The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 1 of 108
Welcome to the February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY!
This week has not started off on a good note. One of the leading lights on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia, passed away at the age of 79 while on a hunting trip in Texas. I have been listening to a lot of information about Justice Scalia and his impact on the United States for almost 30 years. But I found out a whole lot about the man I admired. One of the things that surprised me was that Justice Scalia’s best friend on the Court was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They are from the far ends of the political spectrum but found time to enjoy each other’s company and to cultivate civility between themselves. Justice Scalia had 9 children and a ton of grandchildren. But the one thing that struck me was the nickname the grandkids had for him. The called him Pop-Pop and that is something that shows the love in that family to me. Justice Scalia will be missed by all who love this precious country and work to keep it safe. Sleep well Pop-Pop, you will be missed.
Another really important thing that happened this week was that scientists have measure gravity waves from the collision of two black holes in our galaxy. The existence of gravity waves was predicted by Albert Einstein in his ground breaking General Theory of Relativity in 1915. Scientists have been trying to figure out how to produce this effect for over 100 years but Mother Nature beat them to the punch. I am a science geek and admit it, but some of you out there aren’t and sometimes need a little help figuring out what the nerds are having an orgasm about. In that case, try this website, “Einstein's Gravitational Waves, Explained for Dummies”, to help you. It sure helps me to understand the details of this important discovery. http://www.gq.com/story/einsteins-gravitational-waves-explained-for-dummies
One important thing I would like to point out to you is that one of our own, Robert Lightfoot is having some terrific medical problems and there has been a fund set up to help him pay for his medical expenses. I have listed the information as the first article of this week’s missive and I hope that you will read it and give generously to help one of our own.
So, on that “Important Note", why don't y'all sit back and relax because here's the best in gossip, jokes and science for your reading pleasure!
Uncle Timmy
~~~ ROBERT'S TRANSPLANT FUND. From LibertyCon’s Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/LibertyCon/?fref=nf Created February 10, 2016, Linda Lightfoot, WAYCROSS, GA https://www.gofundme.com/arn64vr8/donate Hello – I am Linda Kay Lightfoot and my husband is Dr. Robert C Lightfoot. I’m a Reference Librarian and he is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice/Sociology at South Georgia The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 2 of 108 State College in Douglas and Waycross, Georgia. I’m here to raise money to help with my husband’s kidney & liver transplant and all the unexpected expenses. Robert and I have been married nearly 24 years and he is truly the love of my life. He’s put up with all my health problems, so now I’m taking care of him. Donate NowSHARE ON FACEBOOK All my health problems pale in comparison to his recent problems. On September 2, 2015, Robert was teaching on the campus in Douglas, Georgia when he collapsed in class with severe breathing difficulties. [A Shout-out for the all students who made him comfortable, called for help and notified the college administration.] He was placed in ICU, and remained there until Sept. 18. I learned that he had had double pneumonia for months, and he now had a gram-negative septic blood infection. I received a call at work the following evening to tell me he sedated, on a respirator, and that his kidneys were shutting down so I gave permission for dialysis. The septic infection had damaged his kidneys, liver and pancreas. Over the next days I lived in the ICU with Robert, hoping for a positive sign. The doctors found the right combo of antibiotics and the infections began to subside. They removed the ventilator and eased off the sedation. He finally woke up around the 14th. He was transferred to Jacksonville, FL for 3 weeks for therapy and to get his medicines adjusted. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 3 of 108 He came back to Waycross to a nursing facility for several weeks and I finally brought him home on Oct. 28th. Unfortunately, I learned over that weekend that he was now subject to high ammonia levels due to the low kidney & liver functions plus he can’t make enough red blood cells on his own. So he went into the local hospital for several days. Since then, he’s been hospitalized numerous times over the past 3 months. When the call comes in that the surgery will occur, we’ll have to drop everything and drive to Jacksonville again. The recovery at Mayo could be several weeks, plus more time at home. We do have insurance to help with the costs, but that doesn’t cover daily things like lost wages, travel funds, meal money, paying our bills, and other things like rooms. Plus there are always things you find you need when you are out of town. We just heard from Mayo Clinic Jacksonville that he’s been cleared to begin the test and evaluation period. So we will be traveling to Jacksonville, FL twice a week for 3-5 weeks. One of his ICU doctors said that Robert must have a very strong will to survive, or he wouldn’t have lived to leave Douglas hospital and eventually come home. Not only that, but he has returned to teaching! He really has a drive to educate people. Robert has a large circle of friends and co-workers who would be devastated to lose him – most of all me. I know everyone says that their spouse means the world to them – but he truly does to me. He is the love of my life, a big teddy bear to hug when I’m down, a strong guardian in times of trouble and my best friend. I HAVE KNOWN ROBERT AND LINDA KAY FOR DECADES AND THEY ARE GOOD PEOPLE. DURING THIS TIME OF NEED, PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY TO HELP HIM OUT. TIM BOLGEO TENNESSEE VALLEY INTERSTELLAR WORKSHOP MARCH 1ST AT THE CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO From: "Les Johnson" [email protected] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop Announces Free Public Event PRESS RELEASE February 9, 2016 Chattanooga Mayor Berke Will Kickoff Evening of Interstellar Talks Date: Tuesday, March 1 Start Time: 7:00 pm EST Location: The Edney Building (1100 Market Street, Chattanooga, TN 37402) 5th Floor The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 4 of 108 Is traveling to another star possible? If so, then how? These are but two of the questions to be answered at a night of science and science fiction, as a part of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW) Symposium. Scientists and engineers from around the world are gathering in Chattanooga for the 4th TVIW Symposium to discuss how humanity might one day reach the stars -- and to help make this dream a reality. Chattanooga’s Mayor Berke will launch the evening’s scheduled events which are free to the public. 7:00 Welcome by Chattanooga Mayor Berke 7:15 "Interstellar Travel: Is it Possible?" – A talk presented by Les Johnson. Les is a science and science fiction author and a NASA scientist. He was the featured Interstellar Explorer in National Geographic magazine, a technical consultant for the movie, ‘Europa Report’ and is leading an asteroid rendezvous mission for NASA. His "Going Interstellar" anthology describes future interstellar journeys and he serves as the Chair of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. 7:45 "Science Fiction / Science Fact: Science Fiction Authors Discuss Interstellar Travel" - A panel with New York Times best selling science fiction authors whose works highlight possible futures in which humans roam the space between the stars. 8:30 Book Signing – All the authors participating will be available to sign copies of their books. Also, representatives from the Hamilton Place Barnes & Noble will be on site to sell copies of the author’s books and other interstellar related titles. Authors who will be participating in the night’s events are: Dr. Gregory Benford - a science fiction author and astrophysicist on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of over twenty novels, including "Bowl of Heaven" and "Shipstar." He is a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and a four-time Hugo Award nominee. Dr. Charles E. Gannon - Prior to becoming a full time author, Dr. Gannon was a Distinguished Professor of English at St. Bonaventure University and a Fulbright Senior Specialist. His is the author of the "Fire With Fire" series and collaborates on the New York Times Best Selling series: the Starfire military sf series ("Extremis") and Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series. Sarah A. Hoyt - has over 23 published novels, in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical mystery, historical fantasy and historical biography. Her short stories have been published in Analog, Asimov's, Amazing Stories, Weird tales, and a number of anthologies from DAW and Baen. Her space-opera novel Darkship Thieves was the 2011 Prometheus Award Winner. Geoffrey Landis - is a NASA scientist working on planetary exploration, interstellar propulsion, solar power and photovoltaics. Supported by his scientific background Landis also writes hard science fiction, and has won a Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards, and a Locus Award. Jack McDevitt - is science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. His two main The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 5 of 108 series are the Alex Benedict series and the Priscilla Hutchins series. He won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel and has been nominated an additional sixteen times. Toni Weisskopf - is a science fiction editor and the publisher of Baen Books. She edited a number of anthologies and won the Phoenix Award in 1994 for excellence in science fiction and was a Hugo Award nominee. She is an alumna of Oberlin College. There is a limited amount of parking on the street and a lot across from The Edney which is free after 6pm. There is also a parking deck within a 3 to 5 minute walk. The building is on the downtown trolley line. Sponsor WayPaver Foundation (http://www.waypaverfoundation.org/) WayPaver Foundation addresses humanity's grandest challenges by enabling humankind to become a mutli- planetary species beyond economic, environmental, or biological constraints. For more information about TVIW: TVIW Site https://www.tviw.us Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TNValleyInterstellarWorkshop Twitter https://twitter.com/tviwus CONTACT: Rain Glynn, Public Relations. [email protected] From: “Tim Bolgeo” [email protected] NEW STAR TREK TV SERIES BEAMS UP BRYAN FULLER AS CO-CREATOR By Sarah Lewin, Staff Writer | February 9, 2016 05:00pm ET http://www.space.com/31845-new-star-trek-tv-series-bryan-fuller.html "Star Trek" is coming back to TV in 2017 via CBS Television Studios. Here, the original Starship Enterprise model hangs in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Move over, James T. Kirk, "Star Trek" has another captain now. CBS Studios has tapped "Hannibal" creator Bryan Fuller — a veteran Trek writer — as a co-creator for its new Trek TV series launching in 2017. Fuller has written for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: Voyager," and brings a deep appreciation of the "Star Trek" world to the new show, according to CBS Studios representatives. The new show will air on CBS All Access, a digital streaming platform. (The first episode will air on live TV.) "My very first experience of Star Trek is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls," Fuller said in a statement. "Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire. It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before." The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 6 of 108 Credit: National Air and Space Museum Kurtzman, the new show's other executive producer — who was a co-writer and producer on the recent reboot films — added his support of the new showrunner: "Bringing 'Star Trek' back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan’s devoted care," Kurtzman said in the statement. "His encyclopedic knowledge of Trek canon is surpassed only by his love for Gene Roddenberry's optimistic future, a vision that continues to guide us as we explore strange new worlds." The show will introduce new characters and follow storylines unrelated to the movies, although it will be set after the upcoming film "Star Trek Beyond." THE HARRY POTTER PLAY WILL BECOME THE EIGHTH HARRY POTTER BOOK IN JULY Katharine Trendacosta, February 10, 2016 http://io9.gizmodo.com/in-july-youll-be-able-to-buy-the-script-for-harry-pott-1758266871 Good news for everyone who won’t be able to make it to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: the script for the play will be on sale July 31. That’s right after the official opening of the play. And on Harry’s birthday. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 7 of 108 Announced on Pottermore, the version of the script you can buy will be the one that exists during the preview performances. So any changes that are made between then and the actual opening in late July won’t be in the book. The good news is that not every fan can see a play in London, so this will get them at least all the story that’s in the play. Since this is being billed as “officially the eighth story in Harry Potter canon,” it’ll probably be a big deal. The play itself is by Jack Thorne from a story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. So not exactly the same as reading Rowling’s words again, but still her vision. Just in play form. [Pottermore via Vulture] ‘DEADPOOL’ REVIEW: AVERAGE MARVEL FLICK BURIED IN RELENTLESS (BUT FUNNY) CRUDITY by JOHN NOLTE12 Feb 2016131 http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/02/12/deadpool-review-standard-marvel-flick-buried-in- relentless-but-funny-crudity/ In 2012’s “21 Jump Street,” a character tells another character to, “Go suck a d*ck.” If memory serves, the sequel, “22 Jump Street,” apologized for that line as homophobic, which made me want to break down in tears after punching someone. Simply put, I don’t want to live in an America where you can’t tell someone to “go suck a d*ck.” Marvel’s “Deadpool,” the latest sure- fire and very R-rated entry into that ever-expanding universe, does not have this problem. That’s the good news. “Deadpool,” which is even more of a comedy than a superhero film, is not in any way hindered by political correctness. In fact, the self-referential script frequently mocks political correctness. The script is also unbelievably, indescribably (in this format) raunchy. One of the tamer examples is a lovely young woman reassuring a horribly deformed man, “That’s a face I can sit on.” The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 8 of 108 The only difference between the humor in “Deadpool” and a Judd Apatow movie is that “Deadpool” actually made me laugh. Granted, the movie is funny. When our hero (Ryan Reynolds in a career-making role) taunts the villain by spelling out his girly name with the massacred bodies of dead henchman (including a decapitated head to dot the “i”), I about fell out of my seat. Nevertheless, two hours of nihilistic violence and raunchiness is about 90 minutes more than I would have liked. Admittedly, I’m a bit more of a prude than your average teen today, but my reaction had more to do with the repetition than the ick. At first this anarchic approach feels liberating. Reynolds constantly breaks the fourth wall. Deadpool is not only aware that he is a superhero, he is also aware that he is in a superhero movie. Most refreshing is that he has no desire to be a goody two-shoes X-Man. Deadpool is not a joiner. He is also not a hero. He’s on a shameless quest for revenge, and revenge he shall have. For the all its anarchy, though, “Deadpool” is still a standard Marvel origin movie. Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is just your average black market mercenary who falls in love with a gorgeous but foul-mouthed hooker (Morena Baccarin) when he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. A last chance treatment places Wade in the hands of sadistic sociopaths who can cure his cancer by turning him into a mutant. Unfortunately, the small print says he must agree to be a slave. As good as Reynolds is, and he is very, very good (and a long way from his “Green Lantern” debacle), Wade Wilson is basically Tony Stark with a foul mouth. The non-stop irreverence, the shield of ironic distance, the wild-eyed libertarian streak… There is really nothing new here. This includes the action sequences, which are rote-Marvel, just bloodier. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 9 of 108 Moreover, “Kick-Ass” brilliantly invented this take on the superhero genre six years ago. “Kingsman: The Secret Service” did it better and with more originality just last year. “Deadpool” has a lot going for it, but its only real lasting effect is to make me want to see its predecessors again. I must say, though, that this feels like the kind of franchise that will improve over time. DO NOT miss the after-credits scene. Chik-chika-chikahhh… ADDED: Readers are pointing out that this is not a Marvel-Marvel film but a Fox-Marvel film. I realize that but in look and tone, straight through to the Stan Lee cameo, “Deadpool” is a total and complete Marvel film. It doesn’t feel like an “X-Men” film and it surely doesn’t feel like a “Fantastic Four” film. There is just no question 20th Century-Fox went with what works, surrendered its own aesthetic to embrace Marvel’s. PASS OF A GOOD FRIEND, STUART J. LAMB Taken from the Chattanooga Free Press Stuart J. Lamb, USN Ret., 57, of Chattanooga, passed away Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, at his home. He was a linguist for the U. S. Navy where he received service medals for both Gulf Wars as well as many other decorations. He was fluent in Russian and Arabic languages and retired after 20 years of service. He was a member of St. Albans Episcopal Church, the Single Action Shooting Society, a former board member of the ChattaCon Science Fiction Convention, a member of the SCA and very involved with Steampunk. He was preceded in death by his parents, Lowry and Margie Lamb. Survivors include his wife of 26 years, Joanna Lamb; brother, Kerry Lamb; and niece, Kira Lamb. Condolences may be sent to www.lane-southcrestchapel.com Memorial services will be held at a later date. The family will receive friends on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016, from 2-6 p.m., in the funeral home. Arrangements by the South Crest Chapel of Lane Funeral Home and Crematory located at the end of Historic Missionary Ridge, Rossville. AUTHOR MARK JUSTICE DIES From: “Andrew Porter” [email protected] Via: "Mike Willmoth" [email protected] http://www.briankeene.com/2016/02/10/mark-justice-r-i-p/ Brian Keene writes, "Woke this morning [Wednesday, 10 February] to reports that Mark Justice passed away. He was admitted to the hospital yesterday after going to the doctor The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 10 of 108 for what he thought was his gall bladder. It turned out he’d suffered a heart attack. He was due for more testing this morning, but apparently passed overnight. "Mark’s books included LOOKING AT THE WORLD WITH BROKEN GLASS IN MY EYE and (with David Wilbanks) the DEAD EARTH series. He also ran one of the first -- and best -- horror fiction-centric podcasts, POD of Horror. He was also a long-time morning show disc jockey in Ashland, Kentucky. He occasionally used that morning show to promote horror fiction, featuring friends and peers like Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, F. Paul Wilson, Joe R. Lansdale, J.F. Gonzalez, and myself. I’ve signed in Ashland numerous times throughout the last twenty years, and Mark was always happy to have me on the show anytime I was in town. I’d been planning on seeing him again later this year as my signing tour for THE COMPLEX and PRESSURE brought me close to him once again. "He was generous and genuine, and very, very funny. He knew this genre’s history like few others. He will be missed." *** According to his website, "Mark Justice lives with his wife Norma Kay and their cats in Kentucky, where he hosts a morning radio program. In his rare free time he writes fiction. He also hosts the podcast Pod of Horror." His death was also announced here, with a photo: http://podofhorror.com/index.html Thanks to Paul Di Filippo for the initial link. -- Andrew Porter ERROR ON AMAZON PAGE From: "Jean Goddin" [email protected] I was going through today's freebie book offerings and knew you would find this one of interest. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ATYKG5K/?tag=&utm_source=Freebooksy+Free+Books&utm_camp aign=d36495a0fa-freebooksy2_14_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_79911212c6-d36495a0fa- 56369601 Right in the middle of the page it says, "Andre Norton was a 20th century American writer best known for HIS historical fiction, such as Civil War military books and Westerns." Says to me that Amazon is clueless about Miss Andre. TIME TRADERS AND MANY OTHER ANDRE NORTON BOOKS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FOR FREE AT PROJECT GUTENBERG. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Andre+Norton The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 11 of 108 ONE OF THE GREATEST HONORS OF MY LIFE IS TO HAVE MET MS. ANDRE AND TO BECOME HER FRIEND. TOWARD THE END OF HER LIFE MS. ANDRE MOVED TO MURFREESBORO, TN. AND I MADE IT A POINT TO DRIVE UP ONCE A MONTH TO VISIT HERE. I EVEN WOULD TAKE BRANDY, SWMBO Jr., WITH ME SOMETIMES TO ENJOY THE VISIT. I EVEN HAVE A PICTURE OF MS. ANDRE OVER MY DESK THAT LOOKS OVER ME EVERYDAY. WHEN I LOOK AT THAT PICTURE, IT THINK HOW FORTUNATE I HAVE BEEN IN MY LIFE. I WILL ALWAYS MISS YOU MS. ANDRE AND WILL THINK OF YOU FOREVER. TIM Re: Loosing a friend From: "Anita S Moore" [email protected] Dear Uncle Timmy, After the week I have seen my grandfather would have declared "They're dropping like flies!" He would say this when he would see a string of obituaries over a shore period of time of people he knew, or knew people who knew them> Last week my Bible study teaching leader's father died. The funeral for the dad of a friend from church was yesterday. And today the news of friend of my friend. At the funeral yesterday My friend from church's husband sat the phrase "passed away" bothered him. It makes it sound like the person no longer exists. He said of his father in law "Buddy isn't passed away. He just moved." He said, let me tell you some things that are gone. And he read this. Rev 21 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.(F) They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.(G) 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.(H) There will be no more death’[b](I) or mourning or crying or pain,(J) for the old order of things has passed away.”(K) 5 He who was seated on the throne(L) said, “I am making everything new!”(M) Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”(N) Prayer for Joanna, their family and for you, for peace and comfort of the Lord. Hug you when I see you. THANK YOU ANITA. I KNOW HOW STUARTS FAMILY IS GRIEVING SINCE IT WAS A SUDDEN LOSS AND THEY DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR IT. IT HURTS THAT MUCH MORE. I CAN REMEMBER MY FRIEND THINKING ABOUT ALL THE STUFF HE USED TO GET INTO WHEN HE WAS YOUNG. BUT JOANNA IS FACING THE LOSS OF HER BELOVED AND LIFEMATE. OUR THOUGHTS AN PRAYERS GO OUT TO HER. UT Re: The February 10th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! From: "Lin Daniel" [email protected] Snow: We actually got snow yesterday, for the first time since the first part of January. It's like last year's winter used up all the snow for this year. I've become very fond of snow falling. Rain falls; snow dances. From: “”Jim Woosley” [email protected] SUPERIORITY - by Arthur C. Clarke IN MAKING THIS STATEMENT - which I do of my own free will - I wish first to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way trying to gain sympathy, nor do I expect any mitigation of whatever sentence the Court may pronounce. I am writing this in an attempt to refute some of the lying reports broadcast over the prison radio and published in the papers I have been allowed to see. These have given an entirely false picture of the true cause of our defeat, and as the leader of my race's armed forces at the cessation of hostilities I feel it my duty to protest against such libels upon those who served under me. I also hope that this statement may explain the reasons for the application I have twice made to the Court, and will now induce it to grant a favor for which I can see no possible grounds of refusal. The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all statements to the contrary, it was not due to lack of bravery on the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet's. We were defeated by one thing only - by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat - by the inferior science of our enemies. When the war opened we had no doubt of our ultimate victory. The combined fleets of our allies greatly exceeded in number and armament those which the enemy could muster against us, and in almost all branches of military science we were their superiors. We were sure that we could maintain this superiority. Our belief proved, alas, to be only too well founded. At the opening of the war our main weapons were the long-range homing torpedo, dirigible ball-lightning and the various modifications of the Klydon beam. Every unit of the Fleet was equipped with these and though the enemy possessed similar weapons their installations were generally of lesser power. Moreover, we had behind us a far greater military Research Organization, and with this initial advantage we could not possibly lose. The campaign proceeded according to plan until the Battle of the Five Suns. We won this, of course, but the opposition proved stronger than we had expected. It was realized that victory might be more difficult, and more delayed, than had first been imagined. A conference of supreme commanders was therefore called to discuss our future strategy. Present for the first time at one of our war conferences was Professor-General Norden, the new Chief of the Research Staff, who had just been appointed to fill the gap left by the death of Malvar, our greatest scientist. Malvar's leadership had been responsible, more The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 13 of 108 than any other single factor, for the efficiency and power of our weapons. His loss was a very serious blow, but no one doubted the brilliance of his successor - though many of us disputed the wisdom of appointing a theoretical scientist to fill a post of such vital importance. But we had been overruled. I can well remember the impression Norden made at that conference. The military advisers were worried, and as usual turned to the scientists for help. Would it be possible to improve our existing weapons, they asked, so that our present advantage could be increased still further? Norden's reply was quite unexpected. Malvar had often been asked such a question - and he had always done what we requested. "Frankly, gentlemen," said Norden, "I doubt it. Our existing weapons have practically reached finality. I don't wish to criticize my predecessor, or the excellent work done by the Research Staff in the last few generations, but do you realize that there has been no basic change in armaments for over a century? It is, I am afraid, the result of a tradition that has become conservative. For too long, the Research Staff has devoted itself to perfecting old weapons instead of developing new ones. It is fortunate for us that our opponents have been no wiser: we cannot assume that this will always be so." Norden's words left an uncomfortable impression, as he had no doubt intended. He quickly pressed home the attack. "What we want are new weapons - weapons totally different from any that have been employed before. Such weapons can be made: it will take time, of course, but since assuming charge I have replaced some of the older scientists with young men and have directed research into several unexplored fields which show great promise. I believe, in fact, that a revolution in warfare may soon be upon us." We were skeptical. There was a bombastic tone in Norden's voice that made us suspicious of his claims. We did not know, then, that he never promised anything that he had not already almost perfected in the laboratory. In the laboratory - that was the operative phrase. Norden proved his case less than a month later, when he demonstrated the Sphere of Annihilation, which produced complete disintegration of matter over a radius of several hundred meters. We were intoxicated by the power of the new weapon, and were quite prepared to overlook one fundamental defect - the fact that it was a sphere and hence destroyed its rather complicated generating equipment at the instant of formation. This meant, of course, that it could not be used on warships but only on guided missiles, and a great program was started to convert all homing torpedoes to carry the new weapon. For the time being all further offensives were suspended. We realize now that this was our first mistake. I still think that it was a natural one, for it seemed to us then that all our existing weapons had become obsolete overnight, and we already regarded them as almost primitive survivals. What we did not appreciate was the magnitude of the task we were attempting, and the length of time it would take to get the revolutionary super-weapon into battle. Nothing like this had happened for a hundred years and we had no previous experience to guide us. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 14 of 108 The conversion problem proved far more difficult than anticipated. A new class of torpedo had to be designed, as the standard model was too small. This meant in turn that only the larger ships could launch the weapon, but we were prepared to accept this penalty. After six months, the heavy units of the Fleet were being equipped with the Sphere. Training maneuvers and tests had shown that it was operating satisfactorily and we were ready to take it into action. Norden was already being hailed as the architect of victory, and had half promised even more spectacular weapons. Then two things happened. One of our battleships disappeared completely on a training flight, and an investigation showed that under certain conditions the ship's long-range radar could trigger the Sphere immediately after it had been launched. The modification needed to overcome this defect was trivial, but it caused a delay of another month and was the source of much bad feeling between the naval staff and the scientists. We were ready for action again - when Norden announced that the radius of effectiveness of the Sphere had now been increased by ten, thus multiplying by a thousand the chances of destroying an enemy ship. So the modifications started all over again, but everyone agreed that the delay would be worth it. Meanwhile, however, the enemy had been emboldened by the absence of further attacks and had made an unexpected onslaught. Our ships were short of torpedoes, since none had been coming from the factories, and were forced to retire. So we lost the systems of Kyrane and Floranus, and the planetary fortress of Rhamsandron. It was an annoying but not a serious blow, for the recaptured systems had been unfriendly, and difficult to administer. We had no doubt that we could restore the position in the near future, as soon as the new weapon became operational. These hopes were only partially fulfilled. When we renewed our offensive, we had to do so with fewer of the Spheres of Annihilation than had been planned, and this was one reason for our limited success. The other reason was more serious. While we had been equipping as many of our ships as we could with the irresistible weapon, the enemy had been building feverishly. His ships were of the old pattern with the old weapons - but they now out-numbered ours. When we went into action, we found that the numbers ranged against us were often 100 percent greater than expected, causing target confusion among the automatic weapons and resulting in higher losses than anticipated. The enemy losses were higher still, for once a Sphere had reached its objective, destruction was certain, but the balance had not swung as far in our favor as we had hoped. Moreover, while the main fleets had been engaged, the enemy had launched a daring attack on the lightly held systems of Eriston, Duranus, Carmanidora and Pharanidon - recapturing them all. We were thus faced with a threat only fifty light-years from our home planets. There was much recrimination at the next meeting of the supreme commanders. Most of the complaints were addressed to Norden-Grand Admiral Taxaris in particular maintaining that thanks to our admittedly irresistible weapon we were now considerably worse off than before. We should, he claimed, have continued to build conventional ships, thus preventing the loss of our numerical superiority. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 15 of 108 Norden was equally angry and called the naval staff ungrateful bunglers. But I could tell that he was worried - as indeed we all were - by the unexpected turn of events. He hinted that there might be a speedy way of remedying the situation. We now know that Research had been working on the Battle Analyzer for many years, but at the time it came as a revelation to us and perhaps we were too easily swept off our feet. Norden's argument, also, was seductively convincing. What did it matter, he said, if the enemy had twice as many ships as we - if the efficiency of ours could be doubled or even trebled? For decades the limiting factor in warfare had been not mechanical but biological - it had become more and more difficult for any single mind, or group of minds, to cope with the rapidly changing complexities of battle in three-dimensional space. Norden's mathematicians had analyzed some of the classic engagements of the past, and had shown that even when we had been victorious we had often operated our units at much less than half of their theoretical efficiency. The Battle Analyzer would change all this by replacing the operations staff with electronic calculators. The idea was not new, in theory, but until now it had been no more than a Utopian dream. Many of us found it difficult to believe that it was still anything but a dream: after we had run through several very complex dummy battles, however, we were convinced. It was decided to install the Analyzer in four of our heaviest ships, so that each of the main fleets could be equipped with one. At this stage, the trouble began - though we did not know it until later. The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate it. It was quite impossible to accommodate the extra staff aboard a battleship, so each of the four units had to be accompanied by a converted liner to carry the technicians not on duty. Installation was also a very slow and tedious business, but by gigantic efforts it was completed in six months. Then, to our dismay, we were confronted by another crisis. Nearly five thousand highly skilled men had been selected to serve the Analyzers and had been given an intensive course at the Technical Training Schools. At the end of seven months, 10 percent of them had had nervous breakdowns and only 40 per cent had qualified. Once again, everyone started to blame everyone else. Norden, of course, said that the Research Staff could not be held responsible, and so incurred the enmity of the Personnel and Training Commands. It was finally decided that the only thing to do was to use two instead of four Analyzers and to bring the others into action as soon as men could be trained. There was little time to lose, for the enemy was still on the offensive and his morale was rising. The first Analyzer fleet was ordered to recapture the system of Eriston. On the way, by one of the hazards of war, the liner carrying the technicians was struck by a roving mine. A warship would have survived, but the liner with its irreplaceable cargo was totally destroyed. So the operation had to be abandoned. The other expedition was, at first, more successful. There was no doubt at all that the Analyzer fulfilled its designers' claims, and the enemy was heavily defeated in the first engagements. He withdrew, leaving us in possession of Saphran, Leucon and Hexanerax. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 16 of 108 But his Intelligence Staff must have noted the change in our tactics and the inexplicable presence of a liner in the heart of our battlefleet. It must have noted, also, that our first fleet had been accompanied by a similar ship - and had withdrawn when it had been destroyed. In the next engagement, the enemy used his superior numbers to launch an overwhelming attack on the Analyzer ship and its unarmed consort. The attack was made without regard to losses - both ships were, of course, very heavily protected - and it succeeded. The result was the virtual decapitation of the Fleet, since an effectual transfer to the old operational methods proved impossible. We disengaged under heavy fire, and so lost all our gains and also the systems of Lormyia, Ismarnus, Beronis, Alphanidon and Sideneus. At this stage, Grand Admiral Taxaris expressed his disapproval of Norden by committing suicide, and I assumed supreme command. The situation was now both serious and infuriating. With stubborn conservatism and complete lack of imagination, the enemy continued to advance with his old-fashioned and inefficient but now vastly more numerous ships. It was galling to realize that if we had only continued building, without seeking new weapons, we would have been in a far more advantageous position. There were many acrimonious conferences at which Norden defended the scientists while everyone else blamed them for all that had happened. The difficulty was that Norden had proved every one of his claims: he had a perfect excuse for all the disasters that had occurred. And we could not now turn back - the search for an irresistible weapon must go on. At first it had been a luxury that would shorten the war. Now it was a necessity if we were to end it victoriously. We were on the defensive, and so was Norden. He was more than ever determined to reestablish his prestige and that of the Research Staff. But we had been twice disappointed, and would not make the same mistake again. No doubt Norden's twenty thousand scientists would produce many further weapons: we would remain unimpressed. We were wrong. The final weapon was something so fantastic that even now it seems difficult to believe that it ever existed. Its innocent, noncommittal name - The Exponential Field - gave no hint of its real potentialities. Some of Norden's mathematicians had discovered it during a piece of entirely theoretical research into the properties of space, and to everyone's great surprise their results were found to be physically realizable. It seems very difficult to explain the operation of the Field to the layman. According to the technical description, it "produces an exponential condition of space, so that a finite distance in normal, linear space may become infinite in pseudo-space." Norden gave an analogy which some of us found useful. It was as if one took a flat disk of rubber - representing a region of normal space - and then pulled its center out to infinity. The circumference of the disk would be unaltered - but its "diameter" would be infinite. That was the sort of thing the generator of the Field did to the space around it. As an example, suppose that a ship carrying the generator was surrounded by a ring of hostile machines. If it switched on the Field, each of the enemy ships would think that it - and the ships on the far side of the circle - had suddenly receded into nothingness. Yet the circumference of the circle would be the same as before: only the journey to the center would be of infinite duration, for as one proceeded, distances would appear to become greater and greater as the "scale" of space altered. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 17 of 108 It was a nightmare condition, but a very useful one. Nothing could reach a ship carrying the Field: it might be englobed by an enemy fleet yet would be as inaccessible as if it were at the other side of the Universe. Against this, of course, it could not fight back without switching off the Field, but this still left it at a very great advantage, not only in defense but in offense. For a ship fitted with the Field could approach an enemy fleet undetected and suddenly appear in its midst. This time there seemed to be no flaws in the new weapon. Needless to say, we looked for all the possible objections before we committed ourselves again. Fortunately the equipment was fairly simple and did not require a large operating staff. After much debate, we decided to rush it into production, for we realized that time was running short and the war was going against us. We had now lost about the whole of our initial gains and enemy forces had made several raids into our own solar system. We managed to hold off the enemy while the Fleet was reequipped and the new battle techniques were worked out. To use the Field operationally it was necessary to locate an enemy formation, set a course that would intercept it, and then switch on the generator for the calculated period of time. On releasing the Field again - if the calculations had been accurate - one would be in the enemy's midst and could do great damage during the resulting confusion, retreating by the same route when necessary. The first trial maneuvers proved satisfactory and the equipment seemed quite reliable. Numerous mock attacks were made and the crews became accustomed to the new technique. I was on one of the test flights and can vividly remember my impressions as the Field was switched on. The ships around us seemed to dwindle as if on the surface of an expanding bubble: in an instant they had vanished completely. So had the stars - but presently we could see that the Galaxy was still visible as a faint band of light around the ship. The virtual radius of our pseudo-space was not really infinite, but some hundred thousand light-years, and so the distance to the farthest stars of our system had not been greatly increased - though the nearest had of course totally disappeared. These training maneuvers, however, had to be canceled before they were completed, owing to a whole flock of minor technical troubles in various pieces of equipment, notably the communications circuits. These were annoying, but not important, though it was thought best to return to Base to clear them up. At that moment the enemy made what was obviously intended to be a decisive attack against the fortress planet of Iton at the limits of our Solar System. The Fleet had to go into battle before repairs could be made. The enemy must have believed that we had mastered the secret of invisibility - as in a sense we had. Our ships appeared suddenly out of no-where and inflicted tremendous damage - for a while. And then something quite baffling and inexplicable happened. I was in command of the flagship Hircania when the trouble started. We had been operating as independent units, each against assigned objectives. Our detectors observed an enemy formation at medium range and the navigating officers measured its distance with great accuracy. We set course and switched on the generator. The Exponential Field was released at the moment when we should have been passing through the center of the enemy group. To our consternation, we emerged into normal space at a distance of many hundred miles - and when we found the enemy, he had already The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 18 of 108 found us. We retreated, and tried again. This time we were so far away from the enemy that he located us first. Obviously, something was seriously wrong. We broke communicator silence and tried to contact the other ships of the Fleet to see if they had experienced the same trouble. Once again we failed - and this time the failure was beyond all reason, for the communication equipment appeared to be working perfectly. We could only assume, fantastic though it seemed, that the rest of the Fleet had been destroyed. I do not wish to describe the scenes when the scattered units of the Fleet struggled back to Base. Our casualties had actually been negligible, but the ships were completely demoralized. Almost all had lost touch with one another and had found that their ranging equipment showed inexplicable errors. It was obvious that the Exponential Field was the cause of the troubles, despite the fact that they were only apparent when it was switched off. The explanation came too late to do us any good, and Norden's final discomfiture was small consolation for the virtual loss of the war. As I have explained, the Field generators produced a radial distortion of space, distances appearing greater and greater as one approached the center of the artificial pseudo-space. When the Field was switched off, conditions returned to normal. But not quite. It was never possible to restore the initial state exactly. Switching the Field on and off was equivalent to an elongation and contraction of the ship carrying the generator, but there was a hysteretic effect, as it were, and the initial condition was never quite reproducible, owing to all the thousands of electrical changes and movements of mass aboard the ship while the Field was on. These asymmetries and distortions were cumulative, and though they seldom amounted to more than a fraction of one per cent, that was quite enough. It meant that the precision ranging equipment and the tuned circuits in the communication apparatus were thrown completely out of adjustment. Any single ship could never detect the change - only when it compared its equipment with that of another vessel, or tried to communicate with it, could it tell what had happened. It is impossible to describe the resultant chaos. Not a single component of one ship could be expected with certainty to work aboard another. The very nuts and bolts were no longer interchangeable, and the supply position became quite impossible. Given time, we might even have overcome these difficulties, but the enemy ships were already attacking in thousands with weapons which now seemed centuries behind those that we had invented. Our magnificent Fleet, crippled by our own science, fought on as best it could until it was overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The ships fitted with the Field were still invulnerable, but as fighting units they were almost helpless. Every time they switched on their generators to escape from enemy attack, the permanent distortion of their equipment increased. In a month, it was all over. THIS IS THE true story of our defeat, which I give without prejudice to my defense before this Court. I make it, as I have said, to counteract the libels that have been circulating against the men who fought under me, and to show where the true blame for our misfortunes lay. Finally, my request, which as the Court will now realize I make in no frivolous manner and which I hope will therefore be granted. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 19 of 108 The Court will be aware that the conditions under which we are housed and the constant surveillance to which we are subjected night and day are somewhat distressing. Yet I am not complaining of this: nor do I complain of the fact that shortage of accommodation has made it necessary to house us in pairs. But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces. THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS THAT SOME WEAPONS MIGHT WE SO SOPHISTICATED THAT THEY HAVE INHERENT FAULTS, COST SO MUCH THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD ENOUGH OF THEM. WEAPON SUPERIORITY FOR SUPERIORITY’S SAKE DOES NOT MAKE VERY GOOD COMMON SENSE. IN MY MIND THIS IS KIND OF LIKE TALKING ABOUT THE F-35 LIGHTENING II THAT IS SO EXPENSIVE AND COSTING US BILLIONS AND THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX KEEP TELLING US THAT ALL THE PROBLEMS WITH IT WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF IN THE ‘FUTURE’. OR GETTING RID OF THE PREMIER GROUND ASSAULT PLANE, THE A-10 WARTHOG, AND REPLACE IT WITH MORE CAPABLE F-15E AND F-35’S. GETTING THE IDEA YET? UT From: "Kay Bolgeo" [email protected] A satisfied woman speaks out The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 20 of 108 From: "Michael Klon Waldrip" [email protected] AH, THE IRISH A painter by the name of Murphy, while not a brilliant scholar, was a gifted portrait artist. Over a short number of years, his fame grew and soon people from all over Ireland were coming to the town of Doolin in County Clare, to get him to paint their likenesses. One day, a beautiful young English woman arrived at his house in a stretch limo and asked if he would paint her in the nude. This being the first time anyone had made such a request he was a bit perturbed, particularly when the woman told him that money was no object; in fact, and she was willing to pay up to $10,000. Not wanting to get into any marital strife, he asked her to wait while he went into the house to confer with Mary, his wife. In a few minutes he returned. "T'would be me pleasure to paint yer portrait, missus," he said "The wife says it's okay. "I'll paint ya in da nude alright, but I have to at least leave me socks on so I have a place to wipe me brushes."...... The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 21 of 108 Ah, the Golfers! One day many years ago, I accidentally overturned my golf cart. Elizabeth, a very attractive and keen golfer, who lived in a villa on the golf course, heard the noise and called out: Are you okay, what's your name?" "It's David and I'm okay thanks," I replied. "David, forget your troubles. Come to my villa, rest a while and I'll help you get the cart up later." "That's mighty nice of you," I answered, but I don't think my wife would like it." "Oh, come on," Elizabeth insisted. She was very pretty, very sexy and persuasive . . I was weak. "Well okay," I finally agreed and added, "but my wife won't like it." After a few restorative Vodka and tonic water, I thanked Elizabeth: "I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be really upset. "So I best go now" "Don't be silly!" Elizabeth said with a smile: "She won't know anything. By the way, where is she?" "Probably still under the cart ...." I said .... OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES I was eating breakfast with my 11-year-old Granddaughter and I asked her, What day is tomorrow?" The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 22 of 108 Without skipping a beat she said, "It's Presidents Day!" She's smart, so I asked her "What does Presidents Day mean?" (I was waiting for something about Obama, Bush, or Clinton, etc.) She replied, "Presidents Day is when the President steps out of the White House, and if he sees his shadow, we have another year of Bullshit." You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose LADIES GOLF Three ladies are playing the 4th hole at a members-only golf club, when a naked man, wearing a bag over his head, jumps from the trees and runs across the green. The 3 ladies look and are in shock at the size of his manhood. The first lady says, "Well he definitely is not my husband." The second lady looks at his manhood and says, "He for sure is not my husband." The third lady takes a good look and says, "He's not even a member of this club!" ANOTHER BLONDE JOKE A blonde goes into a nearby store and asks a clerk if she can buy the TV in the corner. The clerk looks at her and says that he doesn't serve blondes, so she goes back home and dyes her hair black. The next day she returns to the store and asks the same thing, and again, the clerk said he doesn't serve blondes. Frustrated, the blonde goes home and dyes her hair yet again, to a shade of red. Sure that a clerk would sell her the TV this time, she returns and asks a different clerk this time. To her astonishment, this clerk also says that she doesn't serve blondes. The blonde asks the clerk, "How in the world do you know I am a blonde?" The clerk looks at her disgustedly and says, "That's not a TV -- it's a microwave!" The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 23 of 108 THE IRISH WRESTLER A Russian and an Irish wrestler were set to square off for the Olympic gold medal. Before the final match, the Irish wrestler's trainer came to him and said 'Now, don't forget all the research we've done on this Russian. He's never lost a match because of this 'pretzel' hold he has. It ties you up in knots. Whatever you do, do not let him get you in that hold! If he does, you're finished.' The Irishman nodded in acknowledgment. As the match started, the Irishman and the Russian circled each other several times, looking for an opening. All of a sudden, the Russian lunged forward, grabbing the Irishman and wrapping him up in the dreaded pretzel hold. A sigh of disappointment arose from the crowd and the trainer buried his face in his hands, for he knew all was lost. He couldn't watch the inevitable happen. Suddenly, there was a Long, High Pitched Scream, then a cheer from the crowd and the trainer raised his eyes just in time to watch the Russian go flying up in the air. His back hit the mat with a thud and the Irishman collapsed on top of him, making the pin and winning the match. The trainer was astounded. When he finally got his wrestler alone, he asked 'How did you ever get out of that hold? No one has ever done it before!' The wrestler answered 'Well, I was ready to give up when he got me in that hold but at the last moment, I opened my eyes and saw this pair of testicles right in front of my face. I had nothing to lose so with my last ounce of strength, I stretched out my neck and bit those babies just as hard as I could.' The trainer exclaimed 'That's what finished him off?' Paddy replied, 'Not really. You'd be amazed how strong you get when you bite your own nuts". SISTER BARBARA Sitting by the window of her convent, Sister Barbara opened a letter from home one evening. Inside the letter was a $100.00 bill her parents had sent. Sister Barbara smiled at the gesture. As she read the letter by the window, she noticed a shabbily dressed stranger leaning against the lamp post below. Quickly, she wrote, "Don't despair. Sister Barbara," on a piece of paper, wrapped the $100.00 bill in it, got the man's attention and tossed it out the window to him. The stranger picked it up, and with a puzzled expression and a tip of his hat, went off down the street. The next day, Sister Barbara was told that a man was at her door, insisting on seeing her. She went down, and found the stranger waiting. Without a word, he handed her a huge wad of $100.00 bills. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 24 of 108 "What's this?" she asked. "That's the $8,000.00 you have coming Sister," he replied. "Don't Despair paid 80-to-1." From: "Douglas S Dudash" Notification of shipment delivery From: "Jim Hollis" [email protected] OH HOW I LOVE THE IRISH JOKES! -ONLY THE IRISH HAVE JOKES LIKE THESE Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, His face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp "What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender. " Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy. "That little shit, O'Conner," says Sean, "He couldn't do that to you, He must have had something in his hand." "That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had, The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 25 of 108 And a terrible lickin' he gave me with it." " Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself, Didn't you have something in your hand?" That I did," said Paddy. "Mrs. O'Conner's breast, and a thing of Beauty it was, but useless in a fight." `` *********** An Irishman who had a little too much to drink Is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road. A cop pulls him over. "So," says the cop to the driver, Where have ya been?" " Why, I've been to the pub of course," slurs the drunk. " Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've had quite a few to drink this evening." "I did all right," the drunk says with a smile. "Did you know," says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, "that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?" "Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk. "For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf." *********** Brenda O'Malley is home making dinner, as usual, When Tim Finnegan arrives at her door. "Brenda, may I come in?" he asks. "I've somethin' to tell ya". "Of course you can come in, you're always welcome, Tim. But where's my husband?" "That's what I'm here to be telling ya, Brenda. There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery..." "Oh, God no!" cries Brenda. "Please don't tell me." "I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I'm sorry. Finally, she looked up at Tim. "How did it happen, Tim?" "It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned." "Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me truth, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?" "Well, Brenda... No. In fact, he got out three times to pee." *********** Mary Clancy goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she's in tears. He says, "So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?" She says, "Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night." The priest says, "Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?" She says, "That he did, Father." The priest says, "What did he ask, Mary?" She says, he said, 'Please Mary, put down that damn gun...' *********** AND THE BEST FOR LAST The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 26 of 108 A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, Enters a confessional booth, sits down, but says nothing. The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention but the drunk continues to sit there. Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall. The drunk mumbles, "ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side either!" WILL I LIVE TO SEE 80? (Here's something to think about.) I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, she said I was doing fairly well for my age. (I am past sixty) A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking her, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80? 'She asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?' ' Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!' Then she asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?' 'I said, 'Not much... My former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!' 'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'' No, I don't,' I said. She asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?'' No,' I said...She looked at me and said, 'Then, why do you even give a shit? Hope your days go better than this. This is an old one but I find myself doing these things. I laughed at this until I realized that this is exactly what I do. Now, finally, somebody has made a video clip of it! Just 2 minutes and 56 seconds long. Now sit back, relax, click on the below link, and have a few chuckles...... Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6oHBG3ABUJU&vq=medium > The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 27 of 108 From Gary Shelton’s Facebook Page From: "Karen Boyd" [email protected] TRUTHS Invented in the 1940s in Tennessee, Mountain Dew was meant to be mixed with whisky. In fact, its bottles were designed to look like moonshine, and the original Mountain Dew labels featured outhouses, stills, and hay-chewing yokels. <*><*><*><*> Dogs are the only non-primate animals to look people in the eyes. Dogs seek out eye contact from people, but not their own biological dog parents. And, unlike other domesticated animals, dogs run to their owners when they’re scared or worried - unlike horses and cats that will run away. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 28 of 108 <*><*><*><*> A sunburn is the result of your skin cells committing mass suicide to protect you from their damaged DNA, which can cause cancer. ?> Love this fact & the way they put it~ <*><*><*><*> LEGOs can support 4-5 times the weight of a human without collapsing and are strong enough to support a LEGO tower around 2.2 miles high. <*><*><*><*> The red juice that comes out of a rare steak isn't blood—it's just water and a protein called myoglobin <*><*><*><*> The terms "UK" and "Great Britain" are not interchangeable—the United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland, while Great Britain does not. <*><*><*><*> Earthworms have 5 hearts. <*><*><*><*> Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance. <*><*><*><*> If you step on people’s feet, they will open their mouth, just like trash bins. <*><*><*><*> Treadmills were created to punish English prisoners in 1818 - see, I knew it <*><*><*><*> The first bomb the Allies dropped on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo. <*><*><*><*> Yawning helps us to regulate the temperature of our brains by bringing cool air into the body. <*><*><*><*> Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 29 of 108 ~~~~~~ FUNNIES True bravery is arriving home stinking drunk after a very late night out with the boys..... Then....being assaulted by your wife with a broom, And still having the guts to ask: "Are you cleaning, or were you flying somewhere?" <*><*><*><*> A priest was preparing a dying man for his journey. Whispering firmly, the priest said, "Denounce the devil! Let him know how little you think of his evil!" The dying man said nothing. The priest asked, "Why do you refuse to denounce the devil and his evil?" The dying man said, "Until I know where I'm heading, I don't think I ought to aggravate anybody." <*><*><*><*> A little girl asked her mother, 'How did the human race appear?' The mother answered, 'God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.' Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.' The confused girl returned to her mother and said, 'Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?' The mother answered, 'Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.' <*><*><*><*> Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened. <*><*><*><*> A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal, its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible. The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah." The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?" The little girl replied, "Then you ask him." <*><*><*><*> An elderly man, that had a little to much to drink, was walking along the road. A big truck came along and knocked him down. The driver stopped, got out and hollered at the old man "Hey watch out." The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 30 of 108 The old man look at the driver and asked: " Why you gonna back up?" <*><*><*><*> A man with a gun went into a bank and demanded their money. Once he was given the money, he turned to a customer and asked, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' The man replied, 'Yes sir, I did.' The robber then shot him in the temple, killing him instantly. He then turned to a couple standing next to him and asked the man, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' The man replied, 'No sir, I didn't, but my wife did.' From Jamie Casteel Bolgeo’s Facebook Page From Bob Bolgeo’s Facebook Page IN THE BAR Having already downed a few power drinks, she turns around, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says, "Listen here, good looking. I will screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, their place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on. . . It doesn't matter to me. I just love it." His eyes now wide with interest, he responds, "No kidding!!! I'm in Government too. . . Are you Federal or State?" From: "Ray Beloate" [email protected] THE GRANDMOTHER OF ALL BLONDE JOKES This blonde decided one day that she was sick and tired of all those blonde jokes and how all blondes are perceived as stupid. So, she decided to show her husband that blondes really are smart. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 32 of 108 While her husband was off at work, she decided that she would paint a couple of rooms in the house. The next day, right after her husband left for work, she got down to the task at hand. Her husband arrived home at 5:30 and was hit by the distinctive smell of paint. He walked into the living room and found his wife lying on the floor in a pool of sweat. He noticed she was wearing a heavy parka and a leather jacket at the same time. He bent over and asked if she was OK. She replied, “Yes”. He asked what she was doing. She replied that she wanted to prove to him that not all blonde women are dumb and she wanted to do it by painting the house. He then asked her why she had a parka over her leather jacket and she replied she was reading the directions on the paint can and it said… (You'll love this....) (I know you will....) "FOR BEST RESULTS, PUT ON TWO COATS." From: “Christina Cowan” [email protected] YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! From: “Tim Bolgeo” [email protected] The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 33 of 108 DEATH BY METEORITE? INDIA TRAGEDY MAY BE 1ST IN RECORDED HISTORY By Laura Geggel, Live Science Staff Writer, February 8, 2016 http://www.space.com/31866-did-meteorite-kill-indian-man.html A broken up asteroid (not the one that may have hit India) hurtling through space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Update on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 9:20 a.m.: NASA officials said in a statement that online photos of the event are more consistent with a land-based explosion than a space rock, as reported by the New York Times. For the first time in recorded history, a meteorite is reported to have killed a person. The incident happened Saturday (Feb. 6) when an object, thought to be a meteorite, hit a college campus in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, the Wall Street Journal reported. The impact killed a man and injured three others, the WSJ said. Officials found a 4-feet-deep (1.2 meters) crater in the ground that contained "bluish black" rock fragments, G. Baskar, the college's principal in Tamil Nadu's Vellore district, told the WSJ. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 34 of 108 But NASA has yet to confirm whether the mysterious object is indeed a meteorite. "Our Planetary Defense Coordination Office is aware of the reports and is looking into it," said Laurie Cantillo, a NASA spokeswoman. "So at this point the report is unconfirmed." The impact occurred at 12:30 p.m. local time (2 a.m. E.T.) Saturday, when a bus driver was standing on the grass near the college's cafeteria, according to Reuters. The driver, a 40- year-old man named Kamaraj, was killed, and a student and two gardeners standing nearby were injured, the WSJ reported. "There was a noise like a big explosion," Baskar told the WSJ. "It was an abnormal sound that could be heard till at least 3 kilometers [about 2 miles] away." The explosion broke windows in neighboring classrooms and cars, and prompted college officials to cancel classes until Wednesday (Feb. 10), the WSJ said. Meanwhile, J. Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, announced that the driver's family would receive 100,000 rupees ($1,470) and those injured would get 25,000 rupees ($368) in compensation, the WSJ reported. If scientists confirm that a meteorite — and not space junk or other debris — led to the man's death, this would be the first scientifically proven meteorite fatality in modern times, NASA said. "It is so rare, there has never been a scientifically confirmed report of someone being killed by a meteorite impact in recorded history," Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, told Live Science in an email. "There have been reports of injuries, but even those were extremely rare before the Chelyabinsk event three years ago." A meteorite wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, leaving the gaping Chicxulub crater in Mexico; and other meteorites have hit Earth throughout the years, including the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite that injured about 1,000 people. However, most meteorites land in remote places, including a 3.5-lb. (1.6 kilograms) rock researchers found in the Australian Outback shortly after it crash-landed on Earth on Nov. 27, 2015. There is evidence that space rocks once bombarded Earth and the moon about 3.9 billion years ago, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). But "since that time, cratering appears to have continued at a much slower and fairly uniform rate," the JPL said. Comets and asteroids continue to pockmark Earth when they become meteorites, or space rocks that survive the plunge through the planet's atmosphere and land on Earth. But most meteors burn up high in the atmosphere, leaving streaks that people call shooting stars. However, larger space rocks do sometimes make landfall. People saw a fireball streak across the sky from Kentucky to New York on Oct. 9, 1992. Researchers found the remains, a 27-lb. (12 kg) meteorite that punched a hole in a parked car, in Peekskill, New York, the JPL reported. There are ancient Chinese records of meteorites causing human deaths, but there have been no human fatalities reported in the past 1,000 years, the JPL said. Still, meteorites have injured some people, including Alabama housewife Ann Hodges, who awoke from a nap on her couch when a 3-lb. (1.4 kg) meteorite fell through her house and bruised her hip. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 35 of 108 "An individual's chance of being killed by a meteorite is small," the JPL said. "But the risk increases with the size of the impacting comet or asteroid." It may be too late for the dinosaurs, but today, scientists are mapping near-Earth objects to learn which space rocks pose the most danger to Earth, the JPL said. ~ AUSTRALIAN COPS CONFISCATE CROCODILES’ T-SHIRT LAUNCHER, CITE GUN- CONTROL RULES by AWR HAWKINS12 Feb 201677 http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/02/12/pro-basketball-teams-t-shirt-launcher-confiscated-in- light-of-australian-gun-control/ The police in Queensland, Australia, confiscated an air-powered T-shirt launcher from the Townsville Crocodiles, an Australian pro-basketball team, by claiming the popular device is a “category B weapon” that must be registered with the government. The Crocodiles general manager, Rob Honan, said the Queensland Police “ballistics unit informed the venue that essentially it was a category B weapon and it needed to be handed in, otherwise people in possession of it would be prosecuted,” according to the Brisbane Times. The Queensland Police explained that the T-shirt launcher must be licensed and registered to the user, and because of this, it also must be properly manufactured — it cannot be homemade. The police explicitly stated that such weapons “can only be manufactured by a licensed armorer.” By applying the label of category B weapon to a PVC pipe which uses air pressure to launch t-shirts, authorities have placed the T-shirt launcher “in the same category as a single shot centre-fire rifle, a double barrel centre-fire rifle, a repeating centre-fire rifle, a break action shotgun and centre-fire rifle combination.” The Townsville Crocodiles are now thinking about getting a slingshot with which to launch shirts into the crowd. A better example of the insidious nature of gun control would be difficult — if not impossible — to find. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at [email protected]. ~ MARYLAND DEPUTY SHOT AND KILLED IN GUN-FREE PANERA BREAD by AWR HAWKINS, 13 Feb 2016 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/13/business-in-which-maryland-deputy-was-shot- killed-is-gun-free-zone/ The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 36 of 108 A Harford County sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed inside an Abingdon, Maryland, Panera Bread restaurant on February 10, despite the fact that the Panera Bread is a gun- free zone. Breitbart News reported in September that Panera Bread joined Sonic, Chipotle, and Jack in the Box in asking that law-abiding citizens disarm themselves before entering the business. That same day, The Huffington Post published a statement from Panera, clearly instituting the ban: “Within our company, we strive to create Panera Warmth. This warmth means bakery-cafes where customers and associates feel comfortable and welcome. To this end, we ask that guns not be brought into this environment unless carried by an authorized law enforcement officer. Panera respects the rights of gun owners, but asks our customers to help preserve the environment we are working to create for our guests and associates.” Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety tweeted in celebration of the gun ban, exclaiming, “Panera Bread asks customers not to bring guns into its restaurants!” It was in this gun-free zone that a Harford County deputy was shot and killed on Wednesday. A second deputy was then shot and killed in a related shootout at a secondary location. Just as in the cases of the gun-free zones at Virginia Tech University, Fort Hood, the Aurora movie theater, Sandy Hook Elementary School, the DC Navy Yard, the Lafayette Grand Theatre, the Chattanooga military offices, Umpqua Community College, and many other locations where tragedies occurred, the gun-free zone at Panera Bread only disarms law- abiding citizens. THE PANERA BREAD RESTAURANT PURPOSELY HAD THE OFFICE DISARMED SO THAT HE COULDN’T DEFEND HIMSELF. THEY DID NOT TAKE ANY ACTIONS TO PROTECT THEIR CUSTOMERS. WHAT TYPE OF LIABILITY SHOULD THEY INCUR BECAUSE OF THEIR ACTIONS? UT ~ ASHLEY GRAHAM BECOMES FIRST SIZE-16 MODEL TO COVER ‘SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’ SWIMSUIT ISSUE by DANIEL NUSSBAUM14 Feb 2016 http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/02/14/ashley-graham-becomes-first-size-16-model-to- cover-sports-illustrated-swimsuit-issue/ Plus-size model Ashley Graham will make history Monday when she becomes the first size- 16 model to cover Sports Illustratedmagazine’s vaunted “Swimsuit Issue.” For the first time in its 52-year history, the magazine will release three separate covers for its 2016 swimsuit edition, featuring three different women: Graham, MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, and previous SI swimsuit model Hailey Clauson. The magazine revealed its cover choices during a TNT special on Saturday night. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 37 of 108 “I thought Sports Illustrated was taking a risk by putting a girl my size in the pages,” Graham told People magazine. “But putting me on the cover? They aren’t just breaking barriers; they are the standard now. This is beyond epic.” JAMES MACARI/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED The 28-year-old Nebraska native credited SI Swimsuit issue editor MJ Day for her history- making cover and for making her feel like she was “supposed to be there” during the photo shoot. Graham dedicated the cover to “all the women out there who never felt that they were beautiful enough, who never felt like they were skinny enough, and who never felt like they were going to be able to be represented in society like this.” “Girls who are insecure about their bodies, girls who feel fat, girls who have cellulite, girls who have stretch marks on their body — those are all the things that I had as a kid and I never had a woman like me growing up to look at,” Graham told People. “I had my mother and that’s one thing, but to have somebody who has cellulite, who has things that jiggle, who has back fat and talk about how you can be an overcomer and not let society take you down for all of that. That’s real.” The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 38 of 108 Sports Illustrated‘s 2016 Swimsuit issue hits newsstands Monday, February 15. Watch the magazine’s big reveal above. ~ I THINK I’VE PONTIFICATED ON THIS MATTER BEFORE. AND THE ANSWER IS, “YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS I WOULD!” YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! NORMALLY THIS SECTION OF THE REVENGE IS FOR HUMOROUS ITEMS. BUT FOR THIS TIME IT IS FOR A SERIOUS ONE. CHRIS KYLE WAS A GREAT AMERICAN HERO WHO WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR MANY YEARS TO COME. UT From: "Ray Beloate" [email protected] The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 39 of 108 CHRIS KYLE For those who may not know, here are a list of Chris Kyle's awards. •2 Silver Stars with Combat Valor •5 Bronze Stars with Combat Valor •Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat Valor... •2 Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals with Combat Valor •2 Combat Action Ribbons •Navy Presidential Unit Citation •Joint Meritorious Unit Award •Navy Unit Commendation •Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation •Navy Good Conduct Medal with 2 Service Star •National Defense Service Medal •Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal • Iraq Campaign Medal with 4 Campaign Stars •Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal •Global War on Terrorism Service Medal •Sea Service Deployment Ribbon with 3 Service Stars •Rifle Marksmanship Medal •Pistol Marksmanship Medal • United States Navy SEALs Insignia Here is a description of his funeral, definitely worth reading: Chris Kyle: This is apparently from a wife of one of the Navy Seals in attendance... it makes interesting, disturbing, but hardly surprising reading. Chris Kyle became the US armed services number #1 sniper of all time. Not something he was happy about, other than the fact that in so doing, he saved a lot of lives. Three years ago, his wife Taya asked him to leave the SEAL teams because he had a huge bounty on his head by Al Qaeda. He did and wrote the book "The American Sniper" and 100% of the proceeds from the book went to two of the SEAL families who had lost their sons in Iraq . That was the kind of guy Chris was. He formed a company in Dallas to train military, police and I think firemen, how to protect themselves in difficult situations. He also formed a foundation to work with military people suffering from PTSD. Chris was a giver not a taker. He, along with a friend and neighbor, Chad Littlefield, were murdered trying to help a young man that had served six months in Iraq and claimed to have PTSD. Now I need to tell you about all of the blessings. Southwest Airlines flew in any SEAL and their family from any airport to the funeral... free of charge. The employees donated buddy passes and one lady worked for four days without much of a break to see that it happened. Volunteers were at both airports in Dallas to drive them to the hotel. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 40 of 108 The Marriott Hotel reduced their rates to $45 a night and cleared the hotel for only SEAL's and family. The Midlothian, TX Police Department paid the $45 a night for each room. I would guess there were about 200 people staying at the hotel, 100 of them were SEALs. Two large buses were chartered (an unknown donor paid the bill) to transport people to the different events and they also had a few rental cars (donated). The police and secret service were on duty 24 hours during the stay at our hotel. At the Kyle house, the Texas DPS parked a large motor home in front to block the view from reporters. It remained there the entire five days for the SEALs to meet in and so they could use the restroom there instead of the bathroom in the house. Taya, their two small children and both sets of parents were staying in the home. Only a hand full of SEALS went into the home as they had different duties and meetings were held sometimes on an hourly basis. It was a huge coordination of many different events and security. Derek was assigned to be a Pall Bearer, to escort Chris' body when it was transferred from the Midlothian Funeral Home to the Arlington Funeral Home, and to be with Taya. A tough job. Taya seldom came out of her bedroom. The house was full with people from the church and other family members that would come each day to help. I spent one morning in a bedroom with Chris' mom and the next morning with Chad Littlefield's parents (the other man murdered with Chris). A tough job. George W. Bush and his wife Laura , met and talked to everyone on the Seal Team one on one. They went behind closed doors with Taya for quite a while. They had prayer with us all. You can tell when people were sincere and caring. Nolan Ryan sent his cooking team, a huge grill and lots of steaks, chicken and hamburgers. They set up in the front yard and fed people all day long including the 200 SEALs and their families. The next day a local BBQ restaurant set up a buffet in front of the house and fed all once again. Food was plentiful and all were taken care of. The family's church kept those inside the house well fed. Jerry Jones, the man everyone loves to hate, was a rock star. He and his wife were just making sure everyone was taken care of....Class... He donated the use of Cowboy Stadium for the services because so many wanted to attend. The charter buses transported us to the stadium on Monday at 10:30 am. Every car, bus, motorcycle was searched with bomb dogs and police. I am not sure if kooks were making threats trying to make a name for themselves or if so many SEALs in one place was a security risk, I don't know. We willingly obliged. No purses went into the stadium! We were taken to The Legends room high up and a large buffet was available. That was for about 300 people. We were growing. A Medal of Honor recipient was there, lots of secret service and police and Sarah Palin and her husband. She looked nice. This was a very The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 41 of 108 formal military service. The service started at 1:00 pm and when we were escorted onto the field I was shocked. We heard that about10,000 people had come to attend also. They were seated in the stadium seats behind us. It was a beautiful and emotional service. The Bagpipe and drum corps were wonderful and the Texas A&M men's choir stood through the entire service and sang right at the end. We were all in tears. The next day was the 200-mile procession from Midlothian, TX to Austin for burial. It was a cold, drizzly, windy day, but the people were out. We had dozens of police motorcycle riders, freedom riders, five chartered buses and lots of cars . You had to have a pass to be in the procession and still it was huge. Two helicopters circled the procession with snipers sitting out the side door for protection. It was the longest funeral procession ever in the state of Texas. People were everywhere. The entire route was shut down ahead of us, the people were lined up on the side of the road the entire way. Firemen were down on one knee, police officers were holding their hats over their hearts, childrenwaving flags, veterans saluting as we went by. Every bridge had fire trucks with large flags displayed from their tall ladders, people all along the entire 200 miles were standing in the cold weather. It was so heart warming. Taya rode in the hearse with Chris' body so Derek rode the route with us. I was so grateful to have that time with him. The service was at Texas National Cemetery. Very few are buried there and you have to apply to get in. It is like people from the Civil War, Medal of Honor winners, a few from the Alamo and all the historical people of Texas. It was a nice service and the Freedom Riders surrounded the outside of the entire cemetery to keep the crazy church people from Kansas that protest at military funerals away from us. Each SEAL put his Trident (metal SEAL badge) on the top of Chris' casket, one at a time. A lot hit it in with one blow. Derek was the only one to take four taps to put his in and it was almost like he was caressing it as he did it. Another tearful moment. After the service Governor Rick Perry and his wife, Anita , invited us to the governor's mansion. She stood at the door, greeted each of us individually, and gave each of the SEALs a coin of Texas . She was a sincere, compassionate, and gracious hostess. We were able to tour the ground floor and then went into the garden for beverages and BBQ. So many of the Seal team guys said that after they get out they are moving to Texas. They remarked that they had never felt so much love and hospitality. The charter buses then took the guys to the airport to catch their returning flights. Derek just now called and after a 20 hour flight he is back in his spot, in a dangerous land on the other side of the world, protecting America. We just wanted to share with you, the events of a quite emotional, but blessed week." The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 42 of 108 To this day, no one in the White House has ever acknowledged Chris Kyle; his service, his death, his duty, his generosity, his caring, his life. However, the President can call a sports person and congratulate him on his bravery for announcing to the world that he is gay. He can say on national television that someone, a man who has committed a crime and was shot by police in the line of duty, would have made him a good son. The SEALS have asked that you please, keep this moving if you think Chris Kyle would have made a good son. YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! From: "Michael Klon Waldrip" [email protected] THEN AND NOW PICTURES http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/2014/apr/image-opacity-slider-master/index.html?ww2-dday FROM WWII TO THE PRESENT YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! From: “Keith A. Glass” [email protected] WOULD YOU MARRY A ROBOT? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL ALLOW PEOPLE TO FIND LASTING LOVE WITH MACHINES, EXPERT CLAIMS * Computer scientist says humans will form close relationships with robots * Cloud computing could allow machines to become far more life-like * Robots could become the 'perfect companion' for many people * Experts predict people could even go to court in a bid to marry their robots By RICHARD GRAY FOR MAILONLINE, PUBLISHED: 12 February 2016 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3366228/Would-MARRY-robot-Artificial-intelligence- allow-people-lasting-love-machines-expert-claims.html#ixzz3zy8HlbaX While there are fears robots may rise up to take over the world if artificial intelligence progresses too quickly, some of us may find ourselves simply marrying machines in the future. A leading computer scientist has predicted that as robots become more human-like, people may start turning to them for companionship. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 43 of 108 His predictions mirror the plot of the hit TV series Humans, where people formed emotional attachments to robots brought in to help out around the home. Robots could soon become intimate companions for humans and some people may even seek to marry them as they become more human-like. The fictional TV series Humans (pictured) depicted a similar scenario where householders began forming emotional attachments to their robotic helpers in the home Unlike other technology, such as mobile phones and computers, robots will have the ability to interact with us in a far more realistic way. Dr Kevin Curran, a senior member of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers and a computer scientist at the University of Ulster, argues cloud computing has the potential to transform artificial intelligence so robots can become far more lifelike. Speaking to MailOnline, he said: 'It seems that when these machines do act in ways just like adults, where they can interact and talk in real-time, robots will become the perfect companion. 'We have got to ask ourselves will robots be re-purposed for companionship? Will humans become intimate with robots? The answer, I believe, is yes. 'Will we start to see people fighting court cases to win the right to marry their companion? We may see court cases arguing that these artificial beings have the same rights as humans. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 44 of 108 'What pressures will this put on the opposite sex. All of a sudden people will find they are not just competing with their peer group, but also this perfect race of robots.' There has been a growing move towards producing robots that are lifelike in an attempt to help them overcome many of the challenges they would face moving around in the real world. Roboticists have been trying to develop more realistic and life-like machines, such as Bina 48 (pictured) which has been given the biography and identity of a real person, allowing it to answer questions and even argue in a similar way to humans Robotics firm Boston Dynamics, which is owned by Google, has produced a series of robots that move like dogs, cheetahs and humans, making them able to tackle difficult terrain. Other researchers have been trying to develop robots that behave more like humans, such a Bina48 - a robot that has adopted the persona of a real person. Artificial intelligence researchers are also now beginning to explore how to use techniques such as deep learning to give computers emotional intelligence. This is what allows humans to infer information from the world around them, particularly when talking to other people. Cracking this will prove essential to allow robots becoming widely accepted in our homes, according to Dr Curran. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 45 of 108 Some of the first mass produced robots are likely to be companions for the elderly and children. To achieve this scientists have been attempting to give the robots the ability to interact in a more realistic way, such as with Kismet, developed by MIT, which uses facial expressions when it communicates (pictured) 'There is a new move towards cloud robotics where a lot of the processing is done remotely and this has really helped to increase what is possible,' he said. 'Robots are becoming lighter and more mobile as they are not trying to do everything on the actual body - they just require a Wi-Fi chip and a processor. 'The measurement, accuracy and calculations are being done remotely. 'We are finally starting to see robots that actually can walk like real creatures. Just look at what Boston Dynamics has achieved.' Dr Curran added it was likely the first mass market for robots will be to provide companions for elderly people or minders to look after children on their way to school. However, he explained: 'We just have to project a few years down the road and we may see robots being re-purposed for sexual purposes. COULD HUMANS SOMEDAY FALL IN LOVE WITH ROBOTS? The idea where a human falls in love with a robot may not be that far fetched. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 46 of 108 A recent study has found that humans have the potential to emphasise with robots, even while knowing they don't have feelings. It follows previous warnings from experts that humans could develop unhealthy relationships with robots, and even fall in love with them. The film 'Ex Machina', in which a computer programmer falls in love with a droid, may not be as far-fetched as you think The discovery was made after researchers asked people to view images of human and humanoid robotic hands in painful situations, such as being cut by a knife. After studying their electrical brain signals, they found humans responded with similar immediate levels of empathy to both humans and robots. But the beginning phase of the so-called 'top-down' process of empathy was weaker toward robots. The study was carried out by researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology and Kyoto University in Japan, and provides the first neurophysiological evidence of humans' ability to empathise with robots. These results suggest that we empathise with humanoid robots in a similar way to how we empathise with other humans. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 47 of 108 Relationships between robots and humans have been explored in many science fiction films, including the film Ex Machina, the most recent Terminator film and Her. 'Other technologies do get re-purposed in this way - just look at the internet. A large amount of traffic on the internet is to adult websites.' Recently, researchers in Japan unveiled a robotic 'actress' that has been hailed as the 'world's sexiest robot'. Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory at Osaka University designed the robot, called Geminoid F, to act like a human, and it has rubber 'skin' and a woman's face but cannot walk, so has to be wheeled around. Dr Curran said as robots become more commonplace it is likely to lead to some social changes. He said while people are likely to adapt quickly, it may take longer for the authorities and legislation to tackle the rapid advance in technology. He said: 'Are we prepared as a society for when robots are integrated in society and appear as humans? 'When robots hit the mass market and walking down the street with their companion, how do you talk to your five-year-old about that?' ~ PERHAPS IF HE STOPPED TREATING USERS LIKE CASH COWS TO BE COMMODITIZED. . MARK ZUCKERBERG IS FLANKED BY 16 BODYGUARDS — AT HOME By Ian Mohr, February 14, 2016 | 10:30pm http://pagesix.com/2016/02/14/mark-zuckerberg-has-16-bodyguards-at-his-home/ Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Photo: Reuters One booming business in Silicon Valley is security — but not the digital kind. Insiders tell Page Six that the young tech billionaires are forced to hire armies of guards after threats from unstable users. Sources told us that Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg has 16 bodyguards now working at his home. “He has guards over at his place,” said a Palo Alto, Calif., insider, adding that tech moguls around town are all quietly upping security. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 48 of 108 We hear that Zuckerberg’s 16-person detail are not all on the scene at the same time, but work in shifts. “You’re touching hundreds of millions of people,” a Silicon Valley source pointed out of the digital landscape, adding that threats from even a tiny percentage of disgruntled users who work the apps for endless hours can be unnerving — “All the CEOs get threats, and they take them very seriously.” The source noted that threats can disturbingly extend to family members. Facebook said it had more than a billion “daily active users on average” for December 2015. Our source also pointed out that Facebook’s become a reported leading reason for romantic breakups and divorces, which can cultivate angry users who would unfairly blame the site. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers has said, “Facebook holds the distinction of being the unrivaled leader for online divorce evidence.” Meanwhile, Zuckerberg’s security detail has annoyed locals at his $10 million San Francisco “pied-à-terre.” Neighbors last month accused his detail of “permanently .?.?. illegally” taking up two prime parking spots in the area. A letter posted by residents said, “We’ve spoken to the security guards, and they were cordial but ultimately have been instructed by their supervisors to not move the cars under any circumstances.” That followed other skirmishes with Zuckerberg’s neighbors over issues including construction. He also owns a $7 million home in Palo Alto and spent $30 million in 2013 to buy up four neighbors’ homes, then leased them out. A Facebook rep didn’t comment. ~ SEATTLE AQUARIUM CANCELS OCTOPUS SEX ACT DUE TO CANNIBALISM CONCERNS By KOMO Staff Sunday, February 14th 2016 http://komonews.com/news/local/aquarium-cancels-octopus-sex-act-due-to-cannibalism-concerns SEATTLE (KOMO) -- The octopus at the Seattle Aquarium won't be getting any love this Valentine's Day. Each Valentine's Day the Aquarium invites people to watch the sea creatures mate, but this year the chance to watch some 8-armed nooky has been called off. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 49 of 108 Aquarium staff say they're afraid that their male octopus - a 70-pound cephalopod named Kong - is too big for the females who are 30 to 40 pounds, and he may eat them. Photo courtesy Seattle Aquarium. So much for romance! Instead of mating, Kong will be released back into the Puget Sound Monday at noon. Octopuses only live about three or four years and mate once at the end of their lives. Then they die. ~ MISSING BATTERIES AMONG ISSUES THAT CAUSED ARMY'S RUNAWAY BLIMP David Willman http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-runaway-missile-defense-blimp-20160214-story.html The blimp that broke loose from an Army facility in Maryland last fall, wreaking havoc with its milelong tether, flew uncontrolled for hours because someone neglected to put batteries in its automatic-deflation device, Pentagon investigators have found. The pilotless, radar-carrying blimp was part of the troubled JLENS missile-defense system, which has failed to perform as promised while costing taxpayers more than $2.7 billion since 1998. The runaway blimp episode was caused by a cascade of events spanning 13 hours, according to people familiar with the investigation, an overview provided to congressional staff members and a summary released by a military spokeswoman. The six-sentence summary of the investigation said that "design, human, and procedural issues all contributed" to the mishap. Pentagon officials declined to release a copy of the investigative report. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 50 of 108 The spectacle of a giant military blimp wreaking havoc across two mid-Atlantic states this week has prompted congressional leaders to question the worth of a long troubled missile- defense program known as JLENS. The blimp was one of two moored at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground. On Oct. 28, it was floating at an altitude of about 5,200 feet when its tether tore apart. Fighter jets were scrambled to track the blimp as it wafted over Maryland and Pennsylvania, and commercial air traffic had to be diverted. The blimp's tether damaged power lines, knocking out electricity to 35,000 rural Pennsylvania residents. The tattered blimp finally came to rest in high trees in rural Moreland Township, Pa. The incident made JLENS a target of widespread ridicule and provoked fresh questions about the program. JLENS — short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System — is designed to provide early warning of enemy cruise missiles, drones or other low-flying threats. The blimps, also called aerostats, can float as high as 10,000 feet. At that altitude, their powerful radar can see 340 miles in any direction, farther than land- or sea-based radar, according to the system's prime contractor, Raytheon Co. The 7,000-pound aerostats are anchored to the ground by 11/8-inch-thick Kevlar tethers, which also hold wiring for electricity. The two blimps at Aberdeen were participating in an "operational exercise" intended to test the system's ability to defend the Washington, D.C., area. The exercise was suspended after the accident. The sequence of events that caused the blimp to break away began when a pitot tube, a narrow 18-inch-long device intended to measure air pressure within the blimp, malfunctioned. Ground personnel failed to detect or address the problem, investigators found. Ordinarily, fans within the blimp would activate in response to a change in atmospheric conditions, such as increased winds. But because the pitot tube failed, the fans did not operate — and air pressure within the blimp started to drop. The blimp turned so that it was perpendicular to the prevailing wind, instead of the desired parallel position. Gusts that reached 69 mph bent its vertical tail fins out of their normal shape. This made the blimp unstable in the air, putting greater pressure on the mooring tether than it was designed to withstand, according to the investigative documents. The Pentagon's glitch-prone, $2.7-billion system of radar-equipped blimps — designed to safeguard the nation's capital against cruise missiles and other airborne threats — has long been a source of frustration to military leaders. A month ago, it became a punch line. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 51 of 108 Still, the blimp was equipped with an automated device that should have caused it to deflate promptly and return to ground within two miles. The device failed to activate, because batteries had not been installed as a backup power source, according to people familiar with the investigation. Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the lapse: "The lack of batteries prevented the automatic rapid deflation device from deploying." Military officials declined to say who was responsible for failing to load the batteries. The blimps were managed by Army and contractor personnel. The breakaway was the most conspicuous of many setbacks for JLENS, detailed in a Times report published last September. In tests, the system has struggled to track flying objects and to distinguish friendly aircraft from threatening ones. A 2012 report by the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation office faulted the system in four "critical performance areas" and rated its reliability as "poor." A year later, in its most recent assessment, the agency again cited serious deficiencies and said JLENS had "low system reliability." A spokesman for Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Carter "concurred" with a recommendation from military officials to resume the JLENS operational exercise. "A thorough and complete test will allow us to determine if this technology will contribute to the overall homeland defense architecture here in the National Capital Region," said the spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Crosson. Now it will be up to Congress to decide whether to provide the additional funds needed to return JLENS to the skies. In the last week, military officials have privately told congressional staff that they would like an additional $27 million to restart the operational exercise as of Oct. 1. A spokesman for Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a supporter of JLENS, said the senator "is reviewing the findings of the investigation as Congress examines next steps in funding for the program." Army Major Beth R. Smith said that officials in charge of the operational exercise plan to "fix any issue identified'' by the investigation and will follow recommendations to add personnel to JLENS and improve training and equipment. YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! From: “Bob Bolgeo” [email protected] WOW!!! CHANGING A LIGHT BULB. UNBELIEVABLE. IT MADE ME DIZZY JUST WATCHING...... “Nothing special...I just changed a light bulb.” The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 52 of 108 http://www.youtube.com/embed/f1BgzIZRfT8?feature=player_embedded YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! From: “Jim Woosley” [email protected] OHIO OFFICIALS SAY FENTANYL PILLS BEING SOLD AS LOOKALIKES Associated Press, Published February 12, 2016 http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/02/12/ohio-officials-say-fentanyl-pills-being-sold-as- lookalikes.html?intcmp=hphz02 CLEVELAND (AP) - Authorities in northeast Ohio say they’re seeing a disturbing trend in the sale of the powerful painkiller fentanyl to people who possibly think they’re buying less- potent oxycodone. Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson said during a news conference Friday that 19 people died from fentanyl overdoses in January while 21 died from heroin. Gilson says the lookalike pills may have caused some of the fentanyl deaths. Statistics show heroin overdoses declined 8 percent in Cuyahoga County from 198 in 2014 to 183 last year, but fentanyl overdoes jumped from 37 in 2014 to 89 in 2015. Gilson says fentanyl pills illicitly manufactured outside the U.S. have found their way into local markets using traditional drug routes. Fentanyl is typically many times more potent than heroin or oxycodone. From: “Tim Bolgeo” [email protected] EUROPE TO DECIDE ON RADICAL AIRLINER DEMO IN 2019 Feb 8, 2016Graham Warwick, Aviation Week & Space Technology http://aviationweek.com/technology/europe-decide-radical-airliner-demo-2019?NL=AW- 05&Issue=AW-05_20160210_AW- 05_792&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1&utm_rid=CPEN1000001477803&utm_campaign=4922&utm_me dium=email&elq2=dd2f1087fab4475ab39a32b1e0fbd014 European design house Bauhaus Luftfahrt, in which Airbus is a shareholder, has revealed new details of its Propulsive Fuselage hybrid-electric concept and is looking to potentially fly a scaled demonstrator as part of the pan-European Clean Sky 2 aerospace research program. Developed under a European Union-funded Framework 7 research program called Dispursal (distributed propulsion and ultra-high bypass rotor study at aircraft level), the concept mounts a third gas turbine in the tail, where it serves the purpose of filling in the The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 53 of 10 8 wake behind the fuselage, reducing drag. Conventionally installed turbofans under the wing provide the thrust required for flight and redundancy needed for safety. The turbine engine in the tail drives a fuselage fan which ingests air through an annular inlet that runs around the circumference of the fuselage. This takes in the boundary-layer airflow, re-energizes the momentum deficit in the wake caused by skin friction and profile drag on the fuselage and reduces the wasted kinetic energy in the jet. In the concept studied, the fuselage fan is driven by the low-pressure turbine via a reduction gearbox, but future work will include investigation of a turbo-electric powertrain in which generators on the underwing engines drive the fuselage fan electrically, says Julian Bijewitz, an advanced motive power researcher within Bauhaus’s visionary aircraft projects group. The aft propulsor ingests fuselage boundary layer and fills in wake, reducing drag. Credit: Bauhaus Luftfahrt The Dispursal study focused on an Airbus A330-type twin-aisle aircraft for potential entry into service in 2035 or beyond, with 340 passengers and a 4,800-nm design range. A The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 54 of 108 conventional-configuration year 2035 reference aircraft was developed with bleedless ultra- high-bypass-ratio (UHBR) engines, all-electric systems and a fuel-cell auxiliary power unit. This showed a 32% reduction in block fuel burned compared with an A330-300. Bauhaus’s initial study indicated a further increase in efficiency of about 10% for the Propulsive Fuselage concept over the advanced reference aircraft. Further refinement of the design following completion of Dispursal showed a 9.2% reduction in block fuel relative to the reference design, or 38.3% less than the baseline A330, Bijewitz told the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech conference in San Diego in January. Resizing the Propulsive Fuselage aircraft for an optimum long-range cruise speed of Mach 0.78, rather than with the Mach 0.80 cruise used in the original study, increased the benefit over the advance reference aircraft, showing 11% lower block fuel when both were resized. The lower cruise speed would only add 16 min. to an 11-hr. flight at the 4,800-nm design range, Bijewitz says. The biggest constraint on the performance of the Propulsive Fuselage concept is the weight of the third engine, which provides about 23% of total thrust in the “best and balanced” design. The underwing engines are smaller (9.1-ft. dia. versus 10.8 ft.) because of the reduced drag, saving weight; but the longer fuselage, T tail and aft propulsor all add weight. The weight penalty is offset by the reduction in block fuel. Operational empty weight for the Propulsive Fuselage concept is almost 6% higher than for the advanced reference configuration, but maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) is just 1.3% higher. However, studies showed the structural weight penalty is sensitive to fuselage fan efficiency in distorted flow, which results in MTOW penalties up to 4.6%. The next steps for the Propulsive Fuselage include more detailed conceptualization of the design, encompassing improved prediction of airframe-propulsion interaction effects and related losses. Fuselage fan performance, particularly surge margin and efficiency, at low speed on takeoff and in abnormal conditions to assess the impact of flow distortion effects will be vetted. An opportunity for testing the concept could occur as part of plans being hatched under Clean Sky 2, which aims to mature technology for an advanced airliner to enter service after 2030. In its third call for core partners, the research program is seeking participants to perform “divergent aircraft” configuration studies focused on hybrid electric propulsion and to help validate flight testing of a dynamically scaled model as a lower-cost way of identifying the performance of the full-size aircraft. In 2019, researchers will decide from among several options that range from the Bauhaus concept to aircraft with airframe-embedded electric-driven propulsors such as the E-Thrust concept studied by Airbus and Rolls-Royce. A €4 billion ($4.5 billion) government/industry research program that will run from 2014 to 2024, Clean Sky 2 has identified distributed propulsion using hybrid power transmission— gas turbines driving electrically powered fans tightly integrated with the airframe—as the likely optimum solution to meet Europe’s Flightpath 2050 environmental targets. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 55 of 108 Demonstration of radical aircraft designs falls under the umbrella of Clean Sky 2’s Large Passenger Aircraft program and involves Airbus as well as Dassault, Saab and Snecma. A core partner is being sought to perform conceptual design of novel configurations with different aircraft and propulsion systems. In addition to more radical hybrid propulsion concepts, Clean Sky 2 is looking at the tighter integration of contrarotating open rotor (CROR) engines and UHBR turbofans. Plans call for a Snecma-developed CROR to be flown mounted on the aft fuselage of an Airbus A340-600, with the first engine test in flight scheduled for late 2020. Airbus and its partners also plan to demonstrate a fully integrated UHBR engine, Rolls- Royce’s UltraFan large geared turbofan, on a flying testbed in 2018. But the more highly integrated hybrid propulsion configuration would be vetted using an unmanned subscale aircraft, to reduce cost, time and risk. The schedule calls for flight testing by late 2022. INDIA POLICE EYE NEW WEAPON: CHILLI-LOADED SLINGSHOTS AFP, February 10, 2016 http://news.yahoo.com/india-police-eye-weapon-chilli-loaded-slingshots-085025657.html Not content with water cannon, tear gas and traditional wooden sticks or lathis, police in Haryana state close to New Delhi will turn to the slingshots as a "non-lethal way" to control violent crowds (AFP Photo/MANAN VATSYAYANA) Police in northern India will soon use slingshots loaded with chilli powder and marbles to tackle unruly protesters in the world's largest democracy, an inspector said on Wednesday. Not content with water cannon, tear gas and traditional wooden sticks or lathis, police in Haryana state close to New Delhi will turn to the slingshots as a "non-lethal way" to control violent crowds. "Plus it is much better than firing plastic bullets which can cause pretty bad injuries," police inspector general of Hisar district, Anil Kumar Rao, told AFP. "It will be used only in emergency cases so that we can manage minimum collateral damage," added Rao, who came up with the idea. The locally-made slingshots are the latest in a series of unconventional measures adopted by security forces in India, which sees daily protests on a myriad of issues. Some quickly escalate out of control. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 56 of 108 In April last year police in the northern city of Lucknow said they were introducing pepper- spraying drones to control "mob crowds". Critics say the marbles could cause serious injury, but Rao said they would be used sparingly and only after the "chilli balls" failed. "And it's not like we plan to use marbles on peaceful protesters, it's only meant to control hostile people," said Rao, whose officers have started practising with the slingshots. "We have to step in and take certain action when people are burning government property, cars. This is a very, very positive step -- a civilised, cost-effective weapon." REVERSIBLE FUEL CELL GOES BOTH WAYS FOR THE US NAVY DAVID SZONDY, FEBRUARY 9, 2016 http://www.gizmag.com/boeing-reversible-us-navy-fuel-cell/41726/ Boeing's reversible solid oxide fuel cell system in operation in Huntington Beach, California (Credit: Boeing) Boeing has delivered a new type of fuel cell to the US Navy for testing that can both store energy and generate electricity. Called a "reversible solid oxide fuel cell," it's designed to absorb energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, then release it as required to provide commercial and military users with a cleaner, more sustainable source of power. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 57 of 108 One of the major failings of renewable energy sources is that most of them are notoriously unreliable. The sun only shines part of the time and the wind is as unpredictable as… well, the weather. This is a particular problem for the US military, which operates under a policy of becoming a greener fighting force, but still needs power sources that are constant and predictable. Sixteen months in development, the Boeing fuel cell system relies on a catalytic electrolysis process that uses electricity to break up water or other materials to generate hydrogen gas, which it then compresses and stores for later use. When electricity is needed, the fuel cell can reverse itself and burn the hydrogen to produce electricity with only water for waste. Boeing claims that this is the first time that both sides of the cycle have been combined into a single system. The Boeing system was first tested on the Southern California Edison power grid at Boeing's Huntington Beach, California, facility. It will now be connected to the Navy microgrid at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Engineering, and Expeditionary Warfare Center in Port Hueneme, California to see it can support military requirements. "This fuel cell solution is an exciting new technology providing our customers with a flexible, affordable, and environmentally progressive option for energy storage and power generation," says Lance Towers, director, Advanced Technology Programs. "Boeing is known for successful innovation and technology advancement. As the company begins its second century, it's not surprising that we'd be at the forefront of helping solve the energy and technology challenges of the 21st century." Source: Boeing WORLD'S LARGEST SOLAR PLANT GOES LIVE, WILL PROVIDE POWER FOR 1.1M PEOPLE By Lucas Mearian, Computerworld, Feb 9, 2016 1:44 PM PT http://www.computerworld.com/arti cle/3031659/sustainable-it/worlds- largest-solar-plant-goes-live-will- provide-power-for-11m-people.html The parabolic mirrors of Noor's solar power plant. Credit: ACWA Power Up to 11% of the world's electricity could come from concentrated solar by 2050 The world's largest solar power plant, now live in Morocco, will eventually provide 1.1 million people with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 58 of 108 The $9 billion Noor Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant could eventually start exporting energy to the European market. The Noor Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), paid for with funds approved by The World Bank, is located in the Souss-Massa-Drâa area in Morocco, about 6 miles from Ouarzazate town. It began operation on Thursday. While the World Bank and other development partners provided financial support, the Noor solar plant is a wholly Moroccan project. "With this bold step toward a clean energy future, Morocco is pioneering a greener development and developing a cutting edge solar technology," Marie Francoise Marie- Nelly, World Bank Country Director for the Maghreb, said in a statement. "The returns on this investment will be significant for the country and its people, by enhancing energy security, creating a cleaner environment, and encouraging new industries and job creation." The World Bank On the left, phase 1 of the Noor Concentrated Solar Power plant is generating energy. On the right, phase 2 will be completed in 2017 and phase 3 in 2018. Overall, the new Noor CSP plant will increase Morocco's energy independence, create 1,600 jobs during construction and 200 jobs during the power plant's operation, and increase the installed capacity of solar power stations from 22MW in 2013 to 522MW in 2018, according to The World Bank. The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form of heated molten salt, which allows for the production of electricity even at night. Unlike concentrated photovoltaic solar power, CSP plants do not create electrical current through the photovoltaic effect, where particles of light (photons) break electrons free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity. Instead CSP uses either lenses or parabolic mirrors to concentrate the sun's light onto a small point where water or another substance is heated. The heat is used to create steam, which runs a turbine that produces electricity. In the Noor CSP, concave mirrors focus on molten salt, heating it anywhere from 300 degrees to 660 degrees Fahrenheit. BrightSource Energy Much like the Noor CSP, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the California Mojave Desert. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 59 of 108 Currently, the Noor CSP can generate 160 megawatts (MW). But as additional phases are completed, in two years it's expected to generate more than 500MW -- enough power to meet the needs of 1.1 million Moroccans. Phase 2 (Noor 2 and 3 plants) are due to open in 2017 and 2018 and will store power for up to eight hours. In all, the Noor CSP plant will cover an area of 6,178 acres. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the California Mojave Desert. Like the Noor CSP, sunlight is concentrated onto a tower containing molten salt. At full power, the new solar power plant will reduce carbon emissions by 760,000 tons per year, which would equate to 17.5 million tons of carbon emissions over 25 years, according to Climate Investment Funds. The International Energy Agency estimates that up to 11% of the world's electricity generation in 2050 could come from CSP. Morocco's goal is to have 42% of its energy come from renewable resources by 2020. IS KECK’S LAW COMING TO AN END? After decades of exponential growth, fiber-optic capacity may be facing a plateau By Jeff Hecht, Posted 26 Jan 2016 | 15:11 GMT http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/is-kecks-law-coming-to-an- end?utm_campaign=Weekly%20Notification- %20IEEE%20Spectrum%20Tech%20Alert&utm_source=boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_term=5 55a972628fbca1d260da1ba&utm_content=&bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJlMjYzMWNiMC05ZTczLTQzY mMtODYwNS0wYjYzOGUzMzk5YWQifQ%3D%3D Since 1980, the number of bits per second that can be sent down an optical fiber has increased some 10 millionfold. That’s remarkable even by the standards of late-20th- century electronics. It’s more than the jump in the number of transistors on chips during that same period, as described by Moore’s Law. There ought to be a law here, too. Call it Keck’s Law, in honor of Donald Keck. He’s the coinventor of low-loss optical fiber and has tracked the impressive growth in its capacity. Maybe giving the trend a name of its own will focus attention on one of the world’s most unsung industrial achievements. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 60 of 108 Photo: Sue Tallon Moore’s Law may get all the attention. But it’s the combination of fast electronics and fiber-optic communications that has created “the magic of the network we have today,” according to Pradeep Sindhu, chief technical officer at Juniper Networks. The strongly interacting electron is ideal for speedy switches that can be used in logic and memory. The weakly interacting photon is perfect for carrying signals over long distances. Together they have fomented the technological revolution that continues to shape and define our times. Now, as electronics faces enormous challenges to keep Moore’s Law alive, fiber optics is also struggling to sustain the momentum. For the past few decades, a series of new developments have allowed communications engineers to keep pushing more and more bits down fiber-optic networks. But the easy gains are behind them. To keep moving forward, they’ll need to conjure up some fairly spectacular innovations. THE LIGHT EXPONENTIAL Data source: Donald KeckFiber-optic capacity has made exponential gains over the years. The data in this chart, compiled by Donald Keck, tracks the record-breaking “hero experiments” that typically precede commercial adoption. It shows the improvement in fiber capacity before and after the introduction of wavelength-division multiplexing [light blue section], mentioned below. The heart of today’s fiber- optic connections is the core: a 9-micrometer-wide strand of glass that’s almost perfectly transparent to 1.55-µm, infrared light. This core is surrounded by more than 50 µm of cladding made of glass with a The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 61 of 108 lower refractive index. Laser signals sent through the core are trapped inside by the cladding and guided along by internal reflection. Those light pulses zip down the fiber at a rate of about 200,000 kilometers per second, two- thirds the speed of light in vacuum. The fiber is almost perfectly clear, but every now and then a photon will bounce off an atom inside the core. The longer the light travels, the more photons will scatter off atoms and leak into the surrounding layers of cladding and protective coating. After 50 km, about 90 percent of the light will be lost, mostly due to this scattering. Communications engineers therefore need to boost the intensity of the light at regular intervals, but this approach has limitations of its own. The interaction between a powerful, freshly boosted signal and the glass in a fiber can cause distortions in the signal that build up with distance, a bit like a haze in the air that obscures distant objects more than nearby ones. These distortions are called nonlinear because they don’t double if the intensity of the light is doubled. Instead they increase at a faster rate. When the light is intense enough the distortions will drown the signal in noise. The story of fiber is a saga of finding ways to boost the data rate and the length of transmission despite the scattering and distortion problems. The very first fiber-optic messages were encoded by simply switching the laser source on and off. Engineers made steady improvements in how quickly that switching could be done. By the mid-1980s, a few years into the dawn of commercial fiber networks, the strategy could be used to send several hundred megabits per second through a few tens of kilometers of glass. Photo: Sue Tallon To keep the signal going after the first 50 km, a repeater was then used to convert light pulses into electronic signals, clean them up, amplify them, and then retransmit them with another laser down the next length of fiber. This electro-optical regeneration process was cumbersome and costly. Fortunately, a better approach soon emerged. In 1986, David Payne of the University of Southampton, in England, showed that it is possible to amplify light directly inside an optical fiber instead of using external electronics. Payne added a dash of a rare-earth element called erbium to a fiber core. He found that by exciting erbium atoms with a laser, he could prime them to amplify incoming light with a wavelength of 1.55 µm—just the point where optical fibers are most transparent. By the mid-1990s, amplifiers containing erbium-doped fibers were already being installed to stretch fiber transmission distances. Depending on their spacing, a series of amplifiers could relay signals over a distance of 500 to several thousand kilometers before the signals The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 62 of 108 had to be converted to electronic signals for cleaning up and regeneration with more expensive gear. Today, chains of erbium-fiber amplifiers can extend fiber connections across continents or oceans. The emergence of the erbium-fiber amplifier opened the door to another way to boost data rates: multiple-wavelength communication. Erbium atoms actually amplify light across a range of wavelengths, and can be made to do so quite uniformly from 1.53 to 1.57 µm. That’s a wide enough band to accommodate multiple signals in the same fiber, each with its own much narrower band of wavelengths. MODERN FIBER OPTICS: THE BASICS Illustration: Erik VrielinkElectronic signals are converted into optical signals at the source [left] and sent into fiber. Optical amplifiers made from specially doped fiber boost the signal. In a switching center, a receiver extracts the signal from its carrier wave and converts it to electronic form. A switch divides and directs that signal into transmitters, which convert their input into an optical signal that is sent along fiber to its next destination. This multiwavelength approach, dubbed wavelength-division multiplexing, along with further improvements in how quickly laser signals could be turned on and off, led to an explosion in capacity in the mid- and late-1990s. By 2000, fiber-optic transmission systems were commercially available that could amplify as many as 80 separate signals, each carrying 10 gigabits per second. In reality, nobody needed all that transmission capacity at the time, so transmission systems were installed with only a few wavelengths and the option to add more channels later. Network operators added more wavelengths to existing fibers as the Internet took off in the early 2000s. But about a decade ago, it became clear that the traditional way of encoding signals was reaching its limit, and that some routes would soon run out of capacity without new technology or more fibers. An on-off signal carries only one bit at a time (if light in a given interval exceeds a threshold power, it generally represents 1; light below the threshold represents 0). The only way to pack more bits per second with this approach is to do what engineers had traditionally done to such signals: Shorten how long each pulse—or lack of pulse—lasts. Unfortunately, the shorter the pulse, the more vulnerable it becomes to an optical effect called dispersion. This is the same phenomenon that causes prisms to spread light into a rainbow of colors. It arises because the speed of light in glass varies with wavelength. Even a pulse of laser light, whose spectrum is as close to a single wavelength as you can get, will stretch out as it travels through a fiber. And as pulses stretch out, they interfere with The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 63 of 108 one another. The problem gets worse as the data rate increases and the interval between successive pulses gets shorter. The upshot is that a fiber that could carry 10 Gb/s for 1,000 km would carry 100 Gb/s for only 10 km before the signal would need to be cleaned up and regenerated. Fibers with improved designs were devised to cut down on pulse dispersion, but replacing the existing fiber network would have been prohibitively expensive. And by 2001, overbuilding during the Internet bubble had left behind vast amounts of unused, “dark” fiber. Fortunately, engineers had other tricks, including two techniques that were previously used to squeeze more wireless and radio signals into narrow slices of the radio spectrum. One was a change to the way signals are encoded. Instead of turning the laser on and off, leave it on all the time and modulate its phase—the timing of the arrival of its peaks and troughs. The simplest such digital phase modulation shifts the peak of a wave by a quarter wavelength, or 90 degrees, ahead or behind the wave’s natural arrival time. The wave representing a 1 will then be at its peak when the wave representing a 0 is at its trough. This approach will still yield two bits, but the capacity of the signal can be doubled by combining two waves. Together, they shift the phase in smaller increments, by +135, +45, -45, or -135 degrees. The four resulting states are used to represent the four possible two-bit combinations: 00, 01, 10, and 11. In 2007, Bell Labs and Verizon used a variant of this approach called differential quadrature phase-shift keying, to send 100 Gb/s through some 500 km of fiber in Verizon’s Florida network. This was a big deal but still not quite good enough for Verizon, which, like other long-haul carriers, wants signals to be able to travel 1,000 to 1,500 km along the cables in its workhorse backbone system before requiring an expensive regenerator. Fortunately, a second technique was able to bridge that distance. This one exploits coherence, an intrinsic property of laser light. Coherence means that if you cut across the beam at any point, you’ll find that all its waves will have the same phase. The peaks and troughs all move in concert, like soldiers marching on parade. Coherence can be used to drastically improve a receiver’s ability to extract information. The scheme works by combining an incoming fiber signal with light of the same frequency generated inside a receiver. With its clean phase, the locally generated light can be used to help determine the phase of the noisier incoming signal. The carrier wave can then be filtered out, leaving the signal that was added to it. The receiver converts that remaining signal into an electronic form carrying the 1s and 0s of the information that was sent. Achieving such coherent reception with infrared light was trickier than with radio waves; it was difficult for optical receivers to match the frequency of the input light signal. That changed with the development of advanced digital signal processors in the early 2000s. They allowed the receiver to deal with the mismatch between the local light and the incoming signal, reconstruct the signals’ phase and timing, and correct for pulse spreading that occurred en route. Together, quadrature coding and coherent detection—along with the ability to transmit using two different polarizations of light—have carried optical fibers to their present limit. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 64 of 108 Today, new transmitter and receiver systems allow a single optical channel—a single wavelength—to carry 100 Gb/s over long distances, in fibers that were designed to carry only 10 Gb/s. And because a typical fiber can accommodate roughly 100 channels, the total capacity of the fiber can approach 10 terabits per second. QUADRATURE PHASE-SHIFT KEYING Source: WikipediaA light wave’s phase—the arrival times of peaks and troughs—can be used to encode information. In quadrature coding, four phases [top and middle waves] can be combined to create four different two-bit combinations [dark blue waves at bottom]. Most of the optical fibers installed since 1990 in regional, national, and international cable systems are compatible with this technology, and in the past six years, many backbone networks have been upgraded to carry signals at that rate. “It’s out there in pretty robust quantities in long-haul terrestrial transport, and most if not all transoceanic submarine cable upgrades are being done at 100 gig,” says Erik Kreifeldt, a senior analyst at the research firm TeleGeography. For a sense of the numbers, consider a recent fiber system by Ciena Corp., a Hanover, Md.– based company. The system can transmit 96 channels, each carrying 100 Gb/s, across hundreds to thousands of kilometers. All together that amounts to 9.6 Tb/s—enough for 384,000 people to stream Ultra HD from Netflix. And that’s just one fiber; today’s fiber-optic cables can carry anywhere from about a dozen to several hundred fibers. But, other than a brief period after the tech bubble collapsed in the early 2000s, the world has never had enough bandwidth. Global Internet traffic increased fivefold from 2010 to 2015, according to a recent report from Cisco. The trend is likely to continue with the growth of streaming video and the Internet of Things. So developers are considering their options. One idea is to adopt even more advanced signal-coding techniques. The quadrature phase shifting used today encodes two bits per signal interval, but Wi-Fi and other wireless The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 65 of 108 systems use even more complex coding. The widely used 16-QAM code, for example, can carry all 16 possible combinations of four bits, from 0000 to 1111. Some cable television equipment uses 256-QAM. Such advanced coding schemes do work in fiber, but as you might expect, there’s a trade- off. The more complex the encoding, the closer the information is packed together. The signal can tolerate fewer perturbations before parts of it wind up in the wrong place. Turning up the power can help, but it also creates nonlinear distortion, which worsens with distance. As a result, system makers are generally considering 16-QAM only for relatively short links—of up to a few hundred kilometers. For longer-haul fibers, engineers have instead devised a way to squeeze channels closer together. There’s room to work with: Today’s advanced long-haul fibers may contain dozens of channels, but they leave chunks of wavelength unused between adjacent channels to prevent cross talk. If those buffer zones are removed, more channels could be packed into each fiber, creating what system engineers call a superchannel, which transmits at every wavelength inside a fiber-optic band. The change can increase transmission efficiency up to 30 percent, says Helen Xenos, director of product and technology marketing for Ciena. The trick is to find a way to encode signals so they don’t interfere with one another, and at least a few companies have found ways to make it work. In 2013, Ciena and British telecommunications group BT packed multiple channels together without buffers to create an 800-Gb superchannel along a 410-km stretch running between London and Ipswich. At least one Ciena customer, the company says, is in the process of deploying a superchannel system on fibers in a transoceanic cable. Ciena says it uses individual chips to generate each laser signal. But they can also be combined onto one chip, a more compact and potentially cheaper approach. “Our secret sauce is our photonic integrated circuit technology,” says Geoff Bennett, director of solutions and technology at Infinera. In 2014, Bennett says, the company demonstrated a short, 1-Tb superchannel made using 10 laser transmitters incorporated into a single photonic integrated circuit. He says future systems should be capable of taking fiber capacity to 12 Tb/s along long-haul networks—and twice that rate for shorter systems used in metropolitan areas. Á LA MODE Such 12-Tb/s superchannels are still a few years away. But when they arrive, they’ll likely be the last capacity boost that we can give to the current generation of installed fibers. That’s because those fibers will be approaching a fundamental barrier called the nonlinear Shannon limit. It’s an extension of a limit, described in 1948 by information theorist Claude Shannon, that says a transmission channel can carry only so much information without error given its bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. The nonlinear version includes an additional factor: a limit on how much the power of a signal can be turned up before nonlinear effects that can arise in glass—but not in air—generate enough noise to drown out the signal. There is no getting around the nonlinear Shannon limit. But when the time comes to install more fibers, carriers will have other options. “The change that is best established and best The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 66 of 108 understood,” says Infinera’s Bennett, is to simply introduce fiber with a larger core. Early fibers were designed with small cores, which strongly limited the number of paths light could take. Using a smaller core helped prevent photons in the signal from bouncing off the core-cladding interface at different angles. If the photons in a pulse did that, they’d take different paths—some longer, some shorter—spreading out the pulse so that it would interfere with the next one. New fiber designs use novel core microstructures, such as photonic crystals, to constrain the light to follow the same path through cores with up to about twice the cross-sectional area as the standard 9-µm fiber. Because the signal has more space, cross-section-wise, to pass through, its energy density is lower. This decrease in energy density cuts down on those same nonlinear distortions that limit transmission distances and speeds. The end result is an increase in data rates; future versions might boost capacity by as much as a factor of 10, says Bennett. These larger-core fibers are already being deployed, mostly in submarine cables where transmission capacity is most valuable. And they’re generally a good option for a new connection, says Bennett: “If somebody is planning to deploy new terrestrial fiber, they might as well deploy large-area fiber.” But as attractive as they may be, large-core fibers don’t completely eliminate the nonlinear distortion problem. A potentially more promising approach is to create multiple parallel paths along which separate light signals can travel. Developers call it spatial-division multiplexing because the strategy splits the transmitted data into different physical paths. The term actually refers to three very different kinds of parallel transmission. The simplest and most obvious approach is to add more physical paths by adding more fibers to a cable. Multifiber cables are already in wide use, but boosting capacity can be costly and complex because each fiber in a cable needs its own transmitters, receivers, and amplifiers. Much bigger rewards may be possible if engineers can find a way to integrate separate light paths within the same fiber in a compact fashion. One way to do that is to construct fibers that contain several light-guiding cores running along their length. Like an ordinary fiber, a multicore fiber is made by first assembling the required materials in a cylindrical “preform,” which is then heated so the glass can be pulled into a long thin fiber. Unlike multifiber cables, which need a separate fiber amplifier for each fiber, a multicore fiber could be paired with a multicore amplifier. An eight-core amplifier could potentially cost much less than eight single-fiber amplifiers. An alternative is to make a core that can guide light in a few distinct ways, called modes. Light signals in two different modes pass through each other along the fiber, but they can be isolated from each other when they emerge at the end of the fiber. To create multiple modes in a fiber, the mode for each signal must be shaped to have the right cross section as it goes into the fiber. Each mode would need to be generated by its own laser, and optics and electronics at the receiving end must be able to separate out the modes. This separation is already done in radio systems using multiple-input/multiple- output antennas. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 67 of 108 So far, both multimode and multicore fiber transmission are in the early stages of development. There have been multiple laboratory tests, dubbed “hero experiments” because they’re out to set records that impress reporters or supervisors. Such demonstrations suggest that each approach has the potential to multiply fiber capacity significantly. Together they might push capacity up by a factor of perhaps a few hundred. But the systems needed to exploit these approaches aren’t practical yet, and a host of questions remain. “Basically all spatial-division multiplexing techniques have their own showstopping problems today,” says Bennett. For example, for multicore and multimode fibers, simply connecting the ends of the fibers to transmitters and receivers is far more complex than for standard fibers. In both cases, much more mechanical precision is needed. Great care has to be taken to make sure light goes in exactly as intended. And for multicore fibers with multicore amplifiers, the cores in each system have to match up with extreme precision. Barring an engineering breakthrough, “it’s almost always easier to just light up another fiber,” Bennett says. “This is what service providers are telling us.” Peter Winzer, a distinguished member of technical staff at Bell Labs and a leader in high- speed fiber systems, agrees that installing new cables with even more fibers is the simplest approach. But in a recent article, he warned that this approach, which will add to the cost of a cable, might not be popular among telecommunications companies. It wouldn’t reduce the cost per transmitted bit as much as they had come to expect from earlier technological improvements. New ideas continue to emerge. In June 2015, Nikola Alic of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues reported a way of increasing fiber transmission distance by using optical frequency combs, which naturally lock laser wavelengths relative to one another, eliminating jitter and improving signal quality. “We can at least double the data rate of any system” by using a frequency comb, says Alic. “It is very nice and solid work,” says Winzer, but he doubts it would have much practical impact, because developers want a bigger increase. What will come next? Today telecommunications carriers have their hands full installing 100-Gb coherent systems. Superchannels will boost maximum capacity by 30 percent or so, and spatial-division multiplexing looks like the best candidate for the next big jump in capacity. But beyond that, who knows? Perhaps some new twist on an old idea might come along. Coherent transmission, which was finally adopted around 2010, was actually a hot topic in the 1980s, but it lost out then to other technologies that were ready to deploy. Something totally new might emerge from the fertile ground of photonics research. And we could always lay more fibers. In any case, the global thirst for data will keep engineers working very hard to keep pumping up the bandwidth. This article originally appeared in print as “Great Leaps of Light.” On 27 January 2016 this text was updated to clarify quadrature coding terminology. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 68 of 108 EINSTEIN'S GRAVITATIONAL WAVES DETECTED IN SCIENTIFIC MILESTONE By Will Dunham and Scott Malone, Reuters, February 11, 2016 http://news.yahoo.com/einsteins-gravitational-waves-detected-scientific-milestone-153535473.html An artist's rendering of an outburst on an ultra-magnetic neutron star, also called a magnetar is … WASHINGTON/CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Scientists said on Thursday they have for the first time detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time hypothesized by physicist Albert Einstein a century ago, in a landmark discovery that opens a new window for studying the cosmos. The researchers said they detected gravitational waves coming from two black holes - extraordinarily dense objects whose existence also was foreseen by Einstein - that orbited one another, spiraled inward and smashed together. They said the waves were the product of a collision between two black holes 30 times as massive as the Sun, located 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The scientific milestone, announced at a news conference in Washington, was achieved using a pair of giant laser detectors in the United States, located in Louisiana and Washington state, capping a long quest to confirm the existence of these waves. The announcement was made in Washington by scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 69 of 108 Like light, gravity travels in waves, but instead of radiation, it is space itself that is rippling. Detecting the gravitational waves required measuring 2.5-mile (4 km) laser beams to a precision 10,000 times smaller than a proton. The two laser instruments, which work in unison, are known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). They are able to detect remarkably small vibrations from passing gravitational waves. After detecting the gravitational wave signal, the scientists said they converted it into audio waves and were able to listen to the sounds of the two black holes merging. "We're actually hearing them go thump in the night," MIT physicist Matthew Evans said. "We're getting a signal which arrives at Earth, and we can put it on a speaker, and we can hear these black holes go, 'Whoop.' There's a very visceral connection to this observation." The scientists said they first detected the gravitational waves last Sept. 14. “We are really witnessing the opening of a new tool for doing astronomy,” MIT astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala said in an interview. “We have turned on a new sense. We have been able to see and now we will be able to hear as well.” The LIGO work is funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the U.S. government. Einstein in 1916 proposed the existence of gravitational waves as an outgrowth of his ground-breaking general theory of relativity, which depicted gravity as a distortion of space and time triggered by the presence of matter. But until now scientists had found only indirect evidence of their existence. OPEN THE DOOR Scientists said gravitational waves open a door for a new way to observe the universe and gain knowledge about enigmatic objects like black holes and neutron stars. By studying gravitational waves they also hope to gain insight into the nature of the very early universe, which has remained mysterious. Everything we know about the cosmos stems from electromagnetic waves such as radio waves, visible light, infrared light, X-rays and gamma rays. But because such waves encounter interference as they travel across the universe, they can tell only part of the story. Gravitational waves experience no such barriers, meaning they can offer a wealth of additional information. Black holes, for example, do not emit light, radio waves and the like, but can be studied via gravitational waves. Scientists sounded positively giddy over the discovery. "It is really a truly, truly exciting event," said Abhay Ashtekar, director of Penn State University's Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. "It opens a brand new window on the universe." The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 70 of 108 "The LIGO announcement describes one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the past 50 years," Cornell University physicist Saul Teukolsky added. Ashtekar said heavy celestial objects bend space and time but because of the relative weakness of the gravitational force the effect is miniscule except from massive and dense bodies like black holes and neutron stars. He said that when these objects collide, they send out ripples in the curvature of space and time that propagate as gravitational waves. The detection of gravitational waves already has provided unique insight into black holes, with the scientists saying it has demonstrated that there are plenty of black holes in the range of tens of solar masses, resolving the long debated issue of the existence of black holes of that size. A black hole, a region of space so packed with matter that not even photons of light can escape the force of gravity, was detected for the first time in 1971. Scientists have known the existence of small black holes and so-called supermassive black holes are millions or billions of times as massive as the sun, but had debated the existence of black holes of intermediate size. Neutron stars are small, about the size of a city, but are extremely heavy, the compact remains of a larger star that died in a supernova explosion. (Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Scott Malone in Cambridge, Mass.; Editing by Tom Brown) THE SCIENTISTS WHO ARE DECIPHERING 'UNREADABLE' ANCIENT TEXTS Written by, BECKY FERREIRA, CONTRIBUTOR, February 10, 2016 // 11:15 AM EST http://motherboard.vice.com/read/lazarus-project-the-scientists-who-are-deciphering-unreadable- ancient-texts Sometime around the year 1491, the German cartographer Henricus Martellus produced an influential map of the world, which was likely used by Christopher Columbus on his 1492 expedition to the Americas. Naturally, Martellus made sure to note all the wildest rumors about the locations he had charted out. Text over south Asia claimed that the Panotii people of the region had ears so big they could curl up and sleep in them, Dumbo-style. A cartouche over the Indian Ocean warned of "a sea monster that is like the sun when it shines, whose form can hardly be described, except that its skin is soft and its body huge," which experts think is a description of orca whales. Japan was labelled with the tantalizing note “precious stones are found on these islands.” But time was not kind to these fantastic messages, and the vast majority of them were muted over the centuries by material degeneration. The words either faded out with time, or had been obscured by damage. We would never know about them at all if it weren’t for the emergence of new techniques in imaging science over the last two decades, which can decipher damaged, vandalized, or otherwise unreadable texts with startling precision and accuracy. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 71 of 108 The Martellus Map. Image: Henricus Martellus/Yale Library Archives “There’s text all over the map,” Roger Easton Jr., one of the key players in this fledgling field, told me over the phone. “But it had all faded; you couldn’t really read much of anything.” Easton is one of the only people in the world who knows how to resurrect these lost writings from obscurity, which means he frequently ventures to fascinating destinations in order to study rare manuscripts. As a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the leaders of the Lazarus Project—an organization of specialists involved in deciphering historical documents with multispectral imaging—he has collaborated with scholars, scientists, and other specialists all over the world. “That’s the best part,” Easton told me. “Meeting the people is the best part. They are so appreciative when you pull something out.” These interdisciplinary teams are able to unlock these difficult texts by capturing them over a wide range of wavelengths. In much the same way that an X-ray image of the sky yields a different perspective on the universe than an infrared image, pseudocolor pictures of text can extract words that have been invisible to the naked eye for centuries. It’s like The Da Vinci Code, only with fancy cameras and better dialogue. “[The Martellus Map] was among the more fun ones we have ever done,” Easton told me. “In some methods, you can see the scribe lines but you can’t see any text at all. In other methods, the text pops right out. I know we didn’t get all of it, but I think we got quite a lot of it.” “This is sort of the ultimate treasure hunt.” The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 72 of 108 A comparison of the “keystone” cartouche on the map, before and after processing. Image: Lazarus Project/EMEL/Megavision/RIT/Y ale Library Archives Indeed, these efforts go way beyond the Martellus Map. From deciphering the field diary of Victorian explorer David Livingstone, written in berry juice, to investigating Thomas Jefferson’s early drafts of the Declaration of Independence— revealing that Jefferson erased the word “subjects” and wrote in “citizens”—imaging science is racking up incredible historical finds. Perhaps the most famous example of the field’s potential was when it was applied to the Archimedes Palimpsest, a gorgeous parchment codex with an extraordinary history. The book was originally a copy of one of Archimedes works written in Byzantine Greek by an unidentified scribe who lived in the tenth century. It was either made in Jerusalem, or was transported there at some point over the subsequent centuries. In either event, it was in Jerusalem, in the year 1229, that a Christian priest scraped off the codex’s ink and bathed the parchment, then repurposed the erased pages as a liturgical prayer book. The palimpsest changed hands many times over the centuries and became its own little moldy ecosystem, which further damaged both the writing. But eventually, in 1906, portions of the undertext were recognized as the work of Archimedes by classics scholar Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Having translated many other works of Archimedes, Heiberg knew the mathematician’s handiwork when he saw it, but until recently, only snippets of the beleaguered original copy could be recovered. That all changed with a landmark project that ran from 1999 to 2008, in which Easton and his fellow digital decoders were able to use multispectral imaging to extract an enormous amount of the text that had been erased. That nameless scribbler who carefully transcribed Archimedes’s work over 1,000 years ago did not labor in vain after all. Archimedes Palimpsest bifolio 120v-121r, under normal light compared to UV illumination The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 73 of 108 processed using principal component analysis to reveal the undertext. Image: Kevin Bloechl and Roger L. Easton, Jr. “This is sort of the sappy way that I put it,” Easton said. “The scribe that wrote this stuff was sort of the imaging scientist of his day, so I’m trying to collaborate with this person over a 1,000 year timespan.” To that point, the palimpsest turned out to contain ideas by Archimedes that had not survived in any other documents, including an entirely new treatise called “The Method of Mechanical Theorems.” This work showed that Archimedes was beginning to work on very modern concepts such as actual infinity as well as the groundwork for calculus. If it weren’t for Easton’s collaboration with that nameless Byzantine scribe, we never would have probed Archimedes’s genius to this extent. Since then, the field has accelerated even further. “When we built the system for the Archimedes, we had a six-megapixel camera that cost $7,000,” Easton told me. “You can now walk into a campus bookstore and buy a better camera than that for $350.” But though the technology is rapidly maturing, there is still a bottleneck in the field when it comes to qualified professionals. The skillset is in high demand, but it also happens to be very difficult to automate and disseminate to a global audience. (Overcoming this hurdle is central to the mission of the Lazarus Project.) According to Easton, the process of figuring out which wavelengths will coax text of any given page is still largely trail and error. “You are never certain what method is going to work,” he said. As a result, experts in this field are swamped with projects. “We do have this unfortunate tendency to bite off more than we can chew,” Easton admitted. When I spoke with him in December, he was a few weeks shy of a trip to Chartres to image manuscripts damaged by bombing during World War II. He’s also working on the “New Finds” volumes at Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, which containmultitudes of works that were recently discovered in a hidden chamber of the monastery, cut off from the main building after a structural collapse. It doesn’t get much more “Indiana Jones” than that. Maybe if there were snakes or holy grails in the chamber too, but that just seems greedy. Saint Catherine’s Monastery. Image: Berthold Werner All the while, new requests for imaging projects continue to be added to the backlog, from priceless historical artifacts to sentimental family heirlooms. As more people enter the field and the techniques are increasingly democratized, we have every reason to expect mountains of inscrutable writings to be rendered legible at last. Imagine the possibilities. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 74 of 108 "It is very gratifying to be able to read text that had been feared lost forever," Easton said. IN HISTORIC FIRST, EINSTEIN'S GRAVITATIONAL WAVES DETECTED DIRECTLY By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer | February 11, 2016 10:34am ET http://www.space.com/31900-gravitational-waves-discovery-ligo.html The probable location of a black hole collision that spawned gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory is shown in this still from a National Science Foundation press conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 11, 2016. The collision occurred 1.3 billion years ago in a region of space over Earth's Southern Hemisphere, scientists say. Credit: National Science Foundation WASHINGTON — Gravitational waves, the cosmic ripples that distort space-time itself, have been directly detected for the first time. In a highly anticipated announcement today (Feb. 11), researchers affiliated with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) reported the detection of gravitational waves. The signal picked up by LIGO came from the collision of two black holes and was detected on Sept. 14, 2015 by LIGO's twin detectors in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington, scientists said. This cosmic crash sent gravitational waves streaming outward at the speed of light, causing ripples in the fabric of space-time, similar to how a dropped pebble disturbs a still pond. Researchers said the collision occurred 1.3 billion years ago between black holes that were about 29 and 36 times more massive than the sun, respectively. During the crash, about three times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in less than a second, generating a peak power output of about 50 times that of the entire visible universe, they added. "Our observation of gravitational waves accomplishes an ambitious goal set out over five decades ago to directly detect this elusive phenomenon and better understand the universe, and, fittingly, Einstein's legacy on the 100th anniversary of his general theory of relativity," said LIGO Laboratory executive director David Reitze, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement. The detection is a milestone moment in astronomy and astrophysics. Unlike light waves, gravitational waves don't get distorted or altered by interactions with matter as they race The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 75 of 108 through space; they therefore carry "pure" information about the objects and events that created them, according to LIGO researchers. "With this completely new way of examining astrophysical objects and phenomena, gravitational waves will truly open a new window on the universe, providing astronomers and other scientists with their first glimpses of previously unseen and unseeable wonders, and greatly adding to our understanding of the nature of space and time itself," LIGO team members wrote in an online description of the project. Gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein in his famous 1916 paper on general relativity. One of the central, and strangest, tenets of general relativity is that space and time are not separate things but rather are linked together in a single fabric: space- time. Massive objects, like stars, stretch and curve this fabric, sort of like how a bowling ball distorts a rubber sheet. These dips cause objects such as planets, and even light, to take a curved path around those more massive bodies. Gravitational waves affect this fabric as well, causing ripplelike distortions. Previous studies have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves — which are generated by the acceleration (or deceleration) of massive objects — through indirect methods, but the LIGO find is the first direct detection of this enigmatic phenomenon. Plots display the signals of gravitational waves detected by the LIGO observatories at Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The detection of gravitational waves by LIGO was announced on Feb. 11, 2016. Credit: LIGO "The description of this observation is beautifully described in the Einstein theory of general relativity formulated 100 years ago and comprises the first test of the theory in strong gravitation," LIGO team member Rainer Weiss, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. "It would have been wonderful to watch Einstein's face had we been able to tell him." LIGO can only spot relatively strong gravitational waves, which are created by dramatic events, such as two black holes swirling around each other and then colliding, or a merger of superdense stellar corpses called neutron stars. The detector can also find gravitational waves generated by an exploding star, known as a supernova, LIGO team members have said. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 76 of 108 Spotting these space-time ripples is a serious challenge. As a gravitational wave passes through Earth, it squishes space in one direction and stretches it another direction. LIGO looks for that warping of space-time using two "L"-shaped detectors; one is in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other is in Hanford, Washington. Each arm of each detector is 2.48 miles (4 kilometers) long. Near the point where the two arms meet, a pulse of laser light is released down each arm simultaneously. The pulses travel down an arm, bounce off a mirror at the far end and come back near the starting point, at the crux of the "L." The historic detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational- Wave Observatory is shown in this plot during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 11, 2016. Credit: National Science Foundation If a gravitational wave passes by, it will compress one arm of the detector and stretch the other. As a result, the light beam traveling down the stretched arm will take slightly longer to get back to the starting point than will the light beam traveling the arm that has been compressed. (If the same signal is spotted by both detectors, researchers can be confident the signal is real, and not the result of environmental conditions at one of the two sites. Recording the signal at two different locations also allows scientists to find the gravitational wave's source in the sky by triangulation.) That logic seems simple enough, but the change in the length of each arm is far smaller than the width of an atomic nucleus. If the LIGO detector spanned all the way from the sun to the next-nearest star — Proxima Centauri, located 24.94 trillion miles (40.14 trillion km) away — a gravitational wave would shrink the detector by only the width of a human hair, one LIGO scientist said. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 77 of 108 This is not the first time gravitational waves have been in the news. In 2014, researchers using the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica announced they had detected signatures of gravitational waves in the microwave light left over from the Big Bang (known as the cosmic microwave background). But that result fell apart when observations by Europe's Planck space observatory showed the alleged signatures were probably nothing but space dust. The LIGO team's claim of direct gravitational-wave detection will very likely undergo intense scrutiny before the scientific community fully accepts the result as sound. There are no other experiments that measure the same kind of gravitational waves that LIGO is sensitive to, so there is currently no way to directly compare the results with another experiment. The research will be published in an upcoming issue of the Physical Review Letters. LIGO is operated by scientists at the California Institute of Technology and the MIT, and it's funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration has more than 1,000 members, from 83 institutions in 15 countries. ~~~~~~~ HOW TO HUNT FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVES [SLIDE SHOW] Various experiments seek different versions of this highly sought-after phenomenon http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow/how-to-hunt-for-gravitational-waves-slide- show/?WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20160211 PARCHED EARTH SOAKS UP WATER, SLOWING SEA LEVEL RISE: STUDY AFP, February 12, 2016 http://news.yahoo.com/parched-earth-soaks-water-slowing-sea-level-rise-231245199.html Miami (AFP) - As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts said Thursday. Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth's continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science. This has temporarily slowed the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent, it said. "We always assumed that people's increased reliance on groundwater for irrigation and consumption was resulting in a net transfer of water from the land to the ocean," said lead author J.T. Reager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 78 of 108 "What we didn't realize until now is that over the past decade, changes in the global water cycle more than offset the losses that occurred from groundwater pumping, causing the land to act like a sponge -- at least temporarily." As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts say (AFP Photo/Cris Bouroncle) The global water cycle involves the flow of moisture, from the evaporation over the oceans to the fall of precipitation, to runoff and rivers that lead back into the ocean. Just how much effect on sea level rise this kind of land storage would have has remained unknown until now because there are no land-based instruments that can measure such changes planet-wide. The latest data came from a pair of NASA satellites launched in 2002 -- known as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Researchers learned that the "water gains over land were spread globally, but taken together they equal the volume of Lake Huron, the world's seventh largest lake," said a NASA statement. Researchers said the findings will help scientists better calculate sea level changes in the years ahead. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 79 of 108 "These results will lead to a refinement of global sea level budgets, such as those presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which acknowledge the importance of climate-driven changes in hydrology, but have been unable to include any reliable estimate of their contribution to sea level changes," said senior author Jay Famiglietti, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. "But we'll need a much longer data record to fully understand the underlying cause of the patterns and whether they will persist." OPTICAL DATA STORAGE SQUEEZES 360TB ON TO A QUARTZ DISC—FOREVER Jamie Condliffe , February 16, 2016 http://gizmodo.com/optical-data-storage-squeezes-360tb-on-to-a-quartz-disc-1759359652 Want to make sure you back something up indefinitely? Then you could do worse than a digital data storage technique that uses laser light to store 360 terabytes of information on nanostructured quartz for up to 14 billion years. Developed by researchers at Southampton University in the UK, the technique uses femtosecond laser pulses to write data in the 3D structure of quartz at the nanoscale. The pulses create three layers of nanostructured dots, each just five microns above the other. The changes in the structure can be read by interrogating the sample with another pulse of light and recording its polarisation —the orientation of the waves—after it’s passed through. The team has now written a series of major works to small glass discs— including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s Opticks, the Magna Carta and the Kings James Bible. The density of the data aboard these discs suggests that they could squeeze a total of 360 terabytes onto a single piece of quartz. They also point out that the data is extremely stable: It could endure for as long as 13.8 billion years at temperatures up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 80 of 108 The idea of archiving data in this way has been around for a little while, but until now the density of data storage has been modest. Back in 2012, a similar technique was used to store 40 megabytes per square inch —approximately the same density of a music CD. The new advance, though, makes the technique a genuine means of archiving vast quantities of information in perpetuity. [Southampton University ] RELAY RACE https://www.tva.com/Energy/Relay-Race Robert M. Frye was determined to step up the pace with which TVA could replace aging transmission relays—even if he had to invent a solution. His efforts won him TVA’s 2016 Ike Zeringue Engineer of the Year award. The idea hatched over lunch, and a casual conversation between two engineers directly responsible for keeping TVA power flowing reliably throughout the transmission system and making sure it gets delivered to its local power companies without a hitch. One was describing a situation in which about a thousand transmission relays in the system could soon become obsolete need to be replaced—but only having the means and methods to replace ten or 12 each year. The other, one Robert M. Frye, listened intently, thinking to himself: “You’ll never make a dent in the problem at that rate.” After the lunch, Frye—a principle engineer for Protection and Control in Transmission and Power Supply at TVA—continued to, ahem, chew on the problem of how to replace the relays more quickly. “It just stuck in my craw,” he says. Then the proverbial light bulb went off in Frye’s mind. TVA’s usual method for replacing transmission line protective relays—those breaker controls that sit in the control buildings at substations and generating plants to keep the power system stable and prevent damage to the transmission lines—was to upgrade the entire line's protection and control panel of equipment, usually with tremendous effort and great cost. But what if a surgical-strike, plug and play replacement relay package could be designed, one that could be dropped in anywhere, anytime for a fraction of the cost? “I thought to myself, ‘I can do something about that,’” remembers Frye, a 29-year TVA veteran. And—along with his team—he did, targeting 350 aging MDAR digital relays on the system, and designing a drop-in replacement package with the same form, fit and function as the obsolete unit, but with modern digital relays and The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 81 of 108 test switches, uniform prewiring and a unique bracket system that would insure little to no wiring changes outside the package. Once designed, the unit proved easy to design, easy to program, easy to wire and easy to install in the field—with minimal disruption to the line. Moreover, the cost to install proved to be approximately $40,000—an 80 percent reduction from TVA’s prior typical installation cost (a savings that could be passed along to ratepayers). Within the space of only one year, Frye and a colleague, Mazin Nashi, were able to upgrade not 10 but 53 transmission relays—a feat that heretofore had been unfathomable (and Frye believes that another 50 or so are on track to be replaced in 2016). That’s a win, win, win, win, win. Heads were turned, and Frye was named as the 2016 Ike Zeringue Engineer of the Year, TVA's most prestigious engineering award. “TVA is proud to name Robert Frye the 2016 Ike Zeringue Engineer of the Year,” says Jacinda Woodward, senior vice president, Transmission and Power Supply. “Each year, we have the pleasure of recognizing an individual who exemplifies excellence in the engineering field and a steadfast commitment to TVA’s mission of service. Robert has earned the trust and respect of his colleagues, and he is well-deserving of this achievement.” “Robert is part of the dedicated TVA workforce across the Tennessee Valley that has helped TVA provide 99.999 percent reliability to our customers every year since 2000,” Woodward adds. Though Frye knew he’d hit upon something with his relay solution, he was still surprised by the honor, and humble. “I am blessed to work with so many smart, knowledgeable people here at TVA,” says Frye, who's already turned his attention to the next challenge: designing a similar replacement package for 150 obsolete Optimho relays. “The people I work with have inspired me to continue learning and growing. I’ve never stopped learning. It’s a team effort to support our mission of service every day. I may bring specialized knowledge in one area—a colleague will have specialized knowledge in another area. We put our strengths together, and it’s that combined knowledge across the entire team that makes us successful.” The award is TVA’s highest honor for an engineer and named for O.J. “Ike” Zeringue, a former TVA president and chief operating officer, as well as chief nuclear officer. Frye is also one of 10 finalists for the Federal Engineer of the Year Award, which will be presented Feb. 26 in Washington, D.C. A 1985 graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Frye holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. He is a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Robert lives in Chattanooga with his wife, April. I’VE KNOW ROBERT FOR ALMOST 30 YEARS AND CAN TELL YOU HE IS AN EXCELLENT ENGINEER. WE HAVE FUSSED AND DISCUSSED ENGINEERING PROBLEMS ALL THAT The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 82 of 108 TIME AND I AM PROUD OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENT AND PROUD TO CALL HIM A FRIEND. TIM BOLGEO From: “Jim Woosley” [email protected] NORTH KOREAN SATELLITE 'STABLE' IN ORBIT AFTER LAUNCH, US OFFICIAL CONFIRMS FoxNews.com, Published February 09, 2016 http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/02/09/north-korean-satellite-stable-in-orbit-after-launch-us- official-confirms.html?intcmp=hplnws VIDEO AT THE WEBSITE The satellite that North Korea launched into orbit Sunday is now "stable" in orbit, a U.S. official told Fox News on Tuesday. Earlier reports had claimed the satellite was "tumbling" in orbit, which would have rendered it useless. A U.S. official told ABC News the same technology used to get the payload into orbit is the same needed to launch a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile at the U.S. A satellite launched by the secretive regime in 2012 is still in orbit but spiraling back to Earth and is not believed to have transmitted signals back to Earth. Both satellites bear the name "Shining Star," a reference to Kim Jong Un's father, the late Kim Jong Il. The new satellite, which is thought to be somewhat larger than the earlier one, is called Kwangmyongsong 4. The Shining Star name was also written on the rocket itself, which previously carried the name Unha, or "Galaxy." South Korean officials and foreign analysts said Tuesday that they now believe the first stage of the rocket had a cagey new feature: It was deliberately rigged to blow up after separation Sunday, for the express purpose of confounding foreign analysts. While government leaders around the world are trying to figure out how to punish North Korea for its rocket launch, the U.S., Japanese and South Korean militaries are scouring the seas for debris and analysts are studying photos, trajectories — anything that might provide insight into North Korean rocketry skills. So far they haven't found much, in part because the first stage was destroyed. In a statement Tuesday, South Korea's Defense Ministry said it believes the North deliberately blew up the rocket's first stage after burnout to prevent South Korea from retrieving rocket debris. Previously, South Korea retrieved the first stage of the rocket the North launched in 2012, along with a 2-by-12-inch explosivee device they say suggests the North had intended to blow that one up, too. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 83 of 108 From North Korea's perspective, blowing up some of the evidence makes sense. "If I were North Korea, I would probably have done the same thing to avoid South Korea pulling it out of the sea to study it and show it off," said David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The second stage lands far enough out at sea that it is probably not recoverable, so they wouldn't need to worry so much about that." The move could also have deeper military implications. Governments around the world have denounced the launch as a cover for testing long-range ballistic missile technology, which it is banned from doing under U.N. resolutions. Ted Postol, a rocket expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that if the North deliberately blew up the rocket's first stage, it could complicate weapons defenses being developed by the United States. "If it is true that the first stage was intentionally cut into many pieces, it is a clear indication that the North Koreans have also demonstrated the potential to build countermeasures against U.S. missile defenses," he said. He said such defenses rely heavily on infrared tracking. But previous tests by the U.S. of its anti-missile defense systems indicate that a plethora of false targets — like the fragments of a detonated rocket stage — make it difficult for interceptors using infrared homing devices to distinguish the warhead from pieces of debris. South Korea says it has already retrieved what it believes is the rocket's fairing — a casing that protects its payload — in the waters southwest of the southern Jeju island. Its defense ministry said the rocket's second stage was believed to have landed in the waters east of the Philippines' Luzon island, about 1,500 miles away from the North's launch pad. The ministry said South Korea and the United States are still trying to find its exact splash zone. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. From: Stephanie Osborn SVENSMARK: “GLOBAL WARMING STOPPED AND A COOLING IS BEGINNING” – “ENJOY GLOBAL WARMING WHILE IT LASTS” Anthony Watts / September 10, 2009 UPDATED: This opinion piece from Professor Henrik Svensmark was published September 9th in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Originally the translation was from Google translation with some post translation cleanup of jumbled words or phrases by myself. Now as of Sept 12, the translation is by Nigel Calder. Hat tip to Carsten Arnholm of Norway for bringing this to my attention and especially for translation facilitation by Ágúst H Bjarnason – Anthony The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 84 of 108 Spotless Cueball: Catania observatory photosphere image August 31st, 2009 - click for larger image While the sun sleeps Translation approved by Henrik Svensmark While the Sun sleeps Henrik Svensmark, Professor, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen “In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 85 of 108 The star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth. If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look. Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period. But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger. "The March across the Belts was a campaign between January 30 and February 8, 1658 during the Northern Wars where Swedish king Karl X Gustav led the Swedish army from Jutland across the ice of the Little Belt and the Great Belt to reach Zealand (Danish: Sjælland). The risky but vastly successful crossing was a crushing blow to Denmark, and led to the Treaty of Roskilde later that year...." - Click for larger image. It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 86 of 108 The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result. You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb. Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds. When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then. That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller. Ever since we put forward our theory in 1996, it has been subjected to very sharp criticism, which is normal in science. First it was said that a link between clouds and solar activity could not be correct, because no physical mechanism was known. But in 2006, after many years of work, we completed experiments at DTU Space that demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic rays help to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation. Then came the criticism that the mechanism we found in the laboratory could not work in the real atmosphere, and therefore had no practical significance. We have just rejected that criticism emphatically. It turns out that the Sun itself performs what might be called natural experiments. Giant solar eruptions can cause the cosmic ray intensity on earth to dive suddenly over a few days. In the days following an eruption, cloud cover can fall by about 4 per cent. And the amount of liquid water in cloud droplets is reduced by almost 7 per cent. Here is a very large effect – indeed so great that in popular terms the Earth’s clouds originate in space. So we have watched the Sun’s magnetic activity with increasing concern, since it began to wane in the mid-1990s. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 87 of 108 That the Sun might now fall asleep in a deep minimum was suggested by solar scientists at a meeting in Kiruna in Sweden two years ago. So when Nigel Calder and I updated our book The Chilling Stars, we wrote a little provocatively that “we are advising our friends to enjoy global warming while it lasts.” In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. Mojib Latif from the University of Kiel argued at the recent UN World Climate Conference in Geneva that the cooling may continue through the next 10 to 20 years. His explanation was a natural change in the North Atlantic circulation, not in solar activity. But no matter how you interpret them, natural variations in climate are making a comeback. The outcome may be that the Sun itself will demonstrate its importance for climate and so challenge the theories of global warming. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable. A forecast saying it may be either warmer or colder for 50 years is not very useful, and science is not yet able to predict solar activity. So in many ways we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting. I think it is important to accept that Nature pays no heed to what we humans think about it. Will the greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different from the greenhouse theory’s predictions. Perhaps it will become fashionable again to investigate the Sun’s impact on our climate. – Professor Henrik Svensmark is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at DTU Space. His book The Chilling Stars has also been published in Danish as Klima og Kosmos Gads Forlag, DK ISBN 9788712043508) BIG BANG IN ANTARCTICA -- KILLER CRATER FOUND UNDER ICE Ancient mega-catastrophe paved way for the dinosaurs, spawned Australian continent http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/erthboom.htm COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history. The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out. Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward. Scientists believe that the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 88 of 108 crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide -- four or five times wider. "This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University. He and Laramie Potts, a postdoctoral researcher in geological sciences, led the team that discovered the crater. They collaborated with other Ohio State and NASA scientists, as well as international partners from Russia and Korea. They reported their preliminary results in a recent poster session at the American Geophysical Union Joint Assemblymeeting in Baltimore. The scientists used gravity fluctuations measured by NASA's GRACE satellites to peer beneath Antarctica's icy surface, and found a 200-mile-wide plug of mantle material -- a mass concentration, or "mascon" in geological parlance -- that had risen up into the Earth's crust. Mascons are the planetary equivalent of a bump on the head. They form where large objects slam into a planet's surface. Upon impact, the denser mantle layer bounces up into the overlying crust, which holds it in place beneath the crater. When the scientists overlaid their gravity image with airborne radar images of the ground beneath the ice, they found the mascon perfectly centered inside a circular ridge some 300 miles wide -- a crater easily large enough to hold the state of Ohio. Taken alone, the ridge structure wouldn't prove anything. But to von Frese, the addition of the mascon means "impact." Years of studying similar impacts on the moon have honed his ability to find them. "If I saw this same mascon signal on the moon, I'd expect to see a crater around it," he said. "And when we looked at the ice-probing airborne radar, there it was." "There are at least 20 impact craters this size or larger on the moon, so it is not surprising to find one here," he continued. "The active geology of the Earth likely scrubbed its surface clean of many more." He and Potts admitted that such signals are open to interpretation. Even with radar and gravity measurements, scientists are only just beginning to understand what's happening inside the planet. Still, von Frese said that the circumstances of the radar and mascon signals support their interpretation. "We compared two completely different data sets taken under different conditions, and they matched up," he said. To estimate when the impact took place, the scientists took a clue from the fact that the mascon is still visible. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 89 of 108 "On the moon, you can look at craters, and the mascons are still there," von Frese said. "But on Earth, it's unusual to find mascons, because the planet is geologically active. The interior eventually recovers and the mascon goes away." He cited the very large and much older Vredefort crater in South Africa that must have once had a mascon, but no evidence of it can be seen now. "Based on what we know about the geologic history of the region, this Wilkes Land mascon formed recently by geologic standards -- probably about 250 million years ago," he said. "In another half a billion years, the Wilkes Land mascon will probably disappear, too." Approximately 100 million years ago, Australia split from the ancient Gondwana supercontinent and began drifting north, pushed away by the expansion of a rift valley into the eastern Indian Ocean. The rift cuts directly through the crater, so the impact may have helped the rift to form, von Frese said. But the more immediate effects of the impact would have devastated life on Earth. "All the environmental changes that would have resulted from the impact would have created a highly caustic environment that was really hard to endure. So it makes sense that a lot of life went extinct at that time," he said. He and Potts would like to go to Antarctica to confirm the finding. The best evidence would come from the rocks within the crater. Since the cost of drilling through more than a mile of ice to reach these rocks directly is prohibitive, they want to hunt for them at the base of the ice along the coast where the ice streams are pushing scoured rock into the sea. Airborne gravity and magnetic surveys would also be very useful for testing their interpretation of the satellite data, they said. NSF and NASA funded this work. Collaborators included Stuart Wells and Orlando Hernandez, graduate students in geological sciences at Ohio State; Luis Gaya-Piqué and Hyung Rae Kim, both of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Alexander Golynsky of the All-Russia Research Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean; and Jeong Woo Kim and Jong Sun Hwang, both of Sejong University in Korea. OBSERVATION OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVES FROM A BINARY BLACK HOLE Merger B. P. Abbott et al.* (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration) (Received 21 January 2016; published 11 February 2016) https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102 On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0 × 10?21. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1?. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410þ160 ?180 Mpc corresponding to a redshift z ¼ 0.09þ0.03 ?0.04. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36þ5 ?4M? and 29þ4 ?4M?, and the final black hole mass is 62þ4 ?4M?, with 3.0þ0.5 ?0.5M?c2 radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 90 of 108 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar- mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger. INCREDIBLE 40,000-YEAR-OLD BRACELET BELIEVED TO BE THE OLDEST EVER FOUND SUGGESTS ANCIENT HUMAN RACE USED DRILLS WHICH WERE JUST LIKE MODERN TOOLS * It was discovered inside the Denisova Cave beside ancient human remains * Scientists say there is evidence that the bracelet's maker used a 'drill' * Nowhere else in the world has evidence of the early technology been found * Other cave finds include the bones of a woolly mammoth and woolly rhino By WILL STEWART IN MOSCOW and IMOGEN CALDERWOOD FOR MAILONLINE, EST, 7 May 2015 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3072094/40-000-year-old-bracelet-believed-oldest-suggests- ancient-humans-used-drills.html#ixzz409bPIfwB A unique green stone bracelet discovered beside ancient human remains in a Siberian cave is 'the oldest ever found' dating back around 40,000 years, say Russian experts. The intricate modern-looking piece of polished jewellery - perhaps belonging to a prehistoric princess - was made of chlorite by the Denisovans, a long extinct early human grouping, it is believed. The remarkable bracelet was found in the Altai Mountain range in 2008, but it is only now that pictures have emerged showing it in all its glory, including a reconstruction of how it would have looked at the time. +6 - Pictures have emerged of the beautiful green bracelet found in a Siberian cave, including a reconstruction of how it would have looked at the time Experts who have spent years examining the bracelet say evidence suggests it was an exceptionally rare item of the era and likely held great significance for the wearer, reported The Siberian Times. In addition, the level of skill and expertise required to create the piece has led to speculation that these earliest humans were more technologically advanced than previously thought, with the Denisovans seemingly more skilled than Homo sapiens or Neanderthals. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 91 of 108 Scientists found that a hole had been drilled in part of the bracelet with such precision that it could only have been done with a high-rotation drill similar to those used today. +6 It was also carefully polished, with a heavy pendant added in the centre, probably hanging from a short leather strap. Yet the archaeologists have ruled out that the bracelet was made in a later era and buried with the earlier, Denisovan remains. Scientists also noted it was made of chlorite, a stone found more than 150 miles away, suggesting the bracelet was of significance at the time. This unique jewellery is currently held at the Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples' of Siberia and the Far East in the city of Novosibirsk. Head of the museum Irina Salnikova said: 'The skills of its creator were perfect. Initially we thought that it was made by Neanderthals or modern humans, but it turned out that the master was Denisovan. 'All jewellery had a magical meaning for ancient people. Bracelets and neck adornments were to protect people from evil spirits, for instance. +6 - Inside the cave where the bracelet was discovered alongside ancient human remains 'But this item, given the complicated technology and "imported" material, obviously belonged to some high ranking person of that society.' Anatoly Derevyanko, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, said: 'The bracelet is stunning. 'In bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green. 'It is unlikely it was used as an everyday jewellery piece. I believe this beautiful and very fragile bracelet was worn only for some exceptional moments.' The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 92 of 108 The bracelet was discovered inside the famous Denisova Cave, which is renowned for its archaeological finds including the bones of a woolly mammoth and woolly rhino. Soil surrounding it was dated using oxygen isotope analysis. Located about 100 miles south of the city of Barnaul, it is popular with tourists because of the vast number of unusual animal remains that have been found there. The bracelet was found in 2008 during an expedition into the cave, which has a year-round temperature of 0 degrees Celsius, helping to preserve remains. Nearby was the finger bone of a seven- or eight-year-old Denisovan girl who lived about 40,000 years ago, a find which changed scientific understanding of early man. Two fragments of the bracelet were found, about three-centimetres wide and one- centimetre thick, and it was established that it had been worn on the right hand, probably by a woman or child. But what puzzled experts was the way the jewellery had been made and it remains far from clear clear how the primitive human species could have created it. Dr Derevyanko said: 'There is a drilled hole with a diameter of about 0.8 cm. 'Studying it scientists found out that the speed of rotation of the drill was rather high with minimal fluctuation, and there was applied easel drilling - technology that is common for more recent times. 'The ancient master was skilled in techniques previously considered not characteristic for the Palaeolithic era.' The institute's deputy director Mikhail Shunkov said the bracelet was found 'in the same layer' inside the cave with proven remains of Denisovans. He said that 'nowhere in the world' had such technology been used at such an early time. This showed Denisovans were 'more progressive' than Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, he said, even though 'according to their genetic and morphological characters', they were far more primitive. The Denisovans are thought to date back as early as 600,000 years ago, and were neither Neanderthals nor modern humans. DNA discovered in Spain suggests the species - which was more common in Russia and the east --- at some point resided in Western Europe, where Neanderthals had been thought to be the only early inhabitants. From: “Christina Cowan” [email protected] SMITHSONIAN GIVING VISITORS A VIRTUAL LOOK INSIDE APOLLO 11 The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 93 of 108 By JESSICA GRESKO, From Associated Press, February 11, 2016 6:20 PM EST http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20160211/f1db6b21-871b-4d52-9005-b3163b15ae1a This image provided by the Smithsonian Institution shows part of the interior of the Apollo 11 command module that shows graffiti left by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. A calendar hand drawn on the wall marking days in space and scribbled warning instructions to not open certain doors are some of the things the public will be able to see as part of a new, 3D look inside the spacecraft that took astronauts on America's historic 1969 mission to the moon. (Smithsonian Institution via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) — They are bits of space graffiti hidden from the public for decades: a crude calendar, scrawled lunar coordinates and markings warning of a locker containing "smelly waste." Apollo 11 astronauts left those scribbles inside the spacecraft that took them on their historic mission to the moon in 1969, but now the public will get to see them for the first time. National Air and Space Museum officials presented a preview Thursday of a virtual 3-D model that will allow the public a look inside the car-sized Apollo 11 command module. No longer will the public have to try to peer inside through one of the capsule's small windows or hatch. The new model will allow anyone to examine the craft's controls and see writing left by its three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. (Aldrin says he's pretty sure the calendar was Collins' handiwork.) Some of the markings left by the astronauts have to do with maneuvers they had to make to reach the moon, information it was easier to have written near the craft's instruments. Others writings are less technical: "launch day urine bags" reads an inscription on one locker. On another: "smelly waste." The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 94 of 108 "They just wanted to warn themselves that this is probably a locker that they should probably leave closed until after the mission was over," said Allan Needell, a curator of space history at the Smithsonian who oversees Apollo artifacts. The Apollo 11 command module, called "Columbia," has been one of the star attractions at the National Air and Space Museum since its opening in 1976. But climbing inside has never been allowed. Even curators have been reluctant to go inside and risk damaging it. The model expected to be available online this summer will let the public maneuver around the craft themselves and even print their own 3-D model of it. Eventually, a virtual reality experience will let visitors feel like they're sitting inside the capsule. To make the model, experts spent two weeks scanning the inside and outside of the craft with lasers. They also took thousands of pictures. Needell, who has overseen study on the command module for almost 20 years, says even he saw new things during the model's creation. One piece of astronaut graffiti curators found written on a wall was a crude calendar of July 1969. It begins on the day the craft launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral, July 16, 1969, and ends with the day the craft returned to Earth, July 24, the only day that is not crossed off. Needell says that in space, the astronauts wouldn't have sunrise and sunset to keep track of the day, so the calendar would have helped. From: “Keith A. Glass” [email protected] IF a Nuclear Reactor in China has a catastrophic meltdown. . . . does it develop the America Syndrome? K.A.G CHINA COULD HAVE A MELTDOWN-PROOF NUCLEAR REACTOR NEXT YEAR Two high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors under construction in Shandong will make up the first commercial-scale plant of its type in the world. by Richard Martin, February 11, 2016 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600757/china-could-have-a-meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactor- next-year/ In what would be a milestone for advanced nuclear power, China’s Nuclear Engineering Construction Corporation plans to start up a high-temperature, gas-cooled pebble-bed nuclear plant next year in Shandong province, south of Beijing. The twin 105-megawatt reactors—so-called Generation IV reactors that would be immune to meltdown—would be the first of their type built at commercial scale in the world. Construction of the plant is nearly complete, and the next 18 months will be spent installing the reactor components, running tests, and loading the fuel before the reactors go critical in November 2017, said Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, a division of Tsinghua University that has developed the technology over the last decade and a half, in an interview at the institute’s campus 30 miles south of Beijing. If it’s successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 95 of 108 followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia. “This technology is going to be on the world market within the next five years,” Zhang predicts. “We are developing these reactors to belong to the world.” Pebble-bed reactors that use helium gas as the heat transfer medium and run at very high temperatures—up to 950 °C—have been in development for decades. The Chinese reactor is based on a design originally developed in Germany, and the German company SGL Group is supplying the billiard-ball-size graphite spheres that encase thousands of tiny “pebbles” of uranium fuel. Seven high-temperature gas-cooled reactors have been built, but only two units remain in operation, both relatively small: an experimental 10-megawatt pebble-bed reactor at the Tsinghua Institute campus, which reached full power in 2003, and a similar reactor in Japan. During a recent visit to the Tsinghua facility, technologists were testing the huge helium blower that will circulate the gas coolant at the Shandong site once it starts up. Such high- temperature reactors are immune to meltdown because they don’t require elaborate external cooling systems of the sort that failed at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The graphite coating protects the fuel from breaking down, even at temperatures well beyond those found in the reactor core during operation, and once the interior temperature passes a certain threshold, the nuclear reactions slow, cooling the reactor and making it essentially self-regulating. And while pebble-bed reactors do not totally solve the problem of nuclear waste, the fuel’s form also gives rise to multiple options for waste disposal. China’s eventual goal is to eliminate or greatly reduce waste by recycling the spent fuel. One of the main hurdles to building these reactors is the cost of the fuel and of the reactor components. But China’s sheer size could help overcome that barrier. “There have been studies that indicate that if reactors are mass-produced, they can drive down costs,” says Charles Forsberg, executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project. “The Chinese market is large enough to make that potentially possible.” Several other advanced-reactor projects are under way in China, including work on a molten-salt reactor fueled by thorium rather than uranium (a collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the technology originated in the 1960s), a traveling-wave reactor (in collaboration with TerraPower, the startup funded by Bill Gates), and a sodium- cooled fast reactor being built by the Chinese Institute for Atomic Energy (see “China Details Next-Gen Nuclear Reactor Program” and “TerraPower Quietly Explores New Nuclear Reactor Strategy”). Indeed, China is rapidly becoming a test bed for innovative nuclear power technologies that have stalled in the United States and Europe. “What you are seeing is serious intent,” says Forsberg. “They may kick greenhouse gases out of their power sector before we do because of that serious intent.” From: "Richard Groller" [email protected] The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 96 of 108 A BLACK HOLE ON A CHIP MADE OF A METAL THAT BEHAVES LIKE WATER First model system of relativistic hydrodynamics in a metal; energy- and sensing- applications also seen February 12, 2016 http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-black-hole-on-a-chip-made-of-a-metal-that-behaves-like- water?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=572860d33a-UA-946742- 1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_147a5a48c1-572860d33a-282083125 In a new paper published in Science, researchers at the Harvard and Raytheon BBN Technology have observed, for the first time, electrons in a metal behaving like a fluid (credit: Peter Allen/Harvard SEAS) A radical discovery by researchers at Harvard and Raytheon BBN Technology about graphene’s hidden properties could lead to a model system to explore exotic phenomena like black holes and high- energy plasmas, as well as novel thermoelectric devices. In a paper published Feb. 11 in Science, the researchers document their discovery of electrons in graphene behaving like a fluid. To make this observation, the team improved methods to create ultra-clean graphene* and developed a new way to measure its thermal conductivity. A BLACK HOLE ON A CHIP In ordinary 3D metals, electrons hardly interact with each other. But graphene’s two- dimensional, honeycomb structure acts like an electron superhighway in which all the particles have to travel in the same lane. The electrons in this ultra-clean graphene act like massless relativistic objects, some with positive charge and some with negative charge. They move at incredible speed — 1/300 of the speed of light — and have been predicted to collide with each other ten trillion times a second at room temperature. These intense interactions between charge particles have never been observed in an ordinary metal before. Most of our world is described by classical physics. But very small things, like electrons, are described by quantum mechanics while very large and very fast things, like galaxies, are described by relativistic physics, pioneered by Albert Einstein. Combining these different sets of laws of physics is notoriously difficult, but there are extreme examples where they overlap. High-energy systems like supernovas and black The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 97 of 108 holes can be described by linking classical theories of hydrodynamics with Einstein’s theories of relativity. A QUANTUM ‘DIRAC’ FLUID METAL But since we can’t run an experiment on a black hole (yet), enter graphene. When the strongly interacting particles in graphene were driven by an electric field, they behaved not like individual particles but like a fluid that could be described by hydrodynamics. “Physics we discovered by studying black holes and string theory, we’re seeing in graphene,” said Andrew Lucas, co-author and graduate student with Subir Sachdev, the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard. “This is the first model system of relativistic hydrodynamics in a metal.” INDUSTRIAL IMPLICATIONS A small chip of graphene could also be used to model the fluid-like behavior of other high- energy systems. To observe the hydrodynamic system, the team turned to noise. At finite temperature, the electrons move about randomly: the higher the temperature, the noisier the electrons. By measuring the temperature of the electrons to three decimal points, the team was able to precisely measure the thermal conductivity of the electrons. “This work provides a new way to control the rate of heat transduction in graphene’s electron system, and as such will be key for energy and sensing-related applications,” said Leonid Levitov, professor of physics at MIT. “Converting thermal energy into electric currents and vice versa is notoriously hard with ordinary materials,” said Lucas. “But in principle, with a clean sample of graphene there may be no limit to how good a device you could make.” The research was led by Philip Kim, professor of physics and applied physics at The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). * The team created an ultra-clean sample by sandwiching the one-atom thick graphene sheet between tens of layers of an electrically insulating perfect transparent crystal with a similar atomic structure of graphene. “If you have a material that’s one atom thick, it’s going to be really affected by its environment,” said Jesse Crossno, a graduate student in the Kim Lab and first author of the paper. “If the graphene is on top of something that’s rough and disordered, it’s going to interfere with how the electrons move. It’s really important to create graphene with no interference from its environment.” Next, the team set up a kind of thermal soup of positively charged and negatively charged particles on the surface of the graphene, and observed how those particles flowed as thermal and electric currents. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 98 of 108 ABSTRACT OF OBSERVATION OF THE DIRAC FLUID AND THE BREAKDOWN OF THE WIEDEMANN-FRANZ LAW IN GRAPHENE Interactions between particles in quantum many-body systems can lead to collective behavior described by hydrodynamics. One such system is the electron-hole plasma in graphene near the charge neutrality point, which can form a strongly coupled Dirac fluid. This charge neutral plasma of quasi-relativistic fermions is expected to exhibit a substantial enhancement of the thermal conductivity, thanks to decoupling of charge and heat currents within hydrodynamics. Employing high sensitivity Johnson noise thermometry, we report an order of magnitude increase in the thermal conductivity and the breakdown of the Wiedemann-Franz law in the thermally populated charge neutral plasma in graphene. This result is a signature of the Dirac fluid, and constitutes direct evidence of collective motion in a quantum electronic fluid. references: Jesse Crossno, Jing K. Shi, Ke Wang, Xiaomeng Liu, Achim Harzheim, Andrew Lucas, Subir Sachdev, Philip Kim, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Thomas A. Ohki, Kin Chung Fong. Observation of the Dirac fluid and the breakdown of the Wiedemann-Franz law in graphene. Science 11 Feb 2016 DOI: 10.1126/science.aad0343 <~><~> ABSOLUTELY & TOTALLY POLITICALLY INCORRECT & AS FAR TO THE RIGHT AS YOU CAN GO! From: “Jim Woosley” [email protected] TOP INTEL OFFICIAL CONFIRMS ISIS MADE, USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS FoxNews.com, Published February 09, 2016 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/09/top-intel-official-confirms-isis-made-used-chemical- weapons.html?intcmp=hpbt2 The nation’s top intelligence official confirmed Tuesday that the Islamic State has succeeded in making and deploying chemical agents in Iraq and Syria -- calling it the first such attack by an extremist group in more than two decades. The confirmation of mustard gas use came during Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he spoke to the Islamic State's growing sophistication online and in the battlefield. He did not elaborate on where and when the chemical attacks occurred, though there has been mounting evidence the terror group was experimenting with chemical weapons. “[The Syrian government] has used chemicals against the opposition on multiple occasions since Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. ISIL has also used toxic chemicals in Iraq and Syria, including the blister agent Sulfur mustard,” Clapper said. He said this marks the first time an extremist group has produced and used a "chemical warfare agent in an attack since Aum Shinrikyo used sarin in Japan in 1995," referring to the Tokyo subway terror attack that year. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 99 of 108 Fox News previously reported on ISIS' potential experimentation with chemical weapons. Photos taken by the Kurds in northern Iraq last summer and reviewed by Fox News showed burns and blistering on skin following exposure to “odorless, colorless” agents absorbed through the clothing. A doctor who was in northern Iraq last year said he treated Kurdish fighters whom ISIS used as "lab rats for WMD," adding that the variety of burns and illnesses suggested that "mustard gas, precursors, as well as neurotoxic acids" were being tested. Evidence has also indicated that Damascus has been using chemical weapons against the Syrian opposition and civilians, despite an agreement to reduce its stockpile two years ago. The Japan attack that Clapper referred to in his testimony occured in March 1995. Then, perpetrators hailing from the cult Aum Shinrikyo launched five coordinated Sarin gas attacks on the Toyko subway, killing 12, severely injuring 50 and leaving some 1,000 people with temporary vision impairment. Clapper dropped the latest revelation amid discussions of other worldwide national security threats, including North Korea, which he said has expanded a uranium enrichment facility and restarted a plutonium reactor that could start recovering material for nuclear weapons in weeks or months. Meanwhile, Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Islamic militants will continue plotting against U.S. interests overseas and homegrown attacks will pose the most significant threat from violent extremists to Americans at home. "The perceived success of attacks by homegrown violent extremists in Europe and North America, such as those in Chattanooga and San Bernardino, might motivate others to replicate opportunistic attacks with little or no warning, diminishing our ability to detect terrorist operational planning and readiness," he said. "ISIL involvement in homeland attack activity will probably continue to involve those who draw inspiration from the group's highly sophisticated media without direct guidance from ISIL leadership," he said, using an acronym for the militant group. He also, in his prepared testimony, said ISIS has an "unprecedented online proficiency." Clapper said that the North Korean government announced in 2013 its intention to refurbish and restart nuclear facilities, to include the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon and its graphite-moderated plutonium production reactor, which was shut down in 2007. He added that U.S. intelligence had assessed that North Korea has expanded Yongbyon and restarted the plutonium production reactor there. His testimony followed the North Koreans' recent underground test explosion and rocket launch. He said the communist nation is working to expand what is thought to be a small nuclear arsenal. U.S.-based experts have estimated that North Korea may have about 10 bombs, but that could grow to between 20 and 100 by 2020. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 100 of 108 When asked, separately, if the the intelligence community suspected that the Iranian government was violating its own nuclear agreement with Washington and its international partners, Clapper said, “no.” “We have no evidence thus far that they are moving toward a violation,” he testified, adding that Washington is in “the distrust and verify mode” and is watching closely. On the cybersecurity issue, Clapper said China selectively uses cyber-attacks against targets Beijing believes threaten Chinese domestic stability or regime legitimacy. "We will monitor compliance with China's September 2015 commitment to refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property with the intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors," he said. He also warned that Afghanistan is at "serious risk of a political breakdown during 2016." He said waning political cohesion, rising activities by local powerbrokers, financial shortfalls and sustained attacks by the Taliban are eroding stability. Russia, meanwhile, continues to compete “to create an image of being co-equal with the United States,” and is “very paranoid about NATO and about being contained,” he said in response to a question on Russian aggression in Syria and Ukraine. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report. From: “John Vannucci” [email protected] THINK THIS GUY HAS IT ALL COVERED. I COULDN'T SPOT ANYTHING HE LEFT OUT. I Am the Democratic, Republican Liberal-Progressive's Worst Nightmare. I am a White, Conservative, Tax-Paying, American Veteran, Gun Owning Biker. That’s me! I am a Master Mason. I work hard and long hours with my hands to earn a living. I believe in God and the freedom of religion, but I don't push it on others. I ride Harley Davidson Motorcycles, and drive American-made cars, and I believe in American products and buy them whenever I can. I believe the money I make belongs to me and not some liberal governmental functionary, Democratic or Republican, that wants to share it with others who don't work! I'm in touch with my feelings and I like it that way! I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer; it makes you a smart American. I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it! I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac or any other item, you should do it in English. I believe there should be no other language option. I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 101 of 108 My heroes are Malcolm Forbes, Bill Gates, John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and Willie G. Davidson, who makes the awesome Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor. I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time watching or arguing about it. I've never owned a slave, nor was I a slave. I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks, and neither have you! I believe if you don't like the way things are here, go back to where you came from and change your own country! This is AMERICA ...We like it the way it is and more so the way it was … so stop trying to change it to look like Russia or China , or some other socialist country! If you were born here and don't like it... you are free to move to any Socialist country that will have you. I believe it is time to really clean house, starting with the White House, the seat of our biggest problems. I want to know which church is it, exactly, where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution? Can I get an AMEN on that one? I also think the cops have the right to pull you over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are, but not just because you happen to ride a bike. And, no, I don't mind having my face shown on my driver's license. I think it's good.... And I'm proud that 'God' is written on my money. I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years. I dislike those people standing in the intersections trying to sell me stuff or trying to guilt me into making 'donations' to their cause.... Get a job and do your part to support yourself and your family! I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.... I believe 'illegal' is illegal no matter what the lawyers think! I believe the American flag should be the only one allowed in AMERICA ! If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American. If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know... We want our country back! My Country..... I hope this offends all illegal aliens. My great, great, great, great grandfather watched and bled as his friends died in the Revolution & the War of 1812. My great, great, great grandfather watched as his friends died in the Mexican American War. My great, great grandfather watched as his friends & brothers died in the Civil War. My great grandfather watched as his friends died in the Spanish-American War. My grandfather watched as his friends died in WW I. My father watched as his friends died in WW II. I watched as my friends died in Vietnam , Panama & Desert Storm. My son watched & bled as his friends died in Afghanistan and Iraq . None of them died for the Mexican Flag. Everyone died for the American flag. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 102 of 108 Texas high school students raised a Mexican flag on a school flag pole, other students took it down. Guess who was expelled...the students who took it down. California high school students were sent home on Cinco de Mayo, because they wore T-shirts with the American flag printed on them. Enough is enough!!! This message needs to be viewed by every American; and every American needs to stand up for America. We've bent over to appease the America-haters long enough. I'm taking a stand. I'm standing up because the hundreds of thousands who died fighting in wars for this country, and for the American flag. If you agree, stand up with me. If you disagree, please let me know. I will gladly remove you from my e-mail list. And shame on anyone who tries to make this a racist message. AMERICANS, stop giving away Your RIGHTS ! Let me make this clear! THIS IS MY COUNTRY ! This statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration ! YOU ARE WELCOME HERE, IN MY COUNTRY, welcome to come legally: 1. Get a sponsor. 2. Learn the LANGUAGE, as immigrants have in the past! 3. Live by OUR rules! 4. Get a job! 5. Pay YOUR Taxes! 6. No Social Security until you have earned it and Paid for it! 7. NOW find a place to lay your head! If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, then YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM! We've gone so far the other way . . . bent over backwards not to offend anyone. Only AMERICANS seems to care when American Citizens are being offended! WAKE UP America!!! If you do not Pass this on, may your fingers cramp! Made in the U S A & PROUD OF IT!!!!! <~><~> From: "Tom Carpenter" [email protected] For the most part, I consider Politico to be hardly work lining the bottom of someone's birdcage, but this article has some merit, so I thought I'd pass it along. TC DONALD TRUMP IS SHOCKING, VULGAR AND RIGHT AND, MY DEAR FELLOW REPUBLICANS, HE'S ALL YOUR FAULT. By TUCKER CARLSON, January 28, 2016 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-is-shocking-vulgar-and-right- 213572?paginate=false About 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair. I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 103 of 108 “It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “But I get more pussy than you do.” Click. At the time, I’d never met Trump and I remember feeling amused but also surprised he’d say something like that. Now the pattern seems entirely familiar. The message had all the hallmarks of a Trump attack: shocking, vulgar and indisputably true. Not everyone finds it funny. On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods. Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park. I understand it of course. And, except in those moments when the self-righteous silliness of rich people overwhelms me and I feel like moving to Maine, I can see their points, some of them anyway. Trump might not be my first choice for president. I’m not even convinced he really wants the job. He’s smart enough to know it would be tough for him to govern. But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn’t mean his candidacy can’t be instructive. Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully. Here’s some of what they might learn: HE EXISTS BECAUSE YOU FAILED American presidential elections usually amount to a series of over corrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t. Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of- center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self- perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted. Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.” Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 104 of 108 abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal. It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too. On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low- wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good. Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn’t said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals — these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the “ghost of George Wallace” that a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their voters are rebelling. TRUTH IS NOT ONLY A DEFENSE, IT’S THRILLING When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long. That’s not just a talking point about political correctness. It’s the central problem with our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t have the words to describe it. You can’t even think about it clearly. This depressing fact made Trump’s political career. In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it’s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he’s wrong. It’s especially exciting when you suspect he’s right. A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed. What’s our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino—attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that was the plan. Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 105 of 108 Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He’s so obviously faking it. They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they’re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How’d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq? WASHINGTON REALLY IS CORRUPT Everyone beats up on Washington, but most of the people I know who live here love it. Of course they do. It’s beautiful, the people are friendly, we’ve got good restaurants, not to mention full employment and construction cranes on virtually every corner. If you work on Capitol Hill or downtown, it’s hard to walk back from lunch without seeing someone you know. It’s a warm bath. Nobody wants to leave. But let’s pretend for a second this isn’t Washington. Let’s imagine it’s the capital of an African country, say Burkina Faso, and we are doing a study on corruption. Probably the first question we’d ask: How many government officials have close relatives who make a living by influencing government spending? A huge percentage of them? OK. Case closed. Ouagadougou is obviously a very corrupt city. That’s how the rest of the country views D.C. Washington is probably the richest city in America because the people who live there have the closest proximity to power. That seems obvious to most voters. It’s less obvious to us, because everyone here is so cheerful and familiar, and we’re too close to it. Chairman so-and-so’s son-in-law lobbies the committee? That doesn’t seem corrupt. He’s such a good guy. All of which explains why almost nobody in Washington caught the significance of Trump’s finest moment in the first debate. One of the moderators asked, in effect: if you’re so opposed to Hillary Clinton, why did she come to your last wedding? It seemed like a revealing, even devastating question. Trump’s response, delivered without pause or embarrassment: Because I paid her to be there. As if she was the wedding singer, or in charge of the catering. Even then, I’ll confess, I didn’t get it. (Why would you pay someone to come to your wedding?) But the audience did. Trump is the ideal candidate to fight Washington corruption not simply because he opposes it, but because he has personally participated in it. He’s not just a reformer; like most effective populists, he’s a whistleblower, a traitor to his class. Before he became the most ferocious enemy American business had ever known, Teddy Roosevelt was a rich guy. His privilege wasn't incidental; it was key to his appeal. Anyone can peer through the window in envy. It takes a real man to throw furniture through it from the inside. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 106 of 108 If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart. Early last summer, in a piece that greeted Trump when he entered the race, National Review described the candidate as “a ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula.” Virtually every other critique of Trump from the right has voiced similar aesthetic concerns. Why is the Party of Ideas suddenly so fixated on fashion and hair? Maybe all dying institutions devolve this way, from an insistence on intellectual rigor to a flabby preoccupation with appearances. It happened in the Episcopal Church, once renowned for its liturgy, now a stop on architectural and garden tours. Only tourists go there anymore. HE COULD WIN Of all the dumb things that have been said about Trump by people who were too slow to get finance jobs and therefore wound up in journalism, perhaps the stupidest of all is the one you hear most: He’ll get killed in the general! This is a godsend for Democrats! Forty-state wipeout! And so it goes mindlessly on. Actually — and this is no endorsement of Trump, just an interjection of reality — that’s a crock. Of the Republicans now running, Trump likely has the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton, for two reasons: First, he’s the only Republican who can meaningfully expand the pie. Polls show a surprisingly large number of Democrats open to Trump. In one January survey by the polling form Mercury Analytics , almost 20 percent said they’d consider crossing over to him from Hillary. Even if that’s double the actual number, it’s still stunning. Could Ted Cruz expect to draw that many Democrats? Could Jeb? It’s an article of faith in Washington that Trump would tank the party’s prospects with minority voters. Sounds logical, especially if you’re a sensitive white liberal who considers the suggestion of a border wall a form of hate speech, but consider the baseline. In the last election, Romney got 6 percent of the black vote, and 27 percent of Hispanics. Trump, who’s energetic, witty and successful, will do worse? I wouldn’t bet on it. But the main reason Trump could win is because he’s the only candidate hard enough to call Hillary’s bluff. Republicans will say almost anything about Hillary, but almost none challenge her basic competence. She may be evil, but she’s tough and accomplished. This we know, all of us. But do we? Or is this understanding of Hillary just another piety we repeat out of unthinking habit, the political equivalent of, “you can be whatever you want to be,” or “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”? Trump doesn’t think Hillary is impressive and strong. He sees her as brittle and afraid. He may be right, based on his exchange with her just before Christmas. During a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump said Hillary had been “schlonged” by Obama in the 2008 race. In response, the Clinton campaign called Trump a sexist. It’s a charge Hillary has leveled against virtually every opponent she’s faced, but Trump responded differently. Instead of scrambling to donate to breast cancer research, he pointed out that Hillary spent years attacking the alleged victims of her husband’s sexual assaults. That ended the conversation almost immediately. The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 107 of 108 It was the most effective possible response, though more obvious than brilliant. Why was Trump the only Republican to use it? Republican primary voters may be wondering the same thing. Or maybe they already know. They seem to know a lot about Trump, more than the people who run their party. They know that he isn’t a conventional ideological conservative. They seem relieved. They can see that he’s emotionally incontinent. They find it exciting. Washington Republicans look on at this in horror, their suspicions confirmed. Beneath the thin topsoil of rural conservatism, they see the seeds of proto-fascism beginning to sprout. But that’s not quite right. Republicans in the states aren’t dangerous. They’ve just evaluated the alternatives and decided those are worse. There are 25 questions. The average number correctly answered is 19.78. (Let's just say 20.) The test was designed by Bill O'Reilly. There are no trick questions. Answer 15 correctly to pass... COUNTRY KNOWLEDGE http://www.billoreilly.com/quiz?categoryID=4&quizID=757 TOM AND I BOTH GOT 24 OUT OF 25, BUT WE MISSED DIFFERENT QUESTIONS. UT From: "Jim Hollis" [email protected] PC FOR DUMMIES POSTED ON FEBRUARY 16, 2016 BY SCOTT JOHNSON http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/02/pc-for-dummies.php In the latest installment of instruction from Praeger University, George Will provides the short course A Progressive’s Guide to Political Correctness (video below, about six minutes). It’s part PC for Dummies and part satire a la A Modest Proposal. Will proposes renaming a number of cites to conform to the operative requirements of PC doctrine, resulting in a song that would have to go by “I Left My Heart in Nancy Pelosi City.” THE VIDEO IS AT THE WEBSITE AND IT IS EXCELLENT! Minnesota’s state flag comes in for a drubbing, but here reality has outrun Will’s satire. See, for example, Professor Judith Harrington’s 2015 Star Tribune column “As long as we’re discussing flags, how about Minnesota’s?” Subhead: “It, too, may fail to reflect current sensibilities.” The February 17th, 2016 Edition of REVENGE OF HUMP DAY! Page 108 of 108 Minnesota is ripe territory for the PC police. Lake Calhoun must go, of course, but how long before we turn to the capital city insensitively named St. Paul? Will’s witty critique raises the question whether it is possible to satirize the doctrine(s) of political correctness. Political correctness represents the left’s pure will to power. Like the French and Russian revolutions, it will consume its own. In principle political correctness should be possible to satirize, but reality may already be outstripping our poor power to add or detract. ______ If you would like to unsubscribe From: THE REVENGE OF HUMP DAY, please send an email message to Tim Bolgeo [email protected] and say, "QUIT SENDING ME THIS STUPID RAG!" ______~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~