Climate and Science

Their lives were controlled by the god that supplied their heat and light.

It dictated when they would plant and pick. They tracked the phases of the moon, and used the constellations to navigate home safely.

Around the Third Century BC, a Greek named Pythagoras speculated that the Sun is the center of the known universe. His ridiculous idea fell on deaf ears. And as for Earth being a sphere? They laughed.

Two millennia later Isaac Beeckman observed that we see the sun through something that has substance and presses down on us. Oxygen was identified as air’s most abundant element in the 1770s. Again, there were doubters aplenty.

We now know sunshine warms our planet using a short wavelength and that heat radiates back out at night with a longer wavelength. Not everyone agrees that excess ‘greenhouse gases’ trap those longer rays and allow less heat to escape.

There have always been those who distrust science.

Galileo was forced to denounce his heliocentric ‘heresy’ and spend the rest of his life under house arrest. In the 1800s surgeons refused to wash their hands, fearing people would blame them for spreading diseases.

You’re free to deny the sun will rise tomorrow but the Theory of Probability says otherwise — we’re able to predict to a nanosecond when the sun will break the horizon.

This coming Sunday morning at 04:19 (GMT), the Earth’s annual swing around the Sun will reach its solstice. We’ll see the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the exact opposite in the south.

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Milo’s videos

 

Instead of movie stars and sports heroes, M’s role model is the guy who created Johnny Bravo.

M started coming into our coffee shop with his dad back during his preschool years. We see a bit less of him these days — he has things to do.

Few of us realized M’s fascinated by first responders — the firefighters, medics, hazmat and animal-protection teams who serve us all.

His parents have taken him to visit his heroes at their facilities. He downloads databases detailing emergency calls published by municipalities, absorbing everything he can get his hands on.

“I’m kind of different.” The thirteen-year-old director and animator has been staging live performances for years, at the same time developing videos with his friend Charlie.

Trying one technique after another, trapped in one dead-end after another, the resolute M has ended up creating a collection of animated videos.

He uses his iPhone to construct stop-motion animation — moving a fire truck across the screen takes 50 or 60 shots. His typical video is shorter than two minutes and takes roughly four hours to complete. There are no scripts or storyboards. M exploits accidents for all their worth

At his tender age, the kid already knows what an elevator pitch is and explains that his work’s about more than sirens and speeding vehicles — it’s about responders risking their lives to rescue others.

His YouTube channel currently has 14.2 thousand subscribers; a recent video has attracted more than three-million visits.

M thinks it’s important to keep a distance from his online popularity. In a world that is insane for celebrity, he has decided to stay anonymous.

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Wendy, A Large Small Woman

Wendy came out of the gate fast.

By the seventh grade she was attending high-school classes alongside students years ahead. During high-school, she was recruited into undergrad studies at a flagship university.

At the same time Wendy liked earning her way. She babysat at $6.25 an hour, and at age fifteen took a job “breading chicken” until midnight. She had saved $10,000 before she was out of her teens.

She was young when she met the husband with whom she had a son and a daughter. Pursuing of an associate degree at her community college proved difficult and she decided she could afford to take a year off from her education.

Wendy will tell you that was a mistake.

The mother of two was forced back to work full time. She clocked so many hours that the restaurant “rewarded” her with empty promotion that stripped her of overtime pay.

Now years later as general manager at a restaurant chain, she’s responsible for hiring, firing, coaching, planning and sales — she knows hundreds of customers by first name.

The not large woman can “put away a truck” with the best of them. Wendy knows that food service is punishing and that her knees will creep up on her.

One of her goals is to celebrate her fiftieth birthday without a mortgage. She’s anxious to help her daughter in college avoid the crippling debt she finally managed to overcame.

There’s talk of one day owning a coffee house (cozy, lined with books) that will satisfy a love of engaging the public. There’s talk of fascinating places around the world patiently waiting for her to arrive.

But for now there’s a more immediate goal. Wendy Borges is bent on keeping the various generations of her family intact, and within reach. She comes from a community that places a value on these things.

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Impeaching Kim

It was only three presidencies ago that the House set out to “remove a duly elected president from office.”

And it seems like just yesterday that the House plotted to “overturn the will of the American voters.”

The arguments now being made against impeaching Donald Trump are identical to those used during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.

President Trump is being accused of extortion, bribery, obstruction and profiteering from being in office. Not to mention using campaign money to pay off porn stars. Not good.

An impeachment inquiry is a painful but necessary step in investigating a president’s conduct. It may or may not lead to impeachment.

Our Founding Fathers wanted us to impress upon our presidents that Dear Leader Kim may be above the law, but they are not.

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Donald Corleone [Poster Boys]

Donald Trump has contracted for the services of a ridiculous number of people with hidden ties to former Soviet countries.

No way this is a coincidence.

Trump goombahs are being investigated, indicted and convicted. Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, Stone, Gates, Papadopoulos, Giuliani’s new best friends Lev and Igor. There will be more.

We have an American president who acts like he’s working for a godfather named Putin. He’s reversed the efforts of both Republican and Democratic presidents to contain the Russian dictator.

He wants to ease sanctions and to reinstate Russia in the G7. He’s urged Ukraine to surrender its democracy to Russian aggression. He’s peddling a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, sabotaged our 2016 elections.

The Trump operation buys off porn stars, profits from the presidency, obstructs, extorts, destroys whistleblowers and those officers duly appointed to investigate.

Our Founding Fathers knew we’d vote a occasional mobster into the White House now and again, so they gave us a constitutional power to correct that mistake. The power to impeach.

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