Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Cherney (Terrastro, TWAN)
Explanation: Why would the sky glow red? It’s the Aurora Australis which like its Borealis sister in the Northern Hemisphere is normally green.
But a solar storm in 2012, emanating mostly from active sunspot region 1402:
showered particles on the Earth that excited oxygen atoms high in the Earth’s atmosphere. As the excited element’s electrons fell back to their ground state, they emitted a red glow. Were oxygen atoms lower in Earth’s atmosphere excited, the glow would be predominantly green. Pictured here, this high red aurora is visible just above the horizon last week near Flinders, Victoria, Australia.
The sky that night, however, also glowed with more familiar but more distant objects, including the central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy on the left, and the neighboring Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies on the right.
The time-lapse video below highlights auroras visible that night and puts the picturesque scene in context.
President Trump’s much-feared Muslim immigration ban, among other things pretty much shuts down any immigration to the United States from Iraq. This includes THOUSANDS of Iraqis who acted as interpreters for our soldiers. At the time, they were promised that if this whole “occupation” thing didn’t work out, they’d be able to get a visa and move to the land of apple pie and Oxycontin. President Trump just slammed the door in their faces.
There are roughly 13,000 people, Iraqis and Afghans, in this same position. And maybe you don’t feel sorry for them, thinking, “A lot of sketchy stuff happens in that ‘Iraq’ place. Trump’s not saying they can never come in. We’ve just got to vet them.” But the thing is, we already fucking have. Haider Salman has been fighting alongside the U.S. in Iraq since Donald Trump was a reality television star: “[In 2007], I worked with first cav[alry]. 2008 with 101st airborne. 2009 with 25th Infantry division, [and in 2010] I worked with 25th infantry division and Oregon national guard.”
Haider Salman’s vehicle
During that last posting, “I got hit by IED eight times …” He started the application process for his visa back in 2012, and he admitted that the fact that it’s taken so long “was my fault.” See, he’s had a little trouble completing each part of the process in a timely matter. His only excuse is the massive, bloody war against ISIS.
And if Haider is stuck in Iraq, it’ll be for another (minimum) 60 days. That’s an eternity in “heavily armed militias want to kill you” time. He and Chase’s anonymous friend and thousands of other interpreters who fought and risked their lives on this country’s behalf just got a big orange middle finger from our 45th president. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that this guy …
Mary Tyler Moore, whose witty and graceful performances on two top-rated television shows in the 1960s and ’70s helped define a new vision of American womanhood, died on Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. She was 80.
Her family said her death, at Greenwich Hospital, was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest after she had contracted pneumonia.Ms. Moore faced more than her share of private sorrow, and she went on to more serious fare, including an Oscar-nominated role in the 1980 film “Ordinary People” as a frosty, resentful mother whose son has died.
But she was most indelibly known as the incomparably spunky Mary Richards on the CBS hit sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Broadcast from 1970 to 1977, it was produced by both Ms. Moore and her second husband, Grant Tinker, who later ran NBC and who died on Nov. 28.
At least a decade before the twin figures of the harried working woman and the neurotic, unwed 30-something became media preoccupations, Ms. Moore’s portrayal — for which she won four of her seven Emmy Awards — expressed both the exuberance and the melancholy of the single career woman who could plot her own course without reference to cultural archetypes.The show, and her portrayal of Mary as a sisterly presence in the office, as well as a source of ingenuity and humor, was a balm to widespread anxieties about women in the work force.
It modeled a productive style of coed collegiality, with Ms. Moore teasing out the various ironies known to any smart woman trying to keep from cracking up in a world of scowling male bosses and preening male soloists.
Dr. Denise Su, curator and head of paleobotany and paleoecology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History was co-author on new research that described a species of otter new to science and that is among the largest otter species known.
The new species, Siamogale melilutra lived 6.24 million years ago in in the Yunnan Province in China. It weighed approximately 50 kg. (110 lbs) and was roughly the size of a modern wolf.
Dr. Su and co-author Dr. Xiamong Wang, curator and head of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, published their findings in The Journal of Systematic Paleontology.
Siamogale melilutra belongs to an ancient lineage of extinct otters that was previously known only from isolated teeth from a different, much older species that was recovered in Thailand. What is unique about the new discovery is that researchers recovered a complete cranium, mandible, dentition and various skeletal elements—offering a wealth of insight into the taxonomy, evolutionary history and functional morphology of this new species.
The 3D printed CT restoration revealed a combination of otter-like and badger-like features, giving way to the species name “melilutra,” which combines the Latin names for badger (meles) and otter (lutra).
MADRID (AFP).- A topless protester managed to get so close to Donald Trump on Tuesday that she grabbed his crotch… or rather that of his effigy, the latest addition to Madrid’s Wax Museum.
Shouting “Grab patriarchy by the balls” in English and Spanish, the woman burst into the waxwork’s unveiling ceremony to the consternation of a visibly embarrassed museum employee who tried to hide her bosom with a jacket.
The woman, whose name was not revealed, belongs to the Femen activist group known for its high-profile topless protests.
She wrestled briefly with an older man who tried to push her out and was soon escorted away, although not before grabbing the crotch of the effigy of the US president-elect, who has often been criticised for misogynistic comments.
The lifelike waxwork of Trump dressed in a dark suit, red tie, giving the thumbs up and with his familiar look of utter confusion, was unveiled in central Madrid, just days before the president-elect’s inauguration on Friday.
Natalie Slater was inspired after taking her Mother Road Revisited project to Houston Foto Fest to make .gifs out of her images from the exhibition. Below are a few of the 30+ images. They start with older photographs (ca.1930-1970) and dissolve to her 2013 pictures.
All were taken along Route 66 between Chicago and Santa Monica.
The animation above shows satellite-based measurements of rainfall as it accumulated over California and the western U.S. Specifically, it shows rainfall accumulation every 30 minutes from 4:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on January 7 to 4:30 p.m. on January 10.
An atmospheric river has been flooding California and other parts of the western United States with rain and snow for nearly a week. Precipitation could be measured in feet rather than inches in some locations, and rivers and valleys filled with some of the worst flooding since 2005. According to meteorologists, the deluge is not over as more storms are predicted through January 12, 2017.
Stretching tens to hundreds of kilometers wide, atmospheric rivers are literally jet streams of moist air. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the most potent atmospheric rivers can carry an amount of water vapor equivalent to 7.5 to 15 times the flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Between 30 and 50 percent of the annual precipitation in the western U.S. comes from just a few atmospheric river events.
Off the West Coast of the U.S., an atmospheric river is often referred to as the “Pineapple Express,” as the storm systems and moisture often flow from the tropical Pacific near Hawaii. The flow of moist air runs into low-pressure weather systems and can deliver bursts of precipitation for days at a time. These rainfall totals are remotely-sensed estimates, and local amounts can be significantly higher when measured from the ground.
Parts of California have already received 6-8 inches of rain.
Portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1806
Alexander Hamilton was born on January 11, 1755. He was an American statesman and one of my favorite Founding Fathers.
Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, British West Indies, to a mother of French Huguenot and British ancestry,and a Scots father, James A. Hamilton. Orphaned as a child by his mother’s death and his father’s abandonment, he was taken in by an older cousin, and later by a prosperous merchant family. Because of a letter he wrote at 17 to his father describing the hurricane that destroyed St. Croix, he was recognized for his intelligence and talent, and sponsored by a group of wealthy local men to travel to New York City and pursue his education.
“Honoured Sir,” Hamilton began the letter, “I take up my pen just to give you an imperfect account of one of the most dreadful Hurricanes that memory or any records whatever can trace, which happened here on the 31st ultimo at night.”
It began about dusk, at North, and raged very violently till ten o’clock. Then ensued a sudden and unexpected interval, which lasted about an hour. Meanwhile the wind was shifting round to the South West point, from whence it returned with redoubled fury and continued so ’till near three o’clock in the morning. Good God! what horror and destruction. Its impossible for me to describe or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels. A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very much shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter; the sick exposed to the keeness of water and air without a bed to lie upon, or a dry covering to their bodies; and our harbours entirely bare. In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes, spread over the whole face of the country. A strong smell of gunpowder added somewhat to the terrors of the night; and it was observed that the rain was surprizingly salt. Indeed the water is so brackish and full of sulphur that there is hardly any drinking it.
My reflections and feelings on this frightful and melancholy occasion, are set forth in the following self-discourse.
Where now, oh! vile worm, is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear. And for why? The jarring of elements—the discord of clouds? Oh! impotent presumptuous fool! how durst thou offend that Omnipotence, whose nod alone were sufficient to quell the destruction that hovers over thee, or crush thee into atoms? See thy wretched helpless state, and learn to know thyself. Learn to know thy best support. Despise thyself, and adore thy God. How sweet, how unutterably sweet were now, the voice of an approving conscience; Then couldst thou say, hence ye idle alarms, why do I shrink? What have I to fear? A pleasing calm suspense! A short repose from calamity to end in eternal bliss? Let the Earth rend. Let the planets forsake their course. Let the Sun be extinguished and the Heavens burst asunder. Yet what have I to dread? My staff can never be broken—in Omnip[o]tence I trusted.
He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage—even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed—and his perfections have I adored. He will snatch me from ruin. He will exalt me to the fellowship of Angels and Seraphs, and to the fullness of never ending joys.
But alas! how different, how deplorable, how gloomy the prospect! Death comes rushing on in triumph veiled in a mantle of tenfold darkness. His unrelenting scythe, pointed, and ready for the stroke. On his right hand sits destruction, hurling the winds and belching forth flames: Calamity on his left threatening famine disease and distress of all kinds. And Oh! thou wretch, look still a little further; see the gulph of eternal misery open. There mayest thou shortly plunge—the just reward of thy vileness. Alas! whither canst thou fly? Where hide thyself? Thou canst not call upon thy God; thy life has been a continual warfare with him.
Hark—ruin and confusion on every side. ’Tis thy turn next; but one short moment, even now, Oh Lord help. Jesus be merciful!
Thus did I reflect, and thus at every gust of the wind, did I conclude, ’till it pleased the Almighty to allay it. Nor did my emotions proceed either from the suggestions of too much natural fear, or a conscience over-burthened with crimes of an uncommon cast. I thank God, this was not the case. The scenes of horror exhibited around us, naturally awakened such ideas in every thinking breast, and aggravated the deformity of every failing of our lives. It were a lamentable insensibility indeed, not to have had such feelings, and I think inconsistent with human nature.
Our distressed, helpless condition taught us humility and contempt of ourselves. The horrors of the night, the prospect of an immediate, cruel death—or, as one may say, of being crushed by the Almighty in his anger—filled us with terror. And every thing that had tended to weaken our interest with him, upbraided us in the strongest colours, with our baseness and folly. That which, in a calm unruffled temper, we call a natural cause, seemed then like the correction of the Deity. Our imagination represented him as an incensed master, executing vengeance on the crimes of his servants. The father and benefactor were forgot, and in that view, a consciousness of our guilt filled us with despair.
But see, the Lord relents. He hears our prayer. The Lightning ceases. The winds are appeased. The warring elements are reconciled and all things promise peace. The darkness is dispell’d and drooping nature revives at the approaching dawn. Look back Oh! my soul, look back and tremble. Rejoice at thy deliverance, and humble thyself in the presence of thy deliverer.
Yet hold, Oh vain mortal! Check thy ill timed joy. Art thou so selfish to exult because thy lot is happy in a season of universal woe? Hast thou no feelings for the miseries of thy fellow-creatures? And art thou incapable of the soft pangs of sympathetic sorrow? Look around thee and shudder at the view. See desolation and ruin where’er thou turnest thine eye! See thy fellow-creatures pale and lifeless; their bodies mangled, their souls snatched into eternity, unexpecting. Alas! perhaps unprepared! Hark the bitter groans of distress. See sickness and infirmities exposed to the inclemencies of wind and water! See tender infancy pinched with hunger and hanging on the mothers knee for food! See the unhappy mothers anxiety. Her poverty denies relief, her breast heaves with pangs of maternal pity, her heart is bursting, the tears gush down her cheeks. Oh sights of woe! Oh distress unspeakable! My heart bleeds, but I have no power to solace! O ye, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them. Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withold your compassion. What are you[r] sufferings compared to those? Ye have still more than enough left. Act wisely. Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven.
I am afraid, Sir, you will think this description more the effort of imagination than a true picture of realities. But I can affirm with the greatest truth, that there is not a single circumstance touched upon, which I have not absolutely been an eye witness to.
Our General [Ulrich Wilhelm Roepstorff, Governor General of St. Croix] has issued several very salutary and humane regulations, and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man.
The letter changed Hamilton’s life, and in a way, it also changed Lin-Manuel Miranda’s: When he read about the letter and its consequences in Ron Chernow’s biography Hamilton, a lightbulb went off. “I was like, This is an album—no, this is a show … It was the fact that Hamilton wrote his way off the island where he grew up. That’s the hip-hop narrative,” he told Vogue in 2015. “So I Googled ‘Alexander Hamilton hip-hop musical’ and totally expected to see that someone had already written it. But no. So I got to work.”
Colonel Hamilton is depicted as the leftmost of the four standing men on the right edge of the painting.
After graduation, Hamilton played a major role in the American Revolutionary War. At the start of the war in 1775, he joined a militia company. In early 1776, he raised a provincial artillery company, to which he was appointed captain. He soon became the senior aide to General Washington, the American forces’ commander-in-chief.
He was an influential interpreter and promoter of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the founder of the nation’s financial system who pushed for the creation of the dollar as a national currency.
Originally he appeared on the $1,000 bill starting in 1861.
He founded the United States Coast Guard
This USCG Cutter bears his name.
and The New York Post newspaper (the latter, now owned by Rupert Murdock, bears very little resemblance to his original).
As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration.
He took the lead in the funding of the states’ debts by the Federal government, as well as the establishment of a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, with a national bank and support for manufacturing, plus a strong military.
This is PBS American Experience biography of Hamilton:
The American Legion post in San Francisco, Post #448 is named after Hamilton. It is the first American Legion post to openly welcome LGBT veterans.
Hamilton was famously murdered in a duel by a balding, absurdly thin-skinned New Yorker. Sure glad we don’t have assholes like that in American politics anymore.
From the Board of Directors, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art “After extensive due diligence and deliberation, the Board of Directors of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is pleased to announce plans to build the museum in Exposition Park in Los Angeles.”
“I wanted somebody who was very leading edge, somebody who designed digitally because the third part of the museum is about digital art. So Ma Yansong’s a very avant-garde Chinese architect, he’s very brilliant, he’s never made anything in the United States,” Lucas told Charlie Rose
Lucas had Ma Yansong design a new scheme for the sites. It’s no longer part of an environment and is a stand-alone object. His fluid digital design brings to mind a long, lean spaceship that has landed. The LA version is a spaceship with gardens woven into its roof and flowing underneath.
“We have been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive support we received from both San Francisco and Los Angeles during our selection process. Settling on a location proved to be an extremely difficult decision precisely because of the desirability of both sites and cities.”
“While each location offers many unique and wonderful attributes, South Los Angeles’s Promise Zone best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship. Exposition Park is a magnet for the region and accessible from all parts of the city. As a museum uniquely focused on narrative art, we look forward to becoming part of a dynamic museum community, surrounded by more than 100 elementary and high schools, one of the country’s leading universities as well as three other world-class museums.
“Now we turn our attention to finalizing the details and building what we believe will be one of the most imaginative and inclusive art museums in the world—a global destination that all Angelenos and Californians will be proud to call their own.”
The art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Charles Desmarais, managed to get a look at the collection and wrote that it “may just be the core of a great museum.”
Otoh Gunga City STAR WARS™: Episode I The Phantom Menace
“I think it’s a spectacularly good collection for what it set out to be. I think every museum collection should have a clear mission and a clear definition of where the institution wants to go with its collection.
Couple in Rumbleseat c. 1935
The museums that we love, the great institutions, none of them pay attention to these popular art forms that have defined in very interesting ways who we are as a culture,” Desmarais said.
Building a Snowman Beatrix Potter (c. 1893)
Mouse with a Spinning Wheel Beatrix Potter (c. 1890)
More of the museum’s collections can be viewed here:
The History of Narrative Art features traditional paintings by Edgar Degas, Winslow Homer and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as a broad range of illustration, children’s art, comic art and photography from many periods and cultures.
Art of Cinemaexplores all facets of cinematic art and its design processes, including concept art, storyboards, set design, props, costume and fashion, animation and visual effects.
Digital Art features new technologies and media from digital cinema to digital architecture, bringing together works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Zaha Hadid and Pixar Animation, to name a few.
Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness 