Brexit cliffhanger in the UK

Not only is there no end to the government shutdown in the US, there does not seem to be even any action at all on this front. But there is plenty of high drama in the UK where things are rapidly coming to a head over Brexit. Tomorrow there is a big vote in the British parliament on the deal that Theresa May negotiated with the EU. She is widely expected to lose that vote, and if so is then required to come up with a new plan that will be voted on next Monday. Note that there is a deadline of March 29 for any deal with the EU to be approved. If it does not happen by then, the UK would be faced with a ‘no deal Brexit’ (see below) unless the deadline is extended by both sides which seems likely to happen since few like the idea of a disorderly breakup.
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A brief summary of what we know about cosmology

Sean Carroll has compiled a nice list of 19 items of what we currently know and don’t know about the Big Bang, in the hope of dispelling some common misconceptions. I found items #12 and #16 helpful in clarifying my own thinking about how to express these ideas.

12. The early universe had a low entropy. It looks like a thermal gas, but that’s only high-entropy if we ignore gravity. A truly high-entropy Big Bang would have been extremely lumpy, not smooth.

16. Dark energy is not a new force; it’s a new substance. The force causing the universe to accelerate is gravity.

Why Ocasio-Cortez scares the political establishment

People newly elected to the House of Representatives are usually considered political nonentities. Nobody outside their districts pays any attention to them, they get put on minor committees that deal with issues on the fringes, and have to slowly work their way up the seniority ranks before they are taken seriously. So the prominence of the new batch of Democratic congresspersons, especially the women, is something different. And of these, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the standout.
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Searching for the McConnell

During the shutdown crisis, the usually noisy creature known as the McConnell has suddenly disappeared into the undergrowth. Stephen Colbert finds nature documentary footage of the behavior of this animal when threatened, which explains the lack of recent sightings in the wild.

Why are the Flat Earthers taking such a big risk?

There is a report that the Flat Earth International Conference is organizing a big sea cruise for its members. But they seem to have overlooked one important detail.

“Ships navigate based on the principle that the Earth is round,” said Henk Keijer, a former cruise ship captain who sailed all over the globe during a 23-year career.

“Nautical charts are designed with that in mind: that the Earth is round.”

Keijer, who now works as a forensic marine expert for Robson Forensic, said the existence of GPS, the global positioning system, alone is proof that the Earth is a sphere, not a flat disc. GPS relies on 24 main satellites which orbit the Earth to provide positional and navigational information.

“The reason why 24 satellites were used is because on the curvature of the Earth,” Keijer said.

“A minimum of three satellites are required to determine a position. But someone located on the other side of the Earth would also like to know their position, so they also require a certain number of satellites.

“Had the Earth been flat, a total of three satellites would have been enough to provide this information to everyone on Earth. But it is not enough, because the Earth is round.”

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