"Good Night, Moon"

Waxing crescent

6.5 days old

40.8 percent lit

February 28, 2020
By Hannah Knowles

Images (click here) of the night sky capture little more than a white dot zipping across gray static. Without the helpful green circle, it’s easy to miss.

But two astronomers soon recognized the speck on their screens as something special: a likely “mini-moon” caught orbiting the Earth, only the second ever recorded.

With close to 1 million known asteroids — rubble from the birth of our solar system — but hardly any spotted circling our planet, this roughly compact-car-size object is “a big deal,” tweeted Kacper Wierzchos, one of the people who made the discovery.

Astronomers expect mini-moon sightings to grow far more common as a new, giant telescope going up in Chile starts scanning the sky. It’s an exciting prospect for scientists interested in someday sending a spacecraft to study one of the rocks and maybe even bring it back to Earth....

The political climate of the United States of America has become deplorable. There is no right or wrong, there is only hatred and obstructionism. It has brought the worst possible reality, in that a serious virus is now part of the landscape of the USA because of leadership that is inept and destructive to government infrastructure.

For decades, there was a decorum in the federal government. It is officially under attack at the very least, but, more or less partisan. The new attitude of Trump's administration is a danger to the US Constitution and I do believe that is it's purpose.

I ran across a video of Louis Freeh in Moscow. He is civilized and brought a message to the Russian press that the USA is interested in ending the dangerous Russian gangs in the USA. It was not a secret meeting, it wasn't a handshake meeting, but, it was a meeting to let Russia know there were activities in the USA that were unwelcome. Louis Freeh's demeanor allowed him the freedom and safety to go to Moscow and build an understanding of what the USA intelligence community knew about activities of Russian citizens in the USA and what the USA intended to do to end the presence of these gangs.

The USA has lost that demeanor and is engaged in a relationship between Trump and Russia that strikes at the very heart of our democracy in tainted elections and power players that are other countries long considered our enemy.

The USA's nuclear capacity was known August 6th and 9th in 1945 over two cities in Japan. Four short years later, Russia let the world know there was a counter balance to the ravages of American power witnessed in Japan. It didn't take long and the USA had reason to worry about it's own military strength.

Russia became the world's second nuclear weapon state (click here) after it tested its first device at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan on 29 August 1949.

Today it is one of five recognized nuclear weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), a status which it inherited as the legal successor of the Soviet Union. The Cold War arms race also resulted in the Soviet Union accumulating a vast arsenal of strategic and non-strategic (also known as "tactical") nuclear weapons....

Trump wants to use nuclear weapons and his hesitation to renew the New START Treaty has less to do with reality so much as power.

...Similarly, (click here) some worried that Russia would seize on the treaty’s relaxed warhead-counting rules to significantly increase, rather than decrease, its number of deployed warheads. Instead, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. confirmed in May 2019 that Moscow has adhered to the treaty’s limits. Indeed, he warned that were the treaty to lapse, Russia could take advantage of the unused “upload” capacity of launchers to quickly increase its deployed warheads.

Yet it would be a mistake to view the costs and benefits of New START in isolation. Russia might be respecting the treaty’s provisions, but it has treated the rest of the international arms-control architecture with flagrant disregard. Moscow violated the INF treaty, leading to the U.S. withdrawal last year; similarly, it has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Open Skies Treaty and has long failed to implement the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe....

I and many others disagree that the New START Treaty should not be treated in isolation. It most certainly should. These weapons are unique in their power and place within their military use. There is  every reason to demand the New START Treaty to be renewed and extended.

The problem with this and over all preparedness of the USA to handle any and every emergency that the American people face, is the FACT that Trump has DISMANTLED the USA's infrastructure to attempt to say, "We don't need all this expense and there is no real need for taxes, except, maybe military preparedness." See, Trump is making friends with all the strong men in the world who are enemies to this country, our traditional allies and NATO. Trump is so sold on his own ability to bring about a world without danger of weapons of mass destruction that he will wager the new "limited nuclear weapon" now deployed in the world, will force all the strong men to bend to his will.

I don't know what kind of fool Donald John Trump is or if there is a classification for him, but, I do know he is a danger to this country TODAY. He has proven he is a danger and that his reduced federal infrastructure is an abject failure. There are people dead of a virus that should have never made it to USA shores. As a matter of fact, if he never placed tariffs on American agricultural goods to China, Covid-19 would never exist because the wildlife market would be unwanted by the Chinese and the virus would never have transferred to human beings and a lot of Chinese citizens would still be alive.

Trump is inept. He should have been removed from office with his current impeachment. If the Republicans didn't see all this coming than it speaks to their ineptness as well.

The USA's dignity is gone and the we need for a new president that actually cares about the USA's STATUS in this world.

There is a culture with every administrator, be it FBI or CIA or the Executive Branch and the idea the USA has to tolerate the free wheeling Trump culture that allows corruption as one of it's core values is outrageous and the Republicans can claim responsibility for the country's COMPROMISED reality!

February 26, 2020
By Kristen Pope

Standing four feet tall and weighing up to 100 pounds, (click here) emperor penguins are the largest penguin species in the world. They are also incredibly vulnerable to climate change.

A recent study published in Global Change Biology by Stephanie Jenouvrier, associate scientist and seabird ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and colleagues found that if humans are able to limit Earth’s temperature increase to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, there is hope emperor penguins will survive. But with “business as usual,” the charismatic penguins made famous for their starring role in the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins are almost certainly doomed....

The Chinstrap Penguins were believed to replace the Emperor Penguin in the climate crisis scenarios held by qualified Antarctica scientists. In the early 2000s these scientists were already measuring and preparing for the idea the Emperor Penguin would become extinct. They grappled with these issues because they care about the topic of their studies. So, to them the loss of the Emperor from Antarctica was the loss of an iconic bird in the coldest climate in the world. It was after all, their work. Their work would bring the honest and truthful news back to civilization and reaction would be to improve the emissions of greenhouse gases. Now, they wait for the crash of populations of birds that could be the foretelling of far worse episodes in other areas of Earth.

February 12, 2020
By Alan Taylor

Ueslei Marcelino, (click here) a photojournalist with Reuters, recently accompanied a team of scientists on an expedition to Antarctica, where they used drones and manual techniques to count various populations of chinstrap penguins. Reuters reports: “The number of chinstrap penguins in some colonies in Western Antarctica has fallen by as much as 77 percent since they were last surveyed in the 1970s, say scientists studying the impact of climate change on the remote region.” They also quote Steve Forrest, a conservation biologist: “The declines that we’ve seen are definitely dramatic. Something is happening to the fundamental building blocks of the food chain here. We’ve got less food abundance that’s driving these populations down lower and lower over time and the question is, is that going to continue?” Last week, an Argentinian base in Antarctica reported the highest temperature ever recorded on the continent: 64.94 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius).

The attitude of Trump is unprofessional and toxic.

He wants to take us back to Rodney King's beating. The demeanor and attitude of this president places people in danger. Those with the power to kill begin to rationalize their own reasons for killing that are illegal and self-serving. I don't want to hear about Abu Ghraib and how this happens all the time. Abu Ghraib was not Special Operations. And it is not supposed to happen all the time. (click here)

The Trump administration is steeped in disrespect and extremist views of government. His irresponsible lack of ethics trickles down to the other arms of the USA government. He is a horror and has been a horror the entire time as a candidate and president.

December 5, 2018
By Meghann Myers

This fall has been rough for headlines involving special operations troops. (click here)

Two Navy SEALs and two Marine Raiders face murder charges in the death of a Green Beret last year in Mali. Meanwhile, a Navy SEAL is under investigation for murdering an Iraqi detainee, and a dozen of his colleagues could be called as witnesses.

Now, after U.S. Special Operations Command has been entrenched in the Global War on Terror for going on two decades, Congress is calling on a Defense Department review of the entire organization, from its operational load to ― notably ― the state of its professionalism and ethics programs.

The most recent National Defense Authorization Act points to “growing congressional concern with misconduct, ethics, and professionalism," according to a Congressional Research Service report published in late October.

“That review is ongoing right now,” a defense official told Army Times on Wednesday.

Senior leaders within the Army have also taken notice, pushing out guidance ahead of DoD’s official report back to Congress....

This is not about a fascination with melting ice to promote tourism. It is about the heating of Earth that endangers life on this planet.

February 25, 2020
By Doyle Rice

A heat wave this month in Antarctica (click here) sent temperatures soaring into the mid- to high-60s across northern portions of the normally frigid continent.

Surprisingly, the warmth melted about 20% of an Antarctic island's snow in only nine days, according to newly released images from NASA, leaving behind ponds of melted water where the snow had been.

"I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica," said Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, in a statement. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.” 

Pelto said that during the heat wave, which peaked from Feb. 6 to 11, snowpack on Eagle Island melted 4 inches. This means that about 20% of seasonal snow in the region melted in this one event on Eagle Island, Pelto said....

Robert Mueller is and has always been above reproach when conducting any investigation.

His reputation is so much above reproach that no one could imagine a scenario where he could act against the USA Constitution and granted power to investigate the unthinkable, a rigged election for president of the USA.

December 12, 2017

...In response to a POLITICO Freedom of Information Act request, (click here) the agency released a one-sentence memo Friday confirming that Mueller was granted a conflict-of-interest waiver in order to assume the politically sensitive post....

AUTHORIZATION (click here)

Pursuant to 5 CFR 2635.502(d) (click here), I hereby authorize Robert Mueller's participation in the investigation into Russia's role in the presidential campaign of 2016, and all matters arising from the investigation.

That was signed by Scott Schools on May 18, 2017

(d) Authorization by agency designee. Where an employee's participation in a particular matter involving specific parties would not violate 18 U.S.C. 208(a), but would raise a question in the mind of a reasonable person about his impartiality, the agency designee may authorize the employee to participate in the matter based on a determination, made in light of all relevant circumstances, that the interest of the Government in the employee's participation outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the agency's programs and operations. Factors which may be taken into consideration include:

(1) The nature of the relationship involved;

(2) The effect that resolution of the matter would have upon the financial interests of the person involved in the relationship;

(3) The nature and importance of the employee's role in the matter, including the extent to which the employee is called upon to exercise discretion in the matter;

(4) The sensitivity of the matter;

(5) The difficulty of reassigning the matter to another employee; and

(6) Adjustments that may be made in the employee's duties that would reduce or eliminate the likelihood that a reasonable person would question the employee's impartiality.

Authorization by the agency designee shall be documented in writing at the agency designee's discretion or when requested by the employee. An employee who has been authorized to participate in a particular matter involving specific parties may not thereafter disqualify himself from participation in the matter on the basis of an appearance problem involving the same circumstances that have been considered by the agency designee.

Antarctica is the coldest place on earth. (click here) It is also the windiest, driest, and highest continent.

The South Pole is not the coldest place in Antarctica.

The coldest temperature recorded in Antarctica was -89.6°C at Vostok station in 1983.

The average winter temperature at the South Pole is about -49°C. Your home freezer is only about -15°C. The wind chill factor means that it can feel much colder.

The lowest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was – 82.8°C on the 23 June 1982.

It is warmer on the coast. The warmest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 15°C on 5 June 1974 at Vanda station.

Warm water or air with temperatures this cold is like pointing a blow torch at the glaciers.

February 27, 2020

Inland Antarctic ice (click here) contains volumes of water that can raise global sea levels by several metres. A new study published in the journal Nature shows that glacier ice walls are vital for the climate, as they prevent rising ocean temperatures and melting glacier ice.

The ocean can store much more heat than the atmosphere. The deep sea around Antarctica stores thermal energy that is the equivalent of heating the air above the continent by 400 degrees.

Now, a Swedish-led international research group has explored the physics behind the ocean currents close to the floating glaciers that surround the Antarctic coast.

"Current measurements indicate an increase in melting, particularly near the coast in some parts of Antarctica and Greenland. These increases can likely be linked to the warm, salty ocean currents that circulate on the continental shelf, melting the ice from below," says Anna Wåhlin, lead author of the study and professor of oceanography at the University of Gothenburg.

"What we found here is a crucial feedback process: the ice shelves are their own best protection against warm water intrusions. If the ice thins, more oceanic heat comes in and melts the ice shelf, which becomes even thinner etc. It is worrying, as the ice shelves are already thinning because of global air and ocean warming," says Céline Heuzé, climate researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences of Gothenburg University....

Fmr FBI director testifies at Sept 11 commission (click here for 911 Commission Report - thank you)

Attorney Generals, FBI and CIA Directors report to the US Congress when it merits an understanding as to how wrongful acts against the American people could occur. The culture of the Trump Administration is one that encourages wrongful acts with so many of his associates jailed for crimes. There has never been an administration before Trump that has leveraged so much corruption within the ranks of government. The people missing from important roles in the government is endangering the country and it cannot continue.

Donald John Trump should have been removed from office.

Ice free waters in the circumpolar circulation around Antarctica is a clear sign of decline of the climate supporting Earth's ice caps.

Just because there are scientists taking advantage of ice free waters doesn't mean it is a good sign of Earth's ice caps. Scientists frequently exploit unusual episodes in time. An example of a measurement of air pollution and CO2 emissions occurred after September 11, 2001. There were measurements made of all kinds of emissions for the three days when no jets were flying after the terrorist attacks on New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC.

It is unfortunate scientists have to exploit ice free waters when they are the ones that have warned of it the entire time and went unheeded. These measures of the Thwaites Glacier were never supposed to be necessary.


20 February 2020
By Jeff Tollefsen

Taking advantage of rare ice-free waters in West Antarctica last February, (click here) scientists got their first look underneath Thwaites Glacier, a massive and increasingly unstable formation perched at the edge of the continent. What they saw only increased fears of a collapse that could raise global sea levels by more than half a metre. Data gathered by a robotic submarine deployed by scientists with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration suggest that warm water from the deep ocean is welling up from three directions and mixing underneath the ice.

“Thwaites has got these three guns pointed right at it,” says Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis and a co-leader of the five-year, US$50-million project to assess the glacier’s stability. “There is warm water coming from all directions.” She presented initial results from the first two years of the project this week at the American Geophysical Union’s ocean science meeting in San Diego, California.

The warm currents could further destabilize the glacier, which is as large as the island of Great Britain and holds enough ice to boost global sea levels by an estimated 65 centimetres (see 'A precarious position'). If it collapses, Thwaites could take other parts of the western Antarctic ice sheet with it and become the single largest driver of sea-level-rise this century....

The change in administration leading a far different national security focus was obvious.

January 5, 2017
By Phillip Rucker

Amb. Woolsey (click here) previously served in the United States Government on five different occasions, where he held Presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations, most recently (1993-95) as Director of Central Intelligence.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr., (click here) a veteran of four presidential administrations and one of the nation’s leading intelligence experts, resigned Thursday from President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team because of growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies.

Woolsey’s resignation as a Trump senior adviser comes amid frustrations over the incoming administration’s national security plans and Trump’s public comments undermining the intelligence community.

“Effective immediately, Ambassador Woolsey is no longer a Senior Advisor to President-Elect Trump or the Transition. He wishes the President-Elect and his Administration great success in their time in office,” Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for Woolsey, said in a statement.

Woolsey suggested in a pair of cable television interviews Thursday evening that he was only an informal adviser to Trump, with duties that included speaking to the journalists about Trump and his national security policies....

This year was a tipping point in Antarctica. Surface melting is noted where before glacier terminus was an indication of deterioration.

February 26, 2020
By Laura Tenenbaum

Boydell Glacier, (click here) Antarctica retreat in Landsat images from 2001 and 2017,  terminus in 2001 at red dots in 2017 at yellow dots. 

From February 5 through February 13, (click here) temperatures in Antarctica were about the same as in Los Angeles. Esperanza Base on the Antarctic Peninsula reached 65 degrees, the hottest ever recorded. But this hasn’t been the only heatwave in Antarctica this summer. There were major warming events in both November 2019 and January 2020. And sea surface temperatures in the area were also higher than average.

Not surprisingly, these sustained high temperatures, which were significantly above freezing, caused rapid melting. During all three of these warm spells, widespread melting occurred on nearby glaciers. About 0.9 square miles, which equates to about 20 percent of snowpack on Eagle Island, melted during the February event. Satellite images also detected widespread surface melting nearby on Boydell Glacier.

Until the 21st century, this type of persistent high temperature was unusual in Antarctica, but it has become more common in recent years....

Every administration has a culture.

"Fraud" Magazine
March/April 2014

This week, (click here) after nine years of trying, Freeh and some friends were finally hired as the "go-to investigators" for the scandal-plagued NCAA.

During Louis Freeh’s eight years as the FBI’s director, (click here) he received hundreds of awards, plaques and honors. None of them adorned his office walls at FBI headquarters. However, he eventually papered one entire wall next to his desk with drawings and sketches by his six sons. 

“I chose that wall so I could look at them during phone calls or meetings when I needed to keep my focus on reality and what, at the end of any Washington, D.C., day, is really important,” he writes in his 2005 book, “My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.”

“I promised myself when I became director that I wouldn’t be one of those D.C. types who would announce — usually when things were going south — that they were leaving government in order to spend more time with their family. I actually spent all the time I needed with them while director,” Freeh wrote.

When Freeh was FBI director, he sent a message to the bureau’s employees about the agency’s Core Values: 

• Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States.
• Respect for the dignity of all those we protect.
• Compassion.
• Fairness.
• Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity.
• Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences of our actions and decisions.

“We who enforce the law must not merely obey it,” he exhorted his people. “We have an obligation to set a moral example, which those whom we protect can follow.”

Freeh, by example, could have added a seventh core value: Keep all things in perspective. He has blended an impressive law enforcement career with raising a large family, which he’s worked to keep as his first priority....

Adademik Vernadsky Station NEVER belonged to Russia.

Until 1996 the Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky (click here) station belonged to the United Kingdom and was named Faraday station.

During the Graham Land Expedition (1934-1937) the British founded a scientific base on the Argentine Islands (Western Antarctica). As a permanent meteorological observatory, the base began to work on the Winter Island from 1947. In 1954 the station was moved to the Marina Point, Galindez Island.

From 1994 to February 1996, the process of transferring the station to Ukraine continued. This was British Government gesture of goodwill. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia declared itself to be its successor, and then, at the request of Ukraine to transfer within the framework of the distribution of assets of the former USSR one of the five operating at that time Antarctic stations gave a negative answer.

On November 21, 1994 “Vidrodzhennia” international fund allocated 12000 dollars for the project “Ukraine goes back to Antarctica”. On December 5, 1994 four Ukrainian experts – Yuri Oskret (station life support system), Dr. Gennady Milinevsky (scientific programs), Оleksandr Lushnivsky (communications service) and Volodymyr Georgiev (diesel stuff) have arrived to Faraday station and worked there till February 15, 1995....

February 28, 2020
By Lily Katzman

Earlier this month, (click here) Antarctica experienced record high temperatures, causing the southernmost continent’s ice caps to melt at an unprecedented rate. As a result, Eagle Island, a small island off Antarctica’s northwest tip, experienced peak melt; brown rock appeared from beneath the ice and several ponds of melt water accumulated at the center.

And with these unprecedented temperatures, the algae that normally thrive in freezing water and lie dormant across the continent’s snow and ice are now in full bloom and cover the Antarctic Peninsula with blood-red, flower-like spores.

On February 24, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine posted photos of the phenomenon to their Facebook page, showing ice around their Vernadsky Research Base—located on the Galindez Island off the coast of Antarctica’s northern Peninsula—covered in what researchers call “raspberry snow” or “watermelon snow”. This red-pigmented algae, also known as Chlamydomonas nivalis, has the potential to jumpstart a feedback loop of warming and melting, worrying scientists about the continued impact of climate change on this critical region....

It is a green algae regardless of it's color. It is like people, the color is different but the basic anatomy remains the same.

C. nivalis, contains a red pigment known as hematochrome, which sometimes imparts a red colour to melting snow.

...We studied temperature and light-dependence of photosynthesis, (click here) and plastid and extraplastid red pigment composition of red snow algae (Chlamydomonas nivalis) from snow patches in the high Alps of Austria. Both photosynthetic and respiratory data support the cryophilic adaptation of snow algal cells, but C. nivalis produced oxygen without any inhibition at temperatures up to 20°C and maintained this for 1 h, at irradiances up to 1800 µmol m−2s−1. Chlorophyll and primary carotenoid pigment composition was similar to that found in most other Chlorophyta....         

The disinformation campaign to bring down the Rule of Law started in Trump's first year.

December 3, 2017
by Jacqueline Thomsen

The head of FBI Agents Association (FBIAA) (click here) fired back at President Trump’s comments against the bureau on Sunday, saying any suggestion that agents aren’t dedicated to their jobs “is simply false.”

“Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats. Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution,” FBIAA head Thomas O’Connor said in a statement.

”This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world. FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false.”

Trump tweeted earlier Sunday that the FBI’s reputation was in “tatters” after being lead by former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May.

“After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” Trump tweeted....

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Tampa - April 15 2015 - Live - Just because it is that good!

It's Sunday Afternoon

Has sexy changed much? 

Official Website for Taylor Swift (click here)

Joan Jett - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2015 (click here for Hall of Fame page - thank you)

Joan Jett - Bad Reputation ( uncensored ) (click here for appearance and interview on David Letterman)

"Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (click here fpr official website thank you.)

I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
You're living in the past, it's a new generation
A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
Never said I wanted to improve my station
An' I'm only doin' good when I'm havin' fun
An' I don't have to please no one

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me

I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
I've never been afraid of any deviation
An' I don't really care if you think I'm strange
I ain't gonna change

An' I'm never gonna care 'bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me
Pedal, boys!

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
The world's in trouble, there's no communication
An' everyone can say what they wanna to say
It never gets better, anyway

So why should I care about a bad reputation anyway?
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me

I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation
You're living in the past, it's a new generation
An' I only feel good when I got no pain
An' that's how I'm gonna stay

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation
Oh no, not me, oh no, not me
Not me, not me