The Future for US Aircraft Carriers

The United States has decided to spend many billions of dollars on the CVN-78 (“Ford”) class of aircraft carriers to replace the venerable Nimitz class. 

The latter has served the U.S. Navy since 1975, with the last ship (USS George H. W. Bush) entering service in 2009. The Fords could be in service, in one configuration or another, until the end of the 21st century.

Just as the U.S. government has determined to make this investment, numerous analysts have argued that the increasing lethality of anti-access/area denial systems (especially China’s, but also Russia and Iran) has made the aircraft carrier obsolete.  

If so, investing in a class of ships intended to serve for 90 years might look like a colossal waste of money.

As with any difficult debate, we should take time to define our terms, and clarify the stakes. The anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems around the world may indeed curb the effectiveness of the Ford class, but the U.S. will still find uses for this ships.  READ MORE...

Unsteady

Dan Bongino

 

Fish

 

Wild

Breakfast Habits

Inflammation can be a tricky issue. On the one hand, it is a necessary process that our bodies need to heal from injury, which is known as acute inflammation. On the other, it can lead to serious health issues and illness if it turns chronic, which is the type we will be referring to in this article.

Chronic inflammation can be caused by things like autoimmune disorders, exposure to toxins, obesity, and an inactive lifestyle, and according to Harvard Health, it "plays a central role" in diseases like diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and Alzheimer's.

Because of inflammation's connection to weight, diet, and exercise, there are certain foods that we can eat and avoid to help lower our chances of developing chronic inflammation in the long run.

Continue reading to learn about some of the worst breakfast foods and breakfast habits for inflammation, and for more tips on inflammation, make sure to check out Popular Foods For Reducing Inflammation After 50.

Eating refined carbohydratesShutterstock

When it comes to inflammation, added sugar and refined carbohydrates are some of the leading culprits.

"One of the worst breakfast habits for inflammation is eating refined carbohydrates and foods high in added sugar like packaged pastries, donuts, and baked goods," says Amy Goodson, MS, RD, CSSD, LD author of The Sports Nutrition Playbook.

Lauren Manaker, MS, RDN, registered dietitian on our medical expert board and author of The First Time Mom's Pregnancy Cookbook and Fueling Male Fertility agrees, saying that "sugary and refined pastries like donuts and muffins can be loaded with ingredients that can contribute to inflammation, so it's best to stick to whole grain options without questionable ingredients instead."  READ MORE...

Cat & Dog

 

800 Year Old Mummy

800 Year Old Mummy - Peru

A team of experts has found a mummy estimated to be at least 800 years old on Peru’s central coast, one of the archaeologists who participated in the excavation said on Friday.  The mummified remains were of a person from the culture that developed between the coast and mountains of the South American country.The mummy, whose gender was not identified, was discovered in the Lima region, said archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen Luna.

“The main characteristic of the mummy is that the whole body was tied up by ropes and with the hands covering the face, which would be part of the local funeral pattern,” said Van Dalen Luna, from the State University of San Marcos.

The remains are of a person who lived in the high Andean region of the country, he said. “Radiocarbon dating will give a more precise chronology.”

The mummy was found inside an underground structure found on the outskirts of the city of Lima. In the tomb were also offerings including ceramics, vegetable remains and stone tools, he said.

Peru – home to tourist destination Machu Picchu – is home to hundreds of archaeological sites from cultures that developed before and after the Inca Empire, which dominated the southern part of South America 500 years ago, from southern Ecuador and Colombia to central Chile.

Passenger Bird

 

Rolling Back US-China Tariffs

Eliminating tariffs imposed on goods during the worst of the trade war would help ease inflation in the U.S., former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told CNBC on Tuesday.But there’s currently “no political space” to do so, he said on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia.”

“I think that the United States and China have deep differences. I’ve never thought it should just be about negotiating the exchange of one good or another on one side or the other. It should be about a level playing field,” Lew said. He served as treasury secretary from 2013 to 2017 during the Obama administration.

He continued: “I’ve thought from the beginning that the tariffs were an ineffective way to deal with their attacks on American consumers. And right now, with inflation being an issue, rolling back tariffs would actually reduce inflation in the United States.”

Relations between Washington and Beijing took a turn for the worse in 2018, when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods and Beijing retaliated with similar punitive measures, drawing both sides into a protracted trade war.

U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods stood at an average of 19.3% on a trade-weighted basis in early 2021, while Chinese tariffs on American products were at about 20.7%, according to data compiled by think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics earlier this year.

Before the trade war, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods were on average 3.1% in early 2018 while China’s tariffs on American goods were at 8%, the data showed.

Referring to rolling back tariffs, Lew said: “Both the leaders have to, I think, create political space in our two countries for these issues to be issues where you can move and make progress, because otherwise we either stay where we are. It gets worse. I think we can do better.”  READ MORE...

Dolphin

I Don't Know What I Don't Know

 BULLSHIT...  is the first word that comes to my
mind and why do you think that is?

Because,

people DO KNOW when they do not know something and when they use this phrase they are just playing with words...  saying I know that I don't know...  so, my phrase therefore is correct...

My comment to that is that if you know what you don't know then it is virtually impossible not to know what you don't know as to two concepts are mutually exclusive.

OF COURSE, that you don't know that you don't know or is that still knowing that you don't know?

I am sure there are things from a distant planet that you don't know, but even when you say that, you are saying that you know you don't know those things...

Clever people like this have their heads up their asses and makes me feel like I should buy them a glass bellybutton for them to see out of...

Political Humor

 

Glass of Water

 

Zendaya

 

New Fusion Energy Website Launched

Credit: U.S. Fusion Energy

The new community-wide outreach, education, and workforce development website provides centralized resources for all audiences.

The U.S. Fusion Outreach Team, a grassroots organization in the fusion community focused on reducing barriers to outreach efforts, has launched a new centralized website to engage an expanding workforce, media, educators, and the public in the journey toward a world powered by fusion energy.

The U.S. fusion community has just completed a two year strategic planning process to focus on a bold new direction: the construction of a prototype fusion power plant by 2035 (NAS report). Following a recommendation from the consensus reports created by researchers (Community Planning Process and Powering the Future reports), a diverse committee of stakeholders from the U.S. fusion energy community has collaborated to build usfusionenergy.org. The website will feature the latest fusion news and informative articles, events, and resources that will help anyone, anywhere, understand the promise of fusion energy.

The timing of this website launch could not be more relevant. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is underway in Glasgow as world leaders decide how to tackle climate change. Additionally, the U.S. Congress is currently debating policy on transitioning the country to clean energy. The development of fusion energy as a new power source will be revolutionary to both initiatives.

Furthermore, fusion energy is building momentum in the United States and around the world. The National Ignition Facility in California announced a significant step forward for laser-driven fusion this August. Additionally, Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts recently leaped forward in magnet-driven fusion technology. Worldwide, the international ITER project in France reports steady progress with the first plasma scheduled for 2025.

With such advancements, there has never been a better time to get involved in fusion energy! The United States is teeming with private companies seeking to commercialize fusion, and the industry will need talent of all backgrounds. To meet the moment, the new website, usfusionenergy.org, prioritizes featuring jobs and opportunities across the United States to expand the definition of “Fusioneer,” one who is involved in the fusion energy community.  READ MORE...

Wild Animals

 

Realistic Humanoid

Ai-Da, the world’s first humanoid robot artist, and one of the most famous robots ever, continues to push the boundaries of “normality,” and make headlines with its daring achievements. After becoming the first humanoid robot to create artistic paintings, Ai-Da is now also the first one to write and perform poetry, just like humans.

 

Ai-Da made waves as soon as it made its debut on the artistic scene, in 2019, but it became infamous after the Egypt incident that took place earlier this year. Traveling there in order to open an art exhibition at the Pyramids of Giza, it was detained at the border, under the suspicion that the hidden cameras in its eyes would be used for espionage. No longer a “simple” robotic artist, Ai-Da was seen as a security threat and became even more famous overnight.

The humanoid robot would eventually be cleared, after diplomatic efforts, but the following photos of it next to the Pyramids will forever mark this very interesting event that says a lot about technology advancement in general, and all the fears connected to that. Ai-Da went even further and dedicated a work of art, called Eyes Wide Shut, to this incident, since the Egypt border patrol officers wanted to remove the cameras that basically act as Ai-Da’s eyes.  READ MORE...

Propaganda

 

Hard to be Happy

The self-help industry is booming, fueled by research on positive psychology – the scientific study of what makes people flourish.At the same time, the rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm continue to soar worldwide. So are we doomed to be unhappy, despite these advances in psychology?

According to an influential article published in Review of General Psychology in 2005, 50 percent of people's happiness is determined by their genes, 10 percent depends on their circumstances and 40 percent on "intentional activity" (mainly, whether you're positive or not).

This so-called happiness pie put positive-psychology acolytes in the driving seat, allowing them to decide on their happiness trajectory. (Although, the unspoken message is that if you are unhappy, it's your own fault.)

The happiness pie was widely critiqued because it was based on assumptions about genetics that have become discredited. For decades, behavioral genetics researchers carried out studies with twins and established that between 40 percent and 50 percent of the variance in their happiness was explained by genetics, which is why the percentage appeared in the happiness pie.

Behavioral geneticists use a statistical technique to estimate the genetic and environmental components based on people's familial relatedness, hence the use of twins in their studies.

But these figures assumed that both identical and fraternal twins experience the same environment when growing up together – an assumption that doesn't really hold water.

In response to the criticism about the 2005 paper, the same authors wrote a paper in 2019 that introduced a more nuanced approach on the effect of genes on happiness, which recognized the interactions between our genetics and our environment. READ MORE...