Green flash

I have never seen the so-called ‘green flash’, the brief appearance of green light just as the sun sets over the horizon. It requires special conditions for it it occur and although those conditions are not that rare, your chance of being in the right place for those few seconds is low. Fortunately with cameras, you can now capture the green (and even more occasionally blue and red) flashes as can be seen in this video compilation by Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer.

The slipperiness of conspiratorial rabbit holes

A supporter of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) who was also an avid consumer of Fox News is suing the media company saying that he was defamed by Tucker Carlson.

Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday by Trump supporter Ray Epps after former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

Carlson said Epps, an Arizona resident and former marine, “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.

Carlson also told viewers that Epps was recorded urging the mob to enter the Capitol building, but that he never entered himself.

Epps claims he and his wife, Robyn, have received death threats and that their lives were ruined because of Carlson’s conspiracies.

The lawsuit reads: “As Fox recently learned in its litigation against Dominion Voting Systems, its lies have consequences.”

The lawsuit describes Epps as a “loyal Fox viewer and Trump supporter” and rejeted [sic] the notion he was a federal agent.

Legal experts noted earlier this week that while Epps will have to prove that Carlson’s claims damaged his reputation, he presents a strong argument and therefore probably has standing.

David D Lin of the Lewis & Lin LLC law firm said he believed “there is a lot of potential risk here to Fox and they need to take the claims very seriously,” before adding that Carlson could be personally liable if the suit included him.

Epps could face charges himself for his role in the January 6 insurrection. He was questioned by the House January 6 committee, though a criminal investigation is still ongoing.

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The allure of extreme temperatures

Parts of the US, especially in the southwest and west, are going through record-breaking heat waves. I am not personally affected by it since where I live in California, because it is on the coast, temperatures have so far not exceeded 70F (21C) this year. But as you go inland, the temperatures start rising dramatically even within just a few miles. Salinas Valley has been seeing temperatures of 100F (38C).

Death Valley National Park in California is notorious for its high temperatures even in normal years, and global warming has just accentuated it. But many people are drawn to visit it on even the hottest days precisely because of the heat.

Death Valley is hardly a stranger to elemental extreme and has long attracted those drawn to the edge. The park bills itself as the “hottest, driest and lowest” – the hottest place on Earth, the driest place in the United States and the lowest point in North America. Visitors make the trek there from around the world to experience its surreal, lunar-looking landscapes and dramatic temperature swings. A famously difficult ultramarathon, the Badwater 135 sees runners race across the cracked salt flat of the park each July.

But even by Death Valley standards, this has been a remarkable summer. The park, which set the world record for the hottest air temperature (a withering 134F, or 56.67C) more than a century ago, approached modern heat records this week. An excessive heat warning, involving daytime temperatures “well over” 120F and nighttime averages still hovering around the triple digits, remains in effect until Sunday.

This week, tourists congregated around a display thermometer in front of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, posing for photos as the temperature ticked from 123F to 124F. The impenetrable wall of desert heat, a shock to the system after being inside a chilled car, forced each group into the shelter of the visitor center after only a minute or two.

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There is no dark side of the moon

This comic illustrates a common misconception, that there is a side of the Moon that is in permanent darkness.

(WuMo)

In reality, as the Moon orbits the Earth, any hemisphere (‘side’) experiences equal amounts of sunlight and darkness, just like the Earth. What is true is that due to tidal forces caused by the Earth, the Moon is ‘locked’ with the Earth so that only one side faces the Earth at all times. As a result, it experiences cycles of two weeks of sunlight and two weeks of darkness as it orbits the Earth.

So while there is no dark side, there is such a thing as the ‘far side’ of the Moon that we cannot see from the Earth. The USSR space probe Luna 3 was the first to photograph the far side in 1959.

I am not sure when the notion that the Moon has a permanent dark side originated. Historically, the ‘dark side of the Moon’ was used colloquially (and correctly) to mean ‘hidden’ or ‘unseen’ but at some point became popularly associated with ‘unlit’. That idea may have gained popularity from the massive success of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon, although this was an allusion to lunacy and has nothing to do with astronomy.

Charging by the mile for gas

In the US there is a tax on gasoline and the revenues from that are used to pay for road and bridge repairs and maintenance. But revenues from this tax have not been keeping pace with needs due to Congress not being willing to raise the tax to keep up with inflation coupled with more fuel efficient cars and electric cars on the road, resulting in less consumption of gas. While the latter is a good thing in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it means that much-needed infrastructure repair is not being done.

One solution that is being proposed is to switch from a gas tax to a mileage tax where people would be charged by the number of miles driven rather that the amount of gas consumed. This requires placing of a tracking device on the car and pilot projects have begun in several states, Oregon being the leader.
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The myth of multitasking

(I came across this old post of mine from back in 2011 that I thought might be of interest to those who had not seen it.)

Since I work at a university and am around young adults all the time, I have long been aware that young people today are avid consumers of multimedia, who are adept at emailing, texting, listening to mp3 players, surfing the web, checking up on Facebook, etc. It seems like they are quite proficient at multitasking.

I have always been a poor multitasker. I cannot read or do any work that requires serious thinking if I can hear conversation or loud noises in the background. I have found that I cannot even listen to music in the background when reading. But I know people who seem to thrive on that kind of ambient sound and even deliberately go to coffee shops to do work such as grading papers or writing, things that would be impossible for me.
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A sobering analysis of what it might take to overcome vaccine skepticism

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. epitomizes the modern American success story. He has no notable achievements of his own but because of inherited family wealth and the well-known Kennedy name (he is the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy), he has the kind of influence that is so helpful in staying relevant. In fact, the ‘success’ of the entire Kennedy clan can be traced back to the ambitions of his wealthy grandfather Joseph Kennedy who paved the way to elite education and political success for his descendants.

Kennedy has now entered the contest for the Democratic nomination for president. He is a notorious anti-vaccine crusader and this will simply give him a platform to further propagate his views, while the family name will give him more publicity. Indeed his anti-vaccine misinformation got him banned from Facebook and Instagram and he used the loophole of his candidacy to get back on those platforms. He is also a hypocrite. While making all manner of outlandish and offensive claims about the dangers of vaccines, when he hosted a party at his home, he urged all guests to be vaccinated or be tested for Covid-19. He has also profited greatly from his anti-vaccine stance.
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The seductive appeal of identical twin stories

I am sure that pretty much everyone has been amazed at stories like the following, of identical twins who had been separated at birth and then reunited as adults.

Thirteen days before the start of the Second World War, a 35-year-old unmarried immigrant woman gave birth slightly prematurely to identical twins at the Memorial Hospital in Piqua, Ohio and immediately put them up for adoption. The boys spent their first month together in a children’s home before Ernest and Sarah Springer adopted one – and would have adopted both had they not been told, incorrectly, that the other twin had died. Two weeks later, Jess and Lucille Lewis adopted the other baby and, when they signed the papers at the local courthouse, calling their boy James, the clerk remarked: ‘That’s what [the Springers] named their son.’ Until then they hadn’t known he was a twin.

The boys grew up 40 miles apart in middle-class Ohioan families. Although James Lewis was six when he learnt he’d been adopted, it was only in his late 30s that he began searching for his birth family at the Ohio courthouse. In 1979, the adoption agency wrote to James Springer, who was astonished by the news, because as a teenager he’d been told his twin had died at birth. He phoned Lewis and four days later they met – a nervous handshake and then beaming smiles.

Both Jims, it transpired, had worked as deputy sheriffs, and had done stints at McDonald’s and at petrol stations; they’d both taken holidays at Pass-a-Grille beach in Florida, driving there in their light-blue Chevrolets. Each had dogs called Toy and brothers called Larry, and they’d married and divorced women called Linda, then married Bettys. They’d called their first sons James Alan/Allan. Both were good at maths and bad at spelling, loved carpentry, chewed their nails, chain-smoked Salem and drank Miller Lite beer. Both had haemorrhoids, started experiencing migraines at 18, gained 10 lb in their early 30s, and had similar heart problems and sleep patterns.

Incredible, no?
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The Polynesian puzzle

The Pacific Ocean covers almost half the surface of the Earth and despite its name can be the scene of massive storms. The entire region can be split into three regions, Micronesia and Melanesia that are on the western end of the ocean, close to Australasia, and Polynesia that occupies the central region. Polynesia is vast as can be seen by the size of the so-called Polynesian triangle consisting of Hawaii as the northern vertex, Rapa Nui (formerly called Easter Island) as the southeast vertex, and New Zealand as the southwest vertex. Each side of this triangle is about 9,000 miles. The people of Polynesia, despite being so widely dispersed, form a single, identifiable cultural group.

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Life in zero gravity

Gravity is weird. It is the oldest of the four fundamental forces that we have been able to describe and yet what it is remains mysterious. When Isaac Newton first introduced his theory of gravity and the idea that objects with mass attract each other, he was accused by some critics of introducing a form of mysticism into science by postulating non-contact forces that could act instantaneously over empty space.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity brought in more sophisticated ideas by replacing instantaneous action-at-a-distance between two masses by saying that one mass distorts that space around it and that the distortion spreads through space at the speed of light and that the second mass responds accordingly when that distortion reaches it, thus removing the instantaneous action-at-a-distance problem. His Principle of Equivalence also showed that we cannot distinguish between being in a uniform gravitational field and being subjected to a constant acceleration. When we are in free fall, we are effectively weightless. The catch is that at some point, very quickly, we hit the ground.

Gravity is a ubiquitous force. We cannot shield ourselves from it. All this makes it hard for Earthbound people like us to imagine what life might be like in the absence of gravity. Now with space travel, we see astronauts in space stations in gravity-free situations. It should be noted that that he Earth’s gravitational field at the orbital height of the space station is about 90% of what we feel on Earth. But because they are in free-fall as the station orbits the Earth, they are effectively in zero-gravity (or more accurately microgravity) fields for a long time as long as they are in orbit. This has given us some idea of what life might be like in such an environment but there are still surprises. Part of the surprise is due to the fact that many forces that on Earth are small compared to the Earth’s gravitational field and are swamped by it, become significant when in zero gravity but many people do not realize this.

Take for example, a recent story about a video of Chinese astronauts (they refer to them as taikonauts) that had a glass of water. Since many people expect that in zero gravity water must float in the air in the shape of a sphere, this raised suspicions that the video had not been shot in space. But they are wrong because they ignored how important adhesive forces become in the absence of gravity.
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