Am I What I Am or Not?

The French philosopher Descartes once said,  "I THINK THEREFORE I AM." and the world decided that this was proof enough to explain and justify mankind's existence.  However, some later explained that Descartes comments continued with the words that he believes this thinking is always done in the capacity of doubt...  therefore, one could say that proof of existence is in doubt as well...  and we are back to the proverbial first square.

Why do we even care about our own existence in the first place which to me is the first square?

We live...

We die...

and in between the two we accomplish stuff or we do not...  it is just as simple as that.

But, there are those of us who still want to know what we really do not need to know...  and, the concept of philosophy was created...  with each global culture having their own unique and different sets of philosophical beliefs.

There are four major branches of philosophy:

• Metaphysics
• Epistemology
• Axiology
• Logic

But, only three schools of thought:

• Classic
• Religious 
• Modern

Currently, the major educational philosophies are:

1. Existentialism
2. Essentialism
3. Perennialism
4. Progressivism
5. Social Reconstruction
6. Behaviorism
7. Constructivism
8. Conservatism
9. Humanism

So...  where does this actually take us to an understanding of our own existence and the proof that we even exist at all?

Sadly...  it does not take us anywhere other than to explain why we may or may not do what we do...  which revolves around purpose.

Birth is not proof of existence

Life is not proof of existence

Death is not proof of existence

Yet...  we are here nonetheless...  and, for a certain amount of years continue to life until that life is taken away from us by some explained or unexplained methodology...

HOWEVER, no one can explain why we were given life and actually experienced birth in the first place, other than the male sperm fertilizing a female egg.

But, why me?

and not someone else?

and why am I who I am and not another?

and, am I real or a figment of one's imagination?

or, am I simply a computer program operating in a galactic computer system?

and, why are there UFO's?

and, why is there evidence of alien extraterrestrials?

and, why is it recorded that Jesus declared his kingdom to be not of this world?

and, why do I possess a consciousness?

and, is there a cosmic consciousness?

The Squad Made Me Do It

 

Explaining Consciousness

Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion cells – known as neurons – each connected to 10,000 others, yielding some ten trillion nerve connections.

We have made a great deal of progress in understanding brain activity, and how it contributes to human behaviour. But what no one has so far managed to explain is how all of this results in feelings, emotions and experiences. How does the passing around of electrical and chemical signals between neurons result in a feeling of pain or an experience of red?

There is growing suspicion that conventional scientific methods will never be able answer these questions. Luckily, there is an alternative approach that may ultimately be able to crack the mystery.

For much of the 20th century, there was a great taboo against querying the mysterious inner world of consciousness – it was not taken to be a fitting topic for “serious science”. Things have changed a lot, and there is now broad agreement that the problem of consciousness is a serious scientific issue. But many consciousness researchers underestimate the depth of the challenge, believing that we just need to continue examining the physical structures of the brain to work out how they produce consciousness.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

An Impossible Crystal Formed

According to Michelle Starr, a journalist for Science Alert...

An 'Impossible' Quasicrystal Was Forged in The World's First Nuclear Bomb Test.  At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made.

The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget - the world's very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as the Trinity test. This moment would change warfare forever.

The energy release, equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, vaporized the 30-metre test tower (98 ft) and miles of copper wires connecting it to recording equipment. The resulting fireball fused the tower and copper with the asphalt and desert sand below into green glass - a new mineral called trinitite.

Decades later, scientists have discovered a secret hidden in a piece of that trinitite - a rare form of matter known as a quasicrystal, once thought to be impossible.

"Quasicrystals are formed in extreme environments that rarely exist on Earth," explained geophysicist Terry Wallace of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"They require a traumatic event with extreme shock, temperature, and pressure. We don't typically see that, except in something as dramatic as a nuclear explosion."

Most crystals, from the humble table salt to the toughest diamonds, obey the same rule: their atoms are arranged in a lattice structure that repeats in three-dimensional space. Quasicrystals break this rule - the pattern in which their atoms are arranged does not repeat.

When the concept first emerged in the scientific world in 1984, this was thought to be impossible: crystals were either ordered or disordered, with no in-between. Then they were actually found, both created in laboratory settings and in the wild - deep inside meteorites, forged by thermodynamic shock from events like a hypervelocity impact.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Tantalizing Tuesday in the Valley

Currently (1942), the temperature outside the house is 87 degrees Fahrenheit with 60% humidity and a 10% chance of rain...  inside the house, we have our central air operating at a temperature of 78 degrees and it is very comfortable inside...  not too hot and not too cold...  however, I am dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.  Our home is well insulated so the heat or cold loss is minimal.

I mention this only because the weather forecast for the rest of the week is going to be even higher as it approaches the mid 90's.

On the big screen is the Food Channel's show CHOPPED which is interesting to watch every now and then, but it becomes rather redundant if watched for several hours in one sitting.  While the baskets are different, cooking is cooking...  at least to me.

What is different today for me is the fact that I have created an account on PARLOR which is a conservative social media forum that is competing with Facebook...  but, unlike Facebook, Parlor is basically a site for people who want to read a lot of conservative opinions.  It does not allow for much interaction..  It is like FOX News but instead of listening to people you are reading what people have written...  and those people are people with reputations rather than the common everyday individual which is what I was expecting.

I pretty much already know what conservative talking heads are going to say or write...  so, I'm not gaining that much since it is basically a reiteration of what FOX News has already conveyed to me...  but with some new twists and turns.

Wake Up America

 A few days ago, we experienced the result of a Russian Hacking on our Colonial Pipeline, and many Southern States were without gasoline for their vehicles for about 7-10 days in some cases.

Where we live in East TN, we experienced some gas stations closed while others remained open and the lines to wait for gas were minimal.  The main gas station at which we get all of our gas because it is about 7 cents less now has gasoline in plenty of supply.

It reminded me of the gas lines of the 1970's only it was not as severe.

If we had electric vehicle, we would not have been impacted by the Colonial Pipeline shutdown...  but, what the mainstream media idiots do not realized that if the Russian Hackers could shut down the electronics of the Oil People, they will be able to shut down our FRIGGiNG ENERGY GRID which would at that time control our electric vehicles.

Are they stupid or what?

Our future is totally contingent upon stopping the CYBER HACKERS and the current administration seems not to have THE BALLS to do anything about it because they are more concerned with defunding the police for blacks or teaching critical race theory for blacks.

Now, I am not opposed to blacks or their pursuit for happiness but I am against teaching stuff that has little bearing on our society outside of the small white circle of billionaires who regulate the direction of our society.

The ordinary white man does not GIVE A SHIT who is black or white or brown or red or a sliding scale of color variations.

Cops don't hate blacks, but a few cops do hate blacks and that does not justify changing the system because we are experiencing special cause variation instead of common cause variation.

I really do feel sorry for those who are intellectually ignorant and have retained minimal knowledge from their education...  it is really sad...  but our government cannot force idiots to learn.

In The Process

 Currently,

my wife and I are corresponding with the Owner's Association of Vacation Village Timeshare to receive a Deed Back Document giving our damn purchased timeshare back to them...

WHY?

We are claiming that the agents of the timeshare company who sold us the timeshare DEFRAUDED US with misinformation, intentional lies, and withholding of information including LEGAL COUNSEL that they themselves had and were being advised by on the day of the sale...

Apparently, the Owner's Association (comprised on timeshare owners) must approve the DEED BACK as well as decide if we, my wife and I, should be assessed AN ADDITIONAL FEE based upon lost revenue that they are not going to receive.

My wife and I purchased the timeshare outright, so we owe nothing on it; however, we are required to pay a maintenance fee every 3 years...  and, those are the monies that the Owner's Association stand to forfeit if they agree to a DEED BACK.

Timeshare purchases are one of the worst forms of our CAPITALISTIC SOCIETY that is perpetrated on a NAIVE PUBLIC and the Department of Justice continues to allow them to get away with this.

My wife and I agreed to sit through a 90 minute presentation, then informed the sales agent that we wanted to receive our free gifts and leave.  After another 3 hours of different sell agents trying to convince us that we need to buy something, we were so damn tired and ready to go, that we relented and purchased a foreclosed unit.

This was undoubtedly the worst experience of our entire lives and left us BITTER that the WEALTHY ORGANIZATIONS could do this legally to Americans who honestly believed that they were being told the truth...

Timeshares

Consumer group Choice has accused the timeshare holiday industry of predatory sales tactics and trapping people into unfair long-term contracts in a wide-ranging complaint lodged with the corporate regulator.

“Respondents report feeling fear, shame, embarrassment, a sense of defeat and guilt with their timeshare products,” Choice said in the complaint, which was sent to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission last Thursday.

“At every stage of the timeshare journey, consumers have reported unfair or oppressive practices that Choice believes is either in breach of the law or falls well below community standards and expectations.”

It called on Asic to prosecute timeshare operators who break the law and investigate the industry over allegations of misleading and deceptive conduct by salespeople and breaches of anti-hawking laws, which are designed to stop the unsolicited sale of financial products, at timeshare seminars.

Choice also wants a parliamentary inquiry into the industry that would examine issues including “what legislative and regulatory changes are necessary to protect people from harmful timeshare schemes and improve industry practice”.

Any crackdown by Asic would put the regulator, which is already under heavy political pressure from the Morrison government over issues including responsible lending laws, on a collision course with Queensland senator and the assistant minister to the attorney general, Amanda Stoker.

Stoker has complained in parliamentary hearings about action Asic has already taken against the industry, including a proposal to extend the cooling-off period between agreeing to buy into a timeshare scheme and the contract becoming binding from seven days to 14.

At an estimates hearing in October, she questioned whether Asic’s move “represents a proportionate response, or whether it represents something of a vendetta against the industry”.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

The Truth Will Set Her Free

 

Investigate This... Really???

 

Just Joined

This morning, for some reason, I decided to look for conservative websites that I could join, instead of having to deal with the biased approach taken by FACEBOOK and LinkedIn...

I found these:

1. Rumble
2. Parlor

Rumble, it appears, is only a site for those who want to publish videos that will not be censored; whereas, Parlor is very similar to those two social media sites that I wanted to leave,

So far, all I have seen on Parlor is well known conservatives like Bongino, Levin, and Hannity, etc., are the ones who are posting comments...  so, it is a really good site to read those kind of posts, but I do not see any (at least so far) posts from the everyday conservative Americans like myself...  which is really what I was looking for...

Maybe I just need to give it a little more time...

Mass Extinctions

For the last 10,000 years, Earth has been in the midst of yet another extinction event that is rapidly removing animals from our planet.

Scientists define a mass extinction as around three-quarters of all species dying out over a short geological time, which is anything less than 2.8 million years, according to The Conversation. Right now, humans find themselves at the beginning of the latest mass extinction, which is moving much faster than any of the others. Since 1970, the populations of vertebrate species have declined by an average of 68%, and currently more than 35,000 species are considered to be threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). During the 20th century alone, as many as 543 land vertebrates became extinct, according to a research article in the journal PNAS.

Are humans to blame?
Ever since the beginning of the pollutant-pumping industrial revolution in 1760, humans have been the main contributor to Earth's current environmental crisis. From greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion to deforestation, plastic pile-up and the illegal animal trade, humans have actively stripped the world of some species and threatened many more.

There are those who argue that climate change and the extinction of animal species are a natural part of life, and in some ways that’s true. After all, the first five mass extinctions occurred without the presence of humans. However, the difference is the speed at which these mass extinctions happen.

Fossil records don't just tell us what creatures existed before us, but also how long a species can naturally survive before becoming extinct without human interference. This is referred to as the background rate, and it is equal to around one species extinction per 1 million species per year. Currently, because of human activity, the actual background rate is tens of thousands of times higher, meaning species are becoming extinct much faster than they should be. Studies have found that some species lost from Earth would have continued to survive for 800 to 10,000 years without the interference of human activities, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Komic Korner Kartoons

 

Searching For Alien Life

Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question? Are there civilizations more advanced than ours, civilizations that have achieved interstellar communication and have established a network of linked societies throughout our galaxy? 

Such questions, bearing on the deepest problems of the nature and destiny of mankind, were long the exclusive province of theology and speculative fiction. Today for the first time in human history they have entered into the realm of experimental science.

From the movements of a number of nearby stars we have now detected unseen companion bodies in orbit around them that are about as massive as large planets. From our knowledge of the processes by which life arose here on the earth we know that similar processes must be fairly common throughout the universe. 

Since intelligence and technology have a high survival value it seems likely that primitive life forms on the planets of other stars, evolving over many billions of years, would occasionally develop intelligence, civilization and a high technology. Moreover, we on the earth now possess all the technology necessary for communicating with other civilizations in the depths of space. Indeed, we may now be standing on a threshold about to take the momentous step a planetary society takes but once: first contact with another civilization..

In our present ignorance of how common extraterrestrial life may actually be, any attempt to estimate the number of technical civilizations in our galaxy is necessarily unreliable. We do, however, have some relevant facts. There is reason to believe that solar systems are formed fairly easily and that they are abundant in the vicinity of the sun.  In our own solar system, for example, there are three miniature "solar systems": the satellite systems of the planets Jupiter (with 13 moons), Saturn (with 10) and Uranus (with five). 

The only technique we have at present for detecting the planetary systems of nearby stars is the study of the gravitational perturbations such planets induce in the motion of their parent star. Imagine a nearby star that over a period of decades moves measurably with respect to the background of more distant stars. Suppose it has a nonluminous companion that circles it in an orbit whose plane does not coincide with our line of sight to the star. 

Both the star and the companion revolve around a common center of mass. The center of mass will trace a straight line against the stellar background and thus the luminous star will trace a sinusoidal path. From the existence of the oscillation we can deduce the existence of the companion. Furthermore, from the period and amplitude of the oscillation we can calculate the period and mass of the companion. The technique is only sensitive enough, however, to detect the perturbations of a massive planet around the nearest stars.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Friday Evening in the Valley

While many of my neighbors are celebrating the no facemask
required announcement by going places without wearing their facemasks, I am simple sitting at home enjoying the day with my Siamese cat, Piper, named after the actor and the fact that I needed a 2 syllable name.

My Friday started with coffee and Cappuccino Mix and Fox News with Bill Hemmer and his female cohost whose name I cannot remember but who is not impressive because she talks too fast...  although, I am sure that some people like that style.

SOS for the most part, so I switched the channel to Below Zero about people supposedly living OFF THE GRID in Alaska, but all those damn shows are scripted, so you gotta take the "reality" part with a grain of salt.

Once my body was satiated with a sufficient amount of coffee, I finished sanding down the wall that I had fixed with spackling and after making sure that it was a smooth as a baby's butt, I let my wife know that it was ok to paint...  a chore which I would do if she did not care to do it.

I've always hated that phrase, "I don't care to do it," because to me it means I don't want to do it but to the people in this area, it means I don't mind doing it...  it is all rather confusing to a North Carolinian.

Next, I vacuumed our outside pool which is stupid to say it that way since very few people in these parts have inside pools...  and poured some kind of crap into the pool that the pool people gave us because something in the water was either too high or too low.  I did not have to mix it with anything, just walked around its perimeter and sprinkled a little bit at a time into the pool.

WIth that done, it was time for my first meal of the day...  oatmeal, peaches, and cinnamon but only 1/2 cup of dry ingredients which is heart healthy and only 175 calories.

This meal allowed me to start working on my blogs and the novel I am writing which took me into mid afternoon and I had my first snack of rice cakes and unsweetened tea.  For about 90 minutes I watched 2 episodes (fast forwarding through the commercials) of Ancient Aliens and got especially interested in the Book of Enoch that was left out of the Christian Bible.  It had some very interesting shit in it about a group of extraterrestrials called the Watchers getting humans pregnant and their off springs were these damn giants...  even the Bible mentions giants as well as Enoch even though it don't include his book.  

I know I should have used doesn't instead of don't but I felt a little frisky...

Second snack was then consumed of a 1/8 portion of a small brick of cheese and 5 saltine crackers...  totaling 160 calories.

If you don't give a shit about my caloric intake then just read past it.

Once my second snack was "down the hatch," I proceeded to do a little more research on The Dead Sea Scrolls and Spectral Imaging which can bring out words even after the page is burned...  now that is some cool shit.

Black beans, corn, diced tomatoes, rice, onion, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic is my last meal recording a whopping 320 calories but my daily overall total still remains under 1,600 and my range these days is 1,400 to 1,800.

The day concludes with me checking my stats on my four blogs, setting the thermostat to turn on the air, and writing this last post...

Is this a typical Friday?

Yes...  it is when I am at at home in the Valley...

I have been mowing my lawn on Thursdays this time around instead of Fridays or the weekend because we left early Friday morning several weeks ago for our first of many vacations after the pandemic lost its power over us.  And, I am still waiting for the world to get PISSED OFF at China...  but I doubt that will ever happen.

Darkness outside my window cause me to flip the light switch and now Piper and I have some light by which to see each other.

Tomorrow will be a brief day outside as we lower the steps down into the pool and stake up a dozen tomato plants that were planted a couple of days ago.  Other than that, I plan to spend the rest of the day inside, piddling around with my writing and eating my low calorie meals and snacks.

But, what the hell, it gives this retired Veteran something to do each day and I don't have to spend any time at all at work refusing to KISS THE ASS of my supervisor.

The Number Twelve (12)

 What is the significance of this number?

The number twelve carries religious, mythological and magical symbolism, generally representing perfection, entirety, or cosmic order in traditions since antiquity.

• 12 tribes of Israel
• 12 disciples of Jesus
• 12 Imams in Islam
• 12 gates in heaven
• 12 angels
• 12 inches in a foot
• 12 eggs in a dozen
• 12 ribs on a human being
• 12 hours on a clock
• 12 hours earth orbits the sun
• 12 is easily divisible by 1,2,3,4,6, and 12
• 12 months in the year
• 12 is the symbol of love
• 12 signs of the Zodiac
• 12 sided universe
• 12 gods in Greek mythology
• 12 sons of the Norse god Odin

And, I am sure that we can think of more, if we wanted to take the time, which we probably do not...

Some think of the number 12 as the perfect number and it has been used often by those who believe that extraterrestrials have visited earth and were actually the ones who imparted than knowledge to the people because 10, instead of 12, would be a more common number to use, especially when considering the early development of mankind...  and the fact that we have 10 fingers and 10 toes...  not 12...  and yet those early civilizations had a mathematical system that was based upon the number 12...

Riddle me that one...

Those Who Know The Future

What will happen to you tomorrow?

Or, the next day?

Or, the next?

No one living on earth really knows, although there are forecasters who claim that they can predict the weather or the economy or the technological trends that will happen in the brief future of let's say over the next few days, or few months, or few years, respectfully.

Any further out and it is shear speculation and/guess work at best.

But, what if someone knew what you would be like or become in 50 years or even 60 years, 80 years or more...  then, would one's life not become predetermined?

Religious people believe that our CREATOR knows the future and what will happen or not happen to all of us, both the believers as well as the non-believers...  however, there are many people on earth that are not religious and do not believe in a CREATOR...   yet, the evidence is strongly favoring that earth has been visited in the past and is still being visited today by extraterrestrials...  and, of those who believe in ET's, also believe that many of our large structures here on earth were built by ancient aliens or ET's.

Even the religious son of God, the Father, the Creator, said, "My Kingdom is not of this world."

These people also believe that ET's have altered our DNA and have created the species we are today...  and, in some cases have given  or infused others with their knowledge to take the rest of us humans to where we need to be faster than we could have achieved it on our own.

So, these ET's might also be able to know or have seen our future, releasing the knowledge that our lives have been predetermined from the getgo..

Yet...  there are still those who say BULLSHIT to this idea.   There ain't no ancient aliens crawling all over earth spreading their knowledge out to only a few and building monuments.  Man achieved these things by shear will power and determination of that will power.

HOW FOOLISH IS THAT THOUGHT???

Predetermination

Our fate is written in the stars, so the old stories go. It makes for thrilling drama, but it isn't the way the Universe works. But there's an interesting effect of quantum mechanics that might leave an opening for a starry fate, so a team of researchers decided to test the idea.

The idea stems from a subtle effect of quantum physics demonstrated by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment. One of the basic properties of quantum objects is that their behavior isn't predetermined. The statistical behavior of a quantum system is governed by the laws of quantum theory, but the specific outcome of a particular measurement is indefinite until it's actually performed. This behavior manifests itself in things such as particle-wave duality, where photons and electrons can sometimes behave like particles and sometimes like waves.

One of the more subtle effects related to this property is known as entanglement, when two quantum objects have some kind of connection that allows you to gain information about object A by only interacting with object B. As a basic example, suppose I took a pair of shoes and sent one shoe to my brother in Cleveland, and the other to my sister in Albuquerque. Knowing what a prankster I am, when my sister opens the package and finds a left shoe, she immediately knows her brother was sent the right one. The fact that shoes come in pairs means they are an "entangled" system.

The difference between shoes and quantum entanglement is that the shoes already had a destined outcome. When I mailed the shoes days earlier, the die was already cast. Even if I didn't know which shoe I sent to my brother and sister, I definitely sent one or the other, and there was always a particular shoe in each box. My sister couldn't have opened the box to find a slipper. 

But with quantum entanglement, slippers are possible. In the quantum world, it would be like mailing the boxes where all I know is that they form a pair. It could be shoes, gloves or socks, and neither I nor my siblings would know what the boxes contain until one of them opens a box. But the moment my brother opens the box and finds a left-handed glove, he immediately knows our dear sister will be receiving its right-handed mate.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Success is Relative

There are people or should I say citizens living in the United States that are currently working for $10/hour and if they were to receive a wage increase up to $15/hour then they would feel like they have been successful in their careers.

There are other citizens living in the United States who currently feel that if I do not generate $10 million of annual income that their careers have not been successful.

Both individuals are correct in their assessment of themselves and obviously both live completely different lifestyles...  but... what is the correct measure of success?

• One's paycheck?
• One's net worth?
• One's spiritual beliefs?
• One's family and friends?
• One's healthy lifestyle?
• One's frugal lifestyle?
• One's honesty and integrity?
• One's kindness to animals?

Success accentuates the positive not the negative...  however and this oftentimes happens, if one is to be success one also has to create a certain amount of negativity in order to get there...  wherever there might be.

That is to say that success creates winners and losers and while success sometimes does create winners and winners that oftentimes does not happen due to the circumstances that always leads to one's success...  in that the circumstance always pivot around competition.

You might have enough money to purchase a house for $20,000 over the listed price and because others cannot afford to go higher than $20,000 over listed price, you successfully are able to purchase the house that you want, while others were not successful.

How many times does a loser lose before that loser finally decides to quit?

And, therein lies the difference, the winner does not count the number of loses only the number of wins...  and, mathematically or statistically, a winner loses just as often as a winner wins.

Winners don't quit...  which is why most of them are ultimately successful.

However, one can still be successful by not setting such high and lofty goals.

Why not strive for a net worth of $500,000 instead of a net worth of $10,000,000?

One can be successful at both goals.

BUT, our society only measures true success on the amount of financial capital one accumulates over one's lifetime.  Therefore, the more wealthy are the more successful.

I don't think that is the true measure of success and I feel this way not because I don't have a lot of money saved or invested because I have all that I need to live a comfortable life for the rest of my life.  Some may think my definition of comfortable is wrong because my 1500 square foot home will never compare to their 15,000 square foot home or their 10,000 square foot beach cottage on the coast or at Martha's Vineyard.

What can one do in a 15,000 square foot home?  I mean would you allocate so much time each day to be spent in each room or are those extra rooms there for guests that may or may not show up but once or twice a year, around the holiday period.

Why would you want to read a book alone in a room that could easily hold 100 guests.  All one needs is a chair and a lamp or a window with the curtains open.

I am sitting at my desk right now in an 8 X 10 foot room, looking out the window that my Siamese cat is also looking out of, at the three Dogwood trees that I intentionally planted very close together so that they would create an umbrella affect as they matured.  One blooms pink, one white, and one red in the spring of every year without fail.

I planted them that close to symbolize the religious trinity from which a lot of my inspiration comes these days as I find myself aging out of life.  I look at those three trees and I ponder all sorts of things but mainly how I have survived two types of cancer growing side-by-side in my body for over 12 years.

To me, having a window to look out of and see these three trees that enables my mind and thought to be grateful and appreciative of the life I have been given, to me, is being successful.  I don't need a lot of money to help me generate happiness...  and, I feel sad for those who need money or perceive that they need money to generate their happiness for themselves and others.

New Exoplanet

A team of astronomers from the Grenoble Alpes University in France and elsewhere, reports the detection of a new sub-Neptune exoplanet orbiting an M dwarf star. The newly found alien world, designated TOI-269 b, is nearly three times larger than the Earth. The finding was detailed in a paper published April 30 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets. So far, it has identified nearly 2,700 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 125 have been confirmed so far.

TOI-269 (also known as TIC 220479565) is an M dwarf located some 186 light years away from the Earth. It has a spectral type of M2V, radius of about 0.4 solar radii and mass of approximately 0.39 solar masses. The star's effective temperature is estimated to be some 3,500 K, while its metallicity is at a level of around -0.29.269

TOI-269 was observed by the TESS spacecraft between September 2018 and July 2019, which resulted in the identification of a transit signal in its light curve. Now, using various ground-based telescopes, including the Exoplanets in Transits and their Atmospheres (ExTrA) facility at La Silla Observatory in Chile, a group of astronomers led by Marion Cointepas has confirmed the planetary nature of this signal.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...