Hallie was featured on the front page of the N&O, 15 Nov 2017
This is at least the second time she’s been featured on the N&O’s front page, if not the third. The first time was when she was still a guest of the WakeMed NICU.
Messier 33 galaxy, by Rowland Archer
My friend and former boss Rowland Archer has a hobby of astrophotography. He’s built up quite a collection of stunning photographs that he’s taken from the little observatory he’s build in his backyard outside of Durham. Here’s one of the latest photos he’s shared, of the Milky Way’s nearest neighboring galaxy, Messier 33.
Says Rowland:
This is Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, so named because it is in the constellation Triangulum and was the 33th object discovered by Charles Messier – who was a comet hunter and famously compiled a list of “darn, another fuzzy thing that’s not a comet!” Ironically, his list of stuff to avoid is now one of the most popular list of things to observe! M33 is part of the local group of galaxies – it’s smaller than our Milky Way, and fainter than the Andromeda Galaxy posted earlier this week, but I think it’s a rocking looking galaxy from our view here on Earth – the blue spiral arms, the red knots of color in the arms that are active star forming regions, and the individual stars visible in both. It’s about 3 million light years away from us, and contains “only” about 30 billion stars. But it’s still the third largest member of our local group – our neighborhood of galaxies that are close enough to be bound together by gravity.
Amazing stuff!
This segment is great stuff.
One of the great things about the way real estate is sold on the Internet is being able to get a virtual tour of the homes you knew and loved. I found out that my grandmother’s former home at 937 Oak Avenue in Panama City, FL is now for sale (MLS# 663442). Poking through the photographs it appears the owners (who bought it from Grandma’s estate) didn’t change it as radically as they could’ve. The most drastic changes are the paint colors. Apparently the electrical system has been upgraded. I don’t recall the renovated rear bathroom but that might have been there at the time Grandma lived there. The kitchen hasn’t changed basically at all, which was good to see.
I created a copy of the Zillow page here, as the house is pending sale and the listing won’t be available much longer. I also have photos from that page that I will add to the blog.
I hope I can take another walk (perhaps my last?) through it when we’re down there for Thanksgiving.
News broke today that Hallie is trying again, this time with friends, to get North Carolina’s environment back on track. Go, Hallie!
Hallie Turner was 13 years old when she stood outside a Wake County courtroom telling media crews with cameras trained on her that she planned to continue to fight for action on climate change despite her unsuccessful attempt to sue North Carolina over its environmental rules.
Now 15, Hallie is trying again to get the state Department of Environmental Quality and the state Environmental Management Commission to adopt a rule calling for a sharp reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next three decades. This time, two other North Carolina teens — Emily Liu, 16, of Chapel Hill, and Arya Pontula, a Raleigh 17-year-old, will join Hallie in petitioning the commission.
With the help of Ryke Longest at the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and Our Children’s Trust, a Oregon-based nonprofit focused on climate change, the teens hope to persuade the state to adopt a rule ensuring that by 2050 carbon dioxide emissions would be down to zero.
“It would be a future in which you would not be burning fossil fuels to power your homes,” Longest said on Monday, the day before the teens plan to file their petition.
The anger window is open. For decades, centuries, it was closed: Something bad happened to you, you shoved it down, you maybe told someone but probably didn’t get much satisfaction — emotional or practical — from the confession. Maybe you even got blowback. No one really cared, and certainly no one was going to do anything about it.But for the past six weeks, since reports of one movie producer’s serial predation blew a Harvey-size hole in the news cycle, there is suddenly space, air, for women to talk. To yell, in fact. To make dangerous lists and call reporters and text with their friends about everything that’s been suppressed.
This is not feminism as we’ve known it in its contemporary rebirth — packaged into think pieces or nonprofits or Eve Ensler plays or Beyoncé VMA performances. That stuff has its place and is necessary in its own way. This is different. This is ’70s-style, organic, mass, radical rage, exploding in unpredictable directions. It is loud, thanks to the human megaphone that is social media and the “whisper networks” that are now less about speaking sotto voce than about frantically typed texts and all-caps group chats.
Really powerful white men are losing jobs — that never happens. Women (and some men) are breaking their silence and telling painful and intimate stories to reporters, who in turn are putting them on the front pages of major newspapers.
A red hat
1. Red Hat all of 125 employees when it went public, and
2. Red Hat actually told investors it was banking on ad revenue from its website!
OUR STRATEGY
We seek to enhance our position as a leading provider of open source software and services by:
– continuing to enhance our Web site to create the definitive online destination for the open source community; [Emphasis mine]
– expanding our professional services capabilities to capture large corporate business on an enterprise basis;
– increasing market acceptance of open source software, particularly through technology alliances and sharing our development efforts and resources with third-party developers;
– continuing to invest in the development of open source technology; and
– enhancing the Red Hat brand through targeted advertising and public relations campaigns.
What makes this even funnier is that the S-1 also lists Google as a Red Hat customer:
Red Hat Customers in 1999
Hmm, where do you think all of that web advertising revenue went?
The company is quite different today than the company that went public in 1999, which seems to have been more smoke and mirrors. I’m glad they finally figured it out because it’s good to still have them around!
I got an email yesterday from Dr. James Baraniuk, the researcher who ran the Gulf War Illness research study I participated in back in October 2016. His paper has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
It’s interesting research, showing brain differences between GWI and CFS patients. Will it prove useful to me? Probably not. In all honesty, I have not had as many episodes of fatigue since I participated the study, in part due to my taking up running, I believe. I still have occasional cognitive issues (which really piss me off when they happen) but energy hasn’t been too big of a problem. That 65 mile bike ride I did with Travis and Kelly absolutely did wreck me the next day (or two), but I suppose it would do that for anyone else who hadn’t properly trained for it.
I’ve always said that the cognitive issues were the biggest issue for me. I wish I had the memory and mental clarity I had in my twenties. As they say, youth is wasted on the young!
Gulf War Illness (GWI) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) have similar profiles of pain, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction and exertional exhaustion. Post-exertional malaise suggests exercise alters central nervous system functions. Lumbar punctures were performed in GWI, CFS and control subjects after (i) overnight rest (nonexercise) or (ii) submaximal bicycle exercise. Exercise induced postural tachycardia in one third of GWI subjects (Stress Test Activated Reversible Tachycardia, START). The remainder were Stress Test Originated Phantom Perception (STOPP) subjects. MicroRNAs (miRNA) in cerebrospinal fluid were amplified by quantitative PCR. Levels were equivalent between nonexercise GWI (n?=?22), CFS (n?=?43) and control (n?=?22) groups. After exercise, START (n?=?22) had significantly lower miR-22-3p than control (n?=?15) and STOPP (n?=?42), but higher miR-9-3p than STOPP. All post-exercise groups had significantly reduced miR-328 and miR-608 compared to nonexercise groups; these may be markers of exercise effects on the brain. Six miRNAs were significantly elevated and 12 diminished in post-exercise START, STOPP and control compared to nonexercise groups. CFS had 12 diminished miRNAs after exercise. Despite symptom overlap of CFS, GWI and other illnesses in their differential diagnosis, exercise-induced miRNA patterns in cerebrospinal fluid indicated distinct mechanisms for post-exertional malaise in CFS and START and STOPP phenotypes of GWI.
A law professor sorts out the issues in the Gen. Baker case at GITMO.
On November 1, at Guantanamo Bay, an Air Force colonel sentenced a Marine general to 21 days confinement and $1000 fine. Both the colonel and the general are jurists with different roles in the trial of a suspected al-Qaeda mass murderer. Which of the two senior officers is in the right? That’s what this column will endeavor to elucidate.
Source: Semper Fidelis: Guantanamo and The Ethical Dilemma of Gen. John Baker
A Pentagon official ordered the release Friday of a Marine Corps general who was sentenced to 21 days confinement to quarters in connection with a dispute over defense attorneys at the Guantánamo Bay military tribunals.
A Defense Department lawyer who heads up the military commissions, Harvey Rishikof, agreed to a “deferral” of the punishment imposed on Brig. Gen. John Baker by a military judge Wednesday afternoon, according to a court filing.
An attorney for Baker confirmed he was advised that he is no longer confined to his quarters at Guantánamo.”I have spoken with him and he has been told he is free to go,” Baker’s lawyer Barry Pollack told POLITICO.
Friday’s move came about an hour before a federal judge in Washington convened a hearing on a habeas corpus petition seeking Baker’s immediate release.
Source: Pentagon official releases Marine general confined in Guantanamo dispute – POLITICO
