Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Black Holes are maximally weird. I was unaware this was officially Black Hole week.

- Interesting - how the US built 5,000 ships in WW II.

- The importance of saying no.

- From the archive: Inversion and the power of avoiding stupidity.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- 50 ways the world is getting better. We live at the greatest time in history. We should remember that. (HT Steve Layman) 

- Thinking about Grace

- This is Keanu Reeves. Be like Keanu.

- Hubble discovers a runaway black hole tearing through the universe.

Black Hole Spews Out Material Years After Shredding Star

Astronomers observe black hole "burping" up stellar remains years after star was consumed. "We've never seen anything like this before."

Must confess that using terms like "burping" and comparing black holes to "messy eaters" doesn't give me the highest confidence on the science involved here.

Quotes for Today

 Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"I don't plan to wear a mask for anything after July 4th. If your business requires it, don't expect my money." - Scott Adams

"Let us not postpone anything, let us engage in combats with life each day." - Seneca

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright

"My body is not a temple, it is a Catholic church. Full of wine, bread and guilt." - Helen Ingram

"When they say trust the science. What they mean is don't ask questions." - Oliver Cantin

"There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is only your life. Spend it on things you care about and find meaningful." - Max Hodak

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Surprised the nickname "Canadian Beto" never stuck for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau... Perfume ads don't make any logical sense because they are not aimed at the smartest people... Winston Churchill had a habit of not reading any memo longer than a page. The result was nobody ever gave him a memo longer than a single page - genus!... Speaking of real men of genius... The Wages of Sin (Minus Taxes) would be a good name for a band... So if spaghetti approached the event horizon of a black hole - would it too become "spaghettified?" Or would it turn into another form of pasta?... If a monogamy gene could be isolated in humans - could future prenup agreements require that the gene be activated prior to marriage through CRISPR or some other method?...  

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Perfect storm coming for some campuses - most colleges are facing massive budget cuts due to the Wuhan virus meanwhile students (who don't know any better) are enamored with the talking-point of "defund the police." Boom - bye bye campus police departments (I predict you'll see at least one college go this route)... Elon Musk calls for the breakup of Amazon. "Monopolies are wrong!" As an aside Jeff Bezos also happens to be Musk's biggest competition when it comes to privatized space travel... "How soon before the word "landlord" is attacked and becomes verboten language? I mean by definition a "lord" is male (death to the patriarchy)... So Conor McGregor has announced his retirement from fighting (again). I'll believe this is true in about 5-years... "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised." - Marilyn Manson... So if spaghetti approached the event horizon of a black hole - would it too become "spaghettified?" Or would it turn into another form of pasta?...

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- I'd so love to try this roller coaster

- Really hope President Trump signs this bill

- Eddie Gallagher controversy: Esper fires Navy Secretary, SEAL will keep Trident pin. Have to say I'm on Team Trump on this one.

- Ex-Vikings kicker Fred Cox, inventor of the Nerf football passes aged 80.

- Two black holes merging into one.

- Chinese National who worked at Monsanto indicted on Economic Espionage charges. About time we started stopping the theft of our intellectual property.

- Very Cool

Stephen Hawking's Big Ideas

Nice little appreciation of Hawking (I think it's narrated by Neil Gaiman).

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Boom! Trump's US Attorney in Philadelphia goes right after Philly DA over the shooting of 6 police officers. Good for him

- Cool NASA visualization of a black hole "eating" a sun

- And speaking of the sun - here's why the sun appears red at sunset. (Yeah I still don't understand why the sun appears red at sunset)

- The world's first "solar road" is an absolute disaster.

- Mike Leach is the best!

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- In Trump's first 30 months over 314,000 manufacturing jobs have been added in comparison to Obama's Administration. Wait - I thought we were told those jobs weren't coming back?

- I consider myself a proponent of marijuana but to ignore the possible harmful side-effects is foolish. (I also consider myself a proponent of alcohol but those negative side-effects are better understood and documented.)

- Today would have been Vera Rubin's 91st birthday. She should have won the Nobel Prize for her discovery and confirmation of the the existence of Dark Matter.

- Maybe we should skip manned missions to Mars and go to Jupiter's moon Io instead.

- Wow - is 3.6 septillion yottawatts of power a lot of power? Sounds like a lot.

- Netflix hit with class action shareholder lawsuit following dismal Q2 earnings

- Cool Boris Johnson story.

Black Holes

This week the Event Horizon Telescope was able, for the first time, to show the world an actual image of a black hole. The black hole is located at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 which is 55 million light years from Earth. The supermassive black hole photographed has 6.5 billion times more mass than our Sun.

This was an excellent article on what this historic photograph really means and puts into perspective the difficulty involved in the accomplishment.

This article give you an appreciation of the epic scale of the black hole in relation to our own solar system.

Truly a monumental accomplishment and historic day.

As an aside, it think it would have been much more poetical and cooler if science had settled on the term "dark abyss" instead of "black hole".

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Incredible the difference a week makes. Even though the waters may have receded the damage caused will take months to fix.

- Interesting - scientists discover new form of black hole at heart of Milky Way

- Heh heh - we've all been there Hulkster. And we've also made this vow (only to later break it)

- Footprints suggest mankind may be much older than previously thought

- Insane workout!

- I really do wish Isaiah Thomas full health and nothing but the best. I hope Cleveland loves him as much as Celtics fans

The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Housekeeping

I'm in the process of reading The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe by Stephen Hawking. When speaking of the behavior of black holes - Hawking talks about the Second Law of Thermodynamics:

It states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases with time. Moreover, when two systems are joined together, the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of individual systems.

My initial thought was of a post earlier this week at Instapundit which had the line:

Both the men and the women who got married did more housework than those who stayed single, the analysis showed.

Both black holes and newlyweds acting in the same manner? I guess when Stephen Hawking said it was "the Theory of Everything" - he wasn't kidding.

Of course I could be completely wrong here since my grasp of physics is as bad as my ability at house work.