he’s a media person. In the past few days there’ve been some really strange things attributed to him, including one piece he penned on his blog which read a bit like the ravings of a lunatic. After reading that single piece, I’m glad that I’m unfamiliar with his body of work.

Sex? Maybe I’d be commenting if I’d been having it… Don’t ask!

Job Search? Wow! There’s a lot I could say, BUT it’s all bad news.  

Trump

I figure that we can all get our fill of BAD news just by flipping on the boob tube and tuning to the evening news on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX or reading any of a number of so called print media whether online or in actual hardcopy.

There’s no need to be redundant.

Speaking of print media, we need to do something about the overall degradation of writing skill. There’s no excuse for a journalist to use incorrect syntax, or publish an article with poor spelling.

I was scanning Google News the other day and saw that in addition to the usual offenders in this area, The Christian Science Monitor had a major typo in a headline.

I got curious about the content of the article, and was sad to discover that the article was as poorly written as the headline. I was shocked at this discovery, because The Monitor used to be one of the best at writing cogent articles with .001% typos.

Perhaps journalism is finally dead.

JobSearch

As I thought about it. I wondered if the next evolution will be completely emoji based communications.

We can order pizza with a single emoji, will our future communications look like this?

��������������⌛️

Which roughly translates as “While hurrying to guitar practice, I was arrested by the police, lost at my trial and am doing time.”

I’m seriously screwed if we go that way. The extent of my emoji knowledge is the variety of smiley faces.

I hope you all have a �� day.