Monday, April 25
Sunday, April 24
Off My Rocker
There was a time in the not too distant past when I spent almost all my waking moments outside, especially during the months of April through November and sometimes December... those moments are receding almost as fast as my hairline...
My first issues were heart attack and cancer which kept me mostly inside unless I was wearing clothes that covered most of my skin, protecting it from the sun. Recently, I began to experience difficulty in walking especially when I had not been drinking and an orthopedic doctor suggested an MRI and thought it might be L5/L6 or maybe even L4.
Well shit, that eliminated the rest of my time outside... I was outside today attempting to hook up our water hoses so that they would not leak which is normally not a big deal but because of my penguin walk and inability to lift my legs up high enough, I tripped over the hose numerous times, beating up my knees...
So, here I am back inside wishing I was back outside doing something but hell there ain't much a damn ole handicapped man like myself can do...
My MRI is Wednesday and it will be another week because the results will be shared... but, I am leaning towards surgery rather than injections... several people have told me injections don't last long, and while surgery instantly eliminates flexibility, at least it is over...
Stay young as long as you can... and when you are young be careful what the hell you do because the physical life I lead when I was younger is what's causing all my physical problems now that I am older... Now that's a pisser!!!
Netflix is Failing
In 2021 Squid Game became the most-watched series globally in Netflix history
Trying to watch some of Netflix's more recent series all the way through, says Paul Weiner, feels a bit like cramming frankfurters down your throat in a hotdog eating contest.
Readers outside the US may not share the American enthusiasm for competitive hotdog swallowing. But maybe they can relate to the feeling.
We've all spent the last few years, the last two especially, binge-watching, indiscriminately, too mesmerised to click the off-button.
Are we maybe just a little bit sick of it?
That's the fear seizing executives in Netflix's boardroom right now. That Mr Weiner, a 28-year-old artist from Denver, Colorado, who loved the streaming service at first, especially for watching old favourites like Star Trek and The Office, typifies a new mood. That after years of skyrocketing subscriber growth, people will switch off, not just their television sets, but their direct debits too.
Mr Weiner is one of the hundreds of thousands who have already cancelled, prompting a moment of high drama for the company this week as its share price plummeted and confidence in its future wobbled. READ MORE...
Twitter Fights Musk
Twitter's board has armed itself against a possible hostile takeover - a day after billionaire Elon Musk made a $43bn (£33bn) offer to buy the platform.
It has adopted what is known as a "limited-duration shareholder rights plan", also known as a "poison pill".
The move will prevent anyone from having more than a 15% stake in the company.
It does this by allowing others to buy additional shares at a discount.
The Twitter board detailed its defence plan to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and put out a statement saying it was needed because of Mr Musk's "unsolicited, non-binding proposal to acquire Twitter".
A takeover bid is considered hostile when one company tries to acquire another against the wishes of that company's management - in Twitter's case, its executive board.
Josh White, former financial economist for the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the BBC that a poison pill is "one of those last lines of defence against a hostile bid takeover".
"We call it the nuclear option," he said.
Mr White says the board has made it clear "that they don't feel like it's a high enough value for the company". READ MORE...
Disney's Powers in Florida Revoked
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a controversial bill dissolving Walt Disney World's self-governing status in the state.
The move is seen as retribution for Disney's opposition to the state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill.
The company's status in the state in effect allowed Disney to operate as its own municipal government.
It included the ability to levy tax, build roads, control utilities and operate its own fire department.
The Florida bill will eliminate Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District and several others.
The measure, however, allows for districts to be re-established in the future.
At a bill signing ceremony on Friday, Mr DeSantis accused Disney of lying about the controversial bill, which bars many primary school classrooms from discussing sexual orientation.
"You're a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you're gonna marshal your economic might to attack the parents of my state," he said.
"We view that as a provocation, and we're going to fight back against that." READ MORE...
Saturday, April 23
Reducing Prosocial Reparative Behaviors
A series of studies have uncovered a causal relationship between mindfulness meditation and decreased feelings of guilt. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Several studies have found that mindfulness meditation draws people’s focus inward and reduces negative emotions. But some negative emotions provide useful social feedback. For example, feelings of guilt help to push individuals to atone for their transgressions against others. The new study provides evidence that mindfulness can lead to undesirable outcomes by dampening feelings of guilt.
“I was interested in doing this research because, after I started studying meditation and meditating myself, I noticed that I was using it as almost a default way of reacting to stressors,” said study author Andrew C. Hafenbrack, an assistant professor at the University of Washington. “This was great when I was overly ruminating or overreacting to some minor problem, and is a powerful sleep aid. Sometimes, however, this meant that I would meditate or focus on my breath in situations that there was actually a significant problem and it would have been better if I had faced it directly and immediately.”
“I had some confidence that I was not alone in this when I read a Harvard Business Review article by medical doctor and executive coach David Brendel in 2015, where he described that he ‘worked with clients who, instead of rationally thinking through a career challenge or ethical dilemma, prefer to disconnect from their challenges and retreat into a meditative mindset. The issue here is that some problems require more thinking, not less.'”
“I also know several people who are into mind-body practices, including but not limited to mindfulness meditation, but who are unusually flaky or otherwise don’t treat other people particularly well. So I wondered what was going on. It seemed to go against the essence of what I thought mindfulness and meditation were supposed to do, which is largely due to the associations I had based on the traditional or religious forms.”
The researchers conducted eight separate experiments, which included more than 1,400 participants. In the studies, the participants were randomly assigned to either listen to an 8-minute guided meditation recording created by a professional mindfulness meditation instructor or an 8-minute recording by the same speaker in which they were instructed to think of whatever came to mind. READ MORE...
Smartphone Radiation
Radiation Emissions of Popular Smartphones
Smartphones have become an integral part of our everyday lives. From work and school to daily tasks, these handheld devices have brought everything into the palm of our hands.
Most people spend 5-6 hours on their phones each day. And, given that our phones emit a tiny amount of radiation, we’re exposing ourselves to radiation for hours each day.
But different phones emit different amounts of radiation.
With the help of data collected by the German Federal Office of Radiation Protection, we visualize the radiation emissions of some popular smartphones in the market today.
Radiation and SAR Values of Smartphones
Smartphones and other mobile devices emit tiny amounts of radiofrequency (RF) radiation. Humans can absorb this radiation when the smartphone is being used or is lying dormant anywhere near their bodies.
The parameter used to measure phone radiation emissions is the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). It is the unit of measurement that represents the quantity of electromagnetic energy absorbed by the body when using a mobile device.
The Council of the European Union has set radiation standards for cell phones at 2 watts per kilogram, measured over the 10 grams of tissue that is absorbing the most signal.
SAR values are calculated at the ear (speaking on the phone) and at the body (kept in your pocket). For the purposes of this article, we’ve used the former calculations.
Smartphones With the Highest Levels of Radiation Emissions
The Motorola Edge has the highest radiation emission with a SAR value of 1.79 watts of radiation per kilogram. That’s significantly higher than most other smartphone models in the market today and close to the limits set by the EU for cellphones.
Coming in second is the Axon 11 5G by ZTE with 1.59, followed by the OnePlus 6T at a close third with 1.55 W/kg. The Sony Experia AX2 Plus with 1.41 and the Google Pixel 3 XL and 3A XL at 1.39 round out the top five.
Here is a look at the 10 smartphones that emit the highest level of radiation:
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THESE 10 SMARTPHONES, CLICK HERE...
Rare Ring Galaxies
Almost every galaxy can be classified as a spiral, elliptical, or irregular galaxy. Only 1-in-10,000 galaxies fall into the rarest category of all: ring galaxies. With a dense core consisting of old stars, and a circular or elliptical ring consisting of bright, blue, young stars, the first ring was only discovered in 1950: Hoag's object. After decades of wondering how these objects form, we've seen enough of them, capturing them in various stages of evolution, that we finally know where they come from.
When we look out into deep space, beyond the confines of the Milky Way, we find that the Universe isn’t quite so empty. Galaxies — small and large, near and far, in rich clusters and in near-total isolation — fill the abyss of space, with the Milky Way being just one of approximately two trillion such galaxies within the observable Universe.
Galaxies are collections of normal matter, including plasmas, gas, dust, planets, and most prominently, stars. It’s through the examination of that starlight that we’ve learned the most about the physical properties of galaxies, and been able to reconstruct how they came to be.
In general, there are four classes of galaxies that we see. Spirals, like the Milky Way, are the most common type of large galaxy in the Universe. Ellipticals, like M87, are the largest and most common type of galaxy in the rich, central regions of galaxy clusters. Irregular galaxies are a third ubiquitous type, usually distorted from a prior spiral or elliptical shape by gravitational interactions.
But there’s a very rare type that’s striking and beautiful: ring galaxies. They make up only 1-in-10,000 of all the galaxies out there, with the first one, Hoag’s object, only discovered in 1950. After more than 70 years, we’ve finally figured out how the Universe makes them. READ MORE...
Friday, April 22
A Coronal Mass Ejection From the Sun
Telegraph networks all throughout the globe failed catastrophically on September 1 and 2, 1859. The telegraph operators reported feeling electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment without batteries. The aurora borealis, sometimes known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as Colombia in the evenings. This phenomenon is typically only seen at higher latitudes, such as in northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia.
The planet was hit by a tremendous geomagnetic storm on that day, which is now known as the Carrington Event. When a massive bubble of superheated gas called plasma is blasted from the sun’s surface and collides with the Earth, it causes these storms. This bubble is called a coronal mass ejection.
The plasma of a coronal mass ejection consists of a cloud of protons and electrons, which are electrically charged particles. When these particles reach the Earth, they interact with the magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic field to distort and weaken, which in turn leads to the strange behavior of the aurora borealis and other natural phenomena. As an electrical engineer who specializes in the power grid, I study how geomagnetic storms also threaten to cause power and internet outages and how to protect against that.
Geomagnetic storms
The Carrington Event of 1859 is the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, but it is not an isolated event.
Geomagnetic storms have been recorded since the early 19th century, and scientific data from Antarctic ice core samples has shown evidence of an even more massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around A.D. 774, now known as the Miyake Event. That solar flare produced the largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 ever recorded. Geomagnetic storms trigger high amounts of cosmic rays in Earth’s upper atmosphere, which in turn produce carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon. READ MORE...
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