The last two years, 2023 and 2024 have been simply the hottest years ever recorded for our planet with last year being so hot that the planet as a whole broke the 1.5ºC above pre-Industrial averages limit that scientists are convinced will bring on worldwide disasters. In fact every month since July of 2023 has been hotter than 1.5ºC above the world’s average for that month during the 19th Century. This year the world’s temperature was expected to moderate slightly as an El-Ninó condition in the Pacific has been replaced by a La Niná but the steady rise in temperature due to our continued emissions of greenhouse gasses means that 2025 will still be hot, just hopefully not as hot as 2024.
It’s easy to see why scientists like to compare our rising temperatures to those of the 19th Century. The last ten years have in fact been the hottest ever recorded and that trend is certain to continue. (Credit: New York Times)
Nevertheless 2025 has already had its share of weather related disasters, from the wildfires that swept Los Angeles to major flooding events to severe outbreaks of Tornadoes. Hurricane season is just beginning, and this year is expected to be a busy one, but already the US has suffered from numerous episodes of severe weather strengthened by climate change. The year was only a few days old when the first disaster suddenly struck in the form of a series of wildfires that broke out in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. Within hours two of the fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires had destroyed hundreds of homes and would go on burning for weeks destroying a total of more than 18,000 structures. The total damage caused by the LA fires as a whole has been estimated to be somewhere between $35 and $45 Billion dollars making it the third costliest natural disaster in US history after only Hurricanes Katrina ($102 Billion) and Ian ($56 Billion).
Southern California is usually a raher dry region but the drought that started in 2024 was the worst ever, fueling the LA fires of January 2025Just Two of the thousands of homes destroyed by the January fires in LA. (Credit: Phys.org)
Now LA has often the location for wildfires as its long dry summers cause vegetation in the nearby hills to die and the Santa Ana winds from the north both fuel and spread whatever flames get started. The extreme severity of this year’s fires however were undoubtedly due to climate change as last summer’s heat and drought set records throughout the southwestern US. Even the strength of the Santa Ana winds was above average, helping to spread the fires further and faster than in other years. The added strength of those winds is again likely due to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The LA Fires weren’t just a single fire but a series of blazes of the outlying areas north and west of LA. (Credit:CERT-LA)
Then, starting in April it was the middle of the country’s turn as a series of severe storms caused destruction from Texas in the south to Illinois in the north, from Colorado in the west to Georgia in the east. Springtime in those areas often brings strong storms and tornadoes as warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moves north and runs headlong into dry, cool air coming down from Canada. That’s why the plains states are known as tornado alley. Thanks to global warming however the both the water and the air of the Gulf set records for high temperatures last year leading to increased ocean evaporation that supercharged with moisture the air before it moves north. With record amounts of both water vapour and energy this year’s storms have triggered massive flooding and catastrophic winds, both tornado and straight line, that have been causing destruction on an almost daily basis.
At one point on the 16 of March there were 29 Tornado warnings at the same time across the Midwest. (Credit: Weather Channel)
The twin calamities of tornado winds and rising floodwaters can even leave people not knowing how to protect themselves. Think about it, in a tornado warning you are supposed to get underground for protection but in a flash flood warning you need to get as high up as possible. What do you do when both warnings are issued for your location at the same time? This is something that has happened over a hundred times so far this year.
The city of Little Rock was being subjected to massive flooding at the same time as tornado warnings were being issued. What would you do in the situation? (Credit: KGW)
There was flooding up and down the Mississippi valley in early April along with numerous Tornadoes and other severe weather. (Credit: Weather Channel)
From the 3rd to the 6th of April a series of storms lashed the Mississippi valley leading to numerous flood and tornado warnings. The flooding was responsible for more than eight deaths while hundreds if not thousands of homes were damaged. Then, just a little more than a month later on the 15th and 16th of May another series of storms unleashed dozens of powerful tornadoes. One tornado moved through the city of St. Louis killing 5 and destroying over 5,000 structures. Another tornado struck the town of London, Kentucky killing 18. While those days may have seen the greatest number and intensity of tornadoes so far this year nearly every day since March there has been a handful of tornado and severe storm warnings issued by the National Weather Service.
The statistics on the tornado that struck London, Kentucky on the 16th of May killing 18 people. (Credit: Weather Channel)
Meanwhile to the north fire season in Canada is well underway with over a hundred and thirty wildfires burning over eight million acres of forest, an area greater than the size of the state Delaware. Those same winds that triggered the tornadoes are now also bringing the smoke from those fires south into the US impacting the health of millions of people. Because of this air quality alerts have now joined tornado warnings, flash flood warnings and severe weather threats as a daily occurrence somewhere in this country.
The smoke from the massive fires in Canada is coming across the border into the US no matter what the politicians say about illegal immigration! (Credit: The New York Times)
Now we have the start of Hurricane season, and again this year is forecast to be above average. Not that that means wildfire season or tornado season is over. We could easily have forests burning out west and up north at the same time that tornadoes are ravaging the middle of the country all while hurricanes are slamming into the Gulf or Atlantic coasts.
The number and intensity of the Canadian wildfires is unprecedented for this early in the year. Makes you wonder how bad it’s going to get in the next few months! (Credit: Weather Channel)
Global warming caused by our emissions of greenhouse gasses is making the entire world hotter and heat is a form of energy, a particularly violent form of energy. If we don’t stop it it’s only going to get worse.
This is going to be something of a wild post because, let’s face it Trump’s tariff policy has been both incomprehensible and chaotic. The imposition of massive excise duties on virtually every product from every foreign nation one day and then soon afterwards the announcement of a general pause in the implementation of those tariffs, except on China, which three days later got some exceptions, which are only temporary, has left everyone’s head spinning.
Trump’s on again, off again tariff policy has businesspersons around the world going nuts trying to keep up with what’s going on today let alone try and plan for the future! (Credit: Fisher College of Business)
Such confusion has generated a great deal of uncertainty and confusion in the business community in general and the stock markets in particular with all of the major markets losing more than 10% of their value within just a few days, and then regaining much of it back. Over a two day period the New York and NASDAQ exchanges lost over $6 trillion dollars, most of which was soon regained. However, the markets have been plagued by volatility ever since.
Mommy, look at what I did! Trump always has to make a big show about everything just like a little five-year-old wanting attention. That’s true even when what he’s doing is really a big screw up! (Credit: Wikipedia)A four to five percent drop in one day. Wall Street’s reaction to Trump’s Tariffs was so bad that he was immediately forced to pull back on his plans. (Credit: YouTube)
Now Trump made no secret of his love of tariffs, on the campaign trail he repeatedly claimed that tariffs were his favourite word and asserted that they would be a key element of his plans to ‘Make America Great Again’. Problem is that Trump simply doesn’t understand tariffs, let alone possess any idea of the correct way to use them, see my post of 5 October 24. Trump still insists that it’s the companies in other countries that pay the cost of the tariffs but they just don’t. In actual fact it’s the import firms, usually American companies that pay a tariff fee when a foreign product physically crosses the US border, and those companies almost always pass that cost along to the consumer here in the states.
So bad are Trump’s economic policies that Wall Street has given him the name ‘TACO’ meaning ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’. (Credit: Medium)
The whole purpose of a tariff is to make foreign products more expensive than their American equivalents therefore making American products more attractive to consumers. By making domestic products comparatively cheaper tariffs enable American industries to grow stronger. Because of this the very idea of putting tariffs on things that we don’t make here in the US, like bananas, mangoes or coffee beans, is simply stupid. Strong evidence that Donald Trump is simply stupid.
Since the US produces neither Bananas nor Avocados a tariff on them would simply hurt the businesses involved, both foreign and domestic, without helping any American business! (Credit: My Fearless Foodie)
Anyway, let’s see if I can recount the whole imbecilic tale of tariffs, reciprocal tariffs, market collapses, tariff pauses and exceptions and etc. With all of the ups and downs and conflicting signals from the White House I’ll bet that I get a few things wrong but hopefully I’ll remember all of the high points, or should I say low points.
Somebody ought to tell this the Trump! (Credit: Pondering Life)
Trump began his trade war almost as soon as he got back into office, quickly putting a 20% tariff on everything that we import from China. He then claimed that the US-Mexico-Canada-Trade Agreement (USMCTA) was ripping off our country. (I guess he forgot that he himself had negotiated the USMCTA) So he imposed a 25% tariff on selected goods from our two neighbors like automobiles, lumber and garden produce. (Again, US farmers grow very few avocadoes so putting a tariff on them is simply stupid) Canada and Mexico quickly responded in kind and the possibility of a trade war with two of our biggest trading partners caused Wall Street to decline.
Trump was all smiles when he signed the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement in 2020. Now he’s claiming that out neighbors are using it to ‘Rip Us Off’. Well, who’s fault is that????? (Credit: Border Assembly)
In just a couple of days Wall Street had given back all of the gains that it had made since Trump was elected back in November while at the same time consumer confidence saw a significant drop. Some economists were already suggesting that the tariffs could trigger a recession, although the White House guaranteed that there would be no recession.
The practical definition of a recession is two or more quarters of negative growth in our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We’ve already had one quarter in the first three months of 2025 so are we already in a recession! We’ll know in July! (Credit: Oberlo)
It was on Wednesday the second of April that Trump finally announced his reciprocal tariffs, retribution he claimed for those countries that had been ‘ripping us off’ for decades. Apparently every country on Earth has been ripping us off because the long list of tariffs included every nation on Earth along with Heard Island and McDonald Islands off of Antarctica whose only permanent inhabitants are penguins and seals.
The only inhabitants of Heard and McDonald Islands are Penguins. I guess they’ll pay Trump’s Tariffs in cuteness! (Credit: Yahoo)
At first the amount of the tariffs each country would have to pay seemed to make no sense to either economists or the media so the White House released a complex mathematical formula that they claimed to have used to calculate the tariff percentage that each country would pay. Although the tariffs are called reciprocal the formula does not in fact include the tariffs or trade restrictions that other countries impose on goods from the US. In essence the formula is just engineered to eliminate the trade deficit that the US has with that nation. The amounts of the tariffs were so large that anyone who understood the economy at all knew that they would simply kill international trade and drive the US into a deep recession if not worse.
Trump claims that his tariffs are ‘reciprocal’ meaning they are in response to the tariffs other counties put on US goods but are really designed to eliminate the trade deficit we have with those countries whether it’s fair or not. (Credit: Axios)
In response on the third and forth of April the markets reacted as if they had fallen off of a cliff, all the major exchanges were down by 10% or more. Over the weekend that followed the White House tried to calm the fears of Wall Street by insisting that in the long run the tariffs would make the US economy stronger. Trump himself told the nation that the tariffs were medicine for what ailed the US and that medicine doesn’t always taste good.
Like a child Trump refuses to accept the medicine that tariffs simply won’t achieve the results he expects them to. (Credit: GoodRx)
The markets weren’t listening and continued their decline so that on the ninth of April, just hours after the new tariffs had actually taken effect Trump issued a 90 day pause on all except the tariffs on China. Trump had backed down in the face of Wall Street losses but the White House couldn’t admit to that. Even as they tried to explain Trump’s retreat administration officials couldn’t agree on the reason for the pause because while trade advisor Peter Navarro and press secretary Karoline Leavitt were claiming that this had been the strategy all along Trump himself admitted that he did it because investors were afraid. Remember that, it was the Wall Street investors who were afraid, not him.
Trump likes to portray himself as a strong, fearless leader but in reality, he always backs down and often is known for hiding from a confrontation. (Credit: Redbubble)
Meanwhile China had decided that it would impose tariffs of its own on US goods, 80% worth. This angered Trump who increased the tariffs on China to 105% and then 125%, I can’t remember the reason for the second jump but China followed suit and now both countries tariffs stand at 125%, I think.
Trump’s latest tariff gambit is to increase the tariffs on Steel and Aluminum to 50%. We’ll see how long that lasts! (Credit: YouTube)
Then on the 12th of April Trump decided to make a few exceptions to the China tariffs, basically for electronic goods. According to Trump the exception is temporary, but no one knows what that means. I haven’t heard whether or not China has responded by given a few exceptions to US goods. That’s the problem with all of this back and forth, up and down, tariffs or pauses and exceptions; it’s nearly impossible to keep up with them. Imagine yourself being a customs agent and a crate of textiles comes into the US from Vietnam, does that agent actually know just what tariff he’s supposed to charge?
This is true of most bureaucrats at the best of times. With all of Trump’s chaotic impulses it’s become universal! (Credit: The Cubical Chick)
All of the confusion and uncertainty is also killing the US’s reputation around the world. First of all there’s the anger that Trump’s bullying is generating among the citizens of countries that thought they were our friends. Travel agencies are reporting that bookings for tourists from Europe and Canada coming to visit the US are way down, which could result in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars to airlines, hotels and restaurants.
My hometown of Philadelphia is looking forward to hosting a half dozen World Cup games next year, but will anybody come since the whole world is pissed at us thanks to Trump! (Credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Next year the US is going to host the World Cup in football, my home city of Philadelphia will be the site of six games. What happens however if foreign football fans simply don’t come because of the anger generated by Trump’s trade war. CNN recently broadcast an interview with a Danish citizen who asserted that he had no intention of coming to the World Cup unless “Denmark plays one of its games in Canada.” If that attitude continues the Word Cup could wind up a financial fiasco and America stands to lose a great deal of money.
Lincoln Financial Field is where the Superbowl Champion Eagles play. It is also the site of six world cup games in 2026. But will the games be played to an empty stadium)
Even worse, ever since the end of World War 2 the US has been the world’s economic center, with US treasury bonds the world’s safest investment. Anytime the stock market was in trouble, anytime stock prices would fall you would see the demand for US bonds go up as investors sought a reliable place to keep their money. No more, even as the stock markets were losing 10% of their value investors, both foreign and domestic, were selling their treasury bonds. Apparently, thanks to Trump America is no longer considered a reliable, safe place to keep your money. Because of that the value of the dollar is falling against other currencies like the Euro, the Pound and the Chinese Yuan.
As the dollar becomes weaker thanks to Trump’s chaos will the Euro or Yuan become the world’s new standard medium of exchange? (Credit: Alamy)
Finally, why is Trump doing this? Well, he claims that his tariffs, by making foreign products more expensive, will bring manufacturing back to this country creating millions of good paying blue collar jobs. The lie about American manufacturing jobs going to other countries, Mexico and China get blamed the most, has been around since Ross Perot back in the 1990s. In fact for every manufacturing job that left the US three jobs were lost to robots, to automation. So, even if Trump does succeed in bring manufacturing back to the US the only people that will benefit will be the robots!
The Blue-Collar Worker of the future, whether we like it or not. The US needs to invent new jobs, not try and resurrect the jobs of the past. Embracing innovation is what made America great in the first place! (Wevolver)
So that’s what Trump claims is his goal but in reality he is nothing but a bully, a two-bit hoodlum who has his entire life wanted to use the strength of the United States, economic and military, to extort money from other countries, mostly our friends. Being nothing but a cheat himself he imagines everyone else is cheating him so he feels he has to cheat harder, which is what he really wants to do anyway.
He grew up in New York City during the time of the Five Families and he absorbed much of the mob’s ‘Standard Operating Procedures’. (Credit: Amazon.in)
Now the first results of Trump’s monetary policies are beginning to be quantified as first quarter GDP numbers have been released for 2025 showing a 0.3% drop in all economic activity, the first such drop in three years. This economic chaos is just starting. Who knows what Trump will do when his 90-day pause is over? So hang on tight folks, it’s gonna be a wild ride these next three years.
With all of the millions of different species of plants and animals living together here on planet Earth it’s not hard to find many incredible stories to tell. Here are a few, one of which teaches us that we’re not the only intelligent animal on the planet, a second that relates to a ‘living fossil’ while the third concerns very surprising behavior from a very familiar animal.
With an almost endless variety of different species the study of wildlife can never be boring. But remember many of those species, like the Polar Bear, are on the verge of disappearing because of our selfish behaviour! (Credit: National Geographic Kids)
Mathematics, and geometry in particular are usually considered to be purely human activities. O’k once in a while you’d hear about a horse that is advertised to be able to count by pawing the ground with its front hoof but even such animals cannot recognize different geometric shapes, they cannot tell a square from a triangle or a parallelogram.
Horses, and some other animals, have been ‘trained’ to be able to count or recognize numbers. How much of this is skill on the part of the trainer and how much on the intelligence of the animals is still debatable but it does demonstrate that some animals can think in mathematical terms. (Credit: Atlas Obscura)
Or can they? A recent study from the University of Tübingen in Germany has demonstrated that crows are capable of differentiating one geometric shape from similar shapes. Now in previous studies crows have been found to be able to count as well as young human children so the researchers at Tübingen decided to see whether their pair of tame crows could tell one geometric shape from another.
The intelligence of Crows is well established. They have been shown to be able to solve puzzles and use tools to get at food. But they’re ability to distinguish geometric shapes is a new discovery. (Credit: Science Alert)
They started by showing six shapes on a touch screen, five of which were the same while the sixth was very different, say five crescent moons and a flower. If the crow pecked at the flower, the oddball figure it got a treat of a mealworm. Once the crows understood the game the researchers made it harder, for example six perfect squares and one slight parallelogram.
For an animal is succeed at the level one degree of difficulty is a major discovery but level two! There are some humans who’d have problems with that! (Credit: Scientific American)
The crows had no problem spotting the oddball. It wasn’t long before the crows had demonstrated that they could recognize right angles, parallel lines and even symmetric shapes.
Crows have always had a deep mythological meaning to we humans. In Irish legends they symbolized the Morrigan, three goddesses of war and death! (Credit: YouTube)
So now the question becomes, how many other animals have similar geometric abilities. This study with crows is really the first time any species of animal has taken a geometry test. It remains to be seen how many other species can also pass.
It seems like every time we test an animal for intelligence; we get surprised at just how smart they really are. Maybe we need to recognize that our intelligence is not all that unusual! (Credit: Shutterstock)
Another very common species of animal also made some very surprising news recently, not for its intelligence but for a totally unexpected degree of bloodthirstiness. The animal in question is the California ground squirrel, which like most species of squirrel life on a diet of nuts, grains and seeds.
Oh, so cute and cuddly the California Ground Squirrel is actually a Cold-Blooded Killer!!!!! (Credit: iNaturalist)
However a recent study by naturalists at the University of California Davis along with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has documented that ground squirrels in the San Francisco bay area have been adding an unexpected kind of protein to their diet. That protein comes from hunting, killing and eating voles. The very idea of cute little squirrels as vicious predators may come as something of a shock but the researchers succeeded in filming and photographing numerous cases of squirrels chasing, killing and then eating the small rodents.
In the parks just south of San Francisco this squirrel and others were observed to hunt, chase, kill and eat small rodents like the vole in this one’s mouth. The very idea of a squirrel as a predator is shocking but equally surprising is just how good they are at it! (Credit: Phys.org)
One interesting fact that the naturalists noted was that vole hunting by squirrels peaked during the first two weeks of July, just the time of year when the vole population peaks. In general the team found that squirrels are opportunistic hunters, chasing and killing their prey when one is nearby but not actively searching for voles as true predators would.
Lions and other true predators will actively go out searching for prey, but it seems that ground squirrels only attack when they happen to see a small rodent nearby to prey on. (Credit: Kapama Private Game Preserve)
This behaviour fits in well with general squirrel conduct, taking advantage of every kind of food that’s available. There are still many questions about carnivorous squirrels, is this behavior general in the species, California ground squirrels have a wide range, or is it localized to the area south of San Francisco. Also, are hunting skills taught from generation to generation as in wolves and lions or do individual squirrels learn to hunt on their own. In any case animals like that, creatures that have a wide range of habits and can live off of a variety of different foods, including we humans, have a big advantage during times of change such as the times we live in.
California Ground Squirrels have a very wide range so it remains to be seen if carnivorous behaviour is present throughout the species. (Credit: Animalia Bio)
My final story concerns a type of animal that is far older than either crows or squirrels. In fact the coelacanth, a family of lobe-finned fishes that are related to the first fish that walked on land, is considered to be a ‘living fossil’ because members of that family are known to have swum in the oceans of 400 million years ago. For a long period of time it was thought that the coelacanths had gone extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.
Known for their muscular fins and weirdly shaped tails Coelacanths have been around for almost 400 million years. At least two species are still living today! (Credit: Smithsonian Ocean)
The first living specimen of a coelacanth was discovered in 1938 by a zoologist named Marjorie Courtenay Latimer living in Tanzania who made a habit of perusing the local fish markets for interesting specimens. World War 2 prevented scientists from learning more about the living coelacanths but after the war it was found that a large population of coelacanths, Latimeria chalumnae, were living in the deep waters, 1,000 to 1,300 meters, off the southeast African coast. Then, during the 1960s a second species of coelacanth was discovered at similar depths around the islands of Indonesia.
Most fossil species of Coelacanth are fairly small fish but the two living species can be almost as large as a human being. Does that have anything to do with their long survival? (Credit: Reddit)
Recently oceanographers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) were conducting a biodiversity survey in an underwater canyon about 100 kilometers off the coast of San Diego when purely by chance the cameras of their Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) caught images of a coelacanth. The ROV was not capable of capturing so large a fish, and the specimen was only visible for a few seconds but there was no doubt, the creature was a coelacanth. A water sample brought back by the ROV was even tested for environmental DNA, eDNA and traces of coelacanth DNA was found.
Staring into the past as it stares back at you. Coelacanths are considered to be close relatives of the first fish to climb out of the water and walk on land, in other words our ancestors! (Credit: National Geographic)
At least we now know that there is a population of coelacanths living off the west coast of North America. Is this a new species or a separated population of one of the already known living species? I’ll be sure to let you known when more is learned!
As a member of the ‘Boomer’ generation I caught measles like everyone else I knew. It is true that when I was growing up measles, mumps and ‘German Measles’, nowadays called rubella, were considered to be childhood diseases that all children got at some point before they became a teenager. They’re just so infectious that it was almost impossible not to catch them.
The visible signs of measles are well known but what the disease does to our insides is less well known. It can attack the lungs leading to pneumonia, about one quarter of all measles cases lead to hospitalization, and it can also infect the nervous system leading to blindness, hearing loss and even brain swelling. Not just a childhood disease! (Credit: Verywell Health)
Personally, I came down with all three between first and fifth grades as did just about everyone I went to school with. Because measles is so infectious it seemed that there was no way to avoid it, so some parents did in fact treat the disease as if catching measles was just a part of growing up, like losing your baby teeth or learning how to go to the bathroom by yourself.
For a child to lose its baby teeth, also known as milk teeth, is just a part of growing up but catching measles or mumps or rubella shouldn’t be! (Credit: Alexandria Smiles)
It was never that cute or harmless. First and foremost, measles is viral infection that strikes many parts of the body, yes I know measles is best known for causing an itchy rash on the skin, but it propagates by infecting the respiratory system and then spreading to other victims in coughs and sneezes. About one out of every four children who develop measles wind up in the hospital with pneumonia.
The possible damage caused by measles can lead to a lifetime of disability. And it can be prevented by just getting a shot! (Credit: Carepoint Practice)
Worst still measles can also infect the nervous system leading to blindness or hearing loss. (I lost most of the hearing in my right ear because of either measles or mumps so don’t call them ‘childhood diseases’ to me.) Finally, between the pneumonia and the attacks on the nervous system measles kills about one or two out of every 1,000 people who contract the disease and remember those are almost always children. Throughout the 50s and 60s an average of about a thousand people died from measles every year here in the US.
I’ve has so many hearing tests in my life and the one illustrated above is pretty close to one of mine. Notice how the right ear is much lower than the left ear, just like mine!!! And my hearing loss was either due to measles or mumps! (Credit: UCHealth)
That’s why the development of the MMR vaccine, literally Measles, Mumps and Rubella, in 1963 was such a triumph of medical science. The vaccine accomplished much more than just saving every kid from being sick for a few weeks it saved thousands of lives and prevented many more disabilities that would last a lifetime. The campaign to get every child in America immunized with the MMR vaccine actually succeeded in officially eliminating measles in the US in the year 2000.
I was born just a little bit too early to get the MMR vaccine before I had already gotten Measles, Mumps and Rubella, but thanks to this vaccine those three ‘childhood diseases’ were virtually eliminated in this country. For a while anyway! (Credit: Cedars Sinai)You’d have to be blind not to see how the MMR vaccine, first approved in 1963, has brought about a tremendous improvement in disease control here in the US. (Credit: Our World in Data)
Unfortunately it didn’t stay that way. There were always a few people who decided not to get their children vaccinated whether out of laziness or lack of concern about their children or, worst reason of all, religion. Occasionally some of those children would travel to other countries where measles was still spreading. Those children would then catch the disease and bring it back into the US with them. Because of that for several decades the US continued to have a small number of measles cases that originated outside the country. Since 97-98% of the children here in the US were vaccinated however the population as a whole had ‘herd immunity’ and the disease was unable to spread.
The concept of ‘Herd Immunity’ is that if virtually everybody gets a vaccine rendering them immune to a disease, then even the stupid people who refuse to get vaccinated benefit because there aren’t enough people left unvaccinated for the disease to spread. (Credit: MD Anderson Cancer Center)
Unfortunately that was before the spread of the anti-vaccination campaign on the Internet, which if you think about it is sort of a disease isn’t it. Now there had always been people, some even in the scientific community, to whom the idea of purposefully injecting dead or weakened versions of serious disease into our bodies just makes no sense. I’ll even admit that I find it hard to accept that vaccines work, BUT THEY DO!!! Smallpox no longer exists because of vaccines, Polio is now very rare because of vaccines and if you look at the chart above of Measles cases in the US since 1919 it’s obvious that the MMR vaccine works.
The blind leading the blind, off of a cliff! The misinformation about vaccines has been around a long time despite all of the evidence that vaccines work! (Credit: Facebook)
But you can’t tell that to the conspiracy mongers who insist that vaccines cause autism, after all there was no such a thing as autism before the MMR vaccine was introduced. In fact autism has existed for centuries but doctors paid little attention to such developmental disorders because they had real diseases to fight like smallpox and polio and measles! It’s just a coincidence that Autism started to be properly diagnosed at about the same time that the MMR vaccine was introduced. Study after study has demonstrated that there is no link between autism and any vaccine. Still, “There is none so blind as those who will not see.” and our ignorant clown of a President has seen fit to install an anti-vaccination nut as the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is determined to find the cause of autism no matter how much he has to falsify the data to make it fit his prejudices.
In his latest appearance before congress our Secretary of Health and Human Services actually told senators that no one should listen to his opinion about vaccines! Isn’t that kinda, sorta his job! (Credit: PBS)
Thanks to the anti-vaccination campaigners this year, 2025, has seen the largest outbreak of measles in the US since 1990 when some 28,000 cases were reported, although remember that this year is less than one third over. It was in 1990 that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) began to recommend a second dose of the MMR vaccine be given to children at an age of four or five.
So far this year the state of Texas is the epicenter for the measles outbreak but over 25 states have now reported cases with a total of over 1,000 cases and three deaths so far! (Credit: Instagram)
This year the outbreak is greatest in the state of Texas where a large Mennonite community has for years resisted getting their children vaccinated for religious reasons. The number of confirmed cases in Texas is steadily climbing and is now near 1,000 while outbreaks in 25 other states are adding about another 500, virtually all cases in people who were not vaccinated. There have also been three deaths, all in people who were never vaccinated. Those numbers are as of April 22nd and that’s confirmed cases, health officials in Texas are confident that the real number of cases is two to three times as great.
Freedom is a wonderful thing but when you insist on the freedom to be stupid! Why would anybody want that!!!!! (Credit: The New York Times)
So here we are, fighting a disease that by all rights should have been eliminated from the US years ago, was officially eliminated thanks to the MMR vaccine. Only because of rumours, lies and distrust has this deadly disease been able to spread once again, striking those who are too young to understand the issues and ignorance that has made them sick.
It was in January of 1933 that Adolph Hitler first came to power as Chancellor of Germany. Almost immediately he began to reshape German culture according to his own racially based ideology. Of course that reshaping included both education and science, despite the fact that in the early 20th century German education and science were arguably the best in the world. Scientists like Einstein, Haber, Planck, Pauli, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, the brightest men in the world all taught in German universities.
Adolph Hitler’s first public appearance after being named as German Chancellor, 30 January 1933. (Credit: Nuremberg Municipal Museum)Albert Einstein arriving in America to stay as a result of Nazi treatment of Jews. (Credit: X)
The problem, as far as Hitler was concerned was that too many of Germany’s scientists were Jews, and Hitler was convinced that there was a fundamental difference between good, wholesome ‘German Science’ and what he called ‘Jewish Science’ or sometimes ‘Communist Science’. (Why so many people assume that, just because Karl Marx was born Jewish that communism is some kind of Jewish plot for world domination is beyond my understanding. There were plenty of non-Jewish communists and Marx regarded himself as an atheist.)
Karl Marx (r) was in fact Jewish, but his lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels (l) was baptised as a reformed Calvinist. In fact, very few famous Communists were Jewish! (Credit: Socialist Party Scotland)Once in power the Nazi moved quickly to segregate German Jews from the rest of German Society. It should be remembered that many of the measures the Nazi’s employed were based upon the Jim Crow laws against blacks here in the US. (Credit: AAIHS)
The Nazi removal of Jewish influence in education started almost immediately, Jews were not allowed to teach or attend public universities. As the laws oppressing German Jews grew in number and severity many Jews sought to leave Germany, and that included German scientists like Einstein, Pauli, Born, Wigner, Bethe and Szilard, I could go on and on. As the ‘land of freedom’ the United States was the destination of choice for most of these refugees.
One of the Jewish scientists who left Germany for the US was Max Born who received the Nobel Prise in Physics in the year I was born 1954. (Credit: Atomic Archive)
As World War 2 neared and Nazi military aggression became obvious Jews in other countries also began to join the migration westward to America. And it wasn’t only Jews who came to our country, many Christian scientists who objected to the loss of intellectual freedom, who refused to allow political hacks to tell them what to teach and what research to conduct also left Europe build a new life in America. The best known among these would be Enrico Fermi who led the program that built the world’s first nuclear reactor, but there were others. The benefit that the US and the Allied cause in general gained from these men during WW2 cannot be overestimated.
Enrico Fermi (r) and his family. Enrico was like most Italians a Catholic but his wife Laura (l) was Jewish. This picture is of their arrival in New York. Hundreds of such brilliant people left Europe for the US because of Nazi racial policies. (Credit: The Fermi Effect)
In all thousands of scientists and engineers, and many artists and musicians as well, fled the old world for the new and the addition of their talents enabled the United States to dominate science and culture for the rest of the century. Ever since that time America has always welcomed the world’s brightest minds to come here and learn at our universities and perhaps even stay here and contribute to American science.
Everybody knows the story of Ben Frankin flying a kite to prove that lightning was electricity. Science has always been a part of American greatness in the past, but will it be in the future? (Credit: Skeptics Stack Exchange)
Not any more thanks to Trump. Just as Hitler did, Trump’s war on intellectualism is being conducted on several fronts. First of all Trump’s determination to get rid of as many immigrants as possible is not stopping at just those ‘illegals’ who snuck into our country without a visa or those who have overstayed the time limit on their visas. Immigrants from countries like Cuba and Venezuela, who were granted asylum status because we consider both governments to be dictatorships are now having that status revoked and are being deported.
So anxious is the Trump administration to remove as many immigrants as quickly as possible that the conditions those who are being detained have become a disgrace to our nation. (Credit: Politico)
It even goes further as foreign students, who are given ‘Green Cards’ so that they can study at American universities, and who bring a lot of money to those universities, are now being rounded up and deported if they dare to protest against any of the Trump administration’s policies. America is no longer a welcoming refuge for those seeking to escape tyranny and bring their talents to our country.
Apparently our 1st amendment right to free speech in this country doesn’t extend to legally admitted foreign students who speak out against Trump’s policies like Mahmoud Khalil did. (Credit: NBC News)
Even worse, Trump and his goons have begun the process of forcing scientists who work for the government to accept the administration’s ideological opinion instead of the facts as their research has shown them. In other words scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) can either parrot Trump’s lies about climate change or lose their jobs while physicians at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can either accept Robert Kennedy Jr.’s nonsense about vaccines causing autism or be fired. In fact Peter Marks, the scientist who oversaw the creation of the Covid-19 vaccines in record time, and who is thought to have saved an estimated three million lives, has been forced to resign rather than be a party to RFK Jr’s false science.
It’s not just foreigners who are being persecuted for telling the truth. World recognized vaccine expert Peter Marks was forced to resign from his post at the CDC because he refused to go along with Rober F. Kennedy Jr.’s idiotic beliefs. (Credit: NPR)
At the same time Trump has used federal funding for science as a weapon to force America’s leading universities to bow to his ideological whims. The University of Pennsylvania has lost over $100 million dollars in grant money because they used to have a trans-girl student on their girl’s swim team, and that student graduated several years ago. At Colombia University funds have been taken away on the grounds of campus ‘anti-Semitism’ because in 2024 there were massive protests called for a cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza. By the way many of the students at that peace protest were Jewish. Now Harvard and Princeton have also had research funds taken away from them.
Much of Republican anger over Trans rights began when a Trans girl named Lia Thomas who was a member of the University of Pennsylvania swim team won a national championship. The very idea that a boy would become a girl in order to ‘win’ at girl’s sports is simply ridiculous. (Credit: NBC News)
So far most of the funds that have been pulled are directed at medical research, vaccines and drug testing that much of the republican base regards as a conspiracy by ‘Big Pharma’. Harvard’s President, in a letter to his faculty has declared that the loss of these funds “Will halt life saving research.” It’s not just medical studies that are being affected however because it appears that at Princeton the funding being canceled deals with fusion energy and astrophysics research.
The Tokamak reactor at Princeton’s Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) is our nation’s leading research facility for Fusion Energy. It has been threatened with having its funding withdrawn because Princeton refuses to bow down to Trump’s whims. (Credit: The Daily Princetonian)
The loss of these research funds will be devastating to American science. Johns Hopkins University, one of the first institutes of learning to be attacked by Trump is planning on laying off 2,000 staff members. While other schools have not yet announced how many faculty members they may lose all of them are cutting back on the hiring of new researchers, that means graduate students! So this country’s best and brightest young minds will not be able to continue their education here and all of the discoveries and inventions they may have generated will be lost to our country.
Johns Hopkins University has had to lay off 2,000 medical researchers because of Trump’s retribution. How will this affect the search for new treatments for diseases remains to be seen but those 2,000 scientists now have to find another job, maybe in another country? (Credit: CNN)
As the United States becomes ever more hostile toward science other countries are already looking to increase their own talent pool by luring American scientists to their country. In a recent survey by the British journal Nature over 70% of the American scientists who responded indicated that they were considering leaving the US to continue their work abroad. As you might imagine those scientists who were at the beginning of their careers were the most interested in emigrating.
Much of the science being done at America’s universities is done by graduate students and much of the Trump layoffs are hitting those same grad students. How many will leave the US to seek jobs in other countries taking their talents with them? (Credit: American Society for Biochemistry)
While Canada currently seems to be the destination of choice for American scientists other nations like France, the UK and Japan are not far behind. The German media outlet Deutsch Welle even jokingly published an article entitled ‘Dear US Researchers, Welcome to Germany’.
The European Union as a whole is trying to lure American scientists to move there. That’s a brain drain similar to what happened to Europe in the 1930s and its being caused by the same sort of stupidity! (Credit: Courthouse New Service)
So will US scientists flee to other countries in a modern reversal of the way so many scientists came to America to escape the Nazi. Only time will tell. It’s worth remembering however that Trump’s most ardent supporters are a bunch of creationists, conspiracy mongers and anti-intellectuals who all want to control our educational system with the intent of fostering their own morals on the truth. No country can survive that sort of thing for long!
‘The Object’ by Author Joshua T. Calvert advertises itself as a ‘Hard Science Fiction’ novel, meaning that all of the technology in the story is based on well-established science. In stories of this kind spaceships are propelled by rockets not by warp drive or anti-gravity, there are no transporter beams and time travel is simply impossible. The problem with such stories is that they can become dated pretty quickly.
Cover Art for the Novel ‘The Object’ by Joshue T. Calvert. (Credit: Amazon)
For example Arthur C. Clarke’s first novel, ‘The Space Dreamers’ was written in 1947 and describes the development of a rocket designed to take men to the Moon using technology that was at least possible in the late 1940s. Needless to say the story soon became ‘quaint’ to put it nicely.
Quaint and old-fashioned can be a lot of fun on occasion but most of the time we prefer to live in the modern world. Science Fiction deals with possible futures, not comfortable pasts! (Credit: TouristBee)
Author Joshua T. Calvert goes even further, placing his story in the present day world of NASA, the International Space Station and even Space X gets a lot of mention. Today’s politics are also a part of the plot with tense relations between the US-EU bloc and the China-Russia bloc. The story even begins in the year 2023. The risk in this strategy is that things could change a lot in the next few years so that ‘The Object’ also rapidly becomes dated.
Much of the action, at least in the first half of ‘The Object’ actually takes place at the Johnson Manned Space Center in Houston. That makes it easy to add local colour to the story but if NASA ever changes the name or moves the facility the whole novel becomes simply wrong. (Credit: Texas State Historical Society)
As the novel begins Melody ‘Mel’ Adams is a scientist working for NASA keeping a watch out for asteroids and comets. Mel was in line for an astronaut post but she just missed the cut, her current position at least keeps her a part of the space agency. During an observing run Mel discovers a comet with a developed tail out beyond the orbit of Pluto. The problem with identifying the thing as a comet is that comets don’t develop their tails until they get close enough to the Sun to warm up and begin outgassing.
Author Joshua T. Calvert. (Credit: Podium Entertainment)
The object’s orbit is soon calculated and indicates that, whatever it is it comes from outside the solar system. When the object, which is given the name Serenity, then makes at stop at the planet Saturn and then changes course heading toward the inner planets the possibility that it is an alien spaceship is taken seriously.
As you read ‘The Object’ you get a strong feeling that the story was inspired by the recent discovery of the interstellar object called Oumuamua and the speculation that it could be an interstellar probe build to study our solar system. (Credit: King 5 News)
Serenity’s new trajectory doesn’t have it headed toward Earth however. In fact the closest it will come to our planet is the orbit of Mars so a special mission, using a modified Space X Starship is set up to take a crew of six, two Americans, two Europeans and two Chinese, to rendezvous with the object as it intersects Mar’s orbit. The training and preparation for this mission take up a large part of the novel and it is during training that an injury to the assigned mission commander causes Mel Adams to become the ship’s commander.
As the largest rocket ever build it’s Space X’s ‘Starship’ that author Calvert uses as the vehicle that travels to rendezvous with ‘The Object’. (Credit: Aerospace American AIAA)
I won’t give away the secret of just what Serenity turns out to be but it certainly is different from just a spaceship with an alien crew aboard. That’s the best part of ‘The Object’, Serenity itself. It’s here that the author finally let’s his imagination go, the problem is it takes so long to get there.
In some ways ‘The Object’ itself resembles ‘The Black Cloud’ from the novel by Fred Hoyle. Hoyle’s novel, written in the 1950s is pretty dated now, but still worth reading!!! (Credit: Amazon)
I’m not saying that the first three quarters of “The Object’ are bad, it’s just that they are so filled with minutia that I often lost track of the story, a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Author Calvert has obviously spent years learning all of the details of how NASA handles a space mission, of what working for NASA is like and wants to include every one of them.
In engineering the smallest detail can have immense importance. In a novel not so much! (Credit: Love Changes Everything)
So I am giving ‘The Object’ a thumb’s up, especially if you are interested in how NASA organizes a space mission, how the space agency selects and trains its astronauts. For me however I would have preferred to have the first two-thirds of the novel cut in half and the last third doubled in size.
The popular concept of a caveman, you know, an ignorant brute who carried a club and who solved every problem by hitting something with it has been around now since the first Neanderthal skeletons were discovered back in 1856. The more we learn about our Stone Age ancestors however the less brutish and ignorant they appear. In this post I’ll be discussing a couple of recent discoveries that add further evidence showing just how intelligent ‘Cave Men’ could be. As usual I will begin with the oldest study and go forward in time.
Neanderthal 1, the type specimen of the species is a skull cap that clearly shows the strong brow ridges above the eyes, a classic characteristic of Neanderthals. (Credit: Eunostos)
Just when did we humans begin to make tools, whether they be made from stone, wood or bone doesn’t matter, is a very controversial subject. The fact that even our relatives the chimpanzees use several different kinds of tolls indicates that our ancestors might have been using tools as long ago as five million years or more. Of course, using tools is a very different thing from making tools.
Chimpanzees have been known to pick up a stone and use it to break open a nut or similar food item. That’s a lot different from making stone tools however. (Credit: The New York Times)Eventually however, our ancestors learned how to manufacture a wide variety of stone tools. (Credit: Pinterest)
Picking up a rock to smash open a walnut takes a lot less thought than shaping that rock to have both an easy handgrip and a flat surface to crush the shell without damaging the nut inside. At the same time however, it is often difficult for an archaeologist to look at a rock today and tell whether it had been modified to become a tool a million or more years ago.
Is this a stone tool or just a stone? Sometimes even an expert has difficulty telling the difference. (Credit: The Guardian)
Now a paper published in the journal Nature has provided evidence that not only were humans making tools one and a half million years ago but that they were manufacturing tools at ‘factory’ sites according to a ‘standardized’ design. The site in question is at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania the famous place where Louis Leakey discovered what is still considered to be the oldest species in our genus, Homo habilis.
Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. It was here in the 1950s and 60s that the first evidence for our earliest human ancestor Homo habilis was unearthed. (Credit: Britannica)
What the researchers from CNRS and the l’Université de Bordeaux discovered at Olduvai were 27 tools made from both the bones of hippopotamus’ and elephants all of which had been modified in a similar ‘standardized’ way. Prior to the discovery at Olduvai the earliest known ‘manufacturing site’ for tools was dated at just a half a million years old so the finds indicate that humans were capable of organizing and planning complex tasks far earlier than had previously been known.
Some of the bone tools found at Olduvai Gorge. (Credit: ScienceDirect.com)
And once our ancestors began to ‘manufacture’ goods in quantity at specific sites they then had to transport those goods to where they used them. One problem modern archaeologists have in trying to understand early transportation technology is that any ancient vehicle would have been composed of wood, wood that usually has decayed away a long time ago.
Everybody knows about the stone circles of the British Isles like Stonehenge but few people know that those ancient Britons also made a large number of wooden circles as well. The problem is that the wood has decayed over the centuries and the only evidence we have of the wooden circles are the post holes left in the ground. (Credit: Wikipedia)
A new discovery in the desert of White Sands, New Mexico however had shown that even without the vehicles themselves we can still learn a lot about the ways that our ancestors transported their goods thousands of years ago. Drag marks in the same sediment as, and intermingling with human footprints have been unearthed in 20,000-year-old dried mud. The drag marks are of two kinds, either a single line furrow with footprints on both sides or two lines in parallel with footprints usually inside the lines.
A section of the ‘fossilized’ track marks made nearly 20,000 years in White Sands National Park. (Credit: Sacramento Bee)
The researchers from Bournemouth University in the UK who discovered the tracks think that the lines were made by a type of unwheeled vehicle known as a travois, basically wooden poles tied together to form a ‘Y’ shape, the single line, or ‘X’ shape, the parallel lines. The goods that were to be carried were then secured on top of the poles and the whole vehicle dragged along the ground. For a culture that hasn’t invented the wheel yet that’s about as good a transportation technology as you can get.
The track marks made at White Sands came from two different types of vehicles. The single line was made by a ‘Y’ shaped wooden vehicle (top) while the parallel tracks were made by an ‘X’ shaped wooden contrivance (bottom). (Credit: Archaeology News)
Alongside the footprints of the adults who were presumed to be dragging the travois the archaeologists found the footprints of children indicating that these were entire family groups on the move. Some of the drag marks are as long as 50m and the fact that there were no animal footprints indicates that the travois were in use before the people of North America had domesticated animals. Thousands of years later the people of North America were known to use dogs to drag their travois. Even back in the Stone Age our ancestors were thinking, trying different techniques in order to make their lives better. They passed that wisdom on to their descendants, who in the long run passed it on to us.
Some of the footprints made at White Sands thousands of years ago. In the middle picture you can see how there are two different sizes of prints indicating that children walked along with their parents, just like we do today! (Credit: National Park Service)
We are all aware of how important the stock market is to our nation’s economy as a whole. At the same time we all have some notion of the markets as being those places where ‘shares’ in the big corporations that make up so much of the economy are bought and sold. Few of us however have more than vague idea of many of the various terms that get mentioned every time the stock market is discussed. Often, the many terms that economists and financial experts use seems like words from a foreign language.
Economists and Market Analysts have their own special language and if you want to understand what’s happening in our economy you need at least some familiarity with the terms they use! (Credit: Investments IQ)
So, in this post I’m going to try to explain some of those terms in simple enough language so that hopefully those of you out there who aren’t finance types can understand the ups and downs and ins and outs of the market. I think I’ll start with an example that’s easy to understand, a privately owned small business.
The majority of our economy still consists of small, privately owned businesses. However small shops and markets like this one can get swamped by economic downturns caused by the big corporations. (Credit: Common Edge)
Consider a barbershop or beauty shop, such a small business is almost certainly owned by a single person, the head barber or beautician. Now the shop may have a few employees as well, but they get paid a flat salary. Whatever profits the business makes go to the owner alone, along with all of the losses if there are any. Now owning a small business is complicated enough, usually the owner had to take out a bank loan to start the business, and there are always things like insurance, legal permits and so on. However, a small business, owned by a single person at least doesn’t have to worry about the price of any stock in that business.
Mitt Romney got into trouble but stating that “Corporations are people too!”, but it is true that corporations do have many of the same legal rights that you and I have! (Credit: Investopedia)
That’s a small business; a larger business or company may decide to register itself as a ‘Corporation’, which strictly speaking can be any group that is legally allowed to act as a single entity. In business terms when a group of people called ‘Investors’ come together to form a company they will incorporate that company. If the investors each contribute equally to the formation of the corporation then they will each receive an equal share of whatever profits the corporation makes.
Small corporations can register as ‘S’ corporations while larger firms prefer to register as ‘C’ corporations. (Credit: The Motley Fool)
Oftentimes however the investors do not contribute equally to the new corporation. In that case the corporation may issue ‘Stocks’ that represent a certain share of the total value of the company. For example if the corporation issues 100 shares of stock then each share of the stock is worth 1% of the total value of the company and each share will receive 1% of the profit. (Usually a corporation issues a lot more shares of stock than that, often millions of shares.) The investors now become ‘Shareholders’ with each receiving a number of shares proportional to their investment.
The most often traded type of corporate stock is known as common stock. Buying a share of common stock is actually buying a portion of the company that issued the stock. (Credit: Investopedia)
Now the whole purpose of forming a corporation of course is to make money, and the total sum of all of the money that a company makes is formally called its ‘Revenue’. ‘Expenses’, on the other hand are the costs that any company must pay in order to do business, expenses include but are not limited to paying employees, purchasing materials, paying for utilities like electricity and water, rent for buildings or building maintenance.
Pretty much says it all. Whatever money a company makes minus the costs of doing business is the profit that shareholders receive, if there is any profit. (Credit: Britannica)
Revenue minus expenses is the ‘Profit’ that company makes, unless of course expenses are larger than revenue in which case the company has suffered a ‘Loss’. Whatever profit a company makes is then divided amongst the shareholders on an equal basis for every share, this is known as either a ‘Dividend’ or “Earnings per Share’ (EPS). Dividends can be issued by a company on an annual, semi-annual, quarterly or even monthly basis. Which depends on the company.
Investors can sometimes arrange for their share of the profits, their dividends to get paid in more shares of the company’s stock! (Credit: Investopedia)
Obviously, the value of a share of stock depends greatly on the size of the dividend the company pays for each share of its stock, everything else being equal a stock that pays a dividend of $10 per share per year is worth ten times more than a stock that pays a dividend of $1 per share per year. Another important quantity that financial experts often use is known as the ‘Price per Earnings Ratio’ or P/E. This is simply the price of a single share of stock divided by the total dividends earned by that share over a year. What P/E works out to be then is the number of years you would have to own a share of that stock in order for its dividends to cover the cost of having bought the stock in the first place. Obviously the lower the P/E of a stock the less time it takes for the dividends to pay for the stock and therefore the more valuable the stock is.
When you are looking to buy a stock, you want the P/E ratio to be small so that you get big earnings for the price you paid for the stock! (Credit: The Motley Fool)
O’k, so now let’s say that one of the stockholders in a company wants to sell their stock, or someone who is not a stockholder in a company wants to become one. We all know that the buying and selling of shares of stock has become an enormous business in itself and takes place at ‘Stock Markets’ or ‘Stock Exchanges’. The oldest stock market in the Unites States is actually the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, which first began trading in 1790 but of course the largest exchange in the entire world is the New York Stock Exchange, which first began trading in 1792 and which today lists 2,132 companies whose stock can be bought or sold there.
The New York Stock Exchange in all its glory. Time is money so the buying and selling of stocks is carried out at a frantic pace. (Credit: Bloomberg.com)
As in any marketplace the prices of stocks at an exchange can go up or down depending on supply and demand. I said above that the size of a stock’s dividend is the primary thing that determines a stock’s price but investors can also speculate that in the future a company is going to do better, or worse and that speculation can drive a stock’s price up or down, as can opinions about the overall health of the US economy.
An increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) means that the economic health of the country is good. In these times you would expect stock prices to rise as investors try to profit from the increase in overall wealth. (Credit: Statista)
Once a company’s stock is listed on an exchange is becomes possible to calculate the total value of that company, a quantity known as ‘Market Capitalization’ or Market Cap. Market Cap is simply the current price of a share or the company’s stock multiplied by the total number of shares the company has issued. For example assume a company has issued 100 million shares of stock and at the end of a trading session the price per share is $10, in that case the total value of that company is considered to be $1 billion dollars.
Companies come in all sizes so Wall Street has invented names that relate to a firm’s Market Cap. (Credit: The Motley Fool)
Now with over two thousand of our country’s biggest companies being traded every day the performance of the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE, is an important measure of just how the United States economy is doing as a whole. The problem is that measuring the daily performance of over 2,000 stocks, some of which will go up and some of which will go down is not an easy thing to calculate, especially back in the days before electronic computers. That’s why a number of different ‘Averages’ were developed, the best known of which is the ‘Dow Jones Industrial Average’ or simply the Dow. Begun in 1896 the Dow is an average of the stock value of thirty of the biggest companies in the US, known as Dow components, but spread over number of different industries. In other words the Dow is not just the 30 biggest companies, it’s the biggest financial services companies like J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sacks along with the biggest retailers like Walmart and Amazon plus the biggest information services like Apple and IBM. By spreading its components over different industries the Dow became a quick peak at the entire US economy and since it only had 30 companies it could be calculated on a daily basis.
The three main indexes for understanding the health of the financial markets as a whole are the Dow Jones, The S&P 500, and the NASDAQ. (Credit: The Motley Fool)
With the advent of modern computers it has become possible to calculate the Dow average almost instantaneously, and there are now other averages as well including the ‘Standard and Poor’s 500’ S&P 500 which is the 500 biggest companies in the NYSE along with the NASDAQ 100 which is the 100 biggest companies on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In fact our new ability to monitor thousands of stocks moment by moment has only increased the volatility of stock prices allowing speculators to drive prices up or down so that they can make a quick profit.
At stock exchanges nowadays there are more computers than traders as keeping up with stock prices is something only a computer can handle. (Credit: Investopedia)
There has always been an aspect of gambling to any commodities market, including the stock market. There are always investors who think they have some inside information that allows them to pick short-term winners and losers causing market fluctuations that can hurt the long-term strength of an economy. Maybe it’s just my opinion but while investing in stocks is good for the economy, it does enable companies to secure the money they need to grow after all, turning the markets into casinos with winners and losers is not in anybody’s interest.
Compare this image of a casino floor to that of the stock exchange above. As far as I’m concerned the gambling aspect of stock markets hurts our economy. (Credit: Century Casinos)
And I think I’ll let it go at that. If there’s anyone who thinks I made this brief outline of what the many terms associated with the stock market mean either too simple, or too complicated well I tried my best. Hopefully a few people out there learned something, and that was my intent.
On Tuesday the 18th of March a Space X Dragon capsule returned to Earth carrying the four Crew 9 astronauts completing their mission at the International Space Station (ISS). Those astronauts had two days earlier been relieved at the ISS by four Crew 10 astronauts who will now crew the station until at least July.
When the Crew 9 astronauts, including the Starliner crew, splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico their welcoming committee included a pod of Dolphins! (Credit: Space.com)
In many ways the splashdown of the Dragon capsule in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida represented just another routine crew transfer for Space X. The long saga of Crew 9 however was anything but routine, for two of the astronauts returning to Earth were originally the crew of Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission to the ISS. The Starliner crew only became a part of Crew 9 when NASA decided they did not trust Starliner to safely bring them back home.
The Starliner Crew of Suni Williams (l) and Butch Wilmore (r) got to spend a lot more time in space then they had originally expected. (Credit: Newsweek)
It’s a long story that I’ve already discussed in several past posts, see my posts of 20 July 2024 and 31 August 2024. In brief astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were assigned by NASA as the test pilots for Boeing’s Starliner capsule which was intended to both compliment and compete with Space X’s Dragon capsule in transferring astronauts to and from the ISS. After many years of technical problems and delay the Crew Flight Test (CFT) was finally launched on the fifth of June 2024 and reached the ISS after more problems while in orbit.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule docked at the ISS. Turns out that the crew completely lost control of the spacecraft for several seconds just prior to docking, a very dangerous turn of events that could have caused a real disaster! (Credit: Spaceflight Now)
Astronauts Williams and Wilmore were only supposed to remain on the ISS for eight days but NASA engineers spent more than a month trying to understand and fix the problems with Starliner’s thrusters. In the end it was decided that Starliner was too untrustworthy to risk returning from orbit with astronauts aboard so the Starliner capsule was brought back unmanned.
In the end NASA ordered that Starliner be returned to Earth unmanned. It turned out to be the most successful part of the mission. (Credit: HamletHub)
A special rescue mission using a Space X Dragon capsule was considered but in the end NASA decided to send the next scheduled crew transfer mission, Crew 9, with only two rather than the usual four astronauts. Williams and Wilmore then became the other two Crew 9 astronauts and would return to Earth when Crew 9 was relieved by Crew 10. In all, the eight-day mission for Williams and Wilmore turned into a nine month mission.
The Starliner crew, in blue uniform, with the regular crew of the ISS with whom they’d spend the next nine months. (Credit: Spaceflight Now)
So with Williams and Wilmore now safely back on Terra Firma the question for NASA is, what to do with Starliner. Boeing has yet to demonstrate that the eight billion dollar capsule can complete a mission without problems. To make matters worse for Boeing the ISS is scheduled to be de-orbited in five years so there are a maximum of about eleven regular crew transfer missions left for Starliner to take part in.
NASA has hired Space X to modify one of their Dragon capsules as a re-entry module to bring the ISS down into the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 2030. That re-entry would be something to see! (Credit: YouTube)
Currently NASA is considering their options. At a briefing on March 9th, shortly before the launch of Crew 10, it was announced that Boeing and the space agency were “making good progress” and had resolved 70% of the issues that Starliner had developed during its CFT. If that is so it seems that another CFT is unlikely to be carried out before this time next year and even if everything in that test goes smoothly a regular crew transfer mission can hardly be set up before early 2027.
In addition to Space X’s successful Dragon capsule Boeing is going to have to compete with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane. (Credit: Popular Mechanics)
There are even rumours coming from Boeing that the aerospace corporation might be considering giving up on Starliner. After all there is now little chance that Boeing can recoup the losses that they have incurred due to Starliner on a few missions to the ISS before it is de-orbited. Add to that the damage to Boeing’s reputation if there are any further problems with Starliner. At the same time however there are plans in the works for several commercial space stations to replace the ISS and Boeing would certainly like to use Starliner to secure a portion of the business of taking astronauts back and forth to them.
There are a lot of commercial space stations currently on the drawing board. How much of the business of keeping them manned and supplied Boeing’s Starliner will get is very much up in the air! (Credit: Universe Space Tech)
A few paragraphs above I mentioned that the current plan for the ISS is to de-orbit the aging space station in or around 2030. Space X has already been awarded the contract to modify the cargo version of their Dragon capsule to provide the necessary power to bring the ISS down for a landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On February 21st however Space X’s CEO Elon Musk announced that in his opinion that the ISS should be brought down “as soon as possible”, within two years if not sooner. Musk’s claims that the ISS has served its purpose and is now taking money and resources away from his chief goal of reaching Mars. Musk has even argued that NASA should forget about the Artemis program’s goal of returning astronauts to the surface of the Moon, again with the intent of getting to Mars as quickly as possible.
This is what Space X has really been aiming at all along, the colonization of Mars. Will NASA cancel its Artemis Lunar Program and endorse this vision? Only time will tell. (Credit: Human Mars)
NASA’s new director Jared Isaacman, who has ridden into space twice via commercial flights onboard Space X’s Dragon, also feels that the space agency needs to concentrate on a long term goal of Reaching Mars. Meanwhile Trump has publicly stated that although the idea of missions to the red planet “are of interest” they are not currently “a top priority”. Once again we see the possibility of a political change in Washington upending all of NASA’s long term goals, resulting in a waste of money, resources and worst of all time.
During the ‘W’ Bush Administration NASA began the ‘Constellation’ program for returning the US to the Moon. The whole thing got canceled by Obama after several billion dollars had been spent. Changing to a Mars mission now would waste even more money. (Credit: Spaceflight History)
And to top it off Space X has conducted another private space mission designated as Fram2. That mission was funded by Chun Wang a Chinese born cryptocurrency billionaire and the crew consisted of three of his friends, Eric Phillips of Australia, Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway and Rabea Rogge of Germany. This latest billionaire joyride was distinguished by its planned orbital path, which will for the first time take astronauts over Earth’s polar regions. The mission launched on the first of April and successfully splashed down on the April fourth.
Launch of the Space X Fram2 Private space mission. (Credit: The Space Report)
This post turned out to be entirely about manned space flight but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot going on with robotic space probes. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with them soon.
Over the past century it seems as though all of the big discoveries in Physics have come from either Relativity Theory or Quantum Mechanics. These two pillars of 20th century science are all about objects that are moving very, very fast, or are very, very small. Sometimes it seems as if the old Physics of Isaac Newton has little left to teach us, as if we’ve learned everything there is to know about the behaviour of objects in our everyday world. In this post however I’ll be discussing two recent studies that show how much we still have to learn from classical physics about the ways objects in our everyday life behave.
In Today’s World it is really necessary for everyone to have some understanding of the two Scientific Revolutions that shaped the 20th Century! (Credit: Amazon.com)
The first paper I’ll be discussing comes from researchers at the University of Rennes and the University of Lyon, both in France along with Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan who examined the different shapes and forms that knitted fabrics can take on after being stretched and pulled. Specifically, the team used a common jersey knit stitch known as stockinette, which consists of interlocking loops of threads, to knit a piece of fabric with 70×70 stitches. See figure below. This piece of fabric was then placed on a specifically designed tensile mechanism that allowed the researchers to stretch, pull and twist the piece of fabric in a wide variety of different directions and strengths.
Familiar to anyone who knits the Stockinette stitch is one of the most common methods of turning a thread into a piece of fabric. (Credit: Gathered)
Now we all know that knits that are really pulled and stretched never quite return to their original shape, they become deformed. What the researchers did however was to measure the degree of deformation that resulted in their piece of fabric depending on the amount of stretching given to the fabric. Each of the resulting shapes that the piece of fabric took on after stretching and twisting the team designated as a ‘metastable shape’ and they categorized the many metastable shapes generated during their testing.
Quantitative definitions established by the researchers to study the deformation of knitted fabrics. (Credit: CNRS Le Journal)
At the same time the team ran a series of computer simulations that replicated the actual experimental results. One thing the computer simulations allowed the researchers to do that they couldn’t do experimentally was to reduce and even completely eliminate the effect of friction between the stitches of their piece of fabric. What the team discovered in these simulations was that, in the absence of friction the piece of fabric always returned to its original shape, regardless of the amount of stretching and twisting. Without friction there were no matastable shapes.
Some of the Data obtained by the researchers showed the relaxed states of their fabric after stretching. (Credit: Crassous, Poincloux and Steinberger)
Perhaps the research conducted by the team in France and Japan will help manufacturers develop clothing that does not lose it shape after being worn or washed, perhaps not. At least however you now know that friction is to blame when your favourite sweater gets deformed.
Personally, I think all sweaters are misshapen. They feel so uncomfortable I just can’t wear them at all! (Credit: iStock)
Another study dealt with a twist on the familiar phenomenon of how two or more objects moving a fluid, water or air, actually reduce the force of friction on each other. We’ve all seen how a flock of geese will fly in a ‘V’ shaped pattern. Well that’s because the lead goose’s motion sets up an flow of air called a bow wave that reduces friction to the two geese on either side of it and slightly behind, reducing the amount of energy they have to expend in flying. This reduction in friction continues right down the line so that the flock forms a ‘V’ shape in order to reduce the amount of energy they expend in flying. In water dolphins will often swim close the bow of a ship to take advantage of the same phenomenon, and many species of schooling fish arrange themselves for the same reason.
Geese always fly in a “V” formation because the air currents generated by the bird in front actually makes flying easier for the bird behind them. The bird in front gets relieved on a regular basis. (Credit: Online Training Courses)
Obviously this doesn’t work in a solid medium because solid objects simply cannot move through a solid medium. What about a granular medium however, where each individual grain may be solid but where thousands, if not millions of tiny grains can still in many ways behave like a fluid.
In many ways the grains of sand in an hourglass behave more like a thick liquid than solid objects. (Credit: Amazon.com)
That’s what physicists at the University of Campinas in Brazil and the University of Paris-Saclay in France decided to study. The experimental setup the researchers employed consisted of a bed of glass beads, used in place of sand because of their uniformity, through which two steel balls called ‘intruders’ could be pulled in parallel. The researchers could vary both the distance between the intruders as well as their depth in the glass beads, riding the surface, just submerged or fully submerged etc.
During testing the steel balls were actually submerged in the sand but this is an image of the actual setup the scientists used to measure the effect of multiple objects moving through a granular media. (Credit: University of Paris-Saclay)
What the team discovered was that there was a significant reduction, nearly 30%, in the force of fiction on both balls when they were so close as to be almost touching. The cause of this reduction in friction the researchers attribute to the motion of one intruder breaking the force chains between the grains around the other intruder, and vice versa.
Just looking at all of the different shapes and sizes of sand grains it’s easy to understand where the friction caused by moving through sand comes from. (Credit: Vecteezy)
The researchers also believe that their findings may help to explain some well-known phenomenon in the natural world such as the digging of animal burrows and the growth of plant roots. In any case the results discovered by both teams of physicists clearly show that classical physics can still teach us a lot about the world around us.
