I would have thought that this would be impossible. But engineers never cease to amaze me at what they can do and this particular solution boggled my mind. What they did was slice the ship in two and insert a new piece to extend it, like one would insert a leaf into a dining table to accommodate more people.
Incredible.
Cricket is a game that traditionally has expected the highest ethical standards of its players and spectators, so much so that the phrase ‘not cricket’ has entered the vernacular as denoting something that, while not being technically illegal or contravening an explicit rule, is nonetheless seen as a form of gamesmanship, trying to gain an edge that was not based purely on skill or strategy or ability. But that sterling reputation has seriously deteriorated over time because of the on-field and off-field tactics adopted by players and spectators
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I kept the livestream of the March For Our Lives in the background as I worked on my computer today and I must say that I extremely impressed by what I saw and heard. The speakers kept their speeches short but strong and passionate under the slogans of ‘Never Again’ and ‘Enough is Enough’. There were some popular singers mixed with the speakers but since I am an old fogey who is completely out of touch with pop culture, I could not identify them. But the fact that the crowd seemed to know the words to their songs and sang along with them suggested to me that they were big names in the music world.
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The war over teaching evolution in the classroom, that was such a huge issue in the last century and even prompted me to write a book about it, seems to have subsided after the latest incarnation known as intelligence design getting severely smacked down in a Pennsylvania courtroom in 2005. But Katie Worth writes that now there is a new war in the classroom, this time involving climate change. Wealthy people who oppose any action to combat climate change, like the Koch brothers and the Heartland Institute, are trying to influence teachers in schools by mailing them free packets of misinformation. But once the pro-science community got wind of this move, they fought back with mailings of their own, a project headed by the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI).
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UPDATE: Here is a link to live coverage of the event.
I love the way the students are ridiculing the ‘thoughts and prayers’ escape route (and its putative substitute ‘prayers and condolences’) favored by politicians to not take action or even debate the issue.
About 500,000 people are expected to attend the rally to end gun violence in Washington, DC along with satellite rallies around the country. Pro-gun counter-demonstrations are also expected at various places. In DC it is being sponsored by the NRA and will be held, tellingly, at the Trump hotel. Donald Trump has decided that it is perhaps safer to be away from DC today and has gone to Florida presumably to play golf because that is more important to him that discussing what to do about gun violence with articulate and determined high school students.
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Tomorrow (Saturday, March 24) is the day for the March For Our Lives rallies organized all around the country, with the main one being in Washington, DC. This was initiated by the students of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school students in Parkland, Florida where the February 14 mass killings took place, in which a 19-year old former student used a semi-automatic assault weapon to gun down 17 students. These students have managed to galvanize opposition to the easy availability of guns in a way that adults have not been able to. The Guardian newspaper has handed over oversight of the coverage of the event to the student journalists and editorial staff of the Eagle Eye, the student newspaper.
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To be quite honest, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon largely passed me by, appearing only in the periphery of my consciousness. I kept coming across his name in various places but what I fleetingly gathered did not suggest to me that whatever he was saying or doing was worthwhile investigating to find out more so I ignored it, much like one tries to ignore a fly buzzing around but don’t completely succeed. I adopt the same policy whenever I see the name ‘Kardashian’, quickly moving on.
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Bitcoin has been much in the news recently, along with new words like ‘cryptocurrency’ and ‘blockchains’. When bitcoin first appeared some years ago, I was intrigued by the idea of a currency that was not issued by any government and tried to learn what it was about and even downloaded the software that supposedly enabled people to ‘mine’ the currency. I soon lost interest and gave up because I lacked the motivation. I am not really driven by the desire for money and the process seemed to be so complicated and boring that it did not have any intellectual appeal for me either
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Mark Conditt, the 22-year old who set off the bombs in and around Austin, Texas and blew himself up when he was about to be captured, seems to have been one of your typical right-wingers.
Six years ago he claimed not to possess intense political opinions. “I enjoy cycling, parkour, tennis, reading, and listening to music. I am not that politically inclined. I view myself as a conservative, but I don’t think I have enough information to defend my stance as well as it should be defended,” he wrote on a blog.
“The reasons I am taking [a politics class at Austin community college] is because I want to understand the US government, and I hope that it will help me clarify my stance, and then defend it.”
He did, though, express strong anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality views: “Homosexuality is not natural. Just look at the male and female bodies. They are obviously designed to couple,” he wrote.
“In addition, political protection of a sexual practice is ludicrous. I do not believe it is proper to pass laws stating that homosexuals have ‘rights.’”
He expressed firm views on law and order in a blog post in 2012, saying he supported the death penalty because “living criminals harm and murder, again – executed ones do not”.
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The British firm Cambridge Analytica has been in the news recently about its role in influencing elections in various countries around the world. It specializes in what is known as microtargeting. This is where it gathers up all manner of information about individuals and creates profiles that suggest how they can be motivated in a particular way, using targeted messaging aimed at them to trigger their fears about an opponent. While much of this can be considered legitimate even if creepy, what has been revealed is that the company also produces false ‘news’ items that become viral and has engaged in illegal activities on behalf of its clients.
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