Friday, July 23
Math & Black Holes
The proximity of each reflection is dependent on the angle of observation with respect to the black hole, and the rate of the black hole's spin, according to a mathematical solution worked out by physics student Albert Sneppen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark.
This is really cool, absolutely, but it's not just really cool. It also potentially gives us a new tool for probing the gravitational environment around these extreme objects.
"There is something fantastically beautiful in now understanding why the images repeat themselves in such an elegant way," Sneppen said. "On top of that, it provides new opportunities to test our understanding of gravity and black holes."
If there's one thing that black holes are famous for, it's their extreme gravity. Specifically that, beyond a certain radius, the fastest achievable velocity in the Universe, that of light in a vacuum, is insufficient to achieve escape velocity.
That point of no return is the event horizon – defined by what's called the Schwarszchild radius – and it's the reason why we say that not even light can escape from a black hole's gravity. TO READ MORE
Fairytale Scandanavian Green Roofs
Scandinavians are serious about their green roofs. They’ve had them for a while now and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere. They even have a competition every year to determine the best green roof project in Scandinavia by the Scandinavian Green Roof Association! But there is a reason why Scandinavians like these green roofs so much… They are not only a beautiful feature for a house, but they also offer numerous social, environmental and financial benefits. They absorb rainwater, reduce winter heating costs, reduce summer air-conditioning costs, provide insulation, and are long lasting - just to name a few.
Thursday, July 22
Thursday Morning in East Tennessee
The Tennessee Valley is going to be experiencing 90 degree temperatures today and for the most part, I am going to be remaining inside.
I only watch FOX NEWS these days and it appears that the news is the SOS everyday... SOS is same ole shit...
- Defunding Police
- Critical Race Theory
- Eliminating Whiteness
- Black Lives Matter
- WOKE Awareness
- Illegal Immigration
I watch FOX News for about an hour or two and then I have had enough of all the bullshit that is going on...
I would like to have full employment
I would like to have a growing economy
I would like to have a strong military
I would like for the USA to be the global leader
I would like to end all wars
I would like to end all racism
I value my freedom of speech
As a decade+ long cancer survivor, I value life in all of its aspects... and, I realize that we will always need management even though most managers are ASSHOLES, arrogant, and egotisticals sons-of-bitches... I also realize that the wealthy must always be around regardless of our political system or type of government.
It is THE WEALTHY THAT FRIGGING PAY FOR EVERYTHING... and if we screw with them too much they will just move out of the USA... they can live anywhere... they will create a new USA no matter where they decide to live...
Sometimes, the general public is just plain STUPID...
Done Away With Cable TV
We both have cell phones so we no longer needed our landline through our cable provider.
We went from a cable coax connection to the internet to a fiber optic internet connect which is must faster and much more reliable and has greater bandwidth than cable internet.
We went from cable TV to HULU LIVE which includes much more than our current cable package and the fee is much less than what we were paying.
In short, we are getting more for less money each month.
We are streaming HULU through a ROKU device which is a one time equipment purchase. And, we have all of ROKU's free channels and movies as well.
We also have a KODI box which was a one time equipment purchase and while it offers access to more recent movies and is no always reliable... so, we don't use it much.
Later in the week, we are going to make another one time equipment purchase for a digital antenna where once connected to our TV, we will be able to watch local channels free-of-charge within a 50-100 mile radius.
Our HULU contract is on a month-to-month basis which is good... but our fiber WIFI is on a 2 year contract which does gives us some concern but something with which we have to live...
BREAK FREE OF CABLE...
Microsoft Ends Windows
With the arrival of Windows 11, and its once-a-year update cadence, Microsoft is effectively turning its back on its Windows-as-a-service model.
Microsoft's once-vaunted Windows-as-a-Service (WaaS) is in tatters. Windows 11's introduction last month — and more importantly its proposed servicing and maintenance scheme — did that.
The fact that Microsoft bent to the seemingly inevitable should be credited, even if the company took years to reach a cadence that many customers had pleaded for almost immediately. But the failure of the Windows-as-a-service model likely also has a downside, chief among them the tainting of that strategy — perhaps to the point where it's no longer an option through the foreseeable future.
Pluses and minuses, then, as usual. But which is which?
Microsoft had big plans for Windows 10. Enormous plans. The operating system would not be the next upgrade from Windows 7 but would be the final version for the rest of time. Rather than replace Windows 7 with another edition that would eventually age out of support and be supplanted in turn by Windows 10+x, Windows 10 would be constantly refreshed, with new features and functionality added to major updates released first three, then two times a year. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
Western Future
With no living memory of such scenes, Western audiences reached for the timeless literature of apocalypse to make sense of it all. But whereas ancient traditions of end times blamed spiritual causes for the collapse of civilisations, we, being the moderns that we are, opted for what we imagined to be a ‘scientific’ discourse – the so-called genre of collapsology.
Although some modern scholars, such as Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, retained essentially spiritual explanations for civilisation decline, while embedding them in empirical ground, those who would shape our interpretation of COVID-19 came from a different tradition, one that took inspiration from Thomas Malthus’s 1798 thesis about the natural consequences of human development.
Neo-Malthusians credited environmental feedback loops, not moral failings, for regime collapse. In the 1960s and ’70s, works by Paul Ehrlich and Donella Meadows et al argued that the world’s population was growing so fast it would soon outstrip resource supplies, leading to (among other things) widespread food shortages. More recently, Jared Diamond wrote of the role that environmental depletion and diseases played in the fall of civilisations, and his theory that the collapse of Easter Island resulted from overexploitation of the natural environment has enjoyed particular resonance.
Neo-Malthusians credited environmental feedback loops, not moral failings, for regime collapse. In the 1960s and ’70s, works by Paul Ehrlich and Donella Meadows et al argued that the world’s population was growing so fast it would soon outstrip resource supplies, leading to (among other things) widespread food shortages. More recently, Jared Diamond wrote of the role that environmental depletion and diseases played in the fall of civilisations, and his theory that the collapse of Easter Island resulted from overexploitation of the natural environment has enjoyed particular resonance.
For its part, the COVID-19 pandemic revived old theories about the role that diseases played in regime collapse, and we were reminded that plagues had laid low the Roman Empire and destroyed European feudalism.
Except, that wasn’t what happened. At least, not quite the way supposed.
The thesis that environmental stresses cause regime collapse remains a topic of great debate. We can start just with the cases mentioned above. The alarmist warnings in the 1970s about overpopulation soon gave way not to concerns about food shortages, but about the problems caused by global overproduction of food, which was driving down food prices and accelerating the urbanisation of the developing world.
Except, that wasn’t what happened. At least, not quite the way supposed.
The thesis that environmental stresses cause regime collapse remains a topic of great debate. We can start just with the cases mentioned above. The alarmist warnings in the 1970s about overpopulation soon gave way not to concerns about food shortages, but about the problems caused by global overproduction of food, which was driving down food prices and accelerating the urbanisation of the developing world.
Regarding Diamond’s book about Easter Island, pretty much from the get-go it faced strong criticism for its questionable evidence. For similar reasons, many historians of the Roman Empire doubt that the plague played a part in its downfall. As for the Black Death, in much of Europe it didn’t end feudalism but actually reinforced it.
More generally, measured by the scale of the loss in human life as a proportion of the total population in the affected areas, 19th-century epidemics of cholera, and the flu pandemic of 1918, all took a far greater toll in the Western world than COVID-19. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find hints of regime stress in response to any of them. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
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