Jae Jung, Ph.D., Appointed as Chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute’s Department of Cancer Biology – Health Essentials from Cleveland…

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Jae Jung, Ph.D.

Cleveland Clinic has appointed Jae Jung, Ph.D., chair of Lerner Research Institutes Department of Cancer Biology. Jung will also serve as director of the new Center for Global and Emerging Pathogens Research, which will focus on public health threats ranging from the Zika virus to SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19).

Jung is an internationally renowned expert in virology and virus-induced cancers who has broken ground in the field of inflammation, immune-oncology and emerging pathogens.

As chair of Cancer Biology, he will lead the departments work in understanding the biological underpinnings of cancer ranging from genetic and molecular pathways to disease manifestation. The department is home to leaders in the field of several cancer research areas including prostate cancer, glioblastoma and stem cells. He will closely collaborate with cancer researchers across Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Clinic, including the new Center for Immunotherapy and Precision Immuno-Oncology.

Jungs cancer research focuses on virus-induced cancers, including Kaposis sarcoma, the most common tumor in patients with AIDS. For his work in this disease area, the National Cancer Institute awarded him the prestigious Outstanding Investigator Award in 2016.

Jung will also lead the Center for Global and Emerging Pathogens Research, which is focused on broadening understanding of emerging pathogens. The center spans Lerner Research Institute and the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Jae Jung is a brilliant and global leader in research into the deep and complex intersections between the immune system and cancer, said Serpil Erzurum, M.D., chair of Lerner Research Institute. His work has defined how viruses induce cancers, which make up to 25% of cancers in the world. It is quite fortuitous at this time that we have recruited a world-class scientist in cancer and virus research, propelling our teams in Cleveland and Florida forward in both of these significant areas.

Jung has several research projects related to coronaviruses, including vaccine and drug development and has developed one of the first preclinical models to study SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission to lead to development of a COVID-19 vaccine. His vaccine work utilizes nanoparticles that compel the coronavirus to use its own surface protein to produce antibodies that block viral infection. The hope is that this approach will have fewer side effects than other vaccines, especially among the older population that is particularly susceptible to COVID-19.

Jung and a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and clinicians in Ohio and Florida are collaborating to uncover the mechanisms of infectious agents and virus-induced cancers. He will lead virology, immunology and oncology researchers working to make laboratory discoveries about how pathogens spread and cause disease and will collaborate with Cleveland Clinics Center for Therapeutics Discovery. He recently received a $2.8 million grant from National Institutes of Health to develop a vaccine for a newly emerging tick-borne disease.

Jae Jung is a foremost authority in virus-related cancer and immunology who will build and grow our research programs to advance science and ultimately improve care for our patients, said Brian Bolwell, M.D., chairman of Taussig Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center. He will bring together a team of experts to better understand the complexities of these cancers and emerging pathogens to develop critically needed treatments and vaccines.

I am excited to collaborate with Cleveland Clinics experts in immunotherapy, oncology and infectious disease to advance our knowledge of immunologic medicine, said Jung. Cleveland Clinics robust clinical and research infrastructure in Cleveland as well as at the new Florida Research and Innovation Center will enable us to develop innovative and novel approaches for new therapeutics and vaccines and make them available to people around the world.

Jung joins Cleveland Clinic from the University of Southern California, where he was chair of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and director of the Institute of Emerging Pathogens and Immune Diseases. He earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of California, Davis. He completed post-doctoral training and was later promoted to professor at Harvard Medical School. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology.

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Jae Jung, Ph.D., Appointed as Chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute's Department of Cancer Biology - Health Essentials from Cleveland...

The UK and TCELS to jointly support COVID-19 research in Thailand – GOV.UK

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The UK Government, through the British Embassy Bangkok, and the Thailand Center of Excellence for Life Sciences (TCELS, under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation) have today agreed to share knowledge, technology, experience and business information, and to support the research in health and medicines.

TCELS CEO Dr. Nares Damrongchai signed a memorandum of understanding which states that the two organisations will give financial support to the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, to conduct 2 research projects: i) the implementation of RT-LAMP technology and genome evolution analysis for 2019-nCov; and ii) the development of a spatiotemporal surveillance platform with interactive user interface for real-time evaluation of the COVID-19 epidemic situation in Thailand.

The expected outputs of the projects are RT-LAMP emergency test kit for COVID-19 which have been tested and ready for mass production, and the surveillance platform for COVID-19 transmission monitoring that fits for the current situation in Thailand. The platform will be used to evaluate the disease control policy in real time, building Thailands preparedness should there be a new wave of transmission. Both projects will be conducted by researchers from the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit which is a collaboration between the UKs Oxford University and Thailands Mahidol University.

The MOU is the first one between the British Embassy Bangkok and TCELS which will lead to further collaborations on genomic studies. This is a significant step that builds on prior medical research collaborations that the UK and Thailand continue to have for many years with an aim to sustainably better the peoples livelihood and bring prosperity to both countries.

Brian Davidson, British Ambassador to Thailand, said:

The United Kingdom has been supporting middle-income countries through our Prosperity Fund Programmes to help them achieve sustainable and inclusive economic development. The Prosperity Funds Better Health Programme aims to improve the peoples health through partnership and collaborations with our partner countries. We are excited to be working with TCELS as a part of the global effort to fight against the pandemic that has disrupted the whole world. We hope the two research projects will help Thailand in its response to the coronavirus.

Dr. Nares Damrongchai, CEO of TCELS, said:

TCELS has the mission to support and groom Thailands research and innovation that entail health and medical products and services. We aim to build in Thailand the environment, infrastructure and human resources that will enable the international-standard health and medical innovations that are relevant. We also work with our network to ready our business and investment capacities to enter the medical hub industry. One of our approaches is to give financial support to health and medical research projects under TCELS. We would like to thank the UK Government and the British Embassy Bangkok for joining us in supporting important researches that respond to global challenges.

We will continue to work with the UK on the area of health and medical research. The next phase of our collaborations will be about developing the capacities of genetic counselors for medical genomics and precision medicines, for which we hope to be able to announce some good news in the near future.

Sarinplus Leelasaowapak (Jenny)Corporate Communications ManagerMobile : 097 123 9595e-mail: sarinplus@tcels.or.th

Songsang JatupornsathienCommunications ManagerMobile: 083 988 6766 e-mail: Songsang.Jatupornsathien@fco.gov.uk

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The UK and TCELS to jointly support COVID-19 research in Thailand - GOV.UK

Trump says ‘NASA was Closed & Dead’ before he took charge. That’s not true. – Space.com

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President Donald Trump took to Twitter today (Aug. 5) to announce that he brought NASA back from being "Closed & Dead."

In a tweet posted today, Trump said that he had resurrected the space agency. But the claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny: NASA has never closed since it was founded in 1958, and it has certainly never been "dead."

"NASA was Closed & Dead until I got it going again," Trump wrote in the tweet. "Now it is the most vibrant place of its kind on the Planet...And we have Space Force to go along with it. We have accomplished more than any Administration in first 3 1/2 years. Sorry, but it all doesnt happen with Sleepy Joe!"

Related: What is the United States Space Force?

Many on Twitter have been quick to point out the inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies in this tweet, which also includes a reference to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

One of the most obvious errors in Trump's statement is that NASA was "closed" or somehow inactive or "dead" before his administration. This is simply not the case, and it ignores a basic truth about big-ticket spaceflight projects:they require substantial timelines to come to life.

For example, NASA's move to embrace and grow commercial spaceflight took off during the administration of President George W. Bush, with the establishment of the Commercial Cargo Program in 2006. That program has been quite successful: Two different robotic resupply craft SpaceX's Cargo Drago capsule and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus vehicle now routinely fly uncrewed cargo missions to the space station for NASA.

The Commercial Crew Program got going in 2010 under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama (whom Biden served as vice president). Commercial Crew has nurtured the development of SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, which just wrapped up the company's first crewed mission, the Demo-2 test flight to the space station.

Many NASA robotic exploration efforts have been in the works for a long time as well. For instance, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launched last week, but research and development for the mission started much earlier.NASA launched an Announcement of Opportunity for researchers to pitch and develop the instruments and tools for the rover in September 2013.

Related: President Obama's space legacy: Mars, private spaceflight and more

The Obama administration also began development of the Orion crew capsule, which is set to be used for future moon-bound astronauts as part of NASA's current Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the moon again by 2024. That capsule will launch on NASA's massive Space Launch System, which also traces its roots to the Obama administration.

Before this, NASA's space shuttle program was pioneered under the Nixon administration. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed a bill authorizing $5.5 million to develop a space shuttle. This program continued on through presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The program officially ended in 2011.

Preceding this lengthy program, President John F. Kennedy initiated America's first achievements in human spaceflight, first with Project Mercury and subsequently the Gemini program and Apollo program, the last of which came to fruition under Nixon.

So, in short, stating that the Trump administration is solely responsible for progress being made in the space sector would directly contrast with the infrastructure, foundation and progress that has been achieved over the decades throughout a number of presidential administrations.

One bit Trump's tweet is based on facts, however: the U.S. Space Force was indeed created during the Trump administration. While the U.S. already had Air Force Space Command, which is integrated into the U.S. Air Force, the Space Force was officially established in December 2019.

President Trump has also sought to boost NASA's budget during his years in office. This past February, for example, the White House's federal budget request allocated NASA $25.2 billion, a 12% increase over the agency's 2020 funding (though it's unclear how much Congress will end up actually giving the space agency).

The final detail of the Trump tweet that has received scrutiny is the video attached to it, which shows SpaceX's Starship SN5 prototype vehicle completing a roughly 500-foot-high (150 meters) test hop in Boca Chica, Texas, yesterday (Aug. 4). Starship SN5 is a full-size prototype of SpaceX'sStarship spacecraft, which the company aims to use for future crewed missions to Mars.

Many were confused by the included video, which was tweeted by Chris Bergin of NASASpaceflight.com, because it showcases a private SpaceX effort, not NASA activity. NASA and SpaceX work together frequently SpaceX is even working with NASA to develop its Starship vehicle for future crewed lunar landings as part of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) program but this test flight was a SpaceX endeavor.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Trump says 'NASA was Closed & Dead' before he took charge. That's not true. - Space.com

E Ink demos a folding e-reader that can also take notes – Best gaming pro

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Final week, when Microsoft introduced that cloud gaming can be becoming a member of Xbox Recreation Cross Final on September 15th, many questions have been answered about the way forward for the service. Crucially, it additionally answered the query of what occurs to xCloud on iOS thanks Apple.

As Microsoft strikes in the direction of bringing this service to life, the corporate has closed the books on the preview of cloud gaming often known as xCloud. However beginning tomorrow, cloud gaming will likely be a part of Xbox Recreation Cross Beta app on Android.

Which means that in case you are utilizing that app and are additionally an Xbox Recreation Cross Final subscriber, it is possible for you to to entry the service forward of common availability beginning in September. Microsoft supplied the next assertion about this replace:

As we strategy the launch of cloud gaming with Xbox Recreation Cross Final on September 15, were coming into a restricted beta interval to make sure a easy transition of the cloud gaming expertise to the Xbox Recreation Cross app on Android. Present Xbox Recreation Cross (Beta) app customers will get the chance to check a subset of the accessible titles as we prepared the expertise for broader availability subsequent month. This restricted beta is vital to offering the very best expertise for members at launch and shouldnt be thought-about indicative of the ultimate expertise or library.

The purpose of this beta is to assist cloud gaming migrate to its remaining residence contained in the Xbox Recreation Cross app and this restricted beta check will assist the corporate uncover any final gremlins earlier than launch.

Contemplating that Microsoft has greater than 10 million Recreation Cross subscribers, various will likely be making an attempt out cloud gaming on Sept 15th and that is the trail to bringing that utility to life for these clients in a manner thats sustainable.

Whereas not the most important announcement, if you take a look at the Recreation Cross Beta app tomorrow, dont be stunned if you can begin streaming a couple of titles from the cloud.

Tagged with Cloud Gaming, Recreation Cross, Challenge Xcloud, Xbox

Tech specialist. Social media guru. Evil problem solver. Total writer. Web enthusiast. Internet nerd. Passionate gamer. Twitter buff.

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E Ink demos a folding e-reader that can also take notes - Best gaming pro

Construction for the South Port Connector begins on Monday – KGBT-TV

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Posted: Aug 10, 2020 / 03:43 PM CDT / Updated: Aug 10, 2020 / 03:43 PM CDT

Harlingen, Texas (KVEO)Construction for the South Port Connector Road is set to begin on Monday.

The $25.6 million project is aimed at improving urban traffic and access to the Port of Brownsville.

Brownsville Navigation District (BND), Cameron County, the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority (CCRMA), the Rio Grande Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization (RGVMPO) and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) contributed to the project.

The port connector is the first phase of CCRMAs larger State Highway 32 construction project, according to officials with the Port of Brownsville.

The Port of Brownsvilles steady growth in cargo movement and overall activity makes the south port connector road critical to the regions future success in domestic and international trade, said John Reed, BND Chairman. The excellent partnership forged with Cameron County, the CCRMA, RGVMPO and TxDOT contributes greatly to the success of this project.

The 1.9 mile long port connector road is set to connect Ostos Road inside the port with State Highway 4.

It will provide another entry and exit to and from the port and convenient access to commercial lanes at Veterans International Bridge.

Officials say it will also facilitate the flow of cargo and other goods related to the space industry from the port docks to the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica.

The projected date of completion is late 2021.

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Construction for the South Port Connector begins on Monday - KGBT-TV

One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free – The Atlantic

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Read: This isnt sustainable for working parents

While the parents in my life have been openly acknowledging the challenges of parenting during the pandemic, my child-free friends have for the first time been sharing that they are relieved they dont have children. Many of us have been quietly admitting to one another that a decision weve often been told wed regret or should be ashamed of doesnt seem like the worst decision in the world. These types of conversations have garnered renewed interest in recent weeks, and not just among my friends. An essay series in The Guardian, called Childfree, explores that decision, with reasoning that runs the gamut: not enough money, focusing on your own life, the climate crisis, being fine with being alone. The series wasnt pinned to life amid a pandemic, but it seems especially apt in this moment. The gap between parents and the child-free has also been evident on Twitter. In response to a harmless tweet from a parent about how non-parents have no idea how hard its been to parent during the pandemic, thousands of people chimed in with some version of: Yes, we dothats why we dont have kids.

That particular exchange has all the supercharged, often annoying characteristics of internet debate, but it highlights a long-standing tension. This is hardly the first moment that the idea of marriage and a baby as the primary path for women has come under scrutiny. Early feminists openly discussed the pressures of motherhood. Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique started with the problem that has no name, which was the unhappiness of married women stuck at home with children. She wrote, There is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her childrens mother, her husbands wife.

That has obviously changed. Nine years ago, Kate Bolicks Atlantic essay, which became her memoir about single life, Spinster, made waves. In it, she detailed all the ways that women were upending what society expected of them. She wrote, A childless single woman of a certain age is no longer automatically perceived as a barren spinster.

Friedan and Bolick were both generally speaking to the experiences of middle-class white women. For less privileged women and women of color, of course, becoming a parent has not always been framed as an empowering choice (single Black mothers, for example, are routinely demonized, not heralded, for exercising their choice). Still, I started thinking about these texts again as I reflected on what my friends with children were going through and how, despite our recognition of the oppressiveness of these expectations, they appeared unchanged.

The pandemic has only intensified the pressures that already existed for middle-class parents. Child-care costs were high, but they at least gave you some freedom to work; now families are raising children without the usual support. As schools and day-care centers reopen, they must address new safety concerns. For heterosexual parents, the bulk of the child care falls on the mother. The global health crisis has worsened this sexist division of labor, and the long-term effects could damage womens careers and, despite the best intentions, become a new norm.

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One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free - The Atlantic

Singularity Viewer

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Singularity Viewer is an exciting client for Second Life and OpenSim, which strives to combine the beloved look and feel of Viewer 1.23 with the latest and greatest of available technology, and to stay compatible with future Second Life changes and features.Singularity is an open-source project powered entirely by volunteer force and willpower! Singularity 1.8.9: Animesh, Bento, BoM, VMM and Experiences!! posted Apr 1, 2020, 6:09 PM by Liru Frs [ updated May 7, 2020, 1:56 AM]

This release is a colossal leap forward, and it comes with full support for Animesh, Bento, Bakes on Mesh, Viewer Managed Marketplace, HTTP Asset fetching, and

!

Since LL has turned off support for the old method of fetching assets. Liru, Shyotl, and two new additions to the team, Bittenbythedark and Router Gray, have worked really hard to restore OS X support to offer alongside 1.8.9 in an emergency mac release. Our emergency Mac release has support for everything mentioned here, and everything from previous releases, but certain random things may be buggy.

Graphics

We realize this release has been a long wait for those of you not on the alpha or test builds, and were working on infrastructure to deliver speedier updates in the future. In closing, the team would like to thank everyone credited above; Asriazh, Beware, Cheesy, Gooz, Kitty Barnett, MyBrains, Nomade Zhao, Sappa, Tazy, Testicular Slingshot, Torric, Yoshiko; everyone who tested the betas, alphas and test builds; Stashed.io for reducing our Windows build time; the Alchemy Viewer Team for sharing the infrastructure; everyone who supports us and you, for sticking around through this giant wall of text. Now get out there and enjoy the new release!

Yes, we have alpha builds; yes, they support bento. The link has been in the sidebar for so long.

Also, I apologize for not having posted this sooner. We plan to have more builds out soon.

There are plenty of features and fixes in these builds as well, and we'd love to have your feedback.

Our alpha builds are what become our release builds, so please don't be scared off by the title, they're usually more stable than our last release! (And if they're not, you better tell us before they become our release!)

Anyways, Happy New Year from the Singularity Team!

This past year has been a tumultuous one for our team, one of our developers passed away, another one left to pursue other interests, we were hampered in our ability to update and test the viewer by a lack of infrastructure and hardware issues.

It was not all bad, as we recently gained a new developer, miKa-Pyon, most of our hardware issues were resolved, and were working on improvements with renewed vigor.

Nevertheless, Singularity is constantly evolving, and as we move on to new technologies, we cannot retain support for older platforms. Our toolchain has been updated, we now use modern programming language features which require recent GCC and Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. Unfortunately, as part of this required toolchain update, some older platforms have become too burdensome if not impossible to support. On the upside, thanks to these newer language features we can write better code and get better performance for the viewer. Not only can we use modern C++, we are also able to share code and prebuilt libraries with our sister project, Alchemy Viewer, this is highly beneficial as the development workload is now halved between our two projects. Due to these updates, those compiling our project will find that we now make use of autobuild.While making 32-bit linux builds is very high on our agenda, it requires a large effort and did not make this deadline. We are currently in need of a Mac developer to help us get Singularity for macOS back on track and building again.

Now, on to the other changes (There are a lot of them):

Skin Changes:

Gemini now included as part of standard release. The default skin is still Dark, but this skin is a nice dark-themed alternative.

Weve recreated the skins package.

It now has Dark Green skin by SLB Wirefly.

Skin files have been cleaned up, resulting in a substantially smaller on-disk size. (Shyotl)

Translation Changes:

As usual, the French and Spanish translations were heavily updated as we evolved (Nomade Zhao, Damian Zhaoying)

The German translation is now being upkept by miKa!

Grid Compatibility Changes:

Latest inventory protocol (AISv3) support has been merged in to maintain future compatibility with the SecondLife grid. (Shyotl)

QtWebkit browser has been replaced with a Chromium variant.

SSL library has been updated and includes TLS 1.2 support.

SLVoice (vivox) has been updated to latest version

Serverside baking (sunshine) baking implementation has been updated. (Shyotl)

Avatar render info is now reported to the sim.

General New Features:

Added Mouselook IFF feature. Displays name under crosshair matching coloration of avatar on minimap (Input Prefs) (Alchemy)

Mouselook can now show position and health, if damage is on. (Input Prefs) (Alchemy)

Added the Region Tracker which allows monitoring of multiple regions in a single floater (Alchemy)

Hover height slider added to Quick Settings Panel popup (bottom right corner)

/hover command has been added. Supports values -2.0 through 2.0.

Folder links now support drag-and drop operations, as well as pasting.

Teleport and Look options have been added to Area Search.

Antispam supports filtering receipt of landmarks. (Adv. Chat->Antispam)

You can now edit descriptions and names of multiple objects selected in bulk. (Liru Frs)

A Cloud Setting option has been added to the Windlight Floater (Alchemy)

Edit Linked Parts display of impact has been improved.

You can now pan in and out with alt-shift + pgup/pgdn/e/c (ctrl-shift + pgup/pgdn/e/c in Linux)

You can now hide your own lookat beacon (System->Security & Privacy) (Alchemy)

Local Gesture Preview Feature:

Adds a dropdown option to gesture preview button to preview locally.

Chat done in gestures will be local, along with sounds and animations being played locally

General Interface Changes:

Drop Targets, like the ones in the autoresponse preferences now have a clear button. (Liru Frs)

Double-Click Autopilot is now offered in System Prefs->General.

Made the snapshot floater shorter by changing that radio group to a combo box~

Search All tab now behaves similar to modern Web search, as the original Search All page is no longer maintained by Linden Lab and no longer behaves properly.

Available Toolbar Button Changes:

Added Quit, Region Tracker

Autoreplace button now comes with a toggle to turn it on and off

Menu changes:

Help->Grid Status

Fake Away, Busy, and Away are now in World->Status

Option to sit on away added to World->Status (Alchemy)

World->Status->Autoresponse

Singularity->Resync Animations (alternative to /resync command)

New list right-click menu options:

Multiple avatars can be selected to invite to group.

Share, which lets you easily send an inventory item directly from your inventory to someone else or to a group of people.

Chat History (opens your chat log, if you have one with the selected person)

Radar is now more functional and optimized (Liru Frs, Mika Pyon)

You can now see avatar distance in alerts about their range (right click the radar, Alerts->"Include distance in alerts")

Fixed the rare spam of enter/leave messages

No more rate control, updates happen instantly as we get the messages.

Title now updates more appropriately

No longer spams chat on teleport (Sim Federal of Alchemy)

Improvements to friends list:

Search should now work right

Online Count should be more accurate.

When changing friend rights, only the checkboxes are locked, no longer the entire list.

Avatar Profile Changes:

Chat UI Changes:

IM Tabs can now be configured to show names in different formats (Adv. Chat->Chat UI)

Autoresponse Changes:

New UI setup in preferences

Autoresponse to muted changes

Option to send autoresponse only if away

Can now change autoresponse settings from World->Status->autoresponse

Add the option to block conferences from nonfriends exclusively (Communication prefs)

We fixed a long standing issue where some objects chatting would not get linked because we didnt see them in the world for whatever reason.

Clicking a [Friend] is Online notification will now open an IM with them (Liru Frs)

RLVa updates (Liru Frs)

Don't filter parts of words out just because they match a name under restraint

Escape potentially dirty strings before using them as regex in replace_all_regex

@shownametags support

Radar no longer hides when @shownames restricted, it just hides names

Radar will alert when @shownames restricted, but not when @shownametags restricted

Radar will not offer menu when @shownames or @shownametags restricted, and the IM and Profile buttons will disable.

When @shownames restricted, allow offering calling cards now.

Support RLV 2.9 features: @camunlock, @camavdist, @camzoommax, @camzoommin, @camdistmax, @camdistmin (Liru Frs)

IFF respects RLVa

@adjustheight now supports hover height instead of being deprecated (Kitty Barnett)

Performance, Stability, and Maintenance:

FMOD Ex has been updated to FMOD Studio. (Shyotl, Drake)

Build infrastructure has been migrated to autobuild. (Shyotl, Drake)

See the article here:

Singularity Viewer

Gravitational singularity – Wikipedia

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A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a location in spacetime where the gravitational field of a celestial body is predicted to become infinite by general relativity in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. The quantities used to measure gravitational field strength are the scalar invariant curvatures of spacetime, which includes a measure of the density of matter. Since such quantities become infinite at the singularity, the laws of normal spacetime break down.[1][2]

Gravitational singularities are mainly considered in the context of general relativity, where density apparently becomes infinite at the center of a black hole, and within astrophysics and cosmology as the earliest state of the universe during the Big Bang. Physicists are undecided whether the prediction of singularities means that they actually exist (or existed at the start of the Big Bang), or that current knowledge is insufficient to describe what happens at such extreme densities.

General relativity predicts that any object collapsing beyond a certain point (for stars this is the Schwarzschild radius) would form a black hole, inside which a singularity (covered by an event horizon) would be formed.[3] The PenroseHawking singularity theorems define a singularity to have geodesics that cannot be extended in a smooth manner.[4] The termination of such a geodesic is considered to be the singularity.

The initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, is also predicted by modern theories to have been a singularity.[5] In this case the universe did not collapse into a black hole, because currently-known calculations and density limits for gravitational collapse are usually based upon objects of relatively constant size, such as stars, and do not necessarily apply in the same way to rapidly expanding space such as the Big Bang. Neither general relativity nor quantum mechanics can currently describe the earliest moments of the Big Bang,[6] but in general, quantum mechanics does not permit particles to inhabit a space smaller than their wavelengths.[7]

Many theories in physics have mathematical singularities of one kind or another. Equations for these physical theories predict that the ball of mass of some quantity becomes infinite or increases without limit. This is generally a sign for a missing piece in the theory, as in the ultraviolet catastrophe, re-normalization, and instability of a hydrogen atom predicted by the Larmor formula.

Some theories, such as the theory of loop quantum gravity, suggest that singularities may not exist.[8] This is also true for such classical unified field theories as the EinsteinMaxwellDirac equations. The idea can be stated in the form that due to quantum gravity effects, there is a minimum distance beyond which the force of gravity no longer continues to increase as the distance between the masses becomes shorter, or alternatively that interpenetrating particle waves mask gravitational effects that would be felt at a distance.

There are different types of singularities, each with different physical features which have characteristics relevant to the theories from which they originally emerged, such as the different shape of the singularities, conical and curved. They have also been hypothesized to occur without Event Horizons, structures which delineate one spacetime section from another in which events cannot affect past the horizon; these are called naked.

A conical singularity occurs when there is a point where the limit of every diffeomorphism invariant quantity is finite, in which case spacetime is not smooth at the point of the limit itself. Thus, spacetime looks like a cone around this point, where the singularity is located at the tip of the cone. The metric can be finite everywhere coordinate system is used.

An example of such a conical singularity is a cosmic string and a Schwarzschild black hole.[9]

Solutions to the equations of general relativity or another theory of gravity (such as supergravity) often result in encountering points where the metric blows up to infinity. However, many of these points are completely regular, and the infinities are merely a result of using an inappropriate coordinate system at this point. In order to test whether there is a singularity at a certain point, one must check whether at this point diffeomorphism invariant quantities (i.e. scalars) become infinite. Such quantities are the same in every coordinate system, so these infinities will not "go away" by a change of coordinates.

An example is the Schwarzschild solution that describes a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. In coordinate systems convenient for working in regions far away from the black hole, a part of the metric becomes infinite at the event horizon. However, spacetime at the event horizon is regular. The regularity becomes evident when changing to another coordinate system (such as the Kruskal coordinates), where the metric is perfectly smooth. On the other hand, in the center of the black hole, where the metric becomes infinite as well, the solutions suggest a singularity exists. The existence of the singularity can be verified by noting that the Kretschmann scalar, being the square of the Riemann tensor i.e. R R {displaystyle R_{mu nu rho sigma }R^{mu nu rho sigma }} , which is diffeomorphism invariant, is infinite.

While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity", in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), known as a "ring singularity". Such a singularity may also theoretically become a wormhole.[10]

More generally, a spacetime is considered singular if it is geodesically incomplete, meaning that there are freely-falling particles whose motion cannot be determined beyond a finite time, being after the point of reaching the singularity. For example, any observer inside the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole would fall into its center within a finite period of time. The classical version of the Big Bang cosmological model of the universe contains a causal singularity at the start of time (t=0), where all time-like geodesics have no extensions into the past. Extrapolating backward to this hypothetical time 0 results in a universe with all spatial dimensions of size zero, infinite density, infinite temperature, and infinite spacetime curvature.

Until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that general relativity hides every singularity behind an event horizon, making naked singularities impossible. This is referred to as the cosmic censorship hypothesis. However, in 1991, physicists Stuart Shapiro and Saul Teukolsky performed computer simulations of a rotating plane of dust that indicated that general relativity might allow for "naked" singularities. What these objects would actually look like in such a model is unknown. Nor is it known whether singularities would still arise if the simplifying assumptions used to make the simulation were removed. However, it is hypothesized that light entering a singularity would similarly have its geodesics terminated, thus making the naked singularity look like a black hole.[11][12][13]

Disappearing event horizons exist in theKerr metric, which is a spinning black hole in a vacuum, if theangular momentum( J {displaystyle J} ) is high enough. Transforming the Kerr metric toBoyerLindquist coordinates, it can be shown[14]that the coordinate (which is not the radius) of the event horizon is, r = ( 2 a 2 ) 1 / 2 {displaystyle r_{pm }=mu pm (mu ^{2}-a^{2})^{1/2}} , where = G M / c 2 {displaystyle mu =GM/c^{2}} , and a = J / M c {displaystyle a=J/Mc} . In this case, "event horizons disappear" means when the solutions are complex for r {displaystyle r_{pm }} , or 2 < a 2 {displaystyle mu ^{2} M 2 {displaystyle J>M^{2}} ), i.e. the spin exceeds what is normally viewed as the upper limit of its physically possible values.

Similarly, disappearing event horizons can also be seen with theReissnerNordstrmgeometry of a charged black hole if the charge( Q {displaystyle Q} ) is high enough. In this metric, it can be shown[15]that the singularities occur at r = ( 2 q 2 ) 1 / 2 {displaystyle r_{pm }=mu pm (mu ^{2}-q^{2})^{1/2}} , where = G M / c 2 {displaystyle mu =GM/c^{2}} , and q 2 = G Q 2 / ( 4 0 c 4 ) {displaystyle q^{2}=GQ^{2}/(4pi epsilon _{0}c^{4})} . Of the three possible cases for the relative values of {displaystyle mu } and q {displaystyle q} , the case where 2 < q 2 {displaystyle mu ^{2} M {displaystyle Q>M} ), i.e. the charge exceeds what is normally viewed as the upper limit of its physically possible values. Also, actual astrophysical black holes are not expected to possess any appreciable charge.

A black hole possessing the lowest M {displaystyle M} value consistent with its J {displaystyle J} and Q {displaystyle Q} values and the limits noted above, i.e., one just at the point of losing its event horizon, is termed extremal.

Before Stephen Hawking came up with the concept of Hawking radiation, the question of black holes having entropy had been avoided. However, this concept demonstrates that black holes radiate energy, which conserves entropy and solves the incompatibility problems with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, however, implies heat and therefore temperature. The loss of energy also implies that black holes do not last forever, but rather evaporate or decay slowly. Black hole temperature is inversely related to mass.[16] All known black hole candidates are so large that their temperature is far below that of the cosmic background radiation, which means they will gain energy on net by absorbing this radiation. They cannot begin to lose energy on net until the background temperature falls below their own temperature. This will occur at a cosmological redshift of more than one million, rather than the thousand or so since the background radiation formed.[citation needed]

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The Global Work Crisis: Automation, the Case Against Jobs, and What to Do About It – Singularity Hub

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The alarm bell rings. You open your eyes, come to your senses, and slide from dream state to consciousness. You hit the snooze button, and eventually crawl out of bed to the start of yet another working day.

This daily narrative is experienced by billions of people all over the world. We work, we eat, we sleep, and we repeat. As our lives pass day by day, the beating drums of the weekly routine take over and years pass until we reach our goal of retirement.

We repeat the routine so that we can pay our bills, set our kids up for success, and provide for our families. And after a while, we start to forget what we would do with our lives if we didnt have to go back to work.

In the end, we look back at our careers and reflect on what weve achieved. It may have been the hundreds of human interactions weve had; the thousands of emails read and replied to; the millions of minutes of physical laborall to keep the global economy ticking along.

According to Gallups World Poll, only 15 percent of people worldwide are actually engaged with their jobs. The current state of work is not working for most people. In fact, it seems we as a species are trapped by a global work crisis, which condemns people to cast away their time just to get by in their day-to-day lives.

Technologies like artificial intelligence and automation may help relieve the work burdens of millions of peoplebut to benefit from their impact, we need to start changing our social structures and the way we think about work now.

Automation has been ongoing since the Industrial Revolution. In recent decades it has taken on a more elegant guise, first with physical robots in production plants, and more recently with software automation entering most offices.

The driving goal behind much of this automation has always been productivity and hence, profits: technology that can act as a multiplier on what a single human can achieve in a day is of huge value to any company. Powered by this strong financial incentive, the quest for automation is growing ever more pervasive.

But if automation accelerates or even continues at its current pace and there arent strong social safety nets in place to catch the people who are negatively impacted (such as by losing their jobs), there could be a host of knock-on effects, including more concentrated wealth among a shrinking elite, more strain on government social support, an increase in depression and drug dependence, and even violent social unrest.

It seems as though we are rushing headlong into a major crisis, driven by the engine of accelerating automation. But what if instead of automation challenging our fragile status quo, we view it as the solution that can free us from the shackles of the Work Crisis?

In order to undertake this paradigm shift, we need to consider what society could potentially look like, as well as the problems associated with making this change. In the context of these crises, our primary aim should be for a system where people are not obligated to work to generate the means to survive. This removal of work should not threaten access to food, water, shelter, education, healthcare, energy, or human value. In our current system, work is the gatekeeper to these essentials: one can only access these (and even then often in a limited form), if one has a job that affords them.

Changing this system is thus a monumental task. This comes with two primary challenges: providing people without jobs with financial security, and ensuring they maintain a sense of their human value and worth. There are several measures that could be implemented to help meet these challenges, each with important steps for society to consider.

Universal basic income (UBI)

UBI is rapidly gaining support, and it would allow people to become shareholders in the fruits of automation, which would then be distributed more broadly.

UBI trials have been conducted in various countries around the world, including Finland, Kenya, and Spain. The findings have generally been positive on the health and well-being of the participants, and showed no evidence that UBI disincentivizes work, a common concern among the ideas critics. The most recent popular voice for UBI has been that of former US presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who now runs a non-profit called Humanity Forward.

UBI could also remove wasteful bureaucracy in administering welfare payments (since everyone receives the same amount, theres no need to prevent false claims), and promote the pursuit of projects aligned with peoples skill sets and passions, as well as quantifying the value of tasks not recognized by economic measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This includes looking after children and the elderly at home.

How a UBI can be initiated with political will and social backing and paid for by governments has been hotly debated by economists and UBI enthusiasts. Variables like how much the UBI payments should be, whether to implement taxes such as Yangs proposed valued added tax (VAT), whether to replace existing welfare payments, the impact on inflation, and the impact on jobs from people who would otherwise look for work require additional discussion. However, some have predicted the inevitability of UBI as a result of automation.

Universal healthcare

Another major component of any society is the healthcare of its citizens. A move away from work would further require the implementation of a universal healthcare system to decouple healthcare from jobs. Currently in the US, and indeed many other economies, healthcare is tied to employment.

Universal healthcare such as Medicare in Australia is evidence for the adage prevention is better than cure, when comparing the cost of healthcare in the US with Australia on a per capita basis. This has already presented itself as an advancement in the way healthcare is considered. There are further benefits of a healthier population, including less time and money spent on sick-care. Healthy people are more likely and more able to achieve their full potential.

Reshape the economy away from work-based value

One of the greatest challenges in a departure from work is for people to find value elsewhere in life. Many people view their identities as being inextricably tied to their jobs, and life without a job is therefore a threat to ones sense of existence. This presents a shift that must be made at both a societal and personal level.

A person can only seek alternate value in life when afforded the time to do so. To this end, we need to start reducing work-for-a-living hours towards zero, which is a trend we are already seeing in Europe. This should not come at the cost of reducing wages pro rata, but rather could be complemented by UBI or additional schemes where people receive dividends for work done by automation. This transition makes even more sense when coupled with the idea of deviating from using GDP as a measure of societal growth, and instead adopting a well-being index based on universal human values like health, community, happiness, and peace.

The crux of this issue is in transitioning away from the view that work gives life meaning and life is about using work to survive, towards a view of living a life that itself is fulfilling and meaningful. This speaks directly to notions from Maslows hierarchy of needs, where work largely addresses psychological and safety needs such as shelter, food, and financial well-being. More people should have a chance to grow beyond the most basic needs and engage in self-actualization and transcendence.

The question is largely around what would provide people with a sense of value, and the answers would differ as much as people do; self-mastery, building relationships and contributing to community growth, fostering creativity, and even engaging in the enjoyable aspects of existing jobs could all come into play.

Universal education

With a move towards a society that promotes the values of living a good life, the education system would have to evolve as well. Researchers have long argued for a more nimble education system, but universities and even most online courses currently exist for the dominant purpose of ensuring people are adequately skilled to contribute to the economy. These job factories only exacerbate the Work Crisis. In fact, the response often given by educational institutions to the challenge posed by automation is to find new ways of upskilling students, such as ensuring they are all able to code. As alluded to earlier, this is a limited and unimaginative solution to the problem we are facing.

Instead, education should be centered on helping people acknowledge the current crisis of work and automation, teach them how to derive value that is decoupled from work, and enable people to embrace progress as we transition to the new economy.

While we seldom stop to think about it, much of the suffering faced by humanity is brought about by the systemic foe that is the Work Crisis. The way we think about work has brought society far and enabled tremendous developments, but at the same time it has failed many people. Now the status quo is threatened by those very developments as we progress to an era where machines are likely to take over many job functions.

This impending paradigm shift could be a threat to the stability of our fragile system, but only if it is not fully anticipated. If we prepare for it appropriately, it could instead be the key not just to our survival, but to a better future for all.

Image Credit: mostafa meraji from Pixabay

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University of Colorado students share architecture projects in the Rocky Mountains – Dezeen

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A high-altitude lavatory with gabion walls and a reimagined motel feature in this VDF school show of work from University of Colorado Denver's College of Architecture and Planning.

The projects range from built to conceptual and were created by students as part of their graduate and undergraduate degrees in architecture.

While some designed interventions to improve the experience of tourists and trekkers in the Rocky Mountains, others imagined electric vehicle charging stations for Tesla, which are capable of responding to the context in which they are placed.

University: University of Colorado Denver, College of Architecture and PlanningCourses: BSc Architecture, MArchStudios: BSc Architecture Design Studio 4 and the "Normal, Colfax" Research and Design SeminarMArch Studio 4: Design-Build and Studio 6: Prototype Replication and Singularity

MArch Studio 6: Prototype Replication and Singularity statement:

"Through the design of a prototype for a Tesla-branded electric vehicle (EV) charging facility, this studio investigated the tensions and synergies between the repeatability required to create multiple manifestations of the charging facility and the need to remain flexible and adapt to the site while developing and maintaining brand identity.

"As a studio funded by the PCI Foundation, the students used precast concrete as the primary construction system, requiring them to address the repeatability of the precast members within a single prototype or through multiple manifestations of the prototype."

University of Colorado Denver student housing by Macy Funk, BSc Architecture

"The University of Colorado Denver campus is unique in its diverse student body, which lives in private housing spread across the metropolitan area. The cultural diversity of the student body extends to every facet of the university's identity and is foundational to its values.

"This project posits an on-campus housing solution for students that reflects their common desire to gather and learn from one another socially. The resulting building proposal is bisected and divided by a loose collection of cylindrical and ovoid cloisters."

Studio: Design Studio 4Tutor: Kevin Hirth

Vocational School by Regan Wood, Sara Rowsell and Alli Purvis, BSc Architecture

"Sited along a dense urban corridor, the vocational school responds to Denver's legacy as an economy of largely self-contained labour and education. It consists of a simple, stripped structure that houses the life, work and training of its inhabitants.

"Students are provided with leasable space to practice their craft in close proximity to one another. The radical stance of the dense urban forms, reminiscent of similar buildings in the adjacent downtown area, is emphasised through the overlay of a rubberised roofing membrane that covers the surface of the school, landscape and other surrounding elements."

Studio: Design Studio 4Tutor: Kevin Hirth

Motel by Justin Watson, BSc Architecture

"The American West has a long tradition of itineracy. In Colorado alone, towns have swollen and shrunk with incredible speed due to the boom and bust of gold, oil, steel, tourism and agriculture. In the twentieth century, this itineracy was epitomised by the suburban station wagon, laden with luggage and ferrying families to far-flung destinations of leisure.

"The twenty-first century has seen this model disrupted by the pervasiveness of inexpensive air travel and the consolidation of the hotel industry. Roadside motels at the base of the Rocky Mountains once bustling with business now often represent a stepping stone for those close to homelessness, providing day-to-day housing at a cut-price rate.

"This project reimagines a roadside motel on a rural site in the plains just east of Denver. It hopes to offer a place for rest and relaxation to all inhabitants of the city while creating a new legacy for an often tarnished and abandoned building typology."

Studio: Design Studio 4Tutor: Kevin Hirth

Mobile Home by Trevor Carrasco, BSc Architecture

"This concept was produced as a part of an ongoing research project studying a decaying but well-preserved urban corridor built during the 1960's. It reimagines a common low-cost prefabricated housing model as a monument.

"Formal characteristics were derived from vernacular structures nearby and reconfigured into a new figure in the landscape to foreground issues of social and economic inequity."

Course: "Normal, Colfax" Research and Design SeminarTutor: Kevin Hirth

Cottonwood Cabins by the MArch Colorado Building Workshop students

"High on the Colorado Plateau, in a desert landscape characterised by juniper and ponderosa pine forests, six bunkhouses and an outdoor kitchen create a welcome refuge for trekkers at the Cottonwood Gulch base camp. The objective was to foster a sense of community while reinterpreting the local vernacular which is rooted in the surrounding landscape.

"The cabin's construction is an investigation into mass timber building techniques. The screw-laminated timber acts as a single diaphragm, achieving greater spans and cantilevers than individual pieces of lumber could alone. The cabins are elevated above the landscape to give a degree of separation from the fauna of the high desert. On the interior, bunks are suspended from the ceiling offering trekkers the agency to occupy the space how they wish."

Project website: coloradobuildingworkshop.cudenvercap.orgStudio: Studio 4: Design-BuildTutors: Rick Sommerfeld, Will Koning and JD Signom

Longs Peak Privies by the MArch Colorado Building Workshop students

"Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most frequented peaks in the State of Colorado that is more than 14,000 feet high. But since backcountry toilets were installed on the trail in 1983, the technology has deteriorated in the harsh climate to the point that waste now has to be removed by shovel, placed into five-gallon buckets and carried down the mountain using llamas.

"We collaborated with the National Park Service to design and construct new backcountry privies using lightweight prefabricated construction and emerging methods of waste collection to minimise the human footprint in Colorado's backcountry.

"The final design consists of prefabricated, structural gabion walls. Within the gabions, thin steel plate moment frames triangulate the lateral loads within the structure while stones, collected on-site, are used as ballast. This innovative assembly allows for rapid on-site construction and an architecture that disappears into the surrounding landscape."

Project website: coloradobuildingworkshop.cudenvercap.orgStudio: Studio 4: Design-BuildTutors: Rick Sommerfeld and Will Koning

Electric Oasis by Kristina Bjornson and Malgosia Tomasik, MArch

"The notion of the prototype is deficient in the fact that it assumes a mass-produced scheme can be imposed on any landscape despite its individual needs. In creating a prototype for a Tesla charger station, we wanted to challenge the standardisation of architecture by encouraging unique modifications in the design process.

"We followed a kit-of-parts approach that allows the supercharger stations to adapt and react to their context, taking into account the climatic zone, urban versus rural setting, proximity to other charging stations and lot size. These criteria inform the envelope design, orientation, light filtration and overall scheme. Distinct characteristics of light infiltration were considered to develop a responsive parametric facade based on the unique orientation and climatic data of the site."

Kristina Bjornson website: kvbjornson.comMalgosia Tomasik website: goshatomasik.com

Engaging Flows by Shane Krenn and Lorraine Ziegler

"The typology of the gas station has traditionally augmented the notions of efficiency and in-and-out culture, separating the traveller from the local. We conduct an investigation on how a new prototypical architecture could facilitate lingering. Early discussions pointed us towards the clustering of programmatic volutes to guide flows, generate in-between spaces for impermanent programmes and reframe the context to situate the traveller alongside the local.

"As a conceptual prototype for Tesla, brand recognition and repeatability across differing contexts necessitated the development of a kit of parts. A series of concrete panels and fins yield a multiplicity of programmatic volute shapes, allowing the prototype to be adapted across environments."

Shane Krenn website: shanekrenn.com/engagingflowsLorraine Ziegler portfolio: issuu.com/lorrainezoranziegler

Virtual Design Festival's student and schools initiativeoffers a simple and affordable platform for student and graduate groups to present their work during the coronavirus pandemic.Click here for more details.

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Iron Man 2020 Was Right and Tony Stark Learned the Hard Way – CBR – Comic Book Resources

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Arno Stark's dark predictions for the future of the Marvel Universe were right - and it might be too late for Iron Man to do anything about it.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Iron Man 2020 #5, by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Pete Woodsand VC's Joe Caramagna, on sale now

Despite very few people knowing of its plans, The Singularityis one of the most deadly threatsin the history of the Marvel Universe. Knowledge of The Singularity caused Arno Stark/Iron Man 2020 to start prepping for the threat's arrival in some pretty brutal ways. This led to Tony Stark/Iron Man working to stop Arno, but it turns out Arno had a point. The Singularity has just reached Earth -- and unless the rival Iron Men can come together, it could destroy the entire world.

RELATED:Iron Man: Tony Stark Reveals His Most VERSATILE Armor Ever

Also known as The Extinction Entity, the Singularity is a massive alien creature that has spent an unknown amount of time traveling through the cosmos. It has been slowly making its way to Earth with the intention oftaking control of all artificial intelligence on the planet and usingit to force organic life into subservience -- at which point, the Singularity will assimilate all life into itself.Becoming aware of that possibility, the Rigellian Recorder 451 rebelled against his basic state of observation and tried to help Earth defend from the threat in the hopes that the world would be able to meet its potential and bring peaceto the galaxy.

451's actions included constructing the Godkiller armor, a suit of robotic armor powerful enough to stave off planet-wide threats -- as well as helping Howard and Maria Stark finally conceive a child. Impacting the DNA of the child and influencing it with Kree technology to advance its intelligence, 451 personally designed the child to be capable of outthinking and devising a way to defeat the Singularity. This child wasArno Stark. However, due to Howard Stark'sinterfering with the child's DNA while in utero, Arno was born with a genetic fault that left him forced to use machinery to even breathe. Arno grew up becoming a brilliant inventor readying himself for the coming of the Singularity.

RELATED:Iron Man: How Pepper Potts Became A Superhero

Arno eventually even began to have dreams of the monstrous force approaching Earth, dedicating himself to saving theplanet under any circumstances. This included taking over Stark Unlimited from Tony and combining it with Baintronics, using their newly combined wealth to createnew technologies meant for combatting the Singularity. All of his less-scrupulous actions have been done in pursuit of helping protect the world from this threat, building to him attempting to take mental control of both human life and artificial life in a bid to unite them in battle against the Singularity.

The restored Tony Stark did his best to bring down Arno for how dark hisactions have become in pursuit of this eventuality, at points doubting that the Singularity is even real. This makes it all the more surprising when Tony and his allies quickly overwhelm Arno but are shocked to find themselves confronted by the Singularity as it approaches the Earth, claiming it has come to consume all life on the planet. The gigantic being might even be capable of following through on this threat if given the chance.

Considering the potential galactic potential humanity has showcased -- especially in the recent century of technological innovation -- the Singularity is clearly poised to be one of the most sudden and dangerous threats to the planet yet. It might take the Stark brothers finally putting aside their differences if they want any hope of saving the world from the monstrosity before it destroys everything -- or at the very most, it may take Tony embracing Arno's darker impulses toif they want any real chance of bringing down the Singularity.

KEEP READING:One Of Iron Man's Toughest Enemies Is Really An A.I.

Daredevil: Who REALLY Brought Frank Miller Back for 'Born Again'?

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Russia and the Arctic Council: What Happens Next? Homeland Security Today – HSToday

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Next May, Russia will succeed Iceland as chair of the Arctic Council. With the Far North heating up in terms of both climate change and geopolitical competition, Russias chairmanship comes at a critical juncture for the region. The next few years may well determine if we can mitigate Arctic environmental degradationand preserve the region as a zone of peace rather than conflict.

Two key tensions will define Russias tenure at the helm of the Arctic Council. The first deals with military security: Russias increased pace of Arctic militarization versus the Councils exclusion of hard security issues. The second tension concerns climate and energy security. The accelerating pace of polar climate change is evident, but Russia stands to gain economically from the warming Arctic. How Russian President Vladimir Putin squares this environmental circle will have major repercussions for not just the Russian Arctic, but the whole world.

Formed in 1996, the Arctic Council is the leading intergovernmental forum for polar cooperation. Its members are the eight states with territory in the Arctic Circle: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and America. The Council evolved from the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and retained a singular focus on environmental issues like sustainable development. This singularity of focus, combined with the forums explicit exclusion of military security issues, means the Arctic Council is ill-equipped to single-handedly govern an increasingly openand crowdedFar North.

Read the rest of the analysis by the American Security Project here.

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Scientists: What if black holes had a safe zone where little planets could live? Let’s call them ‘blanets’ – The Next Web

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Every once in a while the scientific community comes up with a discovery so important that it immediately changes the course of human evolution. Im talking of course about the invention of the word blanet. I think we can all agree that it is the cutest word science has ever created.

However, if youre like me, youll be disappointed to know that a blanet is in fact not a tiny little planet covered in soft comfy blankets it would have had a pillow moon as well. Blanets are actually a theoretical class of planetary bodies proposed by astrophysicists that could exist within a safe zone adjacent to a black hole.

Scientists have long hypothesized that black holes could play host to planetary bodies. The big idea is that a singularity is infinitely dense, but as you get further away there comes a point where it should logically be able to snag a hold on a massive object and maintain it within its gravity without devouring it.

The same thing (sort of) happens when planets form around stars, such as our solar system did around our sun.

[Read: Heres what would happen if a black hole fought a wormhole]

A new study conducted by astrophysicists in Japan attempts to shed light on how blanets could form within the confines of a black holes gravitational boundaries. In essence, the researchers calculate that blanetary formation would work quite similar to its planetary cousins.

According to the researchers pre-print study on arXiv:

We proposed that a new class of planets, blanets (i.e., black hole planets) can be formed, provided that the standard scenario of planet formation is present in the circumnuclear disk. Here, we investigated the physical conditions of the blanet formation outside the snowline (rsnow several parsecs) in more detail, especially considering the effect of the radial advection of the dust aggregates.

Planets are formed when dust eddies swirling around a star fuse into a disc from which a planet is spun out of. In black holes the same essential function is at work, however the end result wouldnt be anything like Earth or other bodies were likely to recognize as a planet. Per the study:

Our results suggest that blanets could be formed around relatively low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) during their lifetime (. 108 yr). The gaseous envelope of a blanet should be negligibly small compared with the blanet mass. Therefore, the system of blanets are extraordinarily different from the standard Earth-type planets in the exoplanet systems.

Other astrophysicists have posited hypothetical star systems merged with black holes. In these scenarios, scientists have proposed a binary singularity/star paradigm where a black hole and a star of equal mass would exist in perfect equilibrium. Under such circumstances which are incredibly specific hundreds of habitable planets could revolve around the black sun binary in a belt.

Both theories are based on calculations and explain more about the mechanics and physics of black holes than they do about the actual existence of blanets which would require some pretty specific creation parameters. But that doesnt stop us from imagining entire galaxies hidden inside the fuzzy edges of a supermassive black hole.

Theres no reason why the Milky Way, and us inside of it, couldnt exist within a wispy tendril of a super-duper massive black holes outer edges. Maybe deep down inside Earth was a blanet all along. Then again, maybe its just turtles all the way down.

Read next: Stream Xbox Game Pass games to your Android device with xCloud in September

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Progressives have long history with eugenics – Cowichan Valley Citizen

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Progressives have long history with eugenics

Mr. Rock it is good to see you pop back up, and thanks for the opportunity to expand on the topic.

Eugenics and the progessive movement have a long history together.

The progressives focus on common good and betterment of humanity while devaluing the individual. (Definitions of betterment vary.) The downside is the individual becomes expendable. Even Wikipedia recognizes progressivism was tied to eugenics and the temperance movement, both of which were promoted in the name of public health and as initiatives toward that goal.

Eugenics was thought of as cutting edge science. Progressives sought to improve the human condition by government control of genetics by sterilizing those it deemed inferior. Those that questioned the settled science were ostracized. (Sound familiar?)

It was actually a rebellion against Darwinism as survival of the fittest was not producing the desired results and the state must intervene to select the fittest. There is a strong belief the state should be the one making decisions because you as individuals are too incompetent to do so on our own. The party elite are apparently better equipped to make such personal decisions for others. (sarcasm)

Tommy Douglass, (father of socialized medicine in Canada) university thesis, was titled The Problems of the Subnormal Family. He argued that the subnormal Canadian be segregated or sterilized so they would be less of a public burden. He also argued that before marriage the couple had to prove they were mentality and morally fit. You can see the ideas echoed in CCF (predecessor to NDP) documentation. The public saw the horrors of where eugenics led, the Nazi regime, and it became an unpopular opinion to hold. Thankfully Douglas recanted rather then face public backlash.

This disgust for a group wrapped up in the language of victimhood is all too common to the progressives. The current issue of First Nations women coerced into being sterilized during labour is the legacy of the progressives. The 60s scoop and residential schools are in line with the progressives nanny state ideology of government intervention.

The state having power over an individuals body is only possible if the state owns its citizens. Slavery. Life and death then falls to a small group of elites who are there because of their loyalty to party and leader, not their compassion for others.

Eugenics may have been well intentioned but as history shows, it led to some of the darkest parts of the 20th century. (Road to hell paved with good intentions.)

S. Innis

Duncan

Letters

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Darwin, Expression, and the lasting legacy of eugenics – Salon

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In 1872, with the publication of "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Charles Darwin went rogue. Only a decade after the anatomist Duchenne de Boulogne's produced the first neurology text illustrated by photographs, Darwin claimed to be the first to use photographs in a scientific publication to actually document the expressive spectrum of the face.

Combining speculation about raised eyebrows and flushed skin with vile commentary about mental illness, he famously logged diagrams of facial musculature, along with drawings of sulky chimpanzees andphotographs of weeping infants, to create a study that spanned species, temperament, age, and gender. But what really interested him was not so much the specificity of the individual as the universality of the tribe: If expressions could, as de Boulogne had suggested, be physically localized, could they also be culturally generalized?

As a man of science, he set out to analyze the visual difference between types, which is to say races. While Darwin's scientific contributions remain ever significant, it's worth remembering he was also a man of his era privileged, white, affluent, commanding who generalized as much as, if not more than, he analyzed, especially when it came to objectifying people's looks. In spite of his influence on evolutionary biology and his role in the scientific study of emotion, Darwin's prognostications read today as remarkably prejudicial. ("No determined man," he writes in "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," "probably ever had an habitually gaping mouth.") This urge to label "types" a loaded and unfortunate term would essentially go viral in the early years of the coming century, with such assumptions reasserting themselves as dogmatic, even axiomatic, fact.

Hardly the first to postulate on the graphic evidence of the grimace, Darwin hoped to introduce a system by which facial expressions might be properly evaluated. He shared with many of his generation a predisposition toward history: simply put, the idea that certain facial traits might have a basis in evolution. Empirically, the idea itself is not unreasonable. We are, after all, genetically predisposed to share traits with those in our familial line, occasionally by virtue of our geographic vicinity. At the same time, certain specimens, when classified by visual genre, become the easy targets of discrimination. In so doing, comparisons can and do glide effortlessly from hypothesis to hyperbole, particularly when images are in play.

Almost exactly a century after the arrival of Darwin's volume, Paul Ekman, a psychologist at the University of California, published a study in which he determined that there were seven principal facial expressions deemed universal across all cultures: anger, contempt, fear, happiness, interest, sadness, and surprise. HisFacial Action Coding System(FACS) supported many of Darwin's earlier findings and remains, to date, the gold standard for identifying any movement the face can make. As a methodology for parsing facial expression, Ekman's work provides a practical rubric for understanding these distinctions: It's logical, codified, and clear. But what happens to such comparative practices when supposition trumps proposition, when the science of scrutiny is eclipsed by the lure of a bigger, messier, more global extrapolation? When does the quest for the universal backfire and become a discriminatory practice?

The real seduction, in Darwin's era and in our own, lies in the notion that pictures and especially pictures of our faces are remarkably powerful tools of persuasion and do, in so many instances, speak louder than words.

The idea that photography allowed for the demonstration and distribution of objective visual evidence was a striking development for clinicians. Unlike the interpretive transference of a drawing, or the abstract data of a diagram, the camera was clear and direct, a vehicle for proof. The process itself allowed for a kind of massive stockpiling pictures compared to one another, minutiae contrasted, hypotheses often mistakenly corroborated which, while arguably rooted in scientific inquiry, led to a stunning degree of generalization in the name of fact. If evolution is seen as the study of unseen development biological, generational, temporal, and by definition intangible the camera provided the illusion of quantifiable benchmarks, an irresistible proposition for the proponents of theoretical ideas.

* * *

Darwin's cousin, the noted statistician Francis Galton, saw such generalizations as precisely the point. Long before computer software would make such computational practice commonplace, he introduced not a lateral but a synthetic system for facial comparison: what he termed "composite portraiture" was, in fact, a neologism for pictorial averaging. Galton's objective was to identify deviation and, in so doing, to reverse-engineer an ideal "type," which he did by repeat printing upon a single photographic plate and within the same vicinity to one another thereby creating a force-amalgamated portrait of multiple faces. At once besotted with mechanical certainty and mesmerized by the scope of visual wonder before him, Galton thrilled to the notion of mathematical precision the lockup on the photographic plate, the reckoning of the binomial curve but appeared uninterested in actual details unless they could help reaffirm his suppositions about averages, about types, even about the photomechanical process itself.

That Galton drew upon the language of statistical fact and benefited from the presumed sovereignty of his own exalted social position to become an evangelist for the camera is questionable in itself, but the fact that he viewed his composite photographs as plausible evidence for an unforgiving sociocultural rationale shifts the legacy of his scholarship into far more pernicious territory.

At once driven by claims of biological determinism and supported by the authoritarian heft of British empiricism, Francis Galton pioneered an insidious form of human scrutiny that would come to be known as eugenics. The word itself comes from the Greek wordeugenes(noble, well-born, and "good in stock"), though Galton's own definition is a bit more sinister: For him, it was a science addressing "all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race, also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage." The idea of social betterment through better breeding (indeed, the notion of better anything through breeding) led to a horrifying era of social supremacism in which "deviation" would come to be classified across a broad spectrum of race, religion, health, wealth, and every imaginable kind of human infirmity. Grossly and idiosyncratically defined even a "propensity" for carpentry or dress-making was considered a genetically inherited trait Galton's remarkably flawed (and deeply racist) ideology soon found favor with a public eager to assert, if nothing else, its own vile claims to vanity.

The social climate into which eugenic doctrine inserted itself appealed to precisely this fantasy, beginning with "Better Baby" and "Fitter Family" contests, an unfortunate staple of recreational entertainment that emerged across the regional United States during the early years of the 20th century.Widely promotedas a wholesome public health initiative, the idea of parading good-looking children for prizes (a practice that essentially likened kids to livestock) was one of a number of practices predicated on the notion that better breeding outcomes were in everyone's best interest. The resulting photos conferred bragging rights on the winning (read "white") contestants, but the broader message framing beauty, but especially facial beauty, as a scientifically sanctioned community aspiration implicitly suggests that the inverse was also true: that to be found "unfit" was to be doomed to social exile and thus restricted, among other things, by fierce reproductive protocols.

In 29 states beginning in 1907 and until the laws were repealed in the 1940s those deemed socially inferior (an inexcusable euphemism for what was then defined as physically "inadequate") were, in fact, subject tocompulsory sterilization. From asthma to scoliosis, mental disability to moral delinquency, eugenicists denounced difference in light of a presumed cultural superiority, a skewed imperialism that found its most nefarious expression during the Third Reich. To measure difference was to eradicate it, exterminate it, excise it from evolutionary fact. Though ultimately discredited following the atrocities endured during multiple years of Nazi reign, eugenic theory was steeped in this sinister view of genetic governance, manifest destiny run amok.

Later, once detached from Galton's maniacal gaze, the composite portrait would inspire others to play with the optics of the amalgamated image. The 19th-century French photographer Arthur Batut, known for being one of the first aerial photographers (he shot from a kite), may have been drawn to the hints of movement generated by a portrait's animated edges. American photographer Nancy Burson has experimented with composite photography to merge black, Asian, and Caucasian faces against population statistics: Introduced in 2000, herHuman Race Machinelets you see how you would look as another race. The artist Richard Prince flattened every one of Jerry Seinfeld's fifty-seven TV love interests into a 2013 composite he called "Jerry's Girls," while in 2017, data scientist Giuseppe Sollazzo createda blended facefor the BBC that used a carefully plotted algorithm to combine every face in the U.S. Senate.

Galton would have appreciated the speed of the software and the advantages of the algorithm but what of the ethics of the very act of image capture and comparison, of the ethics of pictorial appropriation itself? There's an implicit generalization to this kind of image production and indeed, seen over time, composite portraiture would become a way to amalgamate and assess an entire culture, even an era. In a 1931 radio interview, the German portraitist August Sander claimed he wanted to "capture and communicate in photography the physiognomic time exposure of a whole generation," an observation that reframes the composite as a kind of collected census, or population survey.

The camera, after all, bears witness over time, its outcome an extension of the eye, the mind, the soul of the photographer. Sander was right. (So was Susan Sontag: "Humanity," she oncewrote, "is not one.") With the advent of better, cheaper, faster, and more mobile technologies for capturing our faces, the time exposure of a whole generation was about to become a great deal more achievable.

* * *

Jessica Helfandis a designer, artist, and writer. She is a cofounder ofDesign Observerand the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism, including "Face: A Visual Odyssey," from which this article is adapted.

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Darwin, Expression, and the lasting legacy of eugenics - Salon

The Face of Medicine Is Not My FaceBut, It Should Be – DocWire News

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This article was originally published here

J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2020 Aug 7. doi: 10.1007/s40615-020-00834-3. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The face of medicine is a term commonly used to describe the leaders and decision-makers of medicine. Medical ethics often discuss past historical atrocities committed by the face of medicine, such as the American eugenics movement and medical experimentation. However, a great irony persists: the faces of medicine do not resemble the faces of the oppressed populations. Nevertheless, the discussion of white supremacy and systemic racism, structures which fueled historical medical atrocities, is often omitted. This reflection discusses the need for education, conversation, and action surrounding these topics to adequately combat racial and ethnic health disparities. We also argue that the decision-makers of medicine should be a diverse group of stakeholders, thereby representative of and personally invested in a diverse group of populations.

PMID:32770309 | DOI:10.1007/s40615-020-00834-3

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The Face of Medicine Is Not My FaceBut, It Should Be - DocWire News

John Muir: The godfather of Seattle’s spiritual life and a racist – Crosscut

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Seattles church of St. Muir

The Northwest is a bastion of so-called "nones" people who belong to no formal religion but consider themselves secular but spiritual.

I belong to this undefined congregation. I was raised in the church of John Muir, a nearly sainted figure from my childhood on.

I grew up on a green, Olmsted-designed boulevard in a neighborhood shaped, like many in Seattle, by turn-of-the-century racist housing covenants. The landscape was designed to cultivate and preserve nature in the city, allowing appreciation of trees and such to flourish in our yards and parks. That landscape is what I knew and loved, from Lake Washington to Rainier Avenue.

My father, aunt, both of my sisters and I attended John Muir School in Mount Baker, from the 1920s to the 1960s. The school was originally part of the Columbia City schools, called Wetmore, and later York. In my fathers day it ran through the eighth grade; in mine it was an elementary school. The Muir name was adopted in 1921 to honor the man who made frequent and much-publicized visits to Seattle as he went to and from Alaska. He climbed most of the major peaks in the Cascades, including Rainier. Muir was a scientist who learned about how glaciers shaped the land, as well as an author and advocate. His name is on Camp Muir at Rainier.

After Muir's death in 1914, Edmond Meany gave a lecture on Muir in memory of one of the great naturalists, poets, and philosophers of the Coast, wrote The Seattle Times at the time. The lecture was held at a Unitarian Church on Boylston Avenue and was said to feature seventy-five hand-painted stereopticon pictures of the mountains Muir loved. It must have felt like a church service featuring mountain gods.

In the 1920s, the John Muir school was transformed from a typical Seattle school into a kind of chapel in the church of Muirs nature worship. There are many ideas expressed in his writings. He regarded woods as temples and felt deeply the sacredness of nature. He described those who would dam Yosmites Hetch Hetchy as temple destroyers, selfish despoilers of every type, from Satan to Senators.

The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness, Muir wrote in his journal. If the view was exclusionist in conception, it was also attuned to powerful feelings evoked by witnessing the wilds, in standing with the natural world against what Muir saw as greed, commercialization and the brutality of industrialization. If Seattles John Muir students couldnt climb mountains or walk remote tracts in their daily lives, they could still be imbued with the faith as they played in parks that sought to give them some hope of meeting the universe in their own neighborhood. Muirs message was that the wilderness untamed offered spiritual uplift.

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Health Media in the COVID-19 Era: Patient influencers weigh in – Media News – MM&M – Medical Marketing and Media

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For last weeks Third M, we asked members of the media as well as individuals from media-adjacent organizations to weigh in on social media follows, coverage blind spots and more. This week, with assistance from Wego Health, we ran the same questions by patient influencers who, in many cases, had a distinctly different perspective. The MM&M patient influencer panel included: Amanda Greene (LA Lupus Lady), Marie Dagenais-Lewis, Candace Lerman (Rare Candace), Frank Rivera, Britt Clark, Deborah Lee Andio (Chronically Grateful Me), Barby Ingle, Dr. Maria De Leon and Lynn Julian.

Greene: On Twitter, I follow #HighRiskCOVID19, which was created by an innovative group of patient leaders to foster community support for information, resources and one another. For mental health, I follow Channel Kindness on many social media platforms as well as ChannelKindness.org, which offers tips and links for more resources to support the community.

Dagenais-Lewis: I became active again in patient advocacy due to COVID-19. I realized my rare disease research foundation was not looking out for the patients, so I started my brand, R.A.R.E., to educate about how Multiple Hereditary Exostoses patients are high-risk for COVID and also how the face mask debate is ableist.

Lerman: I enjoy hearing from former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Twitter. Dr. Stephen Hahn at the FDA provides great information regarding approved testing and antibody kits, as well as information regarding clinical trial delays caused by COVID-19 and medication shortages.

Clark: The Lupus Foundation of America has done an excellent job navigating lupus patients through COVID. They were a voice for us when the pandemic started and when hydroxychloroquine medication shortages started, and have continued to support lupus patients as the country reopens. Without their voice to national and state leadership, many more lupus patients would have been dangerously affected by this medication shortage.

Ingle: In traditional media I have been following the CDCs updates, but I dont fully trust them.

Andio: I like to see the success stories, ones about those who fought and made it through and got to come home. I want more positive news because the terrible daily news is bad for our mental health. People are afraid to leave their home because others never take precautions.

Lerman: The mask debacle! I have been wearing masks for six years thanks to my compromised immune system from off-label chemo. Wearing a proper mask is so critical. The focus should be on protecting yourself and how to wear a mask the correct way. I think we are seeing spikes in numbers because people arent wearing masks correctly, coming within six feet of people and forgetting about hand hygiene because they think cloth masks stop the spread.

Julian: The media is not accepting any responsibility, nor is the President, for telling people they dont have to wear masks. Masks may not be 100% effective, but they are certainly more effective than wearing nothing. By wearing nothing, you are not only risking your own life, but you are risking mine as well.

Rivera: Too many people are being either misled or outright foolish about mask-wearing and social distancing, and how even though [COVID-19] isnt always killing people, the long-lasting aftereffects can be so dangerous.

Greene: How those who are immune-compromised are faring if they test positive. What most of the population can learn from those who are high risk for COVID-19. How facts and science are the resources we should be listening to.

De Leon: How do you deal with intimacy issues amid social distancing and how do you cope with loved ones being separated when hospitalized. Most importantly, coverage of how minority groups most affected, such as Hispanics are dealing with COVID-19 (information in Spanish and other languages).

Dagenais-Lewis: The aspect of how ableism is the main driving factor behind the face mask debate. It matters because the U.S. has a long history with modern eugenics and because ableism is so ingrained into our society that able-bodied people and even disabled people who dont understand they are disabled and affected by ableism complain that the face mask mandate infringes upon their freedom. In my mind, what really infringes on freedom is the fact that disability lacks constitutional protection, not being mandated to wear a face mask.

Clark: How high-risk people can continue to have their jobs protected. How high-risk people dont mind having to continue sheltering in place (as many of us live this life all the time), but that we want to have some guidance on our kids going back to school and our jobs calling us back to work outside of our homes. How to prevent another major medication shortage like the ones experienced recently by those taking hydroxychloroquine.

Dagenais-Lewis: I would love to see more patient advocacy movements, more light being shined on ableism and more feel-good stories that break stigma. I work in the media and all I see is politics, hate and divisive topics that dominate coverage while important topics like disability rights are constantly overlooked. It is upsetting that I pitch stories related to disability and they always get trashed just because society is ableist and truly doesnt care, it seems. With the equal rights movement going on, now is the time to push for disability rights as well.

Julian: Id love to see the science proving the effectiveness of masks be part of the medias narrative.

Lerman: Id love to see the focus shift to the problems created by delays in care due to COVID-19. I believe we will see some disastrous consequences from delayed procedures, screenings and preventative care. Now is the time to start stressing the importance of regular checkups and proactive healthcare.

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Health Media in the COVID-19 Era: Patient influencers weigh in - Media News - MM&M - Medical Marketing and Media

Santa Maria speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Aug. 7, 2020 – Santa Maria Times

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COVID-19 is not a hoax

Last April British citizens eagerly anticipated faster internet as 5G towers were being installed and yet 30 of the towers were burned and vandalized.

A popular conspiracy theory convinced people that 5G towers caused COVID-19. Of course, that proved to be untrue but the individuals who torched the towers believed themselves to be heroes.

The people who harassed and attacked 80 technicians installing 5G towers were good people who thought they were saving their communities from a horrible disease. The misinformation circulating about COVID-19 has been referred to as an infodemic. Much of the misinformation is motivated by greed. Websites promising cures are often phishing sites used to collect credit card numbers. Websites with articles about eye-catching but false information have been used to install malware.

Its vital that we cut through the false conspiracy theories. Firstly COVID-19 is not a hoax. Epidemics and pandemics are a natural part of the human experience. The first documented epidemic was a flu-like disease that ravaged Asia and the Middle East in 1,200 B.C.E.

There have been countless epidemics from ancient times until today. One false claim is that the press has inflated the numbers of COVID-19. Data from mortuaries, hospital census, and public health offices all agree that this is a large and serious outbreak.

Just because you dont personally know someone who has died from the virus doesnt mean that its not real. Because its new scientist have been studying the virus for less then a year and there is much we dont know. What we do know is that facemasks and social distancing are effective to slow the spread of this deadly disease.

Through the generations we have gotten past epidemics of bubonic plague, smallpox, typhus, measles, diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever and numerous flus. We will get past COVID-19 but it will happen a lot sooner if we can work together. We need to let go of the conspiracy theories, social distance and wear a mask.

Molly Machin

Nipomo

As the presidential election approaches and Trumps poll numbers continue to decline, we are beginning to see the inevitable prediction that mail-in voting will lead to massive voter fraud.

This is a common trope that is fueled by random anecdotes and is debunked by all the empirical data to the contrary. A Washington Post analysis of general elections in three Western states in 2016 and 2018 found the incidence of double voting was 0.0025.

Another study, supported by the Pew Charitable Trust, found only 0.001 percent incidence of voter fraud. The assumption of voter fraud not only flies in the face of data it is an insult to the election officials in every state who, with the support of experts in technology, have designed elaborate systems to mitigate this risk.

Ironically the most chaotic election in my lifetime was Gore V Bush, when old fashioned voting machines nearly caused a constitutional crisis. So its odd that mail-in voting, which has been supported by both parties in the past, is suddenly the focus of suspicion for some Republicans.

This is especially odd in the midst of the coronavirus, when avoiding large groups is so critical to public health. Coronavirus has resulted in the support of nearly every state for either mail-in or absentee ballots.

Based on reality we should be more concerned about voter suppression than voter fraud. In most states access to poles looks very different depending on zip code. In some states the poor, Black and Brown people have to travel long distances and stand in line for hours to vote.

We choose to hold elections on Tuesday when many low wage workers have to work long shifts and many single parents do not have childcare. Why not hold voting on Saturday or Sunday? Why not have polling places in or near churches? And, if we really want to have a Democracy, why not make voting easily accessible for every eligible citizen?

Margaret Tillery

Santa Maria

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Santa Maria speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Aug. 7, 2020 - Santa Maria Times

Sanger’s name being removed is the start – The Catholic Spirit

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This unsigned editorial first appeared July 29 on the website of The Tablet, the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York.

Father Fidelis Moscinski, a member of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, joins fellow pro-life advocates in reciting the rosary across the street from Planned Parenthoods Margaret Sanger clinic in New York City Feb. 24, 2020. CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

The reason it gave for removing the name of Sanger was that she possessed, in their own words, harmful connections to the eugenics movement and it was both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthoods contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color.

We should hope that this decision is not just an example of the wave of canceling historical figures left and right that we have recently seen, but the product of a serious reflection about ideas Margaret Sanger shared and promoted. There is a stark difference between an organization deciding to change the name of one of its buildings or a group of citizens asking through legal means to change the name of a street or remove a statue and the mob mentality of imposing a certain concept of history to the whole of society by tearing down whatever monument a group of people decide to destroy.

The same fairness that we demanded for St. Frances Cabrini during the controversy about her statue, or for St. Junipero Serra more recently, should apply to Margaret Sanger. Cabrini and Serra are saints we revere while we abhor the promotion of abortion and Sangers racism.

But in each case, the way we remember them should be based on serious historical perspective and the decision to have buildings or statues to honor them should be based on civil debate, not fanaticism or anachronistic judgments.

Margaret Sanger was clearly a woman who held views that were racist, classist, anti-poor, anti-immigrant and against people with disabilities. Planned Parenthood has recognized the evil and harm wrought by Margaret Sanger and we pray that this is a first step in coming to realize the slaughter of the innocents to which it is contributing.

Perhaps this will spark the process of realizing that abortion takes a human life and snuffs it out before it can even be born. Perhaps Planned Parenthood will realize the harm that it imposes in its abortion mills.

The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at conception. She clearly teaches that all life is precious, from conception to natural death. She clearly teaches that abortion and the procuring of abortion is a grave moral evil. Yes, the Church must be completely pro-life in the fullest sense, engaging the corporal works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give alms to the poor, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead.

All life has value the unborn, the elderly, the prisoner, the disabled, the poor, the immigrant. Unless we give life a chance, unless we commit to being completely pro-life in all we say and do, in our actions and in our attitudes, we cannot say we are living up to the mandate of the Lord to love one another.

Margaret Sangers name being removed is the start. Lets pray that this will lead to those in Planned Parenthood to rethink their actions and attitudes, to turn away from the culture of death, and to fully embrace a culture of life.

The views or positions presented in this or any guest editorial are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Catholic Spirit or the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Tags: Margaret Sanger, Picks, Planned Parenthood, Tablet

Category: Commentary

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Sanger's name being removed is the start - The Catholic Spirit