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Friday Cat Blogging – 18 November 2016

Mother Jones

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Guess who’s getting a Presidential Medal of Freedom? Hopper! Well, Hopper’s namesake anyway, Adm. Grace Hopper:

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, known as “Amazing Grace” and “the first lady of software,” was at the forefront of computers and programming development from the 1940s through the 1980s. Hopper’s work helped make coding languages more practical and accessible, and she created the first compiler, which translates source code from one language into another.1

It’s a posthumous award, but Adm. Hopper is now right up there with Vin Scully and Newton “Television Is A Vast Wasteland” Minow. Naturally, this means that the furry version of Hopper is the star of this week’s catblogging. She is trying her best to look visionary.

1Meh. I guess that’s close enough. No need to get pedantic here.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 18 November 2016

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13 Green Tips That Can Save You Over $5,000 A Year

Simple shifts to greener versions of the products you already buy can save you as much as $5,000 a year. Oh, and you’ll reduce the amount of energy you use and how much trash you throw away, too.  Here are 13 green tips I’ve made personally that have saved me a bundle of money while making me feel good about doing my part to protect the planet.

13 great green tips

Choose compact fluorescent light bulbs

Estimated Savings: $5 – $10/yr/bulb x 4 bulbs = $20 – $40/yr

CFLs use 66% less energy than a regular incandescent light bulb and last ten times as long. Plus, each bulb you shift to will save you $5 – $10 per year in electricity costs. That’s as much as $100 over the lifetime of every bulb you buy. Start by switching out bulbs in the four lights you use the most: your kitchen ceiling light, your bathroom ceiling light, two lamps in your living room or family room. Switch to LED lighting, and you’ll save even more on bulbs that last even longer than CFLs.

Try a reusable water bottle

Estimated Savings: $250 – $500/yr

Bottled water can cost 10,000 times more than tap water! Why? Because you’re paying for all kinds of things BESIDES water: the bottle, the water wasted during the bottling process, the energy used to bottle the water and transport the bottle to your store, the paper label on the bottle, and the bottle cap. Purchase a reusable water bottle for less than $20 and fill it up at home or at work. With these savings, you can buy a water filter for your tap if it makes you feel better, or buy a reusable bottle that comes with its own filter.

Take lunch to work

Estimated Savings: $1560/yr

This green tip is a big money saver, but you probably never thought it was a planet saver, too. Why is it so eco-friendly to take your own lunch to work? Because you’re not using all the throwaway plastic and paper packaging that a take-out lunch involves, especially if you use a reusable lunch bag and food containers.

Programmable thermostat. Image courtesy of _vikram

Program your thermostat

Estimated Savings: $150/yr

Every time you adjust the thermostat to reduce your heating or cooling needs, you save money. But remembering to make the adjustment can be a challenge. The beauty of a programmable thermostat is that it does the adjusting for you. Set the controls to moderate temperatures, and enjoy watching your energy bills decrease.

Put in low flow shower heads, toilets

Estimated Savings: $72/yr

Most conventional shower heads and toilets use an excessive amount of water, wasting a precious resource along with your hard-earned dollars. Replace your existing shower head with a high-impact low flow model to enjoy the same quality but using far less water. Older model toilets may use as much as six gallons of water per flush; newer models only need 1.6 gallons (or less) to get the job done.

Plug in to a smart power strip

Estimated Savings: $94/yr

Computers, fax machines, monitors, answering machines, televisions and other electronics are called “vampires” because they keep sucking energy out of the electrical sockets they’re plugged in to even when they’re turned off. In fact, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, electric appliances use 40% of their energy when they’re turned off! You can cut that – and your energy bill – simply by plugging your electronics into an energy-saving power strip.

Insulate windows, doors with weather stripping

Estimated Savings: $129/yr

A lot of energy is wasted in winter and summer alike when cooled or heated air escapes through cracks around windows and doors. Caulking windows and weather-stripping doors reduces the losses to everything but your pocketbook.

Improve car fuel economy

Estimated Savings: $1050/yr

With gas prices averaging around $2.50 a gallon, every gallon of gas you save puts real money back in your wallet. Burning less gas generates a lot less smog and air pollution, and reduces the impact driving has on climate change, too. If you replace a car that gets only 20 mpg with one that gets 40 mpg, you’ll save $750/yr at today’s gas prices. When prices rise, a fuel efficient car saves you even more. Learn to drive “smart.” Following the speed limit, driving at a consistent speed, keeping the engine tuned up and your tires inflated, will save an additional $300- $500/yr.

Skip one driving trip each week

Estimated Savings: $225/yr

Gasoline costs for individual trips can really add up. Replace at least one trip a week with a carpool, or shop online, telecommute, bicycle or walk to save fuel and money. You can find many more ways to cut your fuel costs at www.biggreenpurse.com.

Energy Star Energy Guide. Image courtesy of Andy Melton.

Buy ENERGY STAR appliances

Estimated Savings: $100/yr on energy, 7,000+ gallons of water

All ENERGY STAR appliances are designed to save energy, and clothes washers and dishwashers offer the added benefit of saving thousands of gallons of water over conventional models. Plus, many local utilities offer a $50 or $100 rebate when consumers trade in old refrigerators and air conditioners for new ENERGY STAR models.

Make Home Cleansers

Estimated Savings: $360/yr

You can save a small fortune by skipping commercial cleaning products and using simple and non-toxic ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. You can clean almost any surface in your home with fragrance-free and biodegradable liquid soap, standard baking soda, hot water, and a sponge. For windows, mirrors and other glass surfaces, use a mixture of vinegar and water, and you’ll pay mere pennies per window to get the shine you want. You can find many green cleaning recipes here.

Buy Gently Used, Swap, or Get Free

Estimated Savings: $750/yr

Swap or trade what you already have for what you want. Use our recycling locator find recycling opportunities, or check listings at Craigslist.com, freecycle.org or your own neighborhood list-serv.

Sell Your Own Used Stuff

Estimated Savings: $350/yr

We all have more stuff than we can use. And we all throw away perfectly good items that someone else could use. From clothing and sports equipment to kitchenware, electronics and furniture, our trash can also generate some treasure. Take advantage of listservs, Ebay and Craigslist to sell what you no longer need or use. And don’t forget that tried-and-true method of keeping your perfectly good stuff in circulation: the neighborhood yard sale!

Total Estimated Savings: $5,110.00

What green shifts have you made that have saved you money? Do you have other green tips you’d like to share with others? Leave your comments below.

Featured image courtesy of Ken Neoh

About
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Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern is a best-selling author, award-winning entrepreneur and mother of two with a Master of Science degree in Natural Resources and the Environment. Glamour magazine calls her an “eco hero” and she recently won the “Image of the Future Prize” from the World Communications Forum, but she’d rather tell you about the passive solar house she helped design and build way back when most people thought “green” was the color a building was painted, not how it was built. She founded biggreenpurse.com because she’s passionate about inspiring consumers to shift their spending to greener products and services to protect themselves and their families while using their marketplace clout to get companies to clean up their act.

Latest posts by Diane MacEachern (see all)

13 Green Tips That Can Save You Over $5,000 A Year – August 8, 2016
Valentines Day Gifts That Show Mother Earth Some Love, Too – February 4, 2015
Tired Of Spending Your Money On Gas? Get A Chevy Volt – January 28, 2015

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13 Green Tips That Can Save You Over $5,000 A Year

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Donald Trump’s Love Affair With White Supremacists

Mother Jones

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The big Donald Trump news over the holiday weekend was Stargate. This refers not to the TV show, but to the Star of David on top of a pile of money that he retweeted to symbolize how corrupt Hillary Clinton is. At first glance, retweeting this anti-Semitic trope seemed like it was probably due to the fact that Trump’s inner circle is almost exclusively a bunch of white men who just didn’t notice that this might be offensive. In other words, dumb and insular, but not malevolent.

Except for a couple of things. First: Trump deleted the tweet within a few minutes and photoshopped a circle on top of the star. Then he went on offense, claiming that the star was really a sheriff’s star, not a Star of David. This prompted an entire Twitter meme (sample: “I was born a conservative sheriff, but my folks converted to reformed sheriff when I was 12”) but also a serious question: If it was really a sheriff’s star, why delete the tweet?

Second and more important: Trump didn’t create this graphic himself. He retweeted it from the account of an obvious white supremacist who plainly meant this to be a Star of David. Was this just a mistake? Did Trump have no idea who this guy was? Perhaps. And yet, why was he—or someone on his staff—following this account in the first place? And why does this “mistake” seem to happen so often? This is hardly the first time Trump has retweeted something from a white supremacist. Here are Ben Kharakh and Dan Primack a couple of months ago in Fortune:

In late January, Donald Trump did something that would have sunk almost any other presidential campaign: He retweeted an anonymous Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist who goes by the not-so-subtle handle @WhiteGenocideTM. Trump neither explained nor apologized for the retweet and then, three weeks later, he did it again. This subsequent retweet was quickly deleted, but just two days later Trump retweeted a different user named @EustaceFash, whose Twitter header image at the time also included the term “white genocide.”

…It is possible that Trumpâ&#128;&#149;who, according to the campaign, does almost all of his own tweetingâ&#128;&#149;is unfamiliar with the term “white genocide” and doesn’t do even basic vetting of those whose tweets he amplifies to his seven million followers. But the reality is that there are dozens of tweets mentioning @realDonaldTrump each minute, and he has an uncanny ability to surface ones that come from accounts that proudly proclaim their white supremacist leanings.

Kharakh and Primack wanted a more quantitative analysis of this, so they hired a firm to perform a network analysis. They identified the 50 most influential “white genocide” Twitter accounts and then looked at Trump’s tweets. Here’s what they found:

Since the start of his campaign, Donald Trump has retweeted at least 75 users who follow at least three of the top 50 #WhiteGenocide influencers. Moreover, a majority of these retweeted accounts are themselves followed by more than 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers.

But the relationship isn’t limited to retweets. For example, Trump national campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson (who is black), follows the most influential #WhiteGenocide account, @Genophilia, which is best known for helping to launch a Star Wars boycott after it became known that the new film’s lead character was black. (Below are some recent #WhiteGenocide tweets from @Genophilia.)

Fortune also used Little Bird software to analyze the top 50 influencers of the Trump campaign slogan #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, and found that 43 of them each follow at least 100 members of the #WhiteGenocide network.

This could be just a coincidence. White supremacists love Trump, and Trump just accidentally happens to retweet a lot of their stuff. Unfortunately for Trump, you’d have to be an idiot to believe that, and he’s running out of idiots. Even Republicans weren’t trying to defend him over the weekend. Paul Ryan just sighed: “I really believe he’s gotta clean up the way his new media works,” he said diplomatically.

But Trump runs his new media himself. It’s one of his biggest claims to fame. To clean it up, he needs to clean himself up. And he shows no signs of being willing to do that.

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Donald Trump’s Love Affair With White Supremacists

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Star Trek is Now Officially Forever

Mother Jones

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In 2016 the postal service will be honoring Sarah Vaughan, Richard Allen, Shirley Temple, Indiana, the repeal of the Stamp Act, pickup trucks, various holidays, and, of course, the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Here are the deets:

Star Trek
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the television premiere, the new Star Trek Forever stamps showcase four digital illustrations inspired by classic elements of the television program:

the Starship Enterprise inside the outline of a Starfleet insignia against a gold background;
the silhouette of a crewman in a transporter against a red background;
the silhouette of the Enterprise from above against a green background; and,
the Enterprise inside the outline of the Vulcan statue (Spock’s iconic hand gesture) against a blue background

The words “SPACE… THE FINAL FRONTIER,” from Captain Kirk’s famous voice-over appear beneath the stamps against a background of stars. The stamps were designed by Heads of State under the art direction of Antonio Alcalá.

The Vulcan statue? Oh well. At least they’re trying. So you see? 2016 is already a better year than 2015.

This article – 

Star Trek is Now Officially Forever

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I Hated All the Star Wars Movies, Except This One. Here’s Why.

Mother Jones

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens just hit theaters. We asked Mother Jones’ own Ben Dreyfuss—a known Star Wars critic—and Edwin Rios—a self-proclaimed fanboy—to share their thoughts after seeing the highly anticipated picture. This discussion has been edited for clarity.

Edwin Rios: BEN!

Ben Dreyfuss: Eddie! OK, Star Wars is here! I just walked out of a 10 a.m. showing. You saw it this morning?

ER: I’ve been up since 4 a.m. Somehow, I’m alive after a 5:15 a.m. showing.

BD: 5:15 a.m. is commitment. That is true love. So let’s start this this way, then: You are a Star Wars fan, correct?

ER: Yeah, back when I was a child, my pops had the original VHS box set. I may or may not have watched it on loop.

BD: OK, so you are saying you love the original Star Wars films because they remind you of playing catch with your dad? There are daddy issues here. Which is fine!

ER: Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that.

BD: OK, so let me just start by saying that I am not a Star Wars fan. I guess when they first came out in the ’70s and early ’80s, the graphics were kickass and new and “wow!” but for people our age they’re not that impressive.

ER: Totally understand that. The first film actually came out in 1977. I would imagine it was pretty revolutionary for its time—the graphics, the camera work, the idea that these randos are traveling through space on an intergalactic adventure.

BD: But let’s talk about this new one. And SPOILER ALERT: We will spoil it all.

ER: Yeah, c’mon, it’s the 21st century, and we’re on the Internet. Spoilers are everywhere. By the way, did you hear Daniel Craig apparently made a cameo?

BD: WHAT?

ER: Yeah! Apparently he was in that scene with Rey, when she asked the Stormtrooper oh so nicely to loosen her restraints.

BD: That was a great scene. OK, general thoughts: I really enjoyed it. I thought it was far and away the best of the series.

ER: See, I’m not sure about “best of the series.” I thoroughly enjoyed every moment, from the iconic John Williams opener to the TIE fighter battle at the end. It harkened to the original trilogy most of the time. But—

BD: Well, I mean we could call this entire fucking film an homage to the original. SO many elements are reproduced. They even joke about it when Harrison Ford is looking at a model of the Death Star and the SUPER DEATH STAR and he says, “I get it. It’s big.”

ER: I mean, it’s a fan’s wet dream.

BD: There is this fight in films like this about whether they should be written for fans or for general audiences. I think you see a lot of ones that go awry are because they’re trying too hard to accommodate the diehards, à la Watchmen, but this one had seemed to also have enough broad appeal to stand on its own.

ER: Totally agree. Can we talk about this cast? That’s what did it for me. It’s just a young and diverse collection of heroes and villains. Badass female lead, badass black and Latino duo.

BD: The leads, whose names I don’t know, but the guy and the girl, they were both pretty fucking amazing.

ER: For sure. This was John Boyega’s (Finn) and Daisy Ridley’s (Rey) launch party. Oh, and Adam freaking Driver killed it as a petulant Darth Vader wannabe.

BD: Totally. And I found, to my surprise, that they really were more interesting than the original actors who admittedly had less to do in this film. But I was sort of bored by their requisite presence and wanted to get back to the Star Wars: The New Class.

ER: A cast of nobodies embodying the allure of an iconic series. It looks all too familiar. Also, can’t forget Oscar Isaac. He was severely underutilized.

BD: Let’s talk a bit about the plot.

ER: How did you feel about the First Order’s weird Nazi overtones?

BD: Oh man! They laid that on thick! That scene with them literally heiling the SS guy?

ER: I literally whispered, “damn, that’s so Nazi,” under my breath when that scene came on.

BD: In one of the first scenes, the Stormtroopers go to the shitty sand planet and are executing people, and the hero, Finn, watches his friend die and there’s the blood on his mask—and he like grows as a person. I mean, from the standpoint of his military career he really did not have a stellar first mission. But I thought the actual emotional moment was some pretty beautiful storytelling that you don’t often see in this genre.

ER: Yeah, it’s something you barely thought about in the original movies. What would happen if a Stormtrooper just said, “Forget this, I’m outta here”? And what if some random scavenger on a desert planet ran into that same Stormtrooper? It’s an alternative perspective on the typical storyline.

BD: How did you feel about the old crew’s presence? Carrie Fisher wasn’t really given much to do.

ER: Neither was R2-D2.

BD: WAIT. R2 D-2. Now I have a question. I totally didn’t understand what the fuck that was about. He had a map but went dark when Luke flew away and then just decided to repower on right at the last second after X many years?

ER: Actually, let’s get back to that, because I have thoughts on that. In a word: It was so fucking implausible. Like WTF R2, NOW YOU WANT TO WAKE UP?

BD: HAHAHAH. It made NO SENSE. They didn’t even try and justify it in dialogued.

ER: Yeah, BB8, who is so adorable, was just like, “Oh shit, you’re awake!” And C3PO is like, “Oh, hi.” Basically.

BD: Is BB8 the ball?

ER: Yeah.

BD: The ball was great. The ball is a fucking star.

ER: Ball So Hard.

BD: Why does the ball talk in clicks and beeps? Like I know R2-D2 does too but it seems very difficult for many of the humans to deal with. Like some know how to speak beep and squeak but other don’t. Why don’t they program the robots to talk in English like Mr. Gold C3PO?

ER: Good question.

BD: THE BALL CAN CLEARLY UNDERSTAND ENGLISH. WHY CAN’T HE SPEAK IT? This is actually my biggest complaint about this movie. I took the time to tweet about it from the theater.

ER: I mean, the droid is still a robot. And it has the capacity to understand, which made it hilarious when Finn was trying to get BB to side with him.

BD: Yeah that was a cute scene. There were a lot of really cute scenes.

ER: Here’s my problem with the plot: It lacked context.

BD: How so?

ER: So let me get this straight: The First Order and the Resistance are fighting. The First Order is basically like the Empire, but not like the Empire. The Resistance is like the Republic, but not actually the Republic. The First Order is controlled by the Dark Side, while the Resistance is trying to establish peace?

BD: Yeah, without any Force. Like they have no Jedi since Luke ran off to play Survivor on some island.

ER: Beautiful shot, by the way. Mark Hamill in his best acting performance since The Kingsman. I just saw that movie recently and was like “OMG Mark Hamill’s head explodes!”

BD: He has spent the last like 20 years doing voiceover work. I think he was in a bunch like animated Batman series.

ER: For sure. He’s kept busy. But back to the plot: Luke has disappeared, and everyone is trying to find him.

BD: You’ve just reminded me of another plot flaw. What sets this movie off aside from the personal revelation that being a Stormtrooper is bad? Like the Super Death Star Ray that the Empire or First Order whatever the hell they’re called is already online. They use it to kill like 10,000,000,000 people midway through and then are going to use it to kill the rest of them. But they didn’t just turn it on. They could have done that months or years or whenever ago.

ER: Right. Also, not a smart move to absorb the sun’s energy to power the weapon. It really screwed the First Order at the end of the day.

BD: I’m no scientist but when suns collapse they like create dark holes I think which are bad. Wait, I have another question. Let’s just acknowledge this right here: Adam Driver or whatever his character’s name is kills Harrison Ford in a pretty obvious moment of like “shake my hand, pa, let’s have a game of catch” and then stabs him in the heart. Then some other shit happens and the girl discovers she has the Force and gets Luke’s lightsaber and then suddenly has all this Force power and does some Force shit and she kills Adam Driver in the woods.

ER: So, two things: I still want to know Rey’s backstory. Whose child is she? And why was she abandoned in the desert? And with whom? But yeah, back to Han Solo’s horrific death scene: It genuinely felt like that moment in Empire Strikes Back, I think, when Luke finds out Vader is his pops and has a WTF moment. Only this time, Kylo Ren seems to have a moment of “maybe I can be good” and then says, “no way” and kills his dad.

BD: So my other question was, how does the girl become so good at sword fighting? I get she has the Force in her because she just has the Force in her, but Adam Driver has been training to kill people with his crucifix lightsaber for years. She just got her first lightsaber and is suddenly winning fucking gold medals in fencing at the Olympics.

ER: If you can fight with a staff in the desert, you can use a lightsaber. Although it also raises the question: How was Finn using the lightsaber so well? He worked in sanitation!

BD: That’s a great point.

ER: He was a janitor, basically. And yet he wielded a lightsaber and went pound for pound against Kylo Ren. Also, let’s appreciate just how much of a child Kylo Ren acted like when things went wrong for him. And how he Force-choked that one general.

BD: Literally having a tantrum and destroying his battleship room with his lightsaber.

ER: He’s got anger and daddy issues.

BD: Final thoughts: I really liked it. I think the reason it is better than the original movies (which are overrated) and the prequels (which are garbage but also somewhat underrated because everyone hates them so much) is largely because J.J. Abrams is a better and more technically inventive filmmaker than George Lucas. (also, for the record, I called this months ago)

ER: But Ben, the originals are not overrated, and The Force Awakens exemplifies why. The things that made the Star Wars series great—its pace, its wit, its storytelling—are what made this movie all the more memorable.

BD: NO WHAT MADE IT GREAT WAS THE CAST AND J.J. ABRAMS.

ER: For the Star Wars fan, this was a wet dream come true. For the typical moviegoer, it was straight-up a good holiday action film.

BD: “Wet dream” is a thing I bet most Star Wars fans know well since they’re all adolescent boys with acne. (Sorry, no offense. I was once one too.)

ER: J.J. Abrams, you done good.

BD: And with that, let’s publish this motherfucker.

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I Hated All the Star Wars Movies, Except This One. Here’s Why.

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President Obama: “I Loved Spock”

Mother Jones

President Obama released a statement Friday on the death of Leonard Nimoy. The actor, best known for his role as Spock on Star Trek died at the age of 83 earlier today.

Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy. Leonard was a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time. And of course, Leonard was Spock. Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the center of Star Trek’s optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity’s future.

I loved Spock.

In 2007, I had the chance to meet Leonard in person. It was only logical to greet him with the Vulcan salute, the universal sign for “Live long and prosper.” And after 83 years on this planet––and on his visits to many others––it’s clear Leonard Nimoy did just that. Michelle and I join his family, friends, and countless fans who miss him so dearly today.

Upon meeting for the first time, Nimoy said the president greeted him with the iconic Vulcan salute.

In the past, Obama has been criticized for being too “Spock-like” or methodical in his proceedings, to which the president once playfully responded, “Is that a crack on my ears?”

Nimoy’s death has sparked an outpouring of eulogies from fans, fellow actors, and politicans alike. Earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted:

RIP.

Link:

President Obama: “I Loved Spock”

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The Texas Tribune: Aquifer Is No Quick Fix for Central Texas Thirst

Experts disagree how much water the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer holds and how long it would be able to sustain Central Texas’s growing population. Source:   The Texas Tribune: Aquifer Is No Quick Fix for Central Texas Thirst ; ; ;

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The Texas Tribune: Aquifer Is No Quick Fix for Central Texas Thirst

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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

Mother Jones

Last week, a team of astronomers at the Gemini Planet Imager in Chile released the mysterious blue image above. That small bright dot in the lower right of the image is a planet—not a planet in our solar system like Mars or Neptune, but one 63 light-years away. It’s the planet Beta Pictoris b, which orbits the star Beta Pictoris in the southern constellation Pictor. But what’s most exciting about the picture is the technology used to make it, which represents a dramatic improvement in the speed and quality with which scientists will be able to look for other planets—including “Earth 2.0,” a theorized planet much like our own.

The first confirmation that planets exist beyond our solar system came in 1992, when a team of astronomers monitored changes in radio waves to prove that multiple planets were orbiting a small star about 1000 light-years away. Then, in 2005, astronomers created the first actual image of a planet beyond our solar system (the date is arguable because the observation was made in 2004, but not confirmed until a year later). Since then, hundreds more planets have been discovered, and a few others have even been photographed.

So when Gizmodo reported last week that the blue image above was the “first ever image of a planet, orbiting a star,” they didn’t have it quite right. In fact, the image wasn’t even the first time that planet had been photographed. But the GPI images are still extremely exciting: They could mark the beginning of a new era of planet-hunting, thanks to technology developed by a team of astronomers led by Bruce Macintosh of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Frank Marchis, who works for the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore, understand, and explain the prevalence of life in the universe, is a key member of Macintosh’s planet-hunting team. I met with him in San Francisco last week to discuss the project and the search for Earth 2.0:

MJ: What exactly are we seeing in this image?

FM: Behind this image is a lot of work. This image is simply a planet orbiting around another star. So we call that an exoplanet – an extrasolar planet – because it doesn’t belong to our solar system. It belongs to another planetary system. So this is the grail of modern astronomy. We’re trying desperately now to image those planets because we know they exist. When you observe a planet with the now defunct telescope Kepler, what you’ve been doing is basically detecting the transit – the attenuation of the star’s light – due to the planet passing between us and the star. Now with GPI, the Gemini Planet Imager, which is mounted at the 8 meter class telescope in Chile we’re going to be able to see the planet itself.

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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

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The Beauty Detox Solution – Kimberly Snyder

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Beauty Detox Solution

Kimberly Snyder

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: June 29, 2011

Publisher: Harlequin Nonfiction

Seller: Harlequin Sales Corporation


Nutritionist and beauty expert Kimberly Snyder helps dozens of A-list celebrities get red-carpet ready—and now you're getting the star treatment. Kim used to struggle with coarse hair, breakouts and stubborn belly fat, until she traveled the world, learning age-old beauty secrets. She discovered that what you eat is the ultimate beauty product, and she's developed a powerful program that rids the body of toxins so you can look and feel your very best. With just a few simple diet changes, you will: • Get a youthful, radiant glow • Banish acne, splotchy skin and wrinkles • Grow lustrous hair and strong nails • Get rid of the bloat, melt away fat and never count calories again!

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The Beauty Detox Solution – Kimberly Snyder

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The Star Tau Boo Flips Its Magnetic Field, Too

The Sun does a lot of crazy things: it spawns roiling loops of superheated plasma that stretch for thousands of milesit blows huge chunks of itself off into space and, every 11 years or so, its insides do a little flip. The solar magnetic field turns on its head, and the north pole becomes the south, and the south, the north. The sun is actually gearing up for one of these flips, says NASA, and it should take place any time now.

It’s nice to see, every now and again, some of these behaviors elsewhere in the universe—to know that the sun might be strange, but not too strange. For the first time, says the American Museum of Natural History, scientists reported seeing another start go through a similar magnetic field flip.

As described in a new study, scientists have been watching as a star, known as Tau Boötis (and nicknamed Tau Boo), flipped its magnetic field back and forth. The behavior isn’t exactly the same as the Sun’s, though. Where the Sun takes 22 years to go through a full cycle, flipping and flipping back, Tau Boötis does it in just two.

It’s still mostly a bunch of conjecture, but the scientists in their study have already suggested a way that they think Tau Boötis’ flip is different than the Sun’s, other than the rapid clip. Tau Boötis has a huge planet orbiting right up close. The scientists think that this huge planet, much like Jupiter but with an orbit that takes just 3.3 days, may be affecting the star’s magnetic field. Astronomy explains:

For Tau Boo, tidal interactions between the star and the planet might be an important factor in accelerating the cycle, but we can’t be sure of the cause,” said Fares.

Tau Boo spins on its axis once every 3.3 days — the same amount of time as it takes the hot Jupiter to complete one orbit. One hypothesis for Tau Boo’s rapid cycle is that the planet makes it rotate faster than usual, and this is affecting the generation of the magnetic field.

“There are still some big questions about what’s causing Tau Boo’s rapid magnetic cycle,” said Fares. “From our survey, we can say that each planetary system is particular, that interactions affect stars and planets differently, and that they depend on the masses, distance, and other properties.”

We still don’t really know why the Sun’s magnetic field flips like this in the first place. So, having a second example of stellar magnetic field flipping to compare the sun’s behavior against should be extremely helpful to scientists working to understand this phenomenon.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Watch Five Years of the Sun’s Explosions
Why the Sun Was So Quiet for So Long
For the First Time, NASA Took a Photo of the Sun’s Tail

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The Star Tau Boo Flips Its Magnetic Field, Too

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