Allen West Wins Election for Texas GOP Chair – The Texan

Posted on by

As the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) online convention was marked by difficulty after difficulty, challenger and former Florida congressman, Allen West, soundly knocked off incumbent James Dickeyand will become the next chairman of the Texas GOP.

West tweeted when the results became clear, I just want to say how truly humbled I am by this honor, and that I will work hard for Texas and Texans. I would like to thank my amazing and dedicated team, as well as an incredible number of supporters. Thank you all! Now the work begins

In concession just after 4:00 a.m. on Monday morning, Dickey posted, It has been an incredible time as Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. I am so grateful to the amazing supporters who rallied around my campaign.

We are truly a bottom-up Party here in Texas, written in our rules to be that way, allowing our voices to be truly representative of those who make our Party great. I wish Lt. Col. West the very best in this role. Thank you for the honor of serving as your Chair. Lets win in November. May God bless you and May God bless Texas, he concluded, congratulating West.

West teased his run for state GOP chair about a year ago and then made it official a month later. And after activist Amy Hedtke threw her name into contention at the last minute, it became a three-person race.

But in the end, West won rather handily.

During the campaign, he has criticized Dickey for disorganization amongst the party and for overseeing the 2018 midterms in which 12 Texas House seats and three State Senate seats all flipped blue and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) narrowly escaped an insurgent Beto ORourke.

Meanwhile, Dickey touted his fundraising prowess, having raised $8 million ahead of the 2020 general election. He also boasted that the partys program had registered 120,000 new likely GOP voters going into November.

Dickey became chairman in 2017 after appointment by the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) and then won election for the next term at the 2018 state convention.

But a growing section of the delegates moved against Dickey both out of discontent with how the 2018 elections went and concern over the coming one.

Other contributors included his handling of the Speaker Bonnen-Empower Texans tape fiasco specifically, that he did not come out harder against the Republican speaker for his conduct; his quick denunciation, and call for resignation, of various county GOP chairs who shared a conspiracy theory about George Floyd and the circumstances surrounding his killing at the hands of Minneapolis police; and the Republican legislators failure to accomplish or even attempt to pass party legislative priorities like constitutional carry and the abolition of abortion.

And that was until the tremendous convention disarray was thrown into the mix after Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner canceled the partys contract to use the George R. Brown Convention Center for the in-person event less than a week before it was set to happen.

That sparked a series of legal challenges that ultimately proved mostly fruitless and the convention was held online, with complications abound. West criticized Dickey, calling the event a debacle, and accusing him of disenfranchising delegates. He then called on RPT to postpone the convention until all delegates could be properly credentialed.

At the beginning of proceedings Sunday, the RPT reported about 1,200 of the total near-7,500 registered delegates had not been properly credentialed.

But despite technical problems and issues credentialing delegates, the marquee convention business was completed.

National committee delegates were selected and presidential electors were approved, however, the partys legislative priorities and party planks have yet to be solidified. The general body voted to postpone the non-election items of business to be taken up at a time yet to be determined.

But the most anticipated portion was the chairmans election. That didnt come until the wee hours of Monday morning after tech problems and procedural delays continually pushed back the estimated time of the vote.

Right as the general body was set to go into their Senate District caucuses to vote on the chairman race, Dickey reported a distributed denial of service attack on the partys servers. This further delayed the actions and caused a weary convention body to grow even more irritated after a week of pandemonium.

In a press release, Wests campaign announced his challenge to Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa to educate the public on key policy differences between the parties.

West is a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and served as a congressman in Floridas 22nd District.

We need to focus on maintaining the conservative policies that made Texas strong and drive voter outreach across the state, West stated.

Hes got his work to cut out for him. RealClearPolitics polling average show President Trump and Joe Biden in a dead heat, and Texas Democrats are emboldened by their 2018 gains, looking to continue the clawing back of the GOP majority this year, too.

With no downtime, Wests new job starts today with a clear mission: win in November.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If youd like to become one of the people were financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

Go here to read the rest:

Allen West Wins Election for Texas GOP Chair - The Texan

Randall Kennedy Racist Litter: The Lessons of Reconstruction LRB 30 July 2020 – London Review of Books

Posted on by

In May 1987, as part of the festivities marking the 200th anniversary of the United States constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the US Supreme Court, delivered a hugely controversial speech. Noting the quasi-religious reverence in which the framers of the constitution are held in America, Marshall expressed some scepticism about routine proclamations of their wisdom, foresight and sense of justice. The Founding Fathers, he pointed out, couldnt have been so very enlightened and far-sighted: after all, the slavery they tolerated caused untold suffering, and ended in a civil war that claimed 600,000 lives. While the Union survived the Civil War, he said, the constitution did not. In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality. That new, more promising regime was Reconstruction, an array of reforms undertaken between 1863 and 1877 to refashion a fractured nation.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves then resident in jurisdictions involved in the rebellion against the federal government. Until this point, Lincoln had gone out of his way to make clear that in resorting to arms the federal government sought merely to suppress the uprising of the Confederacy, the 11 states that attempted to secede in 1861 in order to ensure the perpetuation of their peculiar institution: racial slavery. The leaders of the Confederacy, explicitly repudiating Thomas Jeffersons declaration that all men are created equal, had committed themselves to racial hierarchy. Our new government rests, the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, observed, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Lincoln did not believe that the federal government had the authority to do anything about slavery in the states in ordinary circumstances. He maintained, however, that as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he had the constitutional authority to free slaves as a war measure aimed at quelling rebellion. A sentimental glow surrounds the Emancipation Proclamation, but in fact, as the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, it possessed all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. It contained no criticism of slavery and did not free all slaves; the legal status of at least 800,000 slaves was not affected. The proclamation did not free those held in bondage in the four slave states that remained loyal to the Union: Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky and Maryland. Nor did it free the slaves in certain Southern territories already under Union control. These rather large exemptions moved the Spectator to observe that the underlying principle of the Emancipation Proclamation was not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States. Still, the proclamation did free more than three million slaves, and many observers felt that it transformed the war for the Union into a war for the Union and freedom. When news of the proclamation arrived in South Carolina, slaves recited prayers and sang songs including My Country, Tis of Thee.

The proclamation announced that freedmen would now be allowed to join the United States military. Many enlisted. By the end of the Civil War 180,000 had served about a fifth of the countrys black male population aged between 18 and 45. In the Revolutionary War of 1775-83, when the 13 American colonies sought to secede from Britain, most African Americans who took up arms did so on behalf of King George III (having been promised emancipation for doing so). By contrast, in the Civil War, the overwhelming majority who took up arms fought for the United States (the Confederacy having stubbornly resisted proposals to arm slaves until the very eve of its collapse).

Although Lincoln planned to readmit the Confederate states into the Union quickly, on generous terms, he also seemed open to granting the vote to some black men the very intelligent and those who serve our cause as soldiers. When the actor John Wilkes Booth heard that remark he warned: That means nigger citizenship! Now, by God, Ill put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make. Three days later, on Good Friday, Booth made good on his threat, shooting Lincoln at Fords Theatre in Washington DC.

Lincolns successor, Andrew Johnson, was a fierce racist who militantly opposed giving African Americans an equal legal status to whites. He supported the ending of slavery but wanted blacks to be confined to a subordinate caste. That is one of the reasons Radicals in the Republican Party Lincolns party despised Johnson, who was a Democrat, and attempted to remove him from office by impeachment. Johnson survived he escaped conviction by one vote but the Republicans succeeded in enacting civil rights legislation despite his opposition. The Republicans also put the former Confederate states under military rule, stipulating that they would not be allowed to become self-governing and rejoin the Union until they permitted black men to participate in politics on the same basis as white men. The pariah states acceded, with remarkable results. You never saw a people more excited on the subject of politics than are the negroes of the South, one planter observed. They are perfectly wild. Blacks enrolled in organisations such as the Union League, which encouraged political education through speeches and debates. They petitioned local authorities; they attended Republican rallies and conventions; they voted and ran for office even in the face of violent opposition from resentful whites, who were appalled by the prospect of blacks, including former slaves, taking part in governance. Between 1870 and 1877, 16 blacks were elected to Congress, 18 to positions as state lieutenant governors, treasurers, secretaries of state or superintendents of education, and at least six hundred to state legislatures. Blacks never had decisive control over any state government, not even in Mississippi or South Carolina, where they constituted a majority of voters. But for a short period they wielded sufficient power in substantial parts of the South to insist on the establishment of public education, laws relatively favourable to workers, debtors and tenants, and prohibitions against various sorts of racial discrimination.

Reconstructions most durable and consequential achievements were three amendments to the federal constitution that remain in force today. The Thirteenth Amendment went beyond the Emancipation Proclamation by abolishing slavery throughout the United States (except as a punishment for crime). The Fourteenth Amendment created a constitutional definition of citizenship, declaring that anyone born in the United States (under its jurisdiction) automatically becomes a citizen. That amendment, the wordiest in the constitution, also imposed a new set of duties on states, requiring them to refrain from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens; from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; and from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied by the United States or by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. Each of these amendments contained a provision authorising Congress to enforce it by appropriate legislation.

Reconstruction was under attack from the outset. There was never a consensus on its legitimacy, and in the end it sank under the weight of racism, indifference, fatigue, administrative weakness, economic depression, the ebbing of idealism, and the toll exacted by terrorism, as its enemies resorted to rape, mutilation, beating and murder to intimidate blacks and their white allies. In 1870, when an African American called Andrew Flowers prevailed over a white candidate for the position of justice of the peace in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he received a whipping at the hands of white supremacists affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. They said they had nothing particular against me, he testified, but they did not intend any nigger to hold office in the United States. That same year in Greene County, Alabama armed whites broke up a Republican campaign rally, killing four blacks and wounding 54 others. In 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana black Republicans and white Democrats both claimed the right to govern. When the whites prevailed in battle they massacred fifty blacks as they tried to surrender. The era was dense with such atrocities.

By 1877 every Southern state had been redeemed that is, was under the control of people who aimed to reimpose the norms of white supremacy. Enemies of Reconstruction removed blacks as a factor in politics and consigned them to a degraded position within a rigid pigmentocracy. The constitutional amendments survived untouched. But, at least with respect to racial matters, they were narrowly construed, if not ignored altogether. By 1900 Reconstruction had been demolished, an experiment almost wholly repudiated.

For the first half of the 20th century, many white historians, commentators and politicians portrayed Reconstruction as a calamity that stemmed from a mistaken attempt to elevate African Americans to civil and political equality. Its crusade of hate and social equality, Claude Bowers wrote in The Tragic Era (1929),

was playing havoc with a race naturally kindly and trustful. Throughout the [Civil] War, when [white] men were far away on the battlefields, and the women were alone on far plantations with slaves, hardly a woman was attacked. Then came the scum of Northern society, emissaries of the politicians, soldiers of fortune, and not a few degenerates, inflaming the negroes egotism, and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape is the foul daughter of Reconstruction.

Bowerss sensational rendition mirrored the depiction of Reconstruction offered by leading academics such as William Dunning of Columbia University, who served as president of both the American Historical Association and the American Political Science Association. The negro, Dunning wrote in Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-77 (1907),

had no pride of race and no aspiration or ideals save to be like the whites. With civil rights and political power, not won, but almost forced upon him, he came gradually to understand and crave those more elusive privileges that constitute social equality. A more intimate association with the other race than that which business and politics involved was the end toward which the ambition of the blacks tended consciously or unconsciously to direct itself. The manifestations of this ambition were infinite in their diversity. It played a part in the demand for mixed schools, in the legislative prohibition of discrimination between the races in hotels and theatres, and even in the hideous crime against white womanhood which now assumed new meaning in the annals of outrage.

This pejorative interpretation of Reconstruction performed important ideological work. It justified keeping blacks in their place by painting a frightening picture of what had happened when they last had civic equality and participated in governance.

Racial liberals including most black historians and, in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, a small number of white historians stressed that democracy had been enlarged during Reconstruction, public schooling improved and labour rights strengthened. They refuted allegations that black politicians and their white carpetbagger and scalawag allies had been unusually corrupt and incompetent. They emphasised the illegality and immorality of the means used to topple Reconstruction. The outstanding effort was W.E.B. DuBoiss sweeping, Marxian revisionist account, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-80 (1935). Thirty years later, in 1965, the white historian Kenneth Stampp published The Era of Reconstruction: after that, most leading historians ceased to disparage Reconstruction. Stampps volume appeared the year the Voting Rights Act was passed, removing the most glaring racist impediments to suffrage. The increasing legitimacy of revisionist accounts of Reconstruction was reflected in and reinforced by the Civil Rights movement. When a federal court ruled in favour of black plaintiffs challenging racial segregation on buses in Birmingham, Alabama, a white supremacist judge, citing Bowerss The Tragic Era, urged his colleagues to recall the lessons of Reconstruction, a period which all Americans recall with sadness and shame. By then, however, growing numbers of Americans were thinking of Reconstruction with a new respect.

In 1988 Eric Foner published Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution, 1863-77, a grand narrative built on ground largely cleared of the racist litter left by previous scholars. It is a stupendous scholarly achievement: eloquent, accessible, punctiliously accurate, marvellously detailed, bristling with insight, conscious of broad economic, social and cultural forces, alert to personal quirks, and attentive to the ideas and activities of the actors often women and racial minorities historians often marginalise or ignore. For thirty years it has remained the leading work of Reconstruction historiography, despite ideological disputes and changes in methodological fashion.

In The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, Foner narrows his focus to the key legal transformations of the era. He argues that the Reconstruction Amendments should not be seen simply as an alteration of an existing structure but as a constitutional revolution that created a fundamentally new document with a new definition of both the status of blacks and the rights of all Americans. Much of American history has been shaped by struggles over these amendments and whether they should be seen as mere alterations or as a fundamental remaking of the Founding Fathers handiwork. Conservatives tend to take the former view, liberals the latter. One reason this struggle has been so intense is that each side can adduce facts, ideas, sentiments and historical developments that support their position.

Foner supports the liberal position. He emphasises the gulf that separates life in America before the Reconstruction Amendments from life afterwards, particularly in its racial aspects. Before Reconstruction, the civil liberties enshrined in the constitution placed limits on the federal government, but not on individual states. The constitution aimed primarily to prevent the federal government encroaching on individual liberty, including the freedom to own slaves. With Reconstruction, reformers sought to empower the federal government to guarantee the rights afforded by the three new constitutional amendments, as well as the older rights some saw as being incorporated into the new regime. These older rights were contained in the first ten amendments to the constitution. Sometimes referred to as the Bill of Rights, these amendments, ratified in 1791, provided for (among other things) freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, a prohibition against quartering soldiers in homes, a right not to face unreasonable searches and seizures, and a right to speedy trial by an impartial jury.

Foner doesnt embrace Thurgood Marshalls claim that the Civil War extinguished the constitutional regime of 1787. That assertion wishful thinking perhaps goes too far. For good and for bad mostly bad the initial constitution displayed a striking resilience, inhibiting efforts to elevate former slaves, protect them against resentful whites, or undergird their new freedom with socio-economic support. Like Marshall, however, Foner does seek to alter the general view of the Reconstruction and increase its standing. The Founding Fathers including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton enjoy widespread, if superficial, public recognition. By comparison, key framers of the Reconstruction Amendments James Ashley, Charles Sumner, Lyman Trumbull and Thaddeus Stevens are obscure. Unfamiliar, too, are the origins and back stories of their constitutional handiwork, which Foner ably describes.

Throughout his career Foner has championed progressive radicalism in the American political tradition. In an open letter written in 2015, he chided Bernie Sanders for invoking foreign political models, suggesting that he look instead to American reformers such as Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley, Eugene Debs and A. Philip Randolph. In The Second Founding, Foner returns to this theme, stressing the exceptional and innovative nature of the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment ordered emancipation without compensation and was the first occasion on which the constitution expanded the power of the federal government, creating a new fundamental right to personal freedom, applicable to all persons in the United States regardless of race, gender, class or citizenship status. Few countries, Foner observes, and certainly none with as large a slave population, have experienced so radical a form of abolition. The Fourteenth Amendments creation of birthright citizenship, he writes, represents an eloquent statement about the nature of American society, a powerful force for assimilation and a repudiation of a long history of racism.

Foner stresses the speed with which the constitutional amendments elevated four million black slaves from bondage to citizenship to formal equality with whites. But The Second Founding is far from a triumphalist celebration. The sobering tale it tells has at least three tragic aspects. The first has to do with the enmity that the Reconstruction Amendments encountered from the start. Even after the defeat of the Confederacy, opposition to emancipation, much of it fuelled by Negrophobia, was sufficiently strong to prevent congressional approval of the Thirteenth Amendment the first time it was considered. Railing against the proposed amendment, Representative Fernando Wood, the former mayor of New York City, warned that it involves the extermination of the white men of the Southern states, and the forfeiture of all the land and other property belonging to them. The former Confederate states (with the exception of Tennessee) at first refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. It would not have gained the approval of a sufficient number of states to become part of the constitution if the Republican Party hadnt made ratification a prerequisite for a states regaining congressional representation.

The second tragic aspect has to do with the amendments deficiencies. Consider Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that, with certain exceptions, when the right to vote is denied to adult males the basis of that states congressional representation is to be reduced. Some reformers saw this as a double betrayal: it betrayed blacks by continuing to permit states to exercise racial disenfranchisement (albeit at the cost of suffering a potential reduction in representation), and it betrayed women by introducing gender into the text of the constitution for the first time. While Section 2 supposedly penalised states for excluding men from the franchise (with black men especially in mind), it expressly permitted states to exclude women with no penalty at all. If that word male be inserted, Elizabeth Cady Stanton warned, it will take us a century at least to get it out.

These days, the Fourteenth Amendment tends to be unequivocally celebrated, with little or no awareness of its compromises. When it was drawn up, however, some reformers expressed keen disappointment. It falls far short of my wishes, Thaddeus Stevens said, but I believe it is all that can be obtained in the present state of public opinion. Outraged by its failure to guarantee black male suffrage, the abolitionist Wendell Phillips denounced it as a fatal and total surrender, and urged states to withhold ratification. When it was voted on by the Massachusetts legislature, its two black members rejected ratification.

The Fifteenth Amendment bars states and the federal government from using race as a criterion for voting. But the version of the amendment ultimately approved was among the most restricted of the alternatives considered. One senator proposed an amendment that would have prohibited states from denying the right to vote to any adult male citizen who had not been convicted of crime or participation in rebellion. Another proposed an amendment specifying nationally uniform voting requirements. But as a result of the hostility to the prospect of unrestricted male suffrage, the framers of the amendment designed an exceedingly narrow instrument that could have been foreseen as likely to enable the disfranchisement of perceived undesirables, such as immigrants from China and Ireland. In 1870, with the abolition of slavery only five years in the past, it was evident that literacy, property and similar voting requirements could accomplish much the same ends as outright racial exclusion. Henry Adams observed mordantly that the Fifteenth Amendment was more remarkable for what it does not than for what it does contain. Complaining that the version of the amendment chosen was the weakest considered, Senator Willard Warner argued that it was unworthy of the great opportunity now presented to us.

The third tragic aspect took a while to reveal itself. Racism encumbered the Reconstruction project from the outset, but after a brief interlude of egalitarian enthusiasm that yielded impressive advances, the always fragile commitment to racial justice embraced by the Reconstruction coalition weakened precipitously. The judiciary is the branch of government Foner finds most at fault. He notes ruefully that the Supreme Court constricted the potential reach of the Thirteenth Amendment: it addressed the problem of forced labour, but not the racially stigmatising policies that continued after slaverys demise to mark blacks as a despised minority. The court dismissed as frivolous, for example, the argument that the racial exclusion of blacks from public places trains, hotels, theatres etc amounted to a badge or incidence of slavery that Congress should be empowered to prohibit through the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment bars states from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States a formulation that might have allowed the recognition of a broad array of individual rights. The court, however, interpreted this new provision crabbily, construing it as protecting only a narrow range of activities, such as running for federal office. The amendment provides that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. The court insisted that this new prohibition banned racially discriminatory state action but not private action. When Congress enacted legislation to punish racial aggression by private parties, the court held that such laws went beyond the authority bestowed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The court struck down, for example, a federal law that prohibited the owners of hotels, theatres, restaurants and other public accommodations from engaging in racial discrimination.

Then there was the question of what equal protection of the laws entailed. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a Louisiana statute that required the separation of white and black train passengers. Opponents of the law argued that it was racially discriminatory and thus a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In lonely dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan asked rhetorically: What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that coloured citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? The majority ruled, however, that the law in question was constitutionally inoffensive since it promised separate but equal accommodation for the races. If blacks felt insulted, the court declared, they were being oversensitive.

Similarly disappointing to proponents of racial justice was the Supreme Courts early treatment of the Fifteenth Amendment. In Giles v. Harris (1903), plaintiffs claimed that the state of Alabama had participated in a conspiracy to disenfranchise African Americans. In an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, the court concluded that even if the allegation was true, there was nothing it could appropriately do to redress the wrong. No wonder the Harvard Law Review published an article in 1910entitled Is the Fifteenth Amendment Void?

Some of the ground lost in the long retreat from Reconstruction was regained during the Second Reconstruction the period roughly between 1950 and 1970 which saw an all-out challenge to white supremacism. Legislation was enacted to prohibit racial discrimination across swathes of social activity; racial disfranchisement was attacked by a series of increasingly aggressive laws; and the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation imposed by government across the board, from schools (Brown v. Board of Education) to the marriage altar (Loving v. Virginia). The country, Foner writes, has come a long way toward filling the agenda of Reconstruction.

Foner qualifies this upbeat appraisal, however, with a list of significant dissatisfactions. The latent power of the Thirteenth Amendment, he points out, has almost never been invoked as a weapon against the racism that formed so powerful an element of American slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendments promise has never truly been fulfilled. To make things worse, wrong-headed rulings have made it increasingly difficult for racial minorities to obtain fairness. When it comes to racial justice, Foner writes, the court has lately proved more sympathetic to white plaintiffs complaining of reverse discrimination because of affirmative action policies than to blacks seeking assistance in overcoming the legacies of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. Most distressing of all, to his mind, is the perilous position of the Fifteenth Amendment: To this day the right to vote remains the subject of bitter disputation. The most disturbing recent episode was Shelby County v. Holder (2013), in which the Supreme Court eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that tamped down voter suppression schemes. Since then, such schemes have spread alarmingly. Acting strictly along party lines in states it controls, the Republican Party which has increasingly become the white mans party enacts legislation that makes it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to register to vote. Asserting that such laws are required to stem fraud (a claim that has been repeatedly discredited), the Republicans impose new requirements that invariably and invidiously disqualify racial minorities in disproportionate numbers. They also reduce early voting, eliminate state-supported voter registration drives, and systematically purge people from registration lists for spurious reasons. Reflecting on Shelby County, Foner complains that when conservative jurists discuss the allocation of authority between central and state government, they almost always concentrate on the ideas of 18th-century framers, ignoring those of the architects of Reconstruction.

The Second Founding exhibits the sterling qualities we have come to expect in Foners scholarship, particularly the careful, nuanced judgments. Resisting the overwrought pessimism currently fashionable in some parts of the left, he highlights a remarkable episode in which progressive change erupted unexpectedly. Who could have imagined in 1860 that within a decade an African American would replace the defeated president of the Confederacy as the representative of Mississippi in the Senate? But Foner also insists on recognising the strong pull of racism in American affairs. Rights can be gained, he observes, and rights can be taken away. A century and a half after the end of slavery, the project of equal citizenship remains unfinished.

See the original post here:

Randall Kennedy Racist Litter: The Lessons of Reconstruction LRB 30 July 2020 - London Review of Books

On Black Lives Matter’s abolitionist grammar, Palestine, and the general strike – Mondoweiss

Posted on by

The streets are filled with protestors led by the Movement for Black Lives, and their calls for police de-funding, the abolition of the prison-industrial complex, and abolition of the principles of white supremacy in many other institutions and disciplines are spreading like wildfire, empowering people to act in different ways and directions in their immediate surroundings, in their workplaces and in their organizations. Id suggest that this situation as a whole should be viewed not only as the result of actions, but also of inaction in other words, of the potentialities opened up when, due to the pandemic, so many people have found themselves unconstrained by their ordinary positions of productivity.

Over the last few weeks, weve been experiencing something close to a general strike, perhaps the closest we or any of our generation have come to know. This is a radical moment, and at this point in time we should think about the picket line, and act to create it in different areas of activities. Such is the Hippocratic oath for architects not to build prisons, or the Tamara Lanier lawsuit to free the daguerreotype of Renty Taylor, her ancestor (seized from him when he was enslaved) from Harvard University and the Peabody Museum, or the call to stop circulate images of sexual violence against the bodies of their ancestors issued by Cases Rebelles, or the calls to stop circulating the video of the assassination of George Floyd, after millions were already on the streets and their voices demanding in uncompromising way accountability and police abolition had already become the placeholder for evidence that should no longer be posted. Photography though, is not about the world in which people go on strike, photography ought to continue to draw its picket line.

Photographic abolitionist imaginary cannot start or end with photographs of people on the streets. Rather than saying that public demonstrations are the ultimate manifestation of the body politic, we need to remind ourselves that the body politic is always there (even though many of its members are not be recognized as part of it) and it always manifests itself in different ways, many of them distinct from public protest. When its members are not taking to the streets together, the body politic manifests itself through its policed patterns of power relations. In line with the institutionally regulated forms and formations, members of the body politic affirm themselves in the positions that they are socialized or coerced into inhabiting, separated and classified along race, gender and/or class dividing lines, or through what I have called elsewhere the resolution of the suspect, or into the figure of the unmarked Man, the ultimate bearer of rights under the regime of white supremacy. Even in ordinary times, the streets are always filled with people, but their presence is marshaled into prescribed, familiar flows and arrangements. The variety of their assigned positions, constrained by clear rules of mobility and immobility, ensures that the relentless movement of extraction which simultaneously yields accumulation and dispossession, production and consumption will not allow this differential body politic to get out of control. It is this relentless movement of racialized capital that the pandemic has, to an extent, brought to a halt. Just to be clear I want to stress here that a stop has not been put to racism itself, but rather to much of the production and consumption with which it is intertwined. In this space that was open, activities may not resume in the same way to serve the racialized capital.

The pandemic has led to a partial withdrawal from labor. However, in and of itself, the pandemic is not a strike. Being on strike is the imposition of the condition under which the meanings of a cessation of labor that were formerly foreclosed become imaginable again. The policies of lockdown, quarantine and social distancing, when combined with the undeniably insecure working conditions of those defined as essential workers (and who have been required to ignore or break all the rules others has had to follow to protect themselves from the virus) have created conditions similar to those of a strike. Both those who have had to keep working and those who have been forced to stop working are part of a potential general strike. The July 20th Strike for Black Lives is another rehearsal. This mass withdrawal from positions of work is, in itself, a surprising, unfamiliar and radical manifestation of the body politic that should not be dismissed, but rather paired with the presence of the masses on the streets. Once seen in combination with the withdrawal from work, these street mobilizations are no longer just another interval of public protest but, instead, become something greater.

As many have remarked, with the assassination of George Floyd and the disproportionate number of Black Americans killed by the pandemic, racism has been revealed as the meaning of the pandemic. And, no less importantly, the general strike has been revealed as the meaning of the unproductivity of the masses on the streets, dislocated from their usual operative positions in the body politic. It is this pairing that has made it possible for Black Lives Matters abolitionist grammar to be naturalized in the language of millions. This shift has been so sudden that white institutions have felt compelled to issue statements cleansing them of their white-supremacist language of universalism. Make no mistake, these statements are often disingenuous, belated, and insufficient. However, they can serve as important starting points. Once such statements are made public, those who work in these institutions are collectively afforded the power to strike, to push these words beyond the screen and to use them to transform the institution in question. If, when the movement began in 2013, Black Lives Matters abolitionist and reparative grammar was met with attempts to imperially universalize it (all lives matter), the many who follow the movement today understand that this grammar is the picket line that must not be crossed. In other words, the many who are simultaneously outside their ordinary positions as operators of imperial technologies as they protest on the streets are now practicing this abolitionist-reparative grammar as proper grammar. Otherwise, would Minneapolis City Council members have gone beyond calling for individual indictments and police accountability to advocate the total defunding of the citys police department? Would the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone have existed as a police-free neighbourhood where protestors could draft their uncompromising demands to end white supremacist school-to-prison pipelines?

BLM grammar consists in rejecting the universal political grammar that has, for centuries, normalized crimes against Black people and postponed the ever-pressing abolition of imperial racializing regimes. Abolitionist demands, agendas and imaginaries are neither new nor unprecedented: now, however, they enjoy the status of a general strike that allows them to be uttered as part of the only proper grammar. It is a grammar that enables language to become referential again, to make sense in a world shared by all members of the body politic. With BLM grammar, truth claims are once again possible: for example, that George Floyd is one of many Black people assassinated by police officers, and that the organization that has spawned and nurtured this mass killing for years should be abolished. Also, with BLM grammar, the temporality of truth claims is transformed: events that are described in universal grammar as sporadic, individual killings are recoded in BLM grammar as further episodes of a mass killing. The police assassination of George Floyd is not a dissociated event, but rather an instantiation of forms of violence that are reproduced across time and place, materialized in organizations such as the police and the military, whose shared logic is predicated on the existence of Black suspects whose lives can be snuffed out on the spot. The immediate and uncompromising attacks on public monuments are a symptom of this grammatical change. The toppling of statues of enslavers and colonizers puts a brusque end to exhausting and pointless conversations about what to do with such monuments, conversations that are predetermined by the grammar these monuments themselves impose. Once they come tumbling down, displaying a tiny portion of them for, lets say, educational purposes would require the difficult work of justifying the presentation of such a physical slur in a public space. Such a decision would also necessitate a display that revokes the power of the monument to insult its spectators. What these toppled monuments do, however, is to highlight one urgent question that BLM grammar poses: what are the less visible monuments of the white supremacy that these sculptures celebrate? This is a question Ill return to at the end of this essay.

There is another urgent matter that needs raising. The truth claims and anti-imperial temporality that have become possible once again through BLM grammar and the current general strike are not available everywhere. They are especially hard to pronounce and to hear in countries whose democratic regime is of the apartheid variety. Id like to talk about one such place, Palestine, crushed on a daily basis by the state of Israel. (And, yes, I do insist on referring to Israel as a democratic regime, since our current democracies are nothing to boast about, and are all in some way based on a differential body politic. But this is a topic for another conversation.) A few days after George Floyds execution by police, as large-scale protests started to spread around the world, an Israeli policeman murdered Eyad al-Halaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian man from Wadi al-Joz, Jerusalem. For the Israeli regime, the murder of al-Halaq was a litmus test: would it provoke a response similar in scale to that of the murder of George Floyd? Well, no, it didnt. So it was that Israel obtained yet further confirmation, both local and international, that it could go on brutalizing and extinguishing Palestinian lives as it has done incessantly since 1948, when its regime made disaster was installed. Those small protests that did take place were not seen as arising within the context of 72 years of unceasing struggle, but instead dismissed as a sign that only a few cranks could be bothered to say his name. The conclusion? Another Palestinians life could be taken. And so it was that, just a few weeks later, Ahmed Mustafa Erekat was assassinated at a checkpoint near Jerusalem. Like al-Halaq before him, he was forced to stop at the checkpoint whenever he moved from one point to another. However, on that particular day, he didnt stop properly, according to the apartheid grammar inherent in the Israeli checkpoint system. He was shot several times and then left to die, bleeding out on the road for more than an hour. Israeli hasbara (propaganda) denies the world the chance to hear the names of the Palestinians its soldiers and policemen execute.

In 2015, after the police murder of Michael Brown and the assassination of 2,252 Palestinians in Gaza by Israeli soldiers the previous year, Noura Erakat, a professor of human rights law at Rutgers University, joined with journalist Dena Takruri in an attempt to say their names in solidarity in the video from Ferguson to Gaza and vice versa.

Palestinians and Black Americans shared a common abolitionist grammar and could speak to each other in the same language. As Noura Erakat put it at the time, the point is not to compare oppression [] But the point here is that solidarity is a political decision on how to resist and how to survive in our respective fights for freedom. This week, on Democracy Now!, Noura Erakat spoke as loudly as possible the name of her cousin, Ahmed Mustafa Erekat, whose life was taken by the Israeli regime for its own self-preservation (between the sea and the river), in opposition to the body politic of those it governs half of whom are Palestinians. But even when Erekats name is heard, it is barely associated with the demands to abolish the regime that took his life in one of its routine operations. Unsurprisingly, though, these demands are heard by radical Black leaders who, from the very beginning, made Palestine part of the Black Lives Matter agenda. To understand why BLM grammar is rendered impossible in Israel, it is essential to remember that, under the Israeli regime, Palestinians are murdered not only as individual Palestinians like al-Halaq and Erekat were but also en masse, during countless raids and military campaigns, because they provide the enemy that justifies the Israeli armys very existence.

Consider, too, the inflated police and army budgets, much of which is spent on international propaganda, intimidating and silencing cultural actors and institutions with allegations of antisemitism, and interfering in different countries to promote the introduction of legislation that would make it illegal to say Palestinians names using BLM grammar: in other words, to publicly state that Israels apartheid regime is predicated on the principle that Palestinian lives do not matter. A propaganda that also includes the use of state-funded education that, over the course of 12 years, turns children into soldiers for whom Palestinian lives will not matter. A propaganda that likewise encompasses the hasbara fellowships awarded to students around the world to further the Israeli cause on university campuses internationally, in an attempt to police the discourse there on Israel/Palestine and abort any effort to issue truth claims about Palestine. The recent attack you mentioned on Achille Mbembe in Germany is one of the latest examples of these Israeli-orchestrated attacks on anyone who dares say that Palestinian Lives Matter.

So it is that going on strike requires those who embrace BLM grammar to also find ways to amplify truth claims about Palestine. Outrageously, grotesquely, or tragically, AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has issued a statement of solidarity with BLM, as if it were not one of the primary pillars of support for the state that is a monument to white Jewish supremacy and that blocks the way to a BLM grammar to establish the picket line that should not be crossed. For abolition to be achieved, people will continue to improvise different forms of going on strike as part of the general abolitionist strike and will continue to find ways to put pressure on institutions not to make an exception of Palestine, to say that All Black Lives Matter. If BLM provides the grammar, then keeping the general strike alive requires the uncompromising use of this grammar in all the professions and trades that people carry on, especially once productive activities resume.

With millions on the streets undistracted by the categorical command to produce and consume, those who usually produce photos or ideas which also exist as commodities hold the power to refrain from or refuse to deliver certain goods. And they should, whenever doing so would mean crossing the picket line of All Black Lives Matter grammar. There are many different ways for people to join the strike and render legible the complicity between the white institutions charged with the production of knowledge and culture and the law enforcement regime that has been shaped to protect private property. After all, these institutions are built on the foundations of centuries of primitive accumulation of Black and indigenous land, wealth and stolen labor.

Works of art are the ultimate incarnation of this centuries-old pillaging. To conclude our conversation, lets fire up our imaginations by recalling some recent landmark cases of drawing this picket line, all of which are related to art museums. Firstly, theres the letter written by 100 Whitney Museum workers, who discovered the connection between Warren Kanders, owner of Safariland, a firm whose teargas is instrumental in the violent repression of people across the globe, and their Museum, of which Kanders was a board member (to this day, he remains a funder for and advisor on arts and environmental initiatives at Brown University, where I teach, something that students continue to protest). Then there are the protests and sit-in strikes led by Decolonize This Place, which persisted for months and would not stop until the Whitney respected the picket line. And the work that Forensic Architecture, in collaboration with Praxis Films, pursued with photography in Triple Chaser. Photographs of Safariland teargas canisters were taught to go on strike and to refute the assumption that they represent a decisive moment, and that what they record is only discrete moments, fragments of discrete truths limited to what is captured within their frames. Here they were taught to speak in concert with other photos, to underscore the sense of anti-imperial truth claims. Triple Chaser took part in Kanders toppling, and is also participating in the as-yet unfinished campaign to bring down another white institution the sacred status of secret documents, produced and archived as part of violence and still regarded as a primary source for scholarship seeking to expose imperial violence. In collaboration with with many activists who shared hundreds of photographs from the United States, Turkey, Peru, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Venezuela, Egypt, and Canada, the project assembles a choir of voices to sing out loud a truth claim about the role of museums in reproducing anti-Blackness and anti-Palestinianness.

An earlier version of this text was published in the form of a letter to Carles Guerra at correspondencias.fotocolectania.org.

Ariella Asha AzoulayAriella Asha Azoulay, teaches abolition, political thinking and imperial technologies at Brown University. Her latest book is Potential History Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019).

More here:

On Black Lives Matter's abolitionist grammar, Palestine, and the general strike - Mondoweiss

Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended – Discover Magazine

Posted on by

On July 17, 1975, the U.S. and the Soviet Union docked two spacecraft together in orbit as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, humanitys first international space mission. Over the course of two days, NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts performed a series of scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. But the missions main purpose was far more earthly. It was a political demonstration of peace.

For some historians, the Apollo-Soyuz mission marked the formal end of the space race and the beginning of an extended era of international cooperation in space. Today the spaceflight gets credit for helping pave the way for the joint Shuttle-Mir space program, as well as the International Space Station.

I really believe that we were sort of an example to the countries, astronaut Vance Brand said in a NASA oral history interview in 2000. We were a little of a spark or a foot in the door that started better communications."

For decades, the space race had seen the two superpowers race to master and demonstrate many of the technologies needed to destroy each other with nuclear weapons. Yet, instead of ending in nuclear war, the space race concluded with a handshake in microgravity.

When the Soviet's launched humanity's first satellite, Sputnik 1, it caught the rest of the world by surprise. (Credit: NASA)

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, humanitys first satellite, stunning the world. America responded months later with its own spacecraft, Explorer 1. This back and forth continued to escalate, and in 1961, the Soviet Union put the first human into Earth orbit, once again demonstrating its technological superiority and forcing America to respond.

Amid the heightening Cold War tensions, U.S. officials went looking for some new goal that could be touted as evidence of America's dominance in space. To president John F. Kennedys administration, the moon seemed like the perfect fit. And most importantly, the timeline was long enough that America finally had a chance to beat the Soviets.

In a defining speech at Rice University in Texas in September of 1962, just one month before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy made Americas lunar intentions clear.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, he said, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

The bet paid off. By 1968, NASAs moon program was far ahead of its Soviet rival. As the U.S. wrapped up preparations to send the first Apollo astronauts to the moon, the Soviet Union launched its Zond 5 spacecraft, carrying a pair of tortoises into lunar orbit.

It really was one of those last hurrahs for the Soviet spaceflight program because it was one of the last times they were able to preempt the Americans in any real way, Cathy Lewis, international space program curator for the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum, told Discover in 2018.

And on July 20, 1969, America achieved a major milestone in the space race as the Apollo 11 crew walked on the moon. Over the course of four years, Apollo astronauts traveled to the lunar surface six times. No Soviet cosmonaut ever made the trip.

But the Soviet Union hadnt set idle during that time. While America was putting boots on the moon, cosmonauts were racking up experience in low-Earth orbit, building humanitys first space stations with the Salyut program. They were practiced in spaceflight. And their biological experiments putting animals in satellites had offered up new insights into how the environment of space can change the body.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the two nations had repeatedly talked about cooperating in space and sharing scientific insights. But the Cold War tensions stopped any true exchange from taking place.

Then, in the early 1970s, as both countries were pushing new limits in spaceflight, a period of renewed cooperation called Detente developed on the ground. The Vietnam War was winding down, and both superpowers had just spent enormous fortunes expanding their military might. With the two sides eager for peace, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated nuclear weapons control agreements and generally began easing tensions.

Soyuz commander Alexei Leonov greets NASA astronaut Deke Slayton after the Apollo-Soyuz docking. Both men were already legends in spaceflight at the time, adding drama to the moment. (Credit: NASA)

To some politicians, the ultimate symbol of dtente would be docking a Soviet capsule with an American one in low-Earth orbit for a handshake in space. Scientists and engineers saw benefits to such a joint mission, too. America had talented space pilots and advanced long-distance space technology. Meanwhile, the Soviets had focused on automation and had pioneered long-term spaceflights. Both had something the other was interested in learning about.

An American delegation traveled to Moscow in 1970 to lay the framework for the mission, and within two years, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was officially born.

But not everyone liked the idea. Each side worried the other could steal its technology. Some defense hawks, and even a New York Times editorial board opinion, noted that Apollo-Soyuz offered a technical and scientific bonanza for the Soviet Union's lagging astronautical program. Meanwhile, the Soviets continued insulting American spacecraft.

Finally, three years after the final Apollo moon flight, the two superpowers overcame the political and engineering hurdles to make the rendezvous happen, including the design and development of an American-funded docking module that could mate the two crafts.

On July 15, 1975, a Soyuz capsule and an Apollo capsule leftover from a canceled moon flight launched within hours of each other from opposite sides of the planet. Then, two days later, they met up 140 miles over Earths surface.

Soyuz and Apollo are shaking hands now, Soyuz commander Alexei Leonov said as the two spacecraft gently docked. And as the door opened between the ships, the astronauts inside exchanged their own handshakes and posed for pictures.

Over the next two days, the men learned to work together as they toured the other countrys spacecraft and carried out five joint scientific experiments. At first, though, they struggled to even communicate. Each wanted to speak their own language, but they eventually realized that they all understood things better when they attempted to speak the others language.

We [the Americans] thought they [the Soviets] were pretty aggressive people and ... they probably thought we were monsters, Brand said. So we very quickly broke through that, because when you deal with people that are in the same line of work as you are, and you're around them for a short time, why, you discover that, well, they're human beings."

Together, the crew helped their space agencies gather new technical and scientific insights. One experiment tested the effects of low-gravity on the development of fish eggs. Another created an artificial solar eclipse using the Apollo capsule to block the sun while cosmonauts took pictures of the solar corona.

The International Space Station keeps quietly ticking along. (Credit: NASA)

The moment of peace in space was admittedly brief. Just two days after docking, the ships parted ways. And before long, Cold War tensions reemerged.

After Apollo-Soyuz, no American astronaut would venture to space for roughly six years, until the first space shuttle launched in 1981. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, followed by Russia, kept sending their Soyuz capsules into orbit.

However, the two countries did eventually collaborate in space again first with the Shuttle-Mir program, then with the $150 billion International Space Station, which was largely funded by U.S. taxpayers. And when the Space Shuttle Program came to a close in 2011, NASA was left with no way to keep putting astronauts in orbit themselves. The U.S. had to buy tickets to the International Space Station on Soviet Soyuz capsules.

In fact, Apollo-Soyuz was the last time NASA astronauts rode an American capsule into orbit until May 2020, when SpaceXs Crew Dragon spacecraft delivered astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS.

So, the space race may have ended in a handshake, but the questions and challenges of Apollo-Soyuz have never gone away. The U.S. continues to partner with Russia in space, and pay for the privilege, even as the two countries continue to challenge each other on terra firma.

Read the original:

Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended - Discover Magazine

Commentary: Mask wearing: Maybe you have a right to put your health at risk, but not that of others – Yahoo News

Posted on by

I dont need a mask! declared the San Diego woman to a Starbucks barista. The woman apparently believed she had a right to enter mask-free, contrary to the coffee bars policy. A surprising number of Americans treat expectations of mask-wearing during the coronavirus pandemic in a similar way as if these expectations were paternalistic, limiting peoples liberty for their own good. They are dead wrong.

Their thinking reflects what we might call faux libertarianism, a deformation of the classic liberal theory known as libertarianism. Libertarianism is the political and moral philosophy according to which everyone has rights to life, liberty and property and various specific rights that flow from these fundamental ones. Libertarian rights are rights of noninterference, rather than entitlements to be provided with services. So your right to life is a right not to be killed and does not include a right to life-sustaining health care services. And your right to property is a right to acquire and retain property through your own lawful actions, not a right to be provided property.

Libertarianism lies at the opposite end of the political spectrum from socialism, which asserts positive rights to such basic needs as food, clothing, housing and health care. According to libertarianism, a fundamental right to liberty supports several more specific rights including freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of religious worship. Neither the state nor other individuals may violate these rights of competent adults for their own protection. To do so would be unjustifiably paternalistic, say libertarians, treating grown-ups as if they needed parenting.

Why do I claim that Americans who resist mask-wearing in public embrace faux libertarianism, a disfigured version of the classic liberty-loving philosophy? Because they miss the fact that a compelling justification for mask-wearing rules is not paternalistic at all not focused on the agents own good but rather appeals to peoples responsibilities regarding public health. This point is entirely consistent with libertarianism.

Story continues

Consider your right to freedom of movement. This right does not include a right to punch someone in the face, unless you both agree to a boxing match, and does not include a right to enter someone elses house, without an invitation. Rights extend only so far. They do not encompass prerogatives to harm others (without their consent) or violate their rights. Once we appreciate that rights have boundaries, rather than being limitless, we can see the relationship between liberty rights and public health.

Your rights to freedom of movement, freedom of association, and so on do not encompass a prerogative to place others at undue risk; to endanger others in this way is to violate their rights, which you have no right to do. This idea justifies our sensible laws against drunk driving. So even a libertarian can, and should, applaud Starbucks and its barista for insisting on mask-wearing during the coronavirus pandemic. Whether or not the woman who said she didnt need a mask had a right to ignore her own health, she had no right to put other customers and Starbucks employees at risk either directly, by possibly spreading infection, or indirectly, by flouting a norm of mask-wearing that is reasonably related to public health and protecting other people from harm and rights violations.

The fallacy of faux libertarianism is thinking that liberty rights have unlimited scopes, that ones right to freedom of association, for example, means a right to get together with anyone, at any time, under any circumstances, even if doing so endangers others. If liberty rights had unlimited scopes, then there could be no legitimate laws or social norms since all laws and norms limit liberty in some way or another. That means that, if faux libertarianism were correct, then the only legitimate government would be no government at all, which is to say anarchy as opposed to civil society. And if no social norms were legitimate, then each of us would lack not only legal rights but also moral rights. In that case, we would have no right to liberty or anything else.

Unlike libertarianism, which is a coherent outlook, faux libertarianism refutes itself by destroying any intelligible basis for rights to life, liberty, and property. I am no fan of libertarianism, which I find problematic at various levels. But it is far more compelling than its incoherent impostor, faux libertarianism. Mask up, people, before you enter crowded, public spaces!

ABOUT THE WRITER

David DeGrazia (ddd@gwu.edu) is the Elton Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University.

2020 The Baltimore Sun

Visit The Baltimore Sun at http://www.baltimoresun.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Here is the original post:

Commentary: Mask wearing: Maybe you have a right to put your health at risk, but not that of others - Yahoo News

From surgical robots to 3D printers, this is how to do surgery in space – The Independent

Posted on by

Earlier this year, it was reported that an astronaut in space had developed a potentially life-threatening blood clot in the neck. This was successfully treated with medication by doctors on Earth, avoiding surgery. But given that space agencies and private spaceflight companies have committed to landing humans on Mars in the coming decades, we may not be so lucky next time.

Surgical emergencies are in fact one of the main challenges when it comes to human space travel. But over the last few years, space medicine researchers have come up with a number of ideas that could help, from surgical robots to 3D printers.

Mars is a whopping 33.9 million miles away from Earth, when closest. In comparison, the International Space Agency (ISS) orbits just 248 miles above Earth. For surgical emergencies on the ISS, the procedure is to stabilise the patient and transport them back to Earth, aided by telecommunication in real time. This wont work on Mars missions, where evacuation would take months or years, and there may be a latency in communications of over twenty minutes.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

As well as distance, the extreme environment faced during transit to and on Mars includes microgravity, high radiation levels and an enclosed pressurised cabin or suit. This is tough on astronauts bodies and takes time getting used to.

We already know that space travel changes astronauts cells, blood pressure regulation and heart performance. It also affects the bodys fluid distribution and weakens its bones and muscles. Space travellers may also develop infections more easily. So in terms of fitness for surgery, an injured or unwell astronaut will be already at a physiological disadvantage.

But how likely is it that an astronaut will actually need surgery? For a crew of seven people, researchers estimate that there will be an average of one surgical emergency every 2.4 years during a Mars mission. The main causes include injury, appendicitis, gallbladder inflammation or cancer. Astronauts are screened extensively when they are selected, but surgical emergencies can occur in healthy people and may be exacerbated in the extreme environment of space.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield usesa cardio lab at the ISS (Nasa)

Surgery in microgravity is possible and has already been carried out, albeit not on humans yet. For example, astronauts have managed to repair rat tails and perform laparoscopy a minimally invasive surgical procedure used to examine and repair the organs inside the abdomen on animals, while in microgravity.

These surgeries have led to new innovations and improvements such as magnetising surgical tools so they stick to the table, and restraining the surgeonaut too.

One problem was that, during open surgery, the intestines would float around, obscuring the view of the surgical field. To deal with this, space travellers should opt for minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as keyhole surgery, ideally occurring within patients internal cavities through small incisions using a camera and instruments.

A laparoscopy was recently carried out on fake abdomens during a parabolic zero-gravity flight, with surgeons successfully stemming traumatic bleeding. But they warned that it would be psychologically hard to carry out such a procedure on a crewmate.

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

Bodily fluids will also behave differently in space and on Mars. The blood in our veins may stick to instruments because of surface tension. Floating droplets may also form streams that could restrict the surgeons view, which is not ideal. The circulating air of an enclosed cabin may also be an infection risk. Surgical bubbles and blood-repelling surgical tools could be the solution.

Researchers have already developed and tested various surgical enclosures in microgravity environments. For example, Nasa evaluated a closed system comprising a surgical clear plastic overhead canopy with arm ports, aiming to prevent contamination.

Could a hypothetical traumapod be the answer? (Nasa)

When orbiting or settled on Mars, however, we would ideally need a hypothetical traumapod, with radiation shielding, surgical robots, advanced life support and restraints. This would be a dedicated module with filtered air supply and a computer to aid in diagnosis and treatment.

The surgeries carried out in space so far have revealed that a large amount of support equipment is essential. This is a luxury the crew may not have on a virgin voyage to Mars. You cannot take much equipment on a rocket. It has therefore been suggested that a 3D printer could use materials from Mars itself to develop surgical tools.

Tools that have been 3D printed have been successfully tested by crew with no prior surgical experience, performing a task similar to surgery simply by cutting and suturing materials (rather than a body). There was no substantial difference in time to completion with 3D printed instruments such as towel clamps, scalpel handles and toothed forceps.

Robotic surgery is another option that has been used routinely on Earth and tested for planetary excursions. During Neemo 7, a series of missions in the underwater habitat Aquarius in Florida Keys by Nasa, surgery by a robot controlled from another lab was successfully used to remove a fake gallbladder and kidney stone from a fake body. However, the lag in communications in space will make remote control a problem. Ideally, surgical robots would need to be autonomous.

There is a wealth of research and preparation for the possible event of a surgical emergency during a Mars mission, but there are many unknowns, especially when it comes to diagnostics and anaesthesia. Ultimately, prevention is better than surgery. So selecting healthy crew and developing the engineering solutions needed to protect them will be crucial.

Nina Louise Purvis is a postgraduate researcher in space medicine and a medical student at Kings College London. This article first appeared on The Conversation

Read more here:

From surgical robots to 3D printers, this is how to do surgery in space - The Independent

Album Review: The Rentals Q36 – mxdwn.com

Posted on by

Louis Nguyen July 26th, 2020 - 9:00 AM

Ever since it started as a side project for Matt Sharp in 1994, The Rentals never escaped comparisons to Sharps previous bandWeezer. Still fronting The Rentals as its vocalist, Sharp is the groups only permanent member. Now, Sharp is joined by guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr., delivering an album about space travel, Q36, whose concept is reminiscent of the Weezers scrapped project Songs From the Black Hole. Beyond the comparisons, Q36 holds its own ground as Sharps distinct songwriting style delivers a brilliantly vivid, high concept project.

The album borrows bizarre and clever imagery to convey complex, timely and deeply human emotions. In Above This Broken World, Sharp calls out to a Mothership to rescue a loved one from her secular plight. This lyrical theme underlies a complex and evolving tone in the instrumentations to make for an incredibly nuanced track whose chorus travels from poignant to yearning to hopeful and cathartic with every repetition. Elon Musk Is Making Me Sad uses a different approach to tackle and expand this theme of escapism. The clever and wistful closing track brilliantly borrows an imagined childhood with Elon Musk to express a keen sense of self-regret, returning to his desire to escape and be saved from his bleak reality. The use of imagery to convey complex emotions is also seen in Spaceships. The tracks joyful performances are contrasted with the dark lyrical themes of the mentally ill being shipped off into space, making for a wonderfully nuanced and ironic track.

Sharps keen sense of irony through the use of contrast makes his songwriting especially poignant. Great Big Blue further exemplifies this. While the subtle vocal harmonies float over the evolving and energetic instrumentals, the lyrics constantly juxtapose the dreams and hopes for Challenger Space Shuttle and the specific details of its unfortunate crash, giving the track a sublime poetic feel: Filled with pride to watch their children fly/ Eleven Thirty, Eastern Standard Time. Similarly, Nowhere Girl features a bombastic beat under sweet and nostalgic vocal melodies that are accented by occasional haunting harmonies, reflecting the ironic and eerie lyrics that describe a group of fifth-graders coming across a female cadaver by a scenic river: Nowhere Girl, under the clear autumn skies/ Breathless and exposed/ Nowhere Girl, under the tender moonlight/ Naked and alone. Through irony and contrasts, Sharp brings unmatched nuances to every story he tells.

Musical and thematic parallels between The Rentals and Weezer dont make Sharps recent works feel derivative of his previous collaborations. They show Sharps consistency as a musician who has crafted a signature sound that trademarks his work: the wistful synths-infused alt-rock that is heard throughout Q36. The project is both ambitious and bizarre, yet it finds tremendous success through being thematically vivid, sonically focused and lyrically nuanced.

Here is the original post:

Album Review: The Rentals Q36 - mxdwn.com

Twelve Must-Sees When the Smithsonian Reopens Udvar-Hazy Center July 24 – Smithsonian Magazine

Posted on by

The Smithsonian Institution announced today that the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and the National Zoo will both reopen July 24 following months of closure as a public health precaution due to COVID-19. The two facilities will greet visitors with new health and safety precautions, including timed-entry passes, hand-sanitizing stations, mask requirements for ages six and up, and limited numbers of visitors. But the massive Udvar-Hazy indoor complex, located in Chantilly, Virginia, near Dulles International Airport, should have no problem offering plenty of space for maintaining social distancing. The 17-acre aviation and aerospace museum, which opened in 2003 as an adjunct to the popular National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. houses in its huge hangars thousands of notable artifacts that could never have fit inside the much smaller museum on the National Mall.

Together, the Udvar-Hazy, along with the museum on the National Mall (currently undergoing a massive renovation) showcase the largest collection of space and aviation artifacts on Earth. Of the 6 million visitors to both last year, 1.3 million of them came out to the Virginia site.

When Hazy's doors reopen Friday, visitors will encounter partially visible artifacts drapped with plastic sheeting in the facilitys Boeing Aviation Hangar due to a two-year roof repair project currently under way. That will preclude full viewings of big planes like the Lockheed SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft. And public tours, rides and exhibition interactives won't be available or operable. But there are still more than enough remarkable artifacts to warrant attentionnot the least of which is the still-controversial Enola Gay. August marks the 75th anniversary of its fateful mission to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

With fewer visitors, this will be a time for a more intimate opportunity to check out some of the museum's singular and memorable items. They include the kind of colossal things that you cant quite avoid seeing and would never expect to see indoors, from the elegant curves of the supersonic Concorde to the battered exterior of the Space Shuttle Discovery. As well as thousands of smaller, sometimes personal items crucial to key moments in space flight, from a Mission Control pocket stopwatch to a map marker from the Mercury Project. And even more surprisingly, is the carcass of one of the smallest involuntary space fliersa spider from a Skylab experiment suggested by a high school student.

Here we present a dozen of our picks not to be missed.

Millions may have just tasted their first quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic, but astronauts returning from the moon had to shelter in place as well, lest they spread any unknown lunar germs. Equipped with elaborate air ventilation and filtration systems, the Mobile Quarantine Facility was used by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins after their historic trip to the moon in July 1969. The retrofitted Airstream trailer with living and sleeping quarters and a kitchen was sealed but in motion for their first 88 hours back. First aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, it was transferred to the Pearl Harbor Naval base in Hawaii and eventually the cargo hold of a C-141 aircraft taking the trio to Houston, where a more spacious quarantine facility awaited them at the Johnson Space Center. Crews from Apollo 12 and Apollo 14 also quarantined but by July 1971, following the Apollo 15 lunar landing mission, the practice had been abandoned.

Its fitting that one of the earliest A-Series rockets from Robert H. Goddard is in the Smithsonian. It was the Smithsonian Institution that funded the man who would become known as the father of rocketry, leading to his declaration in 1920 that a liquid fueled rocket could reach the moon, a notion much ridiculed at the time. In 1935, Goddard tried to demonstrate the possibilities of such a rocket in Roswell, N.M. to a pair of big-name supporters, Charles Lindberg and Harry Guggenheim. A technical glitch prevented its launch that day but Lindbergh made sure the 15-foot rocket would be donated to the Smithsonian. It became the first liquid-fuel rocket in the collection.

Early rocketry could be surprisingly primitive, as seen in the jerry-rigged two-foot wooden sled Robert F. Goddard devised in the early 1920s to convey flasks of super-cold liquid oxygen that were much too chilly to touch. Goddard had first started experimenting with solid propellant rockets in 1915, switching to more powerful liquid propellants in 1921. The rudimentary sled, of pine, nails and twine, providing high contrast to the steely sleekness of the all the other objects in the Udvar-Hazy Center, was donated to the Smithsonian in 1959 by the scientists widow, Esther C. Goddard.

One of the smallest items at the Udvar-Hazy Center is the carcass of a Cross spider named Anita, who, with a companion named Arabella, became involuntary space travelers on the Skylab 3 mission in 1973. They were there as part of an experiment to test how weightlessness affected their web building. The idea came from a 17-year-old student from Lexington, Massachusetts, Judith Miles, who responded to a NASA initiative for student experiment ideas. It turns out the arachnid astronauts spun webs in space using a finer thread in response to the weightless environment. Neither Anita nor Arabella survived the nearly two months in space. But they were placed in glass bottles with their names on them. (Arabella is on loan to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.)

As the lunar module of Apollo 11 was fast approaching its historic target on July 20, 1969, it was also running low on propellant. Neil Armstrong approached Tranquility Base searching for a clear patch to land, as Charles Duke at Mission Control in Houston barked out the minutes remaining before the fuel ran out60 seconds, 30 Seconds, he said in those tense final minutes. Duke based his count on a handheld Swiss-made Heuer stopwatch. When Armstrong announced The Eagle has landed. Mission control responded: We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. Were breathing again. Thanks. The item was donated to the museum by the NASA in 1978.

The alien mother ship that spectacularly lands at Devils Mountain at the end of the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was lit like the kind of disco ball youd expect from a ship equipped with such a massive sound (and, as it turned out, communication) system. Without lights it looks more like a death star a much smaller one. But the model, 63 inches round and 38 inches wide, is a surprising find in the Udvar-Hazy Center. Conceived by Steven Spielberg but made by a team led by Gregory Jein, it was built using parts from model trains and other kits. But its makers had a little fun with the parts of it that werent seen on camera, such that its affixed with the model of a Volkswagen bus, a submarine, World War II planes, and R2-D2 from Star Wars one of the modelers had just come from that production. Theres also a mailbox in there and a cemetery plot.

There are not many items in the massive space and aviation collection that are as simply drawn and so brightly painted. But the six-inch, red plastic device had an important job: Showing where the capsules of the Mercury Project were at any time of their flights. It was moved across a world map indicating international tracking stations by a pair of wires. The crude map dominated the wall at Mission Control on Cape Canaveral, Florida, for all six of the manned flights from the Mercury program from 1961 to 1963. The actual Mercury capsules themselves, that gave flight to Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter, were uniformly gun barrel gray with a touch of Army green. But definitely not pink.

The impossibly cute Aurogiro may look like a character from Pixars Cars sequel Planes, but the idea was to build an aerial Model T that could take off from driveways and fly around, or, with the above rotor wings folded back, drive leisurely down the street at 25 mph. Test pilot James G. Ray did just that when he landed it in a downtown Washington D.C. park in 1936, folded back the wings and drove down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Commerce Department which commissioned the project. The precursor to the helicopter performed well, but with an estimated cost of $12,500, it was too expensive for the average suburbanite for whom it was intended. Only one was built.

Sometimes space explorers come from other walks of life. Take 34-year-old New Jersey truck driver and skydiving enthusiast Nick Piantanida, a skydiver who wanted to set a new record for highest jump, in his case from a balloon. His first attempt in 1965 was the victim of a wind shear; he landed in a city dump in St. Paul, MN. His second attempt in February 1966 set a world altitude record of 123,500 feet, but a mishap with an onboard oxygen supply forced controllers to cut the gondola loose. For Strato-Jump III, three months later, Piantanida reached 57,600 feet when disaster struck and the gondola had to be cut loose again. He may have accidentally depressurized his helmet; he never gained consciousness and died four months later in August 1966 at 34.

This French-made two-seat ultralight from 1992 lived up to its name it only weighed about 360 pounds empty but with its 34-foot aluminum tube and sailcloth wingspan this model was used by the conservationist group Operation Migration to help guide endangered flocks of Whooping cranes and other bird species to new migratory routes from Canada to the American South. Flying about 31 mph, it also broadcast crane calls during the flights. It was also featured in the 1996 family film Fly Away Home with Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin.

Discovery was the third Space Shuttle orbiter in space, and racked up the most miles in its 27 years, traveling almost 150 million miles from its 39 Earth-orbital missions from 1984 to 2011. It carried 184 crew members (including John Glenn who returned to space at 77 in 1998). Among its many missions was launching the Hubble Space Telescopeand a couple of its repair missions. Discovery represented the Return to Flight in missions following the loss of the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia disaster in 2003. In all, it clocked 365 days in spacemore than any other orbiters. When it finally retired, it was flown to Virginia in April 2012 after first taking a victory lap over the Nations Capital. It was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by the Endeavour and the Atlantis a few months later.

The biggest thing by far in the Udvar-Hazy Center and maybe in all of the Smithsonian museums is the 202-foot-long Concorde from Air France. In its day, the supersonic airliner cut in half travel time across the Atlantic Ocean, but ultimately couldnt maintain its first-class service because of high operating costs. A sleek, international creation by Arospatiale of France and the British Aviation Corporation, Concorde flew at a maximum causing altitude speed of 1,354more than twice the speed of sound. Air France agreed to donate a Concorde to the Smithsonian in 1989 and lived up to the bargain in 2003, providing the Concorde F-BVFA that had been the first Concorde to open service to Rio de Janeiro, New York and Washington D.C.

More here:

Twelve Must-Sees When the Smithsonian Reopens Udvar-Hazy Center July 24 - Smithsonian Magazine

Critter’s ‘Wild’ and ‘Exotic’; ‘Red Dwarf’ returns – Times Herald-Record

Posted on by

By Kevin McDonough| Times Herald-Record

Animal stories both ennobling and depressing dominate Saturday's programming. Richard Attenborough narrates "Wild India" (8 p.m.), debuting on BBC America. With its billion-plus population of human beings, India still has vast territories filled with exotic creatures, unique landscapes and a large percentage of the world's tiger and elephant populations.

Much of the excitement on "Wild" takes place in the Karnataka region, where arid winds have carved forbidding sculptures out of some of the planet's oldest rock formations. As always, it's a colorful eyeful animated by critters both fearsome and cuddly, sometimes both at the same time.

-- If "Wild India" inspires with the absence of human contact, "Surviving Joe Exotic" (10 p.m. Saturday, Animal Planet, TV-14) concentrates on such human traits as selfishness, pride and avarice. "Surviving" lives up to its name, profiling some of the former employees of the "colorful" character at the center of Netflix's "Tiger King" documentary, as well as following the stories of the big cats and other wild animals who found safer "forever" homes after being taken from Exotic's down-market "empire" after his arrest.

-- If "Solo" represents the backstory of a mega franchise, the 2020 feature "Red Dwarf: The Promised Land" updates a space comedy from the 1980s and '90s. Streaming on BritBox, "Dwarf" always put the emphasis on the unglamorous aspects of space travel, focusing on the drudgery and nuts-and-bolts aspects of technology and bureaucracy, the surreal nature of interplanetary and interspecies interaction as well as the mind-bending potential of human isolation.

-- "Todd McFarlane: Like Hell I Won't" (11 p.m. Saturday, Syfy) profiles an artist associated with the "Spider-Man" comic franchise and the creator of "Spawn," and follows his iconoclastic nature as he rebelled against the conventions of the comic book and toy industries. Speaking of conventions, this documentary is part of Syfy's "Fan Fest," filling a void created by the cancellation of this summer's usual Comic-Con gatherings. It can also be streamed on Syfy.com and Syfy's YouTube page.

Speaking of cult favorites that offer twisted takes on comics and toys, "Robot Chicken" (12:15 a.m. Sunday, Cartoon Network, TV-14) celebrates its 200th episode.

SATURDAY'S HIGHLIGHTS

-- The Nationals and Yankees meet as "MLB Baseball" (7 p.m., Fox) enters its shortened season.

-- Players anticipate renewed competition on "NBA Countdown" (8 p.m., ABC).

-- A new romance unravels when a woman is "Stalked by My Husband's Ex" (8 p.m., Lifetime, TV-14).

-- It's now or never when a fetching former tour guide meets a single dad in the 2019 romance "Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays" (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).

-- Shaun makes a big assumption on "The Good Doctor" (10 p.m., ABC, r, TV-14).

SATURDAY SERIES

Nobody mourns a corporate bully on "Magnum P.I." (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) ... Two hours of "Dateline" (8 p.m., NBC, r, TV-PG) ... Evidence takes Pride to New York on "NCIS: New Orleans" (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) ... "48 Hours" (10 p.m., CBS) ... A vintage helping of "Saturday Night Live" (10 p.m., NBC, r, TV-14).

kevin.tvguy@gmail.com

Go here to see the original:

Critter's 'Wild' and 'Exotic'; 'Red Dwarf' returns - Times Herald-Record

Does Your Company Have a Long-Term Plan for Remote Work? – Harvard Business Review

Posted on by

Executive Summary

CEOs such as Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Twitters Jack Dorsey have announced plans to scale their remote-work initiatives. But, as Microsofts Satya Nadella warns, we may be at risk of replacing one dogma with another if we make a big move toward permanent remote work.

The real issue is not whose predictions turn out to be right or wrong (no one has a crystal ball), but whether those leaders are thinking deeply enough about what they want their new work paradigm to achieve and whether they can architect and construct systems that will allow them to meet their objectives.

To think through those complexities, the authors suggest using Future-back thinking, a process for developing a vision of your best possible future and a clearly laid-out strategy to achieve it. This includes (1) Articulating your grand purpose and aspirational objective (your reason for designing the new system) and envisioning the system and what it looks like; (2) considering each of the assumptions; (3) testing those assumptions; and (4) using the learnings from these experiments to adjust or pivot your systems components, but also your vision itself.

Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his plans for the future of remote work at Facebook. By 2030, he promised, at least half of Facebooks 50,000 employees would be working from home. We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, he declared in a follow-up interview. A few days before, Jack Dorsey had announced that Twitter and Squares employees would be allowed to work where[ever] they feel most creative and productiveeven once offices begin to reopen.

After spending the last two decades building amenity-filled campuses that maximize the collisionability of talent and ideas while enticing their workers to stay in the office for as much time as they can, Covid-19 has shown these leading-edge technology companies that their workers can be just as productive or in some cases, even more so when they stay at home.Its not just tech. Executives in traditional industries who spent days and weeks on the road are discovering that a well-managed Zoom meeting can be as effective as a face-to-face and a lot easier (and less expensive) to organize.

Will Apples new $5 billion HQ, aka The Spaceship, turn out to be a white elephant? Will Google abandon its Googleplex? Will corporations empty out their office buildings everywhere and shrink their physical footprints? Are we on the brink of a new paradigm for work? Microsofts Satya Nadella isnt so sure. Switching from all offices to all remote is replacing one dogma with another, he said in a conversation with The New York Times. One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. Whats the measure for that?

We suspect that the workforces of Twitter and Facebook will be less remote in 10 years than their leaders are predicting today, but much more remote than they could have imagined six months ago. The real issue, however, is not whose predictions turn out to be right or wrong (no one has a crystal ball), but whether those leaders are thinking deeply enough about what they want their new work paradigm to achieve and whether they can architect and construct systems that will allow them to meet their objectives.

WFH is helping them muddle through the immediate crisis, but what do they want from it in the long run? Higher productivity? Savings on office space, travel, and cost-of-living adjusted salaries for workers in cheaper locations? Better morale and higher retention rates?

To know whats best for your organizations future when it comes to remote work, you have to put it in the context of all the things that you are looking to achieve. In other words, you have to have a conscious aspiration. Then you need to envision the workforce system that will make those things possible.

Having more or less remote work is not a point change in an otherwise stable system work from home is a system in and of itself, with many interfaces and interdependencies, both human and technological. These include:

While you can model such a system up to a point, its design specs will inevitably need to be revised as they come into contact with reality; as such, experimentation and learning will be key you cannot expect to have a one-time rollout.

For all of this to be developed and managed in the right way, a different innovation approach is needed.

At Innosight, where both of us work, weve developed a way of thinking and planning that we call Future-back. We cover this in detail in our new book, Lead from the Future, but heres the gist: Future-back is designed to help business leaders develop a vision of their best possible future and a clearly laid-out strategy to achieve it.

Thinking and planning from the future back allows you to fully articulate what you hope to achieve with your new work system and then design its major components from a clean sheet, unencumbered by how things work today or how they worked in the past. Once you have developed your vision, you need to consider all the things that would have to be true for that vision to be achievable, and then test those assumptions with initiatives you can begin today.

The process unfolds in four distinct stages.

You are doing two things in this stage: Articulating your grand purpose and aspiration (your reason for designing the new system) and envisioning the system and what it looks like.

To determine your grand objective your reason for re-imagining your existing system think about what you have learned from the Covid-19 emergency that led you down this path. Your initial aim is simply to develop clarity about your intended future, not achieve analytic certainty.

As you begin to sketch out your workforce system of the future, frame it as a purpose- and objective-driven narrative. This is your vision. As such, it should include: your Purpose (your ultimate inspirational why); your objectives and metrics (your tangible why); and a concise description of the components of your system and how they fit together (your what). For example:

In order to expand our talent base to the four corners of the world and ensure that they are fully-motivated by 2022, 50% of our creative workforce will work remotely for up to 50% of their time. Employees will be fully reimbursed for the costs of their home offices and work-related travel; salaries will reflect local costs of living.

Moving on to the system itself, ask yourself a series of questions about its resources and assets. What kinds of people will make up your system and where will they will be located? How will you organize your different functions and ensure that they work? What will your physical footprint look like? What remote technologies and tools will you need, and how will you combine them with in-person tools and technologies to ensure individual productivity and effective virtual collaborations?

Then you need to ask similar questions about policies and processes, and norms, and metrics.

As Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, there are known knowns and known unknowns, and also unknown unknowns that you must take account of. Work through each of them, surfacing as many of those known and unknown unknowns as you can. Each will need to be proven or disproven:that virtually-convened teams can problem-solve as well as teams that meet in person; that executive development can be carried out online as well as in-person meetings or not, as the case may be.

What do you need to learn and how can you best do it? To answer these questions, walk your vision and its key assumptions back to the present in the form of experiments. You will need more than one if there are different circumstances or contexts in which the system would work for example, if your company includes geographic locations with different societal norms or government regulations, or business units that are fundamentally different from one another (e.g., one that is more service- and manufacturing-oriented versus others that focus on knowledge work and design). People are different, too. WFH makes tremendous sense for some roles and personality types; less for others.

If you are a multinational and want to learn if WFH can work within one of your geographies, carve out a business function or small business unit; systematically apply the WFH technologies, practices, and rules and norms that you wish to use; run it in parallel for a short time; and then carefully measure its results against those of the larger unit.

Through this iterative process of exploring, envisioning, and testing, you will ultimately discover your best way forward. This learning will be an ongoing process, not a discrete event, unfolding over time as your assumptions are converted to knowledge.

Inevitably, there will be tradeoffs that must be negotiated. While you may be able to tap more talent and save money by not requiring your new hires to move, it is also likely that your creative ecosystem will become more diffuse. Some teams may need to meet in person as frequently as several days a week, so they wont have the luxury of living wherever they wish. You will likely have to beef up your technical and human capabilities before you can fully apply your new knowledge across your organization; significant investments may be required to provide sufficient bandwidth for your employees homes, reducing some of your expected savings. You may find, per those early experiments, that your new system wont work in every business unit or geography.

You will likely have to grapple with the pitfalls of causal ambiguity (the fact that what drives good results in one context may very well not in another). Any organization has constraints on its absorptive capacity; you must be prepared for systemic incompatibilities and rejection, which can stem from poor communication between units, the lack of a shared language, or longstanding rivalries and resentments.

At all times, its important to remember that your aspirational whats best should be about more than your bottom line. Back in August 2019, the Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation from one that solely serves its shareholders financial interests to delivering value to all of its stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and communities . Ideally, a companys vision of its future workforce system or systems should reflect its leaders deepest thinking about its why, not just its what and how.

Even if remote work turns out to be less productive on some metrics than others, reducing carbon-based emissions or the improving work-life balancecould make up for it. Or not. Its possible that what works for Twitter and Facebook wont work for you, at least initially. Your struggles with it may point the way towards deeper changes that you have to make.

Future-back thinking doesnt reveal a future that is written in stone it gives you a way to shape it and own it, ensuring your organizations long-term viability. As Satya Nadella suggested, trading one dogma for another is rarely your best solution; in most cases, those dogmas themselves are your biggest problem. At the end of the day, the organizations that can develop the clearest, most inspiring visions, learn the fastest, and pivot the most capably, are the ones that win.

See the article here:

Does Your Company Have a Long-Term Plan for Remote Work? - Harvard Business Review

Everything we know about Starfield, Bethesdas upcoming sci-fi RPG – Digital Trends

Posted on by

Bethesda is a studio that has found great success with its massive single-player RPG games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3. While the companys recent fumbles with games like Fallout 76 (and to a lesser extent, Fallout 4) mightve dropped its stock with gamers, the studio is pushing forward and has some ambitious projects on the horizon. One such project is Starfield, a game that was first announced during Bethesdas 2018 E3 presentation.

We still dont know much about it, but weve gathered as much information as we could to bring you everything we know about Bethesdas upcoming sci-fi RPG.

Recommended reading:

It was probably surprising to see Bethesda unveil a new game and one set in space, at that. Starfield is a single-player sci-fi RPG and is the studios first new game in 25 years. Though the developer attempted to create a game set in space in the 90s, it ultimately failed and was canceled. It seems that Starfield wont share the same fate, as the team has prioritized its development and aims to bring it to next-generation consoles. Currently, its the studios main priority, as a smaller portion of its developers continues work on Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: VI. Bethesda has four main studios under its belt, located in Austin, Dallas, Montreal, and Rockville, Maryland all of which are assisting with the games development.

Fans worried about multiplayer getting in the way of a quality single-player story (looking at you, Fallout 76) should rest easy. According to a Eurogamer interview with Bethesdas Peter Hines, Starfield is is decidedly single player. Well get into this in more detail later, but the company has described Starfield as a core Bethesda game weve come to expect only this time, its set in space, which is new to the studio.

Its unknown if Starfield will come to PS4 and Xbox One, but Bethesda has hinted that it probably wont. The team is currently working on the game, focusing on their vision, and will optimize afterward. Bethesda Game Studios executive producer Todd Howard told GameSpot that releasing for current generation hardware is not out of the question but there is a question there. Im being honest, I dont the answer to that yet. When thinking about its possible release date, its very unlikely Starfield will be available for current-generation consoles especially if its as ambitious as the company says itll be but time will tell.

Speaking of next generation, the question of whether Starfield will be running on a new and improved engine has been on the minds of Bethesda fans since its announcement. After all, many of the studios past games have been notoriously buggy and have felt outdated, even at the time of release. With Starfield, its not clear how itll run, but Bethesda has gone on record to confirm it will use the same engine as Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, known as Creation Engine.

This might be an immediate turnoff to some, but when you consider the engine has evolved tremendously since 2011, it might as well be something totally new. As GamesRadar explains, Bethesda has added to the engine, so much so, that calling it the same isnt as informative as youd think.

For Fallout 76 we changed a lot of it, Howard explained. All new renderer, new lighting model, new landscape system. Then when you go to Starfield, even more of it changes, and then Elder Scrolls VI, which is really out on the horizon, even more of it changes. In short, the fact that Starfield is still running on Creation Engine might not necessarily be something to worry about.

We do know parts of Starfield are already playable as of E3 2018. That was two years ago, so the game is likely in even better shape now. We know the game were making now, and one of the reasons we announced it is that its looking really awesome. We have runway in front of us and we know whats happening, Howard told GameSpot in 2018. When it comes to the gameplay and what to expect from Starfield in comparison to Bethesdas other games, Howard concluded, It has what youd expect and more.

Its different, but if you sit down and play it you would recognize it as something we made if that makes sense? It has our DNA in it. It has things that we like, Howard told Eurogamer in 2018.

The studio is, of course, keeping it tight-lipped when it comes to revealing information about Starfield, but the main point is that itll likely satisfy those players who love classic Bethesda games. In recent years, the company has tried new things like The Elder Scrolls: Bladesand Fallout Shelter two games that were designed with mobile devices in mind. Starfield, on the other hand, will not be like that at all, though what well be doing in it remains to be seen.

We got our first and pretty much only glimpse at Starfield during Bethesdas E3 presentation in 2018, and aside from conveying tone, it didnt reveal much. Bethesda was actually reluctant to reveal the game so early but, as Howard explained during an interview with NoClip, fans had already suspected the team was working on Starfield, following its trademark filing in 2013. The team wanted to give fans a roadmap for what to expect from Bethesda Game Studios going forward, and decided to pull the cloak off but maybe too early, as some fans have pointed out.

The more cynical side of the internet believes the company revealed Starfield when it did to distract from the announcement of Fallout 76, which didnt have the best reception, even prior to its release. The company had to have known the community wouldnt take kindly to an online Fallout game, so perhaps Starfield and The Elder Scrolls: VI were revealed to hold fans over. Bethesda would never admit that, of course.

At E3 2019, Todd Howard, Elon Musk, and The Game Awards Geoff Keighley had a discussion about developing games, among other things and Starfield was brought up. Howard told the audience he went to Musks company, SpaceX, to gather information and inspiration for Starfield. This means Bethesda is attempting to keep the game based in reality, while still making it fun to play. Howard used the word authenticity to describe the way Starfieldis supposed to feel.

In the same chat, Howard described possibly using Helium-3 to fuel rockets in-game. This, ostensibly, hints that some sort of space travel will be available in the final product. We have to game-ify it some, so its not as punishing as actual space travel, Howard added. He compared space travel in Starfield to flight in the 40s, in that its still fairly dangerous. All of this will be fully realized, thanks in part to collaboration with Musks SpaceX.

This talk occurred in 2019, so much of what was mentioned could change as games typically evolve tremendously throughout their development. Certain ideas stick, while others even if enormous amounts of time and resources are spent on them might not ever come to be.

Typically, Bethesda has multiple projects going on at once with one getting the majority of the focus, while the others sit to the side and gestate. We know the company filed for Starfields trademark in 2013, which means it had to have been thinking about it for a while prior to that. In speaking with Eurogamer, Howard said the studio had been at least discussing the game since 2004, with Bethesda fully dedicating staff to it around 2015.

Despite the company having Starfield in mind since as early as 2004, that doesnt mean its been actively working on it since then. But at the very least, we know it is past the pre-production phase and has been for around five years. Howard told Geoff Keighley during a Gamelab discussion, It took us a while to get that cohesive this is what Starfield is, and now that project is off and running in a good way and that was also why we felt good announcing it.

For context, it took Bethesda at least around five years to complete development on Skyrim, assuming the team started work on it as soon as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion shipped in 2006. With that in mind, the current COVID-19 pandemic will likely have an effect on the games development, due to studios being forced to work remotely. This practice although necessary is one that has slowed the production of many forms of media, not just video games.

Okay, maybe not light-years away, but its still very far off, based on the way Bethesdas public figures have been talking about it. During an interview with GameSpot, Howard advised that everyone should be very patient when it comes to getting their hands on Starfield. Bethesda doesnt know when itll be able to show us more, which is partially why there was an internal debate concerning its reveal at E3 2018. Nonetheless, you shouldnt expect to play Starfield until 2021 at the earliest.

Even if Bethesda was counting on shipping Starfield in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic would have likely slowed production, pushing it further out. A much more realistic time frame places it around 2022, given the circumstances. Following the poor reception to Fallout 76 in 2018, Bethesda is likely wanting its next game to be as refined and polished as possible, which will take time.

Pete Hines told Eurogamer that development times havent changed at all, when compared to the studios past games. In reference to when wed learn more about Starfield, Hines said timeframe-wise, it would still be about as long as youd expect when you look at Fallout 3 to Skyrim to Fallout 4 to Fallout 76. Its still going to be those periods of time, that hasnt changed. Or at least, I dont think it will change from that based on what I know. That could point to a Starfield update coming within the next year or two. Keep in mind, that interview was conducted in 2018, prior to the pandemic, so things might have shifted around since then.

What we do know is that itll release for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, the latter of which are scheduled to launch later this holiday. Aside from that, all we can do is speculate about when well get to play Starfield. Hopefully, the wait will be worth it.

Read the original post:

Everything we know about Starfield, Bethesdas upcoming sci-fi RPG - Digital Trends

A Zero-Emissions Airliner Is Possible by the Early 2030sIf This Happens – Popular Mechanics

Posted on by

Could airlines have a zero-emissions airliner by the early 2030s? Totally, they say. As long as everyone involved acts very quickly and gets completely on board with hydrogen technology, that is.

Glenn Llewellyn, the vice president of zero-emissions technology for Airbus, told a panel this week that the aeronautics manufacturer is fully in on hydrogen flight. Its the quickest path, he believes, to turning passenger flight into zero-emissions passenger flight.

Unlimited Pop Mech. Get best-in-class tech and transportation stories, stat.

To do that, he recommends a schema that makes sense: pull up a lot of automotive hydrogen technology thats either already fully formed or in the works, and pull down a lot of space hydrogen launch technology, like what already powers the Vulcain 2 liquid fuel engine. The Vulcain lifts the Airbus-designed Ariane launcher into space for the European Space Agency (ESA).

The European Union has recently released a hydrogen strategy to go with its EU Green Deal series of plans. Indeed, hydrogen is broadly hyped as the great green hope that can fill a stopgap for a lot of heavier industries where wind and solar arent suitable yet. But critics have pointed out some big logistical problems with that idea. Problem #1: Where will all this hydrogen come from?

Separating usable hydrogen is very costly, and the most cost efficient way today uses, you guessed it, fossil fuels. Hydrogen itself is a clean energy, but making the hydrogen isntat least not yet. The fossil fuel industry can push hydrogen as its heir apparent and seem virtuous and in touch, but the truth is it will continue to control the supply of fossil fuel-processed hydrogen for at least a while.

One of the most promising technologies to allow us to do that is hydrogen. Why hydrogen? Mainly because we believe we need to position the aviation industry to be powered by renewable energy and hydrogen is a very good surrogate, Llewelyn said in the panel. He emphasized that ramping up development and manufacturing of any hydrogen airliner must also come with an investment in hydrogen supply infrastructure to airports.

And, again, thats where the links to the fossil fuel industry become relevant. Describing hydrogen as the surrogatea word suggesting an analog and one-to-one swapsuggests its both more ready and more appropriate than it may be in reality.

In addition, as Llewelyn suggests, the only way hydrogen will be ready for passenger flight by the early 2030s is by getting a big head start from both automotive and space-travel technology.

The idea of an airliner powered by hydrogen already conjures images of the Hindenburg. Yes, liquid hydrogen is used in spaceflight, but those are the most advanced craft in the world and launched in conditions kept as isolated and pristine as is humanly possiblenot refueling in a hurry during a layover at OHare. A working hydrogen airliner within 15 years may be a reality, but it may also be flame-broiled pie in the sky.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.

View post:

A Zero-Emissions Airliner Is Possible by the Early 2030sIf This Happens - Popular Mechanics

Roanoke Island campground approved by Dare commissioners – The Coastland Times – The Coastland Times

Posted on by

The Dare County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a conditional use permit for Beachland Farms Campground, a 50-space travel trailer park partially abutting Vista Lake subdivision on Roanoke Island.

Dare County attorney Robert L. Outten outlined the steps for the quasi-judicial hearing. He told the commissioners you do not have the authority to deny the permit. He said the commissioners can put conditions on the development.

Malcolm Fearing as property owner told the commissioners we want to be good neighbors.

With Fearing were attorney Benjamin Gallop with Hornthal, Riley, Ellis and Mayland as well as engineer Dylan Tillett with Quible and Associates.

One of the issues is how much wetland will be filled. Tillett reported 2,522 square feet or 0.06 acre will be filled. The wetland filling will be reviewed by six federal and state agencies.

Commissioner Rob Ross wanted to know the flood zone. AE4 replied Tillett. Vista Lake subdivision has the same zone mapped.

Seven citizens spoke in opposition to the proposal.

Lester Page, who lives in Vista Lake, said his subdivision was flooded out two years ago by a bad hurricane. His car was totaled. About the campground, he said its going to be heavily impacted by surge from the sound.

Page also said, with a hurricane coming, the travel trailers will not get out of there. Debris will go into Vista Lake and Viccars Lane.

We need a heavy bond on this thing, said Page.

One of the conditions addresses Pages concern.

Condition No.14 states the park owner shall be responsible for the removal of any damaged travel trailers or recreational vehicles that may result from storm conditions or other natural disasters. The park owner is responsible for debris removal and damaged units cannot be placed on or abandoned on the right-of-way of any public or private road. Violations of the condition shall be considered littering.

Patricia Gale said the development will definitely impact wildlife. Any impact is too much, she said. She asked for a complete impact study.

Two people addressed concerns about property values.

Jesse Davis was concerned about declining property values. He also questioned the impact of the raised septic system. Engineer Tillett replied that a drainage ditch is available to handle runoff. Davis responded that the ditch was in his backyard.

Nevin Wescott, a 32-year resident, called the campground this terrible wrong behind our community.

He said nobody is going to sit on a back porch and see an RV park.

He said theres going to be a slip up with connections.

One of the conditions in the permit prohibits open campfires. Wescott still is concerned about grills. He remembered a marsh fire six or seven years ago. North Carolina Forest Service put it out.

He voiced concern about the size of current trailers and RVs. I can tell you that they cannot come to Bowsertown and make the turn.

He pleaded: Dont let this happen to us.

Attorney Gallop objected to testimony about traffic and land valuation as the testimony was not competent, meaning it was not offered by a professional.

Ross raised the adequacy issue of Bowsertown Road. Gallop responded that traffic concerns need to be brought by a traffic engineer. Trailer size will be self-limiting.

Fearing said it is a state-maintained road.

Commissioners went down the list of complaints raised by those offering testimony.

Board Vice Chairman Wally Overman made the motion to approve the site plan and conditions. The motion was seconded by commissioner Jim Tobin.

Overman said of Fearing: He will be a good neighbor.

The specific conditions set out for the campgrounds Conditional Use Permit are:

Minimum site area is 1,500 square feet, width at least 30 feet with gravel parking area.

Trailers permitted to park year-round but must be fully licensed and ready for highway use.

The units shall not be used as permanent dwellings.

No additions, decks, porches or other appurtenances permitted. A 100-square foot entrance landing is allowed.

A 20-foot wide gravel road built to NCDOT sub-base standards is to be used as access to sites.

Utilities include water from the Dare County system. On-site wastewater systems approved by Dare County Health Department are to be used.

A bathhouse facility is required by the countys Travel Trailer Park Ordinance.

A vegetative buffer strip must be constructed around the perimeter of the park. A solid fence six feet high must be installed along the southeast boundary adjacent to campsites 9 through 12 which abut properties in Vista Lake.

All supplemental state and federal permits must be secured before installation of any improvements.

A copy of the tenant lease must be provided to Dare County Planning Department.

Travel trailer park owner is responsible for removing any damaged trailers or recreational vehicles resulting from storms or natural disasters. Units cannot be placed or abandoned on the right-of-way of any public or private road.

Open campfires are prohibited in the park.

Signage is subject to separate review under the countys sign ordinance.

Infrastructure improvements shall be installed within 12 months of the date of the permit.

READ ABOUT MORE NEWS HERE.

RECENT HEADLINES:

Teen reported missing last seen in Elizabeth City

Grants presented to each of Hydes volunteer fire departments

See original here:

Roanoke Island campground approved by Dare commissioners - The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times

JAXA Shares Plan To Extended Its Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample-Return Mission – Mashable India

Posted on by

Hayabusa2 is currently heading back home after departing from the asteroid Ryugu in November 2019. But the spacecraft might venture on an extended mission after it returns to Earth and completes its current mission of returning samples from asteroid Ryugu.

In a recent statement, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) along with the Australian Space Agency confirmed that the Hayabusa2 capsule will land on December 6, 2020. Both space agencies are working together on the re-entry and recovery operations of the capsule which is planned to land in Woomera, South Australia.

But, as revealed by the official Twitter handle of Hayabusa2, the spacecraft might swing by Earth and head on over to its next target.

The Hayabusa2 project is considering an extended mission after returning the capsule to Earth. Plans have been narrowed down to 2 possible candidate targets: asteroids 2001 AV43 or 1998 KY26. Both are small & fast spinning objects, which is a type that has not yet been explored. pic.twitter.com/OYpQAyy7ob

After deploying its capsule containing the asteroid samples so that it drops down to Earth, the spacecraft will again escape Earths orbit and go to one of the two potential targets, Asteroid 2001AV43 and Asteroid 1998KY26.

As shown in the mission outline, the spacecraft will be able to reach asteroid 2001AV43 by November 2029 after executing a Venus fly-by. Alternatively, the spacecraft will be able to reach asteroid 1998KY26 by July 2031 after flying by another asteroid.

According to the NHK, JAXA plans will be selecting the next target by September and further plans on completing the complete Hayabusa2 mission 15 years after the spacecraft was launched.

Hayabusa2 is an asteroid sample-return mission that was launched back in December 2014. After arriving at its target, asteroid 162173 Ryugu in June 2018, the spacecraft conducted various scientific experiments and landing operations with help from the mission lander, MASCOT for over a year.

The spacecraft is now returning to Earth after six years and might soon head to its next target for ten additional years. In May, Hayabusa2 completed 2000 days of spacelight as it passed the half-way point of its return trip. The report by NHK adds that JAXA intents to try collecting data on how equipment is affected by long-term space travel.

Today (5/25), Hayabusa2 achieved 2000 days of space flight & passed the mid-point for the return trip! The remaining distance is ~400 million km. Ion engines & flight course are good. Operations continue, hoping that Ryugus treasure will arrive at a peaceful Earth --PM Tsuda. pic.twitter.com/lBTtV9SvKA

SEE ALSO: Bennu and Ryugu Might Have Been Two Large Chunks From One Asteroid

Image Source: JAXA

View original post here:

JAXA Shares Plan To Extended Its Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample-Return Mission - Mashable India

Fortnite Spaceship Could Point to Season 4 Space Theme – Heavy.com

Posted on by

One of the biggest parts of the most recent Fortnite update was the discovery of the secret spaceship that even featured a human inside of it.

For the time being, its hidden underneath a bunch of water, but we figure after a few more water drops, it will become available to explore.

We do know that there is a set of challenges that will come with this new discovery, so it really is a matter of if, not when.

YouTuber Ali-A came out with a video that explored the spaceship, and he even managed to come up with some discoveries of his own that could prove to be quite interesting going forward. Lets take a look.

*NEW* HIDDEN SPACESHIP has a BIG SECRET in Fortnite!Fortnite Secret Spaceship FOUND and where to find it! ALL my Fortnite: Battle Royale videos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1XXHtwbB06kkGsHz17V9Ch0TAa6qfYWR Hit LIKE and Subscribe Thank you! Hey there I'm Ali-A! Thanks for watching one of my videos! 🙂 I make daily gaming videos and have a load of fun doing it. Make sure you're checking out more of my videos and "SUBSCRIBE" to be notified every time I upload. Thanks Enjoy the video! 😀 #UseCodeAliA Follow me! Facebook http://facebook.com/AliAarmy Twitter http://www.twitter.com/OMGitsAliA Instagram http://instagram.com/AliA Join the Ali-A Discord https://discord.gg/3ZA5JJX Ali-A Merch http://AliAShop.com The equipment I use! The headset I use http://bit.ly/1dXHELh How I record my gameplay http://e.lga.to/a Improve your aim (10% off) http://www.kontrolfreek.com/discount/ali-a My controller https://scuf.co/AliA (Use "ALIA" for discount) My Gaming gear https://en.roccat.org/ (Code "ALIA" for 10% off) Cheapest games https://www.g2a.com/r/AliA Intro Music (Listen/Download here) https://youtube.com/FutureHouseMusic https://www.youtube.com/SpinninRec Subscribe for more videos! Ali-A Video uploaded & owned by Ali-A. (PG, Family Friendly + No Swearing!)2020-07-22T23:16:00Z

If you actually look at the Battle Pass, there are a lot of skins and cosmetics that hint at space travel in some way, which is actually pretty interesting consider the initial Season 3 from Chapter 1 also had a similar theme.

Theres also a loading screen that features the same spaceship that is currently found on the map.

Ali-A points out that the Marauders are landing on the map in a similar pod as this spaceship, so its possible they could be tied into all of this in some way.

At the north part of the map, you can see the spaceship underwater and Ali-A openly wonders if this will tie into the larger scheme of things in the season.

A space theme would actually make sense going forward, considering there seems to be a big focus on it this season.

Of course, theres really no way to tell what direction things will go as we progress, but its clear this spaceship will have something to do with it.

Theres not much that Epic adds to the game that isnt on purpose, so itll be fun to keep an eye on what comes out of this ship. The next water drop is set to take place on July 27, so well see if its uncovered then.

READ NEXT: How to Get New Verve Emote in Fortnite For Free

Follow this link:

Fortnite Spaceship Could Point to Season 4 Space Theme - Heavy.com

NASA Reaches Out to Universities for Help With Lunar Dust Problem – Interesting Engineering

Posted on by

Did you know that dust is a serious problem that must be considered when it comes to the future of space exploration?

Lunar dust, in particular, is largely made of small particles that can damage spacesuits, machinery, and equipment and in, future habitats, might even pose a health risk by damaging astronauts' lungs.

In a bid to find solutions to this problem, NASA is reaching out to university students for help.

RELATED: 17 FACTS ABOUT INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL THAT WILL HAVE YOU DREAMING OF SPACE

As part of its Artemis program for sustainable human exploration of the Moon, NASA is reaching out to top students to help find a way to removelunar dust from where it's not supposed to be or stop it from getting there in the first place.

Through its annualBreakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, NASA will be looking for solutions from students for several categories. These include,dust prevention and mitigation during landings, spacesuit dust tolerance, exterior dust clean up, and controlling lunar dust within habitats, NASA explained in a press release.

The five to ten team entries that are selected as winners will receive up to$180,000 each to build, test, and present their dust mitigating technologies.

"This competition gives students an unparalleled opportunity as members of the Artemis generation to help overcome the historically challenging technical obstacles of mitigating lunar dust," said Niki Werkheiser, NASAs Game Changing Development program executive within the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

The 2021 BIG Idea Challenge will accept entries from teams composed of five to twenty-five undergraduate students fromaccredited U.S.-based colleges and universities. For more information visit NASA's Big Idea Challenge page.

It's not the first time NASA has reached out to civilians for help. Only last month, it made a call for help designing future Moon toilets, and in April it announced a $160,000 reward for a successful mini payload design.

Here is the original post:

NASA Reaches Out to Universities for Help With Lunar Dust Problem - Interesting Engineering

Enthusiast Opines Nervos Network will make Ethereum Look Like Windows 3.1 – The Cryptocurrency Analytics

Posted on by

Looking for Altcoins and cryptocurrencies which are set to be here in 10 years from now. For some investors they cannot wait until it is way off in the future to be able to make real money. To estimate whether a crypto can give you some decent returns soon, it is important to understand the competitive aspects of their usability.

As Warren Buffet Says, it is not good to ignore an investment opportunity by sucking thumbs and not doing anything about it if it is within investment competence. It is important to take an investment opportunity if it is good. Creating an analogy, if it personally strikes that the use case is going to be well worth the user interest, it is good to be investing in it.

You need some kind of inner feeling of entitlement to know that you really want to risk in investing in a project that you are able to logically identify a purpose to be with the project the Altcoin is targeting to achieve. Interpreting, you must be able to make some sense out of the mission statement and the purpose outlined in the White Paper.

In this regard, when it comes to identifying the circle of competence, Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted: Nervos have discussed layer 1, layer 2 and consensus scope, economic model, multi-asset store of value, crypto-economics, Nakamoto consensus, and the Eaglesong hash function. They have a Youtube video in this regard.

The You Tube Video has received some shout out from the community. The researchers who contribute to Nervos are introduced.

The Nervos Network is composed of layers of protocols instead of single blockchain. The difference between the layer 1 and layer 2 is the consensus scope. The numbers of nodes which participate in the consensus in this protocol. Layer 1 is absolutely secure and no security is compromised. In Layer 2 a bit of security can be compromised to provide for better user experience and for lower latency effect.

In order to ensure free flow of transactions, each of them should be detached using different processes. All of these are accomplished using UTXO. More to know in the video.

Nervous was chosen by Chinas bsnbase The BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework global infrastructure network used to deploy and operate all types of blockchain DApps.

The BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework global infrastructure network used to deploy and operate all types of blockchain DApps.

The other public chains to be integrated are Ethereum, EOSIO, Tezos, Nervos, NEO, and IRISnet. There is an exhaustive Medium article in this regard.

The community feels that very soon Nervos Network Will make Windows 3.1.

View original post here:

Enthusiast Opines Nervos Network will make Ethereum Look Like Windows 3.1 - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

Earnings Preview: What To Expect From Tesla On Wednesday – Forbes

Posted on by

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y in Hawthorne, California on ... [+] March 14, 2019. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Tesla Inc. TSLA is scheduled to release earnings after Wednesday's close. The stock just hit a record high of $1794.99/share and is currently trading near $1612.65/share. The stock is prone to big moves after reporting earnings and can easily gap up if the numbers are strong. Conversely, if the numbers disappoint, the stock can easily gap down. To help you prepare, here is what the Street is expecting:

Earnings Preview:

Teslais expected to report a loss of ($0.71)/share on $4.67 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, the so-called Whisper number is a loss of ($0.23). The Whisper number is the Street's unofficial view on earnings.

Company Profile & Various Businesses:

Here is a brief company profile:

Tesla, Inc., formerly Tesla Motors, Inc. TSLA , incorporated on July 1, 2003, designs, develops, manufactures and sells fully electric vehicles, and energy storage systems, as well as installs, operates and maintains solar and energy storage products. The Company operates through two segments: automotive, and energy generation and storage. The automotive segment includes the design, development, manufacturing, and sales of electric vehicles. The energy generation and storage segment includes the design, manufacture, installation, and sale or lease of stationary energy storage products and solar energy systems to residential and commercial customers, or sale of electricity generated by its solar energy systems to customers.

Pay Attention To How The Stock Reacts To The News:

From where I sit, the most important trait I look for during earnings season is how the market and a specific company reacts to the news. Remember, always keep your losses small and never argue with the tape.

More:

Earnings Preview: What To Expect From Tesla On Wednesday - Forbes

President Faure receives members of the Seychelles Bible Society – Office of the President of the Republic of Seychelles

Posted on by

21 July 2020 | Religion

President Danny Faure welcomed a delegation from the Seychelles Bible Society of Seychelles at State House this afternoon.

Led by the Vice-Chairperson of the Seychelles Bible Society, Pastor Abel Ntep Ntep, during the meeting the members present shared with the President some of the key accomplishments of the society over the past 5 years, current projects and programmes being implemented, and plans for the future. The delegation shared an update on key ongoing projects including the 'Trauma Healing' project and the establishment of a Bible House with facilities to accommodate the operation and cater for future projects.

President Faure expressed his appreciation to the Bible society for the invaluable work they are doing in the country and reiterated his full support for the conception of the Bible house.

The delegation also presented the President with a copy of their Strategic Plan for 2018-2022.

Also present at State House for the meeting was the Executive Secretary of the Bible Society of Seychelles, Mrs Margaret Maillet, Reverend Bryan Volcere, Pastor Michael Bijoux, Pastor Eddy Payet and Ms Raymonde Onezime, a Member of the Bible Society Board.

Editor's Note:

The vision and mission of the Bible Society of Seychelles is focused on ensuring the Bible is easily available and accessible and promote the use of Holy Scriptures. They also aim to raise support through local contributions for the local and worldwide work of the Bible Society and work in partnership with all churches and church-related organisations.

See the rest here:

President Faure receives members of the Seychelles Bible Society - Office of the President of the Republic of Seychelles

President Faure receives delegation from Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Seychelles – Office of the President of the Republic of Seychelles

Posted on by

20 July 2020 | Religion

President Danny Faure welcomed a delegation from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Seychelles at State House this afternoon.

The delegation led by Pastor Solofo Georges Jean Mesmert thanked the President for making the time to receive them at State House and conveyed the appreciation of the church for the continuous support from government and the consultative approach that exists between the church and government.

The meeting was an opportunity for the delegation to share the work of the church and some of the community-based activities currently in place dedicated as outreach for those at risk, including future plans to expand their outreach programme Light House involving rehabilitation and counselling support.

During discussions, President Faure reaffirmed governments commitment to maintaining strong relations with the Seven-Day Adventist Church and thanked them on behalf of the people of Seychelles for their work targeted at communities in need and empowering citizens.

Other members of the delegation included Pastor Norris Barra, Mr Hugh Watts, Mrs Natalie Edmond.

Originally posted here:

President Faure receives delegation from Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Seychelles - Office of the President of the Republic of Seychelles