Fight to the Finish....Caucuses in Iowa

Hillary Clinton's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 was supposed to be a coronation, not a conflagration.

Now, however, the former secretary of state finds herself in Iowa just days before the first-in-the nation caucuses, trying to extinguish an insurgent campaign by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that seems to be spreading like wildfire.
While Mrs Clinton has spent the past year building a campaign infrastructure that she hopes will carry her to success in Iowa and beyond, Mr Sanders has become a fundraising powerhouse, thanks to passionate grass-roots support.
The Clinton camp may have had a head start on organizing support for Monday's caucuses, but the Sanders campaign is pouring its newfound resources into the state in hopes that a win here - and in New Hampshire next week - will vault him into a national lead and position him to prevail in a fight for the nomination that could drag on for months.
The pitched battle between the two candidates was on full display on Friday night, as they held rallies mere blocks from each other in Davenport, Iowa. Although they drew similarly sized crowds of about 1,000 people in this modest-sized city on the banks of the Mississippi River, it was a clear contrast in styles.
Outside an old-fashioned dance hall, Sanders loyalists lined the street, waving homemade signs, posing with a life-sized cutout of their candidate and cheering as passing cars honked their support.
"I'm so excited to change the world," said Selina Vickers, a social worker who drove 11 hours from Fayette County, West Virginia, to help with the get-out-the-vote effort. "I've never been inspired like this."
Mrs Clinton's backers - a relatively older crowd - were more restrained as they waited to enter their auditorium a few hours later. No car horns, no cheering - just a long line to get through a door guarded by Secret Service officers.

 

Inside the venues, the Sanders fans chatted and chanted, as John Lennon's Power to the People blasted over the loudspeakers. Mrs Clinton had a live country band, which closed with Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA - a patriotic ballad that was a staple of Republican Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns.
"I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free ..."  the singer belted out.


Mr Sanders was introduced by Cornel West, the fiery author and black rights activist. He shouted, clapped and practically pirouetted, telling audience that the Vermont senator was at the centre of a political movement, a "moral and spiritual transformation" in the nation.
"We're trying to remake and recast American democracy, and Bernie Sanders is the select one," he said.


A hoarse former President Bill Clinton was his wife's warm-up act.
We need someone who is strong and smart, who can make things happen," he said. "You can talk about change, but somebody's got to make it."
Those two introductions illustrated the difference between the two candidates. One is a veteran political insider with a famous last name. The other is a hero of the progressive movement, who - as a self-professed "democratic socialist" - until last fall wasn't even a registered member of the Democratic Party.




On the stage in Davenport, Mr Sanders promised sweeping changes: that his election will herald a revolutionary development in US politics, when those who are struggling in the modern economy will wrest power away from what he derides as the "billionaire class".  He called for free college education for all Americans, breaking up "too-big-to-fail" banks, a government-managed healthcare system and raising the minimum wage.


Critics, he said, insist "it's too hard, it can't be done, we have to think much, much smaller. And I say the hell with that!"
The day before, at an appearance before high school students in Des Moines, Mr Sanders' college proposal received an enthusiastic audience - more confirmation of polls that show the candidate doing much better than Mrs Clinton among younger voters.


Ms Clinton, on the other hand, preached practicality during her Davenport speech. Politics, the saying goes, is the art of the possible - and Mrs Clinton frames herself as the candidate who knows how to work within the system.
She said she would build on the healthcare reforms President Barack Obama has already put in place, use existing law to rein in Wall Street excesses, and make college more affordable without giving free tuition to the wealthy.
"We've got to be smart, and we've got to run an election about the real issues and what we can get done," she said. "I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the opposite."
The former secretary of state's speech came at the end of a long day of campaigning across Iowa, and if her pledge to "under-promise" and grind out results isn't the stuff of political revolutions, it was a theme cited again and again by her supporters.
"I like Bernie's ideas, but I really just think Hillary can take on the Republicans," Lindsey Cowherd said, at a rally at in a college gymnasium in Des Moines. "She has the qualifications from day one to do a great job."


Republican pollster and political speech expert Frank Luntz says, "I think Bernie Sanders wins the caucuses". "It's energy, passion, motivation. They want to change America, and they think they can change the world."
If Luntz has his suspicions that Mrs Clinton is in trouble - both here and in New Hampshire, which will hold its primaries a week after Iowa - that may be confirmed by increasingly sharp criticism Mr Sanders is taking, not just from Mrs Clinton and her supporters, but from other gatekeepers in the Democratic establishment.
On Saturday the New York Times said Mr Sanders' proposals "aren't realistic" and endorsed Mrs Clinton for the nomination, writing that she would be the "most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history".
On Thursday the Washington Post editorial board called Mr Sanders "a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it".
"Mr Sanders's success so far does not show that the country is ready for a political revolution," the paper wrote, citing the lack of details behind his healthcare, education and tax plans. "It merely proves that many progressives like being told everything they want to hear."

Battleground Iowa

According to Matt Sinovic, executive director of the liberal group Progress Iowa, the Iowa contest between Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton is too close to call just days before the caucuses.
He said Mr Sanders has the benefit of being a fresh, new face for Iowa voters, which may explain the enthusiasm of his crowds, but Mrs Clinton has broad support across the state. While Hillary Clinton is an established political figure, less is known about Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Here are five things to know about him:
He is a socialist. Sanders is running as a "Democratic socialist", but in his long political career he became comfortable with just "socialist".
Climate change is real. After the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marked 2015 as the hottest year on record, Sanders tweeted: "The debate is over. Climate change is real and caused by human activity."
College should be free. "A college degree is the new high school diploma," Sanders wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.
Gun ownership is a "lifestyle that should not be condemned". Sanders' record on gun control has been mixed which he says is due to the fact that his constituents in Vermont are pro-gun and "99 percent of the people in my state who hunt are law abiding people".


Mrs Clinton is hoping that after eight years of Mr Obama's presidency, where his earlier idealism often has been tempered by the reality of modern American politics, Democratic voters are willing to be practical.
Mr Sanders, on the other hand, argues that Democrats need to think much, much bigger.
It's a debate that won't be resolved when Iowans head to the caucuses on Monday. For Democrats, this is just getting started.


And in theTrump Camp?

Donald Trump leads Texas senator Ted Cruz by five points in the Republican presidential nominating race in Iowa, just two days before the state’s caucuses, according to a gold standard Des Moines Register–Bloomberg News poll published on Saturday evening.
On the Republican side, the poll had Trump at 28 points and Cruz at 23 points, with Florida senator Marco Rubio at 15 points and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10.
On the Democratic side, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton led Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, 45-42, according to the poll, which surveys about 400 likely caucus-goers.
The poll is known for picking up on Iowa election dynamics that outsiders miss. This time the dynamic is that Clinton remains strong and Trump has fought off a challenge from Cruz.
Clinton was six points ahead of Sanders in the same poll in December, but only two points ahead of him earlier this month.

Aunt Jeannie : NASA grew the first ever space flower, and it's absolutely beautiful

                    First ever flower grown in space makes its debut! 

                          Yes, there are other life forms in space! 

The International Space Station just got a little bit more colorful.

U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, who is currently completing a full year aboard the orbiting laboratory, gave the first flower ever grown in space it's Instagram debut on Saturday -- and here we were thinking our gardening skills were good.

According to NASA, the space flower is an orange zinnia, selected because it's a harder plant to grow than lettuce -- which has already been successfully grown and eaten in space.

NASA's astronauts originally had difficulty growing the plants, even documenting a case of mold and over-drying on Twitter around Christmastime. But eventually, the small crop pulled through, producing beautiful, brightly colored alien blooms.

This marks the first time that a flowering crop has been grown on the ISS, which will hopefully provide useful information about other flowering plants that could be grown in space.

"The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce," Trent Smith, project manager of the ISS's "Veggie" plant growth facility, told the Nasa blog.

       "It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration between 60 and 80 days. Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant."

      NASA is growing the flowers and lettuce to learn how to garden in space with the hope of eventually being able to do so on Mars.

      We were under the impression that Matt Damon had already mastered the whole 'crops in space' thing...

Aunt Jeannie , the  first flower  grown in space .  We asked daddy to post it  for us ,  it is really  pretty .  We grow  zinnias  in the garden and they come in all colors . 

Hope you are feeling better  . Love to you from  all of us .

Wrote  by Jonny and Chris 

Boy in the bubble

Hi cubs,

 The boy in the bubble had almost the same autoimmune illness that I do. Some things are a bit different and I am allowed to go out now if I am careful.  I didn't get sick until I was in my twenties. Paul Simon, the song writer, knew about the boy in the bubble and felt sorry for him and wrote this song dedicated to him in 1987. It has weird lyrics.

I lived in a bubble (but it was really shaped like a room) for three years (now that was really weird) . I was able to come out for several hours a day but had to live in a specially built house. I have had a strange life but I still had fun and lots of laughs and people who loved me. So I think it was a pretty good life.

The deep space telescopes have opened up the universe to us and we are learning new things every day about how we came to be and truly amazing things about our galaxy. Ten years ago we didn't know half this stuff. It's all good.

I do have to agree with you that we should be doing more here on earth to clean up our act. The trouble is we can't get everyone in the world to agree to do the things that are necessary. It is a very slow process. I get mad because in the last forty years half the species of wildlife on earth, have disappeared. Half in forty years!!! That is too much to get my head around. What is going to happen in the next forty years ? Whatever happens, I think it will decide the future of our planet.

I honestly think we will smarten up in time and stop the worst stuff from happening.  I have faith in the goodness of people and think they will do the right thing. They are just dragging their feet getting there. And we can't turn the clock back and cool the earth and bring back all those animals.

The latest solar system they have found has a planet that is 15 times the mass of Jupiter and is so far from it's sun, it takes a million years to do one orbit. Awesome! 

We may never get to those planets way out there but we can dream.

 Love you guys

 Aunt Jeannie

PS: Tell Poppa the little green people do not shove things up your butt. The wormlike aliens stick a straw in your ear and suck out all your juices.



Cubs and Loyal Knights...This video is awesome

It's even got 'aliens'!



Syrian kids Enjoy snow for the first time

Welcome to Canada, eh.
A family of Syrians refugees who fled the civil war in their country have seen and experienced snow for the first time in their lives. They took their first toboggan rides this month. The fun was caught on camera as the group flies down Armour Hill in Peterborough, Ont.
Ontario Provincial Police Const. David McNab, who shot the video, is co-sponsoring the family of four with his wife Kristy Hiltz, according to The National Post.
"The kids are amazingly grateful and excited about everything," the police officer told the newspaper.
"Every experience is just laughter, smiles and giggles."

Other Canadians have welcomed the refugees warmly into their hearts in various ways.

School supplies for Syrian children

 

Joe Woodsworth, a senior manager with Surrey, B.C.-based Options Community Services picks up dozens of backpacks, each filled with school supplies for Syrian children.

Dentists' good deeds 

  

A number of dentists have stepped up to the plate to offer free services to refugees who arrived with multiple oral problems from poor diet and hygiene in refugee camps.

For example, Malak arrived with her family in July after living in a Jordanian refugee camp for two years. Her teeth were so decayed the 5-year-old girl was kept up at night because of the pain until a local dentist stepped forward to help her and her family.

Donations

In November, the Edmonton Oilers captain gave $10,000 to Edmonton's Mennonite Centre for Newcomers to support their work in helping to resettle incoming Syrian refugees. Team members intend to donate more from their own pockets

Sponsors

Jim Estill pledgeed to sponsor 50 families. The Guelph businessman made headlines last month after stepping forward to say he intended to spend $1.5 million to privately sponsor 50 Syrian refugee families to come to Canada.

Estill explained he was tired of seeing refugee applications get snarled in long, bureaucratic processes.

                                                     Communities

'Everybody’s very excited' in one B.C. community. “It’s really good to know that we’re so compassionate and that we want to help,” said Darrell McLeod of St. Clare's refugee family sponsorship group. They are finding homes, building furniture and gathering provisions to get the families settled into their community. These acts of kindness are being repeated in many towns. "Everyone’s been really excited to make things happen.”

Homes

Westbank Developments founder Ian Gillespie is behind many of downtown Vancouver's glitziest skyscrapers. He made a pledge in November to furnish a 12-unit West End apartment complex and open it to incoming refugees. He also said he's exploring other ways to help Syrians.

Family

Christine Youssef (pictured) greets newly arrived Syrian relatives on a bus near Pearson International Airport in Mississauga on Dec. 11. Youssef and her mother are sponsoring 43 of their Syrian relatives to come to Canada.

Random Acts of Kindness

When CBC News reporter Eman Bare interviewed Mohamed Al-Noury, 21, and Athar Farroukh, 23, she realized the Syrian refugee couple had no wedding pictures and had not had a proper wedding celebration. So Bare put a callout on social media to surprise the  sweethearts with a wedding. Her request spread and within 24 hours people came forward donating a venue, suit, dress, cake and reception. And of course, many photos of the occasion to treasure.

"Grateful for a community that makes beautiful things happen," wrote Bare on Instagram below a photo taken at the couple's Saskatoon ceremony.


Way to go Canada!

The Roving Reporter :The Police charge 17-year-old boy in Canada after 4 shot dead

TORONTO (AP) — A 17-year-old boy was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting at a school and home in a remote aboriginal community in western Canada, officials said.
      Police said the male suspect can't be named under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Grant St. Germaine said nine people were shot in the school, including a female teacher's aide who died at the scene and a male teacher who died in a hospital. He said seven people wounded in Friday's shooting at the school are hospitalized.
      Two brothers, 17-year-old Dayne Fountaine and 13-year-old Drayden, were shot and killed in a home before the gunman headed to the grade 7-12 La Loche Community School, police said. Police responded to a call of shots fired at the school shortly after the lunch hour.
      Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commanding Officer Brenda Butterworth-Carr said when officers arrived at the school they saw the front door had been shot open. They entered the school, spotted the suspect and gave chase before apprehending him. He is due in court next week.
      A resident of La Loche, Saskatchewan, pays his respects on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016 to the victims of a Friday school shooting. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)
Police said Saturday that they were not aware of a motive and declined to say what type of gun was used.
      The school is in the remote Dene aboriginal community of La Loche in Saskatchewan Province. La Loche is a community of less than 3,000 where just about everybody knows everybody else.
     "This is a significant event for Canada," St. Germaine said. "It's a huge impact on the community of La Loche. It's a part of changing times. We are seeing more violence."
Residents lighted candles and placed flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the school.
      Shootings at schools or on university campuses are rare in Canada. However, the country's bloodiest mass shooting occurred on Dec. 6, 1989, at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, when Marc Lepine entered a college classroom at the engineering school, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself.
      The educational assistant killed at the Saskatchewan school was identified as 21-year-old Marie Janvier. Deegan Park, her boyfriend of three years, said he would have given up the rest of his life just to spend another year with her.
"I grew up not a good guy, but she turned me right," Park told The Associated Press. "She was that much of a great person to turn me right from all the wrongdoings I used to do. ... She was a fantastic person."
       "I loved her, I really did," said Park, who remembered her smile and how she would blush when she was happy.
Kevin Janvier said his daughter was an only child. "I'm just so sad," he said.
      Ashton Lemaigre, a teacher at the school and friend of Marie Janvier, said she worked as a teacher's aide in his classroom. He said she was kind and patient with children and planned to get her teaching degree someday.
"The kids loved having her around," Lemaigre said. "They would just come running to her. And she was just a friend to everybody."
       A second victim was identified as 35-year-old Adam Wood, a new teacher at the school. His family in Ontario issued a statement describing him as an adventurer with a passion for life who made people laugh until their stomachs hurt.
"Adam had just begun his teaching career in La Loche last September and was enjoying his time," his family said. "He was always up for a good challenge and lived each day joyously."
      Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called it "every parent's worst nightmare."
A student who was just returning from lunch when the shots were fired Friday said his friends ran past him urging him to get out.
      ''Run, bro, run!" Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, recalled his friends saying to him as they fled La Loche's junior and senior high school. "There's a shotgun! There's a shotgun! They were just yelling to me. And then I was hearing those shots too, so of course I started running."
      The RCMP said the first reports of shots being fired at the school came in around 1 p.m. Friday, and parents and residents were warned to stay away. Witnesses said some students hid in gym dressing rooms for hours. A nearby elementary school was also placed on lockdown as a precaution.
      Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said he is in a state of disbelief. He planned to visit La Loche on Sunday and promised to provide crisis support and counseling services. La Loche, like a number of aboriginal communities in Canada's prairie provinces, has been plagued by high suicide rates and poverty.
      Wall added that U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman had offered the counsel of U.S. communities that have experienced school shootings.
      "He noted that quite tragically the United States has more experience with the likes of what we saw in La Loche," Wall said.

Thank   AOL

The  Roving  Reporter       G.

The Roving Reporter : Canada School Shooting, Suspect Five Dead In In Custody

                                          Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Five people were killed and two critically injured in a school shooting in a remote part of Saskatchewan on Friday and a male suspect was in custody, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and police said.

Trudeau did not give a motivation for the shooting in La Loche, about 600 km (375 miles) north of the city of Saskatoon.

"Obviously this is every parent's worst nightmare," said Trudeau, who was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States. With five dead, La Loche would be the country's worst school shooting since 14 college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

The shooting occurred in the high school, called the Dene Building, and another location in Saskatchewan, Trudeau and Canadian police said. The school remained on lockdown and the total number injured is not yet known, police said.

Police took the suspect into custody outside the school and seized a gun.

La Loche acting Mayor Kevin Janvier told the Canadian Press the incident may have started at the suspect's home.

“I’m not 100 percent sure what’s actually happened but it started at home and ended at the school," Janvier said.

Among Canada’s provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rate of police-reported family violence in 2014, double the national rate of 243 incidents per 100,000 people, according to a Statistics Canada report on Thursday.

Extra doctors and nurses were sent to treat patients in Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority's 16-bed hospital, said spokesman Dale West. He declined to say how many people had been injured.

Teddy Clark, chief of the Clearwater River Dene Nation, said his daughter told him about the shooting, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

"We're just trying to pull together here and make sense of all this," Clark told CBC television. "It's not a very pretty scene right now."

La Loche student Noel Desjarlais told the CBC that he heard multiple shots fired at the school, which has about 900 students.

"I ran outside the school," Desjarlais said. "There was lots of screaming, there was about six, seven shots before I got outside. I believe there was more shots by the time I did get out."

A cellphone video taken by one resident and broadcast by the CBC showed students walking away from the school across the snow-covered ground and emergency personnel moving in.

In 2014, a teacher expressed concern about violence at the La Loche school, noting that a student who had tried to stab her was put back in her classroom after serving his sentence, and another attacked her at her home.

"That student got 10 months," Janice Wilson told the CBC of the student who tried to stab her in class. "And when he was released he was returned to the school and was put in my classroom."

Thanx     Huffington Post Canada Condolence to all the families  and friends .
Stay tune  for developing details .

The Roving Reporter

Chris and Jonny and Cubs....Aliens

Hi Cubs. Here are a few images of what some artists think aliens might look like:

 Here's Jenny's one eyed girl






My favorite

















THIS IS WHAT I THINK ALIENS LOOK LIKE


Love from Aunt Jeannie

Strong evidence of a ninth planet in our solar system

Artist's impression of a ninth planet: Telescopes are sure to try to track down the object... if it really exists

American astronomers say they have strong evidence that there is a ninth planet in our Solar System orbiting far beyond even the dwarf world Pluto. The team, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has no direct observations to confirm its presence just yet. Rather, the scientists make the claim based on the way other far-flung objects are seen to move. But if proven, the hypothetical planet would have 10 times the mass of Earth.
The Caltech astronomers have a vague idea where it ought to be on the sky, and their work is sure to fire a campaign to try to track it down.
 "There are many telescopes on the Earth that actually have a chance of being able to find it," said Dr Mike Brown.
"And I'm really hoping that as we announce this, people start a worldwide search to go find this ninth planet."

The group's calculations suggest the object orbits 20 times farther from the Sun on average than does the eighth - and currently outermost - planet, Neptune, which moves about 4.5 billion km from our star. But unlike the near-circular paths traced by the main planets, this novel object would be in a highly elliptical trajectory, taking between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one full lap around the Sun.

The Caltech group has analyzed the movements of objects in a band of far-off icy material known as the Kuiper Belt. It is in this band that Pluto resides.
The scientists say they see distinct alignments among some members of the Kuiper Belt - and in particular two of its larger members known as Sedna and 2012 VP113. These alignments, they argue, are best explained by the existence of a hitherto unidentified large planet.
"The most distant objects all swing out in one direction in a very strange way that shouldn't happen, and we realized the only way we could, theoretically,  get them to swing in one direction is if there is a massive planet, also very distant in the Solar System, keeping them in place with it's gravity, while they all go around the Sun together" explained Dr Brown.
"I went from trying very hard to be sceptical that what we were talking about was true, to suddenly thinking, 'this might actually be true'."

The idea that there might be a so-called Planet X moving in the distant reaches of the Solar System has been debated for more than a hundred years. It has fallen in and out of vogue. What makes this claim a little more interesting and believable is Dr Brown himself.
He specializes in finding far-flung objects, and it was his discovery of 2,236km-wide Eris in the Kuiper Belt in 2005 that led famously to the demotion of Pluto from full planet status a year later (Dr Brown's Twitter handle is @PlutoKiller).
At that stage, Pluto was thought to be slightly smaller than Eris, but is now known to be just a little bit bigger.

Others who model the outer Solar System have been saying for some years that the range of sizes seen in the objects, so far identified in the Kuiper Belt, suggest another planet perhaps the size of Earth or Mars could be a possibility. But there is sure to be strong scepticism until a confirmed telescopic observation is made.
Dr Brown and Konstantin Batygin (@kbatygin) report their work in The Astronomical Journal.
Outside scientists say their calculations stack up and express a mixture of caution and excitement about the result. “I could not imagine a bigger deal if—and of course that’s a boldface ‘if’—if it turns out to be right,” says Gregory Laughlin, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. “What’s thrilling about it is the planet is detectable," ( if it is there) with our present technology.

The 'ninth planet' - where to look?

The six most distant known objects in the Solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Why? Brown and Batygin argue that this is because a massive planet (orange) is anti-aligned with these objects. Can telescopes now find this planet? Is it possible the evidence is already in observational data but no-one has yet recognized it? The hunt is on.

Hello my junior scientists....

If it turns out there is another planet in our solar system...and I strongly suspect this is true....what do you think it should be named???? Mars Jupiter and Saturn come from Greek and Roman mythology but I think the new planet should have a modern name.

Love Aunt Jeannie

We're headed for a Hell of Our own Making according to Hawking

Humanity is at risk from a series of dangers of our own making, according to Professor Stephen Hawking. Nuclear war, global warming and genetically-engineered viruses are among the scenarios he singles out. And he says that further progress in science and technology will create "new ways things can go wrong".  Hawking says that mankind could be wiped out by our own creations within the next 100 years. 

Prof Hawking is giving this year's Reith Lectures, which explore research into black holes, and his warning came in answer to audience questions. He says that assuming humanity eventually establishes colonies on other worlds, it will be able to survive.
"Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.
"By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.
"However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."
It is ironic that such a prominent figure in science identifies scientific progress itself as the major source of new threats. On previous occasions, he has highlighted the potential risks of artificial intelligence (AI) becoming powerful enough to cause the extinction of the human race. But he insists that ways will be found to cope.
"We are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we have to recognize the dangers and control them. I'm an optimist, and I believe we can."
Asked for advice for young scientists, Prof Hawking said they should retain a sense of wonder about "our vast and complex" Universe.
"From my own perspective, it has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics. There is nothing like the Eureka moment of discovering something that no one knew before."
But he also said that future generations of researchers should be aware of how scientific and technological progress is changing the world, and to help the wider public understand it.

  

Prof Hawking thinks we will eventually establish colonies in space, but not for another few hundred years

      

"It's important to ensure that these changes are heading in the right directions. In a democratic society, this means that everyone needs to have a basic understanding of science to make informed decisions about the future."

"So communicate plainly what you are trying to do in science, and who knows, you might even end up understanding it yourself."
Since his diagnosis with motor neurone disease, Prof Hawking's determination to overcome the immense physical challenges of his disability has been a source of worldwide admiration and fascination.
His daughter Lucy, a journalist and writer, who has co-written children's science books with Prof Hawking, was asked to explain his drive.
"I think he's enormously stubborn and has a very enviable wish to keep going and the ability to summon all his reserves, all his energy, all his mental focus and press them all into that goal of keeping going," she said.
"But not just to keep going for the purposes of survival, but to transcend this by producing extraordinary work, writing books, giving lectures, inspiring other people with neurodegenerative and other disabilities, and being a family man, a friend and a colleague to so many people and keeping up with friends across the world."

Professor Hawking makes a valid argument. Since the start of the industrial revolution, we've developed the means to plunder all the worldly resources and drive almost 50% of wildlife species to extinction. For the last 200 years, human beings have drilled for oil, extracted minerals, deforested our lands and depleted the oceans of fish. And in the wake of all that activity we left enough pollution to destroy the ozone layer and created enough carbon dioxide to change the climate of our planet. That's not much of an historic record for the human race.

What we have exploited in the last 200 years is more than our ancestors used for the last 5000 years. Something is going to give, maybe within our lifetime, from the pollution, violent weather or other natural disasters.
We also have to worry about the technological revolution that has been taking place since the advent of computers. When you see people get mindlessly addicted to their smartphones, video games, social media and internet porn, you have to wonder if we are not being brainwashed into not thinking for ourselves. Mindless serfs, slaves to the 3C's(communication, computers (AI), consumer electronic devices).  Perhaps the human race will end when it gets sucked into a gigantic matrix and becomes part of the machines. We will be so conditioned to it by then, the robots will take over without firing a single laser. Think that's a pretty extreme prognostication? Maybe not so much. Someone already thought of it. Ask Keanu Reeves.

Goodbye Glenn...We'll Miss You...Take it Easy

Glenn Frey
The Eagles

He  created a style which was a meeting of country, folk and rock music and  was  imitated by many artists who followed The Eagles. It was a defining decade (the seventies) in American music. He will create no more music for us but we have an impressive body of work to remember him by. Goodbye to another fine artist in a month which has bid farewell to so many.  Be at peace Glenn,

The PICs.

 

To Aunt Jeannie :Scientists Figured Out Where Aliens Might Be Hiding — And How We Could Talk to Them

By Max Plenke January 07, 2016 
     At the edges of our galaxy, tens of thousands of light-years away, massive, dense clusters of stars glom together like a humongous interstellar house party. This is where, according to astrophysicists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, we might find intelligent alien life.
     The CFA's lead author, Rosanne DiStefano made this hypothesis at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Wednesday, and — believe it or not — her logic checks out.
Let's say finding intelligent life is a hypothetical one-in-a-million chance. By the center's estimation, there are 150 globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy, each holding roughly a million stars per 100 million light years. Plus, they're old — like, 10 billion years old — and stable, meaning they didn't get nailed by cataclysmic, planet-destroying gamma-ray bursts.
     It could be that these globular clusters are full of planets twice as old as our own, that had billions more years to develop. The Fermi paradox, a theory of why alien life hasn't found us yet, refers to these clusters as Planet X.
     To date, according to the center, only one planet has been found in a globular cluster. This may be because, according to current theories, the globular clusters in our galaxy don't have the heavy elements to build stable planets.
     But DiStefano and her colleague, Alak Ray from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, said it's premature to say there aren't planets in these clusters. Exoplanets, or planets that orbit a stars other than our own, have been found near stars that have just one-tenth of the heavy elements of our own sun.
     In fact, if these globular clusters do have planets, they're probably extremely close together. That means those planets could communicate much easier with one another than with Earth. "We call it the 'globular cluster opportunity,'" DiStefano said on Wednesday. "Sending a broadcast between the stars wouldn't take any longer than a letter from the U.S. to Europe in the 18th century."
     So there could be a chance that Earth is missing out on a huge game of galactic Telephone that's being played on the edge of the Milky Way, with intelligent societies working together to noticeably expand farther into the universe. But according to Robin Hanson, a research associate at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, that would've happened by now.
     "If there were life thousands of light years away, it could've been around for millions or billions of years," he told Mic. "If someone is alive out there, they would've long since developed as much as they can. If they didn't spread out [to Earth], it means they're stuck. And just being near other civilizations [in the globular cluster] doesn't make them any less stuck, no matter how much they developed economically and socially."
     That doesn't mean we couldn't communicate. The issue is that communication is a two-way street. Two civilizations need to look for each other at the same time, know exactly where the other one is and know how to contact it.
     "If everyone is looking in random directions, the chance of coordinating communication is small," Hanson told Mic. "You have to find another coordination structure."
       Hanson told Mic about a theory for sending a signal to an alien race, as long as that race has a particular human tendency. It involves really, really bright lights — in this case, a supernova.
A supernova is a rare event in which a star violently explodes at the end of its life, giving off a huge amount of light and energy. A civilization would need to turn that flash into what you might call a cataclysmic carrier pigeon.
     "Right after you see a supernova, you piggyback off that and send a signal in the same direction," Hanson told Mic. "When you see that light, it will move past the cluster. So there will be that burst of light, and right behind it, the signal. You're going to be waiting a while, but when you see that, we can use it to figure out how to talk effectively."
     But keep this in mind when you're thinking about potential planets on the edge of the galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light-years across. The nearest globular clusters, NGC 6397 and Messier 4, are about 7,200 light-years away. So if we try to send communications to any of the who-knows-how-many planets within them, it would take 7,200 years to receive.
     So if you read Mic, aliens, please pick up some of our galactic slack and say hi — we promise we won't try to kill off your entire species.

Aunt Jeannie , we found this  while surfing  for NASA articles , we wanted  you to smile and it will make you feel better .We asked daddy to post it for us .
Jonny and Chris

Gravitational wave rumors ripple through science world.....Einstein may be watching ...... and smiling









Rumors are rippling through the science world that physicists may have detected gravitational waves, a key element of Einstein's theory which if confirmed would be one of the biggest discoveries of our time.

There has been no announcement, no peer review or publication of the findings -- all typically important steps in the process of releasing reliable and verifiable scientific research.

Instead, a message on Twitter from an Arizona State University cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, has sparked a firestorm of speculation and excitement.

Krauss does not work with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which is searching for ripples in the fabric of space and time.

But he tweeted on Monday about the apparent shoring up of rumor he'd heard some months ago, that LIGO scientists were writing up a paper on gravitational waves they had discovered using US-based detectors.

"My earlier rumor about LIGO has been confirmed by independent sources. Stay tuned! Gravitational waves may have been discovered!! Exciting," Krauss tweeted.

His message has since between retweeted 1,800 times.

If gravitational waves have been spotted, it would confirm a final missing piece in what Albert Einstein predicted a century ago in his theory of general relativity.

The discovery would open a new window on the universe by showing scientists for the first time that gravitational waves exist, in places such as the edge of black holes at the beginning of time, filling in a major gap in our understanding of how the universe was born.

A team of scientists on a project called BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) announced in 2014 that they had discovered these very ripples in space time, but soon admitted that their findings may have been just galactic dust.

A spokeswoman for the LIGO collaboration, Gabriela Gonzalez, was quoted in The Guardian as saying there is no announcement for now.

"The LIGO instruments are still taking data today, and it takes us time to analyze, interpret and review results, so we don't have any results to share yet," said Gonzalez, professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.

"We take pride in reviewing our results carefully before submitting them for publication -- and for important results, we plan to ask for our papers to be peer-reviewed before we announce the results -- that takes time too!"

Other observers pointed out that any supposed detection may be a simple practice run for the science teams, not a real discovery.

"Caveat earlier mentioned: they have engineering runs with blind signals inserted that mimic discoveries. Am told this isn't one," Krauss tweeted.

But science enthusiasts may have to wait awhile longer to get all the details.

The LIGO team's first run of data ends Tuesday, January 12.  And you know how scientists are, they analyze and check and re-analyze and re-check ad infinitum.

Thanx Yahoo



Strike hits ISIS where it hurts the most

The Pentagon  says an allied strike has destroyed millions of dollars-worth of cash that terror group Islamic State (previously ISIS/ISIL) was using to pay wages and finance its operations. The strike targeted the jihadist Iraqi stronghold in Mosul.

“The bulk cash distribution site was used by [ISIS] to distribute money to fund terrorist activities,” Lieutenant Commander Ben Tisdale, a US spokesman, said in a statement.

The US-led coalition used two 900kg bombs to destroy the facility, a Pentagon official told AFP on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We estimate in the millions of dollars ... from all their illicit stuff: oil, looting, extortion,” Tisdale said.He added that bombing raid early Monday was one of a handful that has targeted cash-storing sites since the coalition started attacks on ISIS positions, and was probably the most bountiful to date.

According to CNN, which was the first to report the strike, five to seven civilians were estimated to have been killed in the attack. The TV network said the US military were prepared to have up to 50 civilians killed in the operation, but choosing dawn as the time for the attack helped to minimize casualties.

The US, which has faced criticism over the slow progress in its anti-IS campaign from its regional allies and Russia, which is conducting its own anti-terrorist operation in Syria, has been gradually widening the array of targets for its bombing raids.

The US-led coalition started attacking oil trucks used to smuggle stolen crude oil and other non-military targets with the goal of undermining IS resources. Washington cited concern over potential civilian deaths as the reason why it didn’t try to cripple ISIS’s economic resources earlier. US warplanes even dropped leaflets, warning of an imminent strike, 40 minutes before bombing one of the terrorist oil convoys.

Chilling Photos of Nazi Germany

     

Through the skillful and sustained application of propaganda, flamboyant pageantry, fiery rhetoric, parades and marching bands Hitler mesmerized the German people into believing the economic depression, hunger and poverty they were suffering after World War I were glorious and the prelude to paradise on earth.
Looking back at photos of the Third Reich, it’s difficult to comprehend being indoctrinated by Nazi Party propaganda, not to mention complicit in the crimes against humanity committed during their regime.
While we may forget the brutal, regimented  nature of their propaganda machinery, these chilling images, taken by Hitler’s personal photographer and re-rendered in colour, bring the harrowing reality of Nazi Germany back to life.