Monthly Archives: June 2017

The New Censorship on Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)

Posted: June 9, 2017 at 12:52 pm

Tony Overman, The Olympian via AP Images

Students leave Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., last week after a threat prompted officials to evacuate the campus.

The turmoil at Evergreen State College where a professor is facing accusations of racism and demands for his resignation because he said white students should not be asked to leave campus for a day is only the most recent example of free-speech controversies roiling colleges across the country.

It is an illusion for minority groups to believe that they can censor the speech of others today without having their own expression muzzled tomorrow.

Free speech faces many challenges at colleges and universities these days, but none greater than the growing skepticism of some students especially those who feel particularly marginalized and disempowered in our society. Vocal elements of these groups increasingly question what the Supreme Court has celebrated as the countrys profound commitment to "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" public discourse.

Campaigns led by these students to silence and to exclude from their campuses speakers whose views they find offensive and odious has triggered a serious politicization of the principle of free speech, with "progressive" and minority students tending to condemn freedom of speech, and political conservatives suddenly waving the flag of free expression. This politicization of a fundamental right would be bad enough if it were to stay on campuses, but, as Evergreen State demonstrates, controversies at higher-education institutions are driving the polarization of free speech nationwide. It also poses a special danger to the interests of those very same minority students because, in the long run, it is they who most need the vibrant protection of freedom of speech as an essential and powerful weapon in our continuing struggle for equality.

It was not always this way. The civil-rights movement of the 1960s, for example, energetically embraced the principle of free speech. In April 1968 in Memphis, in the last speech he gave before he was murdered, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. provided a ringing endorsement of the central importance of the First Amendment for the civil-rights movement, when he declared that the freedom of speech is a central guarantee of "the greatness of America."

In a similar vein, the womens movement and the gay-rights movement were both made possible by the ability of courageous advocates for equality to challenge the accepted wisdom, to advance new ideas and understandings, and to shift the expectations and beliefs of countless Americans. Without a fierce commitment to freedom of speech, such progress would never have been possible.

Yet today, minority students and their supporters too often see free speech as the enemy. It is certainly understandable that they see certain speakers and certain ideas as offensive and odious. It is certainly understandable that they would be tempted to want to silence speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley, Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna, and Charles Murray at Middlebury.

But it is also understandable that believers in creationism would want to silence supporters of Darwin in the 19th century, that supporters of the United States entry into World War I would want to silence critics of the war and the draft, that supporters of the belief that "a womans place is in the home" would want to silence supporters of the womens-rights movement, and that supporters of the view that homosexuality is sinful and immoral would want to silence supporters of the gay-rights movement.

Wanting to censor those whose views one finds odious and offensive is understandable. Actually silencing them is dangerous, though, because censorship is a two-way street. It is an illusion for minority groups to believe that they can censor the speech of others today without having their own expression muzzled tomorrow.

When students last year were asked in a Gallup survey sponsored by the Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute if they thought colleges and universities should restrict the expression of "political views that are upsetting or offensive to certain groups," 24 percent of white respondents and 41 percent of African-American respondents said "yes." But as Dr. King understood, a fierce commitment to freedom of speech is most important to those who lack political power.

Even from a short-term perspective, efforts by minority groups to censor the expression of offensive and odious speech often backfires, because it makes those they oppose into ever-more famous martyrs, giving them larger audiences and growing book sales. Little has helped the brand of the likes of Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos more than their exclusion from speaking on college campuses.

Although censoring others may appear to be a courageous sign of strength, it is actually an indication of weakness. Those who resort to censorship do so in no small part because they lack confidence that they can compete effectively with the ideas of their opposition. Allowing others to speak and then challenging them in a forthright and open manner with more persuasive ideas is the way to win in the long-term. It was for this reason that Dr. King in the speech later known as "Ive Been to the Mountaintop" said, "We arent engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody." Rather, he said, "we are going on."

As President Barack Obama observed in a commencement address at Howard University last spring, No matter how much you might disagree with certain speakers, "dont try to shut them down. Let them talk, but have the confidence to challenge them ... If the other side has a point, learn from them. If theyre wrong, rebut them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism" and stupidity "at every stage of your life."

It is through debate, argument, and courage not censorship that truth will win out.

Jeffrey Herbst, a former president of Colgate University, is president and chief executive officer of the Newseum. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

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Lo, the full, final sacrifice – Church Times

Posted: at 12:49 pm

AMONG English anthems of the 20th century, Gerald Finzis Lo, the full, final sacrifice stands out. It celebrates the eucharist, and the feast of Corpus Christi, which we mark on Thursday. The anthem may sound supremely English, but some sleuthing reveals a history that is as much Italian as English, taking in Orvieto and Loreto, as well as Cambridge and Northampton.

Gerald Raphael Finzi (1901-56) composed the anthem to mark the 53rd anniversary, in 1946, of the consecration of St Matthews, Northampton. The Vicar, Walter Hussey, had form, having commissioned Benjamin Brittens Rejoice in the Lamb three years earlier.

Finzi was an unusual choice, known not particularly for church music, but for his masterful song cycles and works for small orchestra in the English pastoral style. Few British composers surpass him in setting words to music, and a more densely theological set of words we could hardly find than Lo, the full, final sacrifice: the creed sounds prosaic in comparison.

The text is Finzis own patchwork, drawn from two poems by Richard Crashaw (c.1612-49), an English metaphysical poet with Continental Baroque leanings. Crashaw based the poems on hymns by St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): Lauda, Sion and Adoro te devote. This is what takes us to Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV had commissioned Aquinas to compose the liturgy for the new feast of Corpus Christi. The words of the anthem come to us by a roundabout route: Finzis reassembly of Crashaws fantasias on hymns by Aquinas.

THE Finzi-Crashaw-Aquinas text starts with the sacrifice of Christ, which it explores through typology by reading Old Testament characters and stories as prefigurements (or figures) of Christ:

Lo, the full, final sacrifice On which all figures fixd their eyes, The ransomd Isaac, and his ram; The Manna, and the Paschal lamb.

These examples Isaac, the ram, the manna, and the lamb come from Aquinas, but the outlandish claim that they each fixd their eyes on Christ and his offering is all Crashaws own. It seems that Christs sacrifice so animates the story of redemption that even the non-human animals even that bread gain personhood in the process, and are able to look to Christ. And so do we, our gaze drawn in by that first, attention-grabbing word, Lo.

Eucharistic theology is contested territory among Christians, but Crashaws poetry builds bridges, a testament to a life that crossed traditions. He was born the son of a Puritan anti-Catholic polemicist, but found his poetic voice as an undergraduate under High Church Laudian influence.

Later a Cambridge Fellow, Anglican priest, and Vicar of Little St Marys, Crashaw ended his life in the Roman Catholic Church, as a priest at the shrine of the Holy House of Loreto, having fled to Italy when Cromwell seized power in England.

Perhaps shaped by the Book of Common Prayer, Crashaws reworking of Aquinas shows that the sacrificial aspect of the eucharist is not in conflict with the one oblation of himself once offered of Calvary. The eucharist brings that one sacrifice before us: already made, but for ever pleaded.

THE text, as we might expect, goes on to circle around bread and wine, and body and blood. Given the emphasis on sacrifice, blood is associated with purification. In Aquinass hymn, a single drop of Christs blood could free the whole world from its sin. Crashaw turned that idea inward, applying it to himself: those drops sovereign be To wash my worlds of sins from me.

Blood also stands for nourishment here, almost as if Crashaw knew about blood transfusions a few centuries early. We might be used to the symbolism of hearts that spurt blood, but, again, Crashaw turns things around: his bleeding heart gasps for blood.

Then there is the image of the pelican, again Crashaws own the soft self-wounding Pelican thought by medievals to feed its young with its own blood. Anglican hymn-books tend to omit the verse about the pelican from Aquinass Adoro te devote, which is a shame. The image of the pelican cheerfully survived the Reformation for instance, in the arms granted to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as late as 1570. And Elizabeth I is seen wearing a brooch depicting a pelican feeding her young, in a portrait of about 1575.

In the third invocation of blood, Crashaw asks that those who drink from the chalice may be Convictors of thine own full cup, Coheirs of Saints: Christs followers share with him not only in the eucharistic cup, but also in the cup of his sufferings. It is all impeccably biblical (1 Corinthians 10.16; Mark 10.37-40; 1 Peter 4.12-19).

Returning to bread, and an echo of the just-concluded Easter season, the anthems text reminds us that the eucharist is life-giving because this is living bread: it is a participation in his body, not dead but risen. St Ignatius of Antioch, who died c.108, called it the medicine of immortality. Crashaw salutes it in similar terms:

Richard Greatrex puts a new metrical Psalter through its paces

O dear Memorial of that Death Which lives still, and allows us breath! Rich, Royal food! Bountiful Bread! Whose use denies us to the dead.

There will come a time, all the same, when sacraments will cease (as W. H. Turtons hymn has it). For now, we have those means of grace; then we will see face to face. Earthly travellers are sustained with bread (and wine), and they receive Christ in the same way: we live by eating.

Those whose journey is complete are sustained by the sight of God. With characteristic daring, in a collision of ideas, Crashaw calls Christ both our shepherd and our pasture, and suggests that, in the life of the world to come, we will feed of Thee in thine own Face.

In the eucharistic processions of Corpus Christi, the bread given to be eaten, for sure is held up for all to see. In the life to come, seeing itself will be our eating.

CRASHAW ends by looking forward to the time When Glorys sun faiths shades shall chase And for thy veil give me thy Face. But, before that conclusion, Crashaw offers one final, magical transposition.

Aquinas wrote only of a desire to see Christs face; Crashaw asks both to see Christ, and also to be seen by him: not just to see Jesus, but to see his eyes. There is a parallel in the way in which Jesus switches from again a little while, and you will see me, in John 16, to I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.

Come, love! Come, Lord! and that long day For which I languish, come away. When this dry soul those eyes shall see, And drink the unseald source of thee.

The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is the Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and the author of Why Sacraments? (SPCK, 2013).

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Megan Leavey is a canine-human love story – The Denver Post

Posted: at 12:48 pm

By Mark Jenkins, Special To The Washington Post

The oddest thing about Megan Leavey is its title. After all, Shakespeare never titled his great romances simply Juliet or Antony.

Admittedly, Megan (made both sympathetic and resolute by Kate Mara) is on-screen a lot more than her paramour: a German shepherd employed by the military to sniff out explosives. But viewers of this fact-based weepie are likely to prefer the emotionally versatile Rex (impersonated mostly by Varco). Hes gruff with strangers but soon reveals his puppy-dog eyes.

The two characters are, of course, made for each other. Surly and solitary, Megan is feuding with her mother and stepfather (Edie Falco and Will Patton) when she impulsively decides to enlist in the Marines. That propels her toward Rex, the bomb-sniffer least likely to be voted Mr. Canine Congeniality. The two become partners only after Rex has violently sidelined his previous handler.

Once Megan and Rex bond, however, the pooch becomes gentle and protective. He doesnt even get jealous when Megan develops feelings of a different sort for a biped: fellow dog handler Matt Morales (Ramon Rodriguez). Most important, Rex keeps his cool after he and Megan start serving as one of the first female-led explosive-seeking teams among U.S. troops in Iraq.

The context for the military conflict is quickly sketched by a scene in which then-Secretary of State Colin Powells war-justifying 2003 speech to the United Nations plays on a TV. But the subject is never raised again. Megan, a New Yorker, is apparently too busy rooting for the Yankees to ponder the wisdom of the invasion by the United States, even after it blows up in her face literally.

In and around the city of Ramadi, Rexs nose locates bombs and guns, leading Megan and her cohorts through numerous scrapes. The movie isnt exactly The Hurt Locker, but it does convey a frantic sense of the battle experience. There are even sequences shot from Rexs height to suggest a dogs-eye view of war.

When Megan and Rexs luck goes cold, both are wounded, psychically as well as physically. She gets a Purple Heart and a discharge; he gets sent to Afghanistan. Megans bid to bring Rex home with her is overruled by a ferretlike Marine veterinarian (Geraldine James), who decides that hes too dangerous, a decision thats enforced by Megans tough-but-fair sergeant (Common).

Back in civilian life, a mopey Megan regains her warrior spirit only when her dad (Bradley Whitford) encourages her to go public with her campaign to win custody of Rex.

Clearly pitched to animal lovers, Megan Leavey marks the narrative debut of documentarian Gabriela Cowperthwaite, whose 2013 Blackfish about the treatment of captive orcas at marine parks was actually more harrowing. This movie is rarely more than merely competent, but it should stir lovers of justice as well as dog fanciers. If theres anything more heartwarming than a loyal animal companion, its teaching an impersonal bureaucracy to roll over and fetch.

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Tim Cook Reveals Apple’s 10-Year Plan For Future Tech – Futurism

Posted: at 12:48 pm

In BriefApple recently held their Worldwide Developers Conference(WWDC) and made a slew of announcements about some of the updatesand new products that we can expect in the next year. The companyseems to be ratcheting up their focus in the field of AR/VR. Vision of the Future

Apple revealed its 10-year plan for the future this week.

If you dont remember that slide from the hours of presentations Apple executives made onstage during the companys developer conference on Monday, youre not alone.

Apple didnt explicitly call it a 10-year plan. And the company was very subtle about how it showed this road map.

But look closely, and its easy to see.

Instead of introducing flashy new products that will change your life today, this years WWDC conference was all about putting the pieces in place for what comes next.

Its a Trojan-horse strategy sneak the seeds for the next breed of technology products into the stuff that were already using.

A new augmented reality platform, virtual reality development tools, the HomePod speaker, and improvements to iOS 11 on the iPad may not feel revolutionary or even particularly useful right now, but they are the building blocks for the technologies Apple is betting will power our future.

Lets break it down:

Ask most tech companies which product will replace the smartphone and the answer will probably revolve around a wearable device for augmented reality, the tech that overlays digital images on the real world.

Microsoft has the HoloLens headset. Google has Project Tango for Android devices and, one day, headgear like Google Glass. Facebook announced its AR ambitions a few months ago, and Mark Zuckerberg even said AR glasses would replace the need for most screens in your life one day.

Apples approach is different.

There werent any AR goggle demos or TED-talk-esque prophecies about how a pair of glasses will soon be the only computer you need. Instead, Apple is starting with something already very familiar: the iPhone and a new way for developers to build AR apps for the phone. When iOS 11 becomes available on tens of millions of Apple devices this fall, Apple will immediately have the largest AR platform. Even better, itll be on the devices that people already use not futuristic glasses or headsets. Apple will get a major advantage over its AR competitors with one simple software update.

That wont be a game changer right away of course, and it certainly wont deliver the kind of jaw-dropping experience being developed by companies like Magic Leap. AR-enabled iPhones will mostly mean some cool games and entertainment apps at first. Pikachu will look more realistic in Pokmon Go. Youll be able to build virtual Lego models on your coffee table. The rainbow puke in your Snapchat selfies will look even better.

But AR on the iPhone sets Apple up for the long run by building a base of developers already dedicated to the platform who want to make stuff for the largest number of users they can. If and when Apple decides to take AR to the next level with a pair of smart glasses or something else, itll be in a better position than companies trying to win over developers.

Apple has been hesitant to get involved with virtual reality, even as the rest of the tech industry seemed to be hyperventilating over its prospects. But now the time feels right for Apple, and its offering a new set of tools in the coming macOS Sierra software that it says will let developers connect VR headsets and create 3D and VR content.

This isnt about attracting gamers and VR enthusiasts to the Mac. This is about making sure Apples most dedicated class of users has the tools it needs to create the content of the future. Apple has historically been the platform of choice for digital artists, filmmakers, and other professionals, and adding VR development tools will make sure those users have what they need and dont abandon Apple.

HomePod, the new Amazon Echo competitor, is Apples biggest new Trojan horse of all.

Even though Apple focused on HomePods music capabilities and pitched it as a new kind of home stereo, it undersold the rest of the real potential. HomePod is also Apple putting Siri in your home in a new way and making a long-term play for the concept of ambient computing, in which everything you own is connected and powered by an underlying artificial intelligence.

HomePod is a way to put Siri everywhere else when youre not looking at your iPhone, typing on your Mac, listening to your AirPods, or tracking your workout on your Apple Watch. HomePod is Apple creeping into the rest of your life under the guise of a really nice Wi-Fi stereo. Apple may be focusing on music now with HomePod, but its also sneaking in a lot of Amazon Echo-like features like controlling your connected appliances and getting updates from Siri.

That said, its pretty clear why Apple would want to bury the AI features of HomePod. Pitching it as a digital assistant instead of a music player will only open up Apple to more criticism about how it is falling behind in AI compared with Google and Amazon. Apples Siri is still much less capable as a virtual assistant than the offerings from Amazon and Google, and Apple has a lot more work to do to catch up. But theres no question that AI is a big area of investment for Apple, and HomePod will play an important role in this strategy as Apple makes progress.

The biggest news with iOS 11 wasnt on the iPhone. It was on the iPad.

Apple has finally started making improvements to the software that help turn the iPad into the laptop replacement the company has been promising for years. Theres a new file-storage system, an app dock similar to the one on Mac, the ability to drag and drop content in between apps, and apps that float in separate windows. The iPad is starting to feel less like a giant iPhone and more like a touch-screen Mac.

Theres still a lot of work to do. The iPad Pros keyboard isnt as good as the one on a normal laptop, and its now up to developers to build compelling apps that take advantage of all the new iOS 11 features and give people a better reason to ditch their laptop for an iPad. The new 10.5-inch iPad is a small move in the right direction because its larger size allows for a full-size keyboard, but its still not enough.

But Apple is inching closer toward its ultimate goal of creating a super thin and portable laptop replacement, and iOS 11 feels like a huge milestone.

A lot of this stuff may not work out. Were in a period of relatively flat innovation across most of the tech industry, where new gizmos improve only incrementally each year. Its impossible to tell which wild idea will actually end up taking off and which will fizzle. (Two years ago everyone thought smartwatches were going to revolutionize the tech industry, after all. Now thats barely part of the conversation.)

In some sense, Apples latest batch of WWDC announcements feels underwhelming, as if Apple is dabbling in various areas rather than making a bold move in any one direction. But the companys vision for the future is already being etched into its products. Just look closely; its right in front of you.

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Carlsen-Nakamura Norway Clash Ends In Draw – Chess.com

Posted: June 8, 2017 at 11:48 pm

Magnus Carlsen vs Hikaru Nakamura was a great fight that ended in a draw, the same result as the other four games in round three of theAltibox Norway Chess tournament. Friday is the first rest day.

The start of Carlsen vs Nakamura. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

In November 2013, when Anand was struggling in his match with Carlsen, Nakamura tweeted the following famous tweet. Ever since a clash between him and the world champion is something special.

After 12 losses and 18 draws, only in Bilbao 2016, Nakamura managed to win his first classical game against Carlsen. After that, they played the 2016 Chess.com Blitz Battle and one blitz game in December in Qatar, but today's game in Stavanger was their first classical game in a year. Itdidn't disappoint.

Via a different move order compared to last year, the players reached a g3-Dragon and again Carlsen played b2-b3 early on. This time, Nakamura was well prepared for it.

For a change, Carlsen arrived early at the game, several minutes before Nakamura. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

Carlsen was "ashamed" of 11.b3 as he "didn't grasp Hikaru's idea at all." That idea was to simply swap pieces on d4, which normally gives White a pleasant space advantagebut not here.

Happy with his position, Nakamura decided to play actively with 21...f5, the start of "insanely risky" play according to Carlsen.

However, the world champ didn't make the most of his chances. A key position was this:

Carlsen was unhappy with 24.Rc6, the best moves according to the engines but not very practical. 24.b5 would have been tougher to meet. A knight appearing on c5 will just be taken off the board.

Carlsen:"With this time control you need to play for the initiative..." Nigel Short: "...and prevent his." Carlsen: "Exactly.I have no clue what he is going to do..."

In the game, Nakamura sacrificed a pawn to create an active play, and in a phase where Carlsen missed several of his opponent's moves, he was almost lucky not to get in trouble.

Hikaru Nakamura correctly judged that he would have enough counterplay.| Photo Maria Emelianova.

Interestingly, after the game, it turned out that both players had been optimistic about their chances. In that sense, a draw was a good result.

Carlsen joins the TV2 live show every day right after he finishes. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

Levon Aronian vs Anish Giri was a great fight as well, which started slowly though, compared to the other games. While Karjakin and Anand had already drawn, and others reached endgames, these players were still in their early middlegame. That was mostly because of Aronian using a lot of time: almost 20 minutes on 13.0-0, 19 minutes on 16.Qb3, 13 minutes on 19.Bc1 and 18.5 minutes on 20.dxe5.

Giri in deep thought.In the post-mortem, he said that during the game he realized that Aronian probably looked at this opening for Black in preparation for his second round game against Nakamura. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

That last move was right afterGiri had put the board on fire as he pushed the g-pawn in front of his king two squares.A tactical sequence followed and the chess board became a mess, but more important was Aronian's horrendous time trouble. He needed to make 12 moves in less than 2 minutes.

Giri: "What we didn't take into account here is that Levon had like a couple of minutes for 12 moves. The objective evaluation of the position is absolutely irrelevant."

"This time control is very strange. You're playing the classical control and then you have 20 minutes less. It's weird. Takes time to adjust," said Aronian, who was kind of lucky that an endgame was reached where he had a number of simple moves.

Giri is impressed by the "cheapo artist," as Short called Aronian the other day. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

Aronian is not the only player having difficulty adjusting to the time control in Stavanger (which is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to finish the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move 61).

Today Vladimir Kramnik, who drew a long game with Wesley So, revealed that he got it wrong initially. He assumed 2 hours for 40 moves and was wondering why he was getting so low on time during the first round. Then, at the start of round two, he noticed the clocks saying 1:40:00, and thought it was a mistake!

Despite attending the players meeting, Kramnik got the time control wrong during the first round. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

The first game to end today was Sergey Karjakin vs Viswanathan Anand. It only took about 1.5 hours, but there was a nice story behind it.

First, Karjakin admitted that the line he played against the Berlin wasn't anything special, but Black needs to know what he is doing. Then Anand revealed how his memory had worked: at some point, early in the game, he remembered the position with 21...Bd7. From that point onwards he was trying to figure out how to reach it!

Karjakin vs Anand. The latter "won" the opening battle as he managed to remember his analysis. | Photo Maria Emelianova.

Anand vividly remembered the conversation with one of his seconds, who suggested that 21...Bd7 move. "I almost fell off my chair," Anand said. But Black is fine there, his second told him, and today he could show it in the game.

Both Kramnik-So and MVL-Caruana can be found in the PGN file.

2017 Altibox Norway Chess | Round 3 Standings

In the evening a group of grandmasters joined in the hotel lobby. Guess what they were doing?

Friday is a rest day. The pairings for round four on Saturday are Aronian-Carlsen, Nakamura-MVL, Giri-Anand, Caruana-Kramnik, and So-Karjakin.

You can follow the games in Live Chess each day starting at 4 p.m. local time (7 a.m. Pacific, 10 a.m. Eastern).We're providing on-site coverage on Chess.com/News and on our Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels.

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Rouhani should play chess where Trump is playing the fool – Trend News Agency

Posted: at 11:48 pm

By Chris Cook, for Trend

Obama's Smart Energy Strategy

On taking office in January 2009, President Barak Obama inherited a failed energy policy from the George W. Bush administration which had attempted to secure Middle East oil & gas resources by military means through creating client states and imposing one-sided contractual terms favouring US International Oil Companies (IOCs). However, China's threat in 2007 to pull the plug on the US financial system forced the US to back off in Iraq, in the same way that the US threat in 1956 to pull the plug on sterling forced the UK to pull out of Suez.

Consequently, the 2008 US financial meltdown obliged the incoming Obama administration to take a very different approach to US energy security. There were two major objectives of Obama's resource resilience energy strategy: firstly, to rid the US for good of their historic reliance on Saudi oil, and secondly, to make a transition through gas as a bridging fuel to a low carbon economy.

The first objective was achieved by Obama's investment bank collaborators who used Saudi/GCC petrodollars to inflate the oil price from its low of $35/barrel in 2009 by manipulating the Brent/BFOE benchmark oil price. The price was then maintained in a range between a collar under oil prices of $80/barrel and a US gasoline price cap at levels which would not threaten Obama's 2012 re-election chances.

The effect of these artificially high prices were firstly, to fund indiscriminate lending to US shale oil and gas developers and secondly, to finance renewable energy such as wind and solar which substituted for fossil fuels. Finally, high prices led to massive investment in energy savings such as in more efficient car engines. As a result the US increased oil production by 5m barrels per day, and made oil product savings of maybe 2m bpd. When added to new high cost global sources of oil such as Canadian tar sands, and global renewable energy and efficiency, particularly in the EU, this led by 2014 to a substantial global surplus of oil production, which has now become structurally embedded.

The increasing surplus of oil supply led as I forecast it would in 2011 to a collapse in the oil price to $45 to $50/bbl in late 2014 after the financial Quantitative Easing (QE) pump of Federal Reserve Bank dollars was finally turned off.

Obama's Energy Doctrine

Obama's strategy executed through Hilary Clinton's State/CIA power nexus was for Caspian and Qatari gas to supply Europe, displacing crude oil and oil products and competing with Russia. Resource nationalism particularly in Turkey and Syria - stood in the way of this. Meanwhile the massive US base at Al Udeid has effectively come to secure Qatari gas production and an effective position of Qatar as a US proxy in the MENA region acting against resource nationalism by promoting Islamism.

The US strategy was therefore to create a new wave of non-nationalist Sunni Islamism such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, and Gulenism in Turkey. The outcome desired by the US was Balkanisation of the region to create a Kurdish Petro State (which would be tolerated by a Gulenist regime in Turkey) with Islamist territories elsewhere acting as conduits for Qatari gas transit to Europe by pipeline.

However, Obama's smart energy policy was so successful that the accompanying wave of new smart technology and investment led to an irreversible tipping point in the global economy of Peak Demand the effect of which is to cap the global oil price at or around $50 per barrel.

Current Events

Saudi Arabia has clearly learnt the truth of Yamani's dictum that the Oil Age is not ending for lack of oil, since they would not conduct the Aramco IPO if the future oil price trajectory were upwards. Clearly, Saudi Arabia is now casting covetous eyes on Qatari gas, since this will enable them to free crude oil for export, particularly in the summer. In other words, Qatari gas will act as a bridging fuel while their ambitious (and in my view unimplementable) Energy 2030 programme progresses. Such a Saudi gas for oil swap is unlikely to take place on favourable terms for Qatar.

So President Trump has now turned away from the Obama doctrine at least in part due to his personal antagonism to anything Obama was able to achieve in office. Unfortunately, as with his similar rejection of COP 21 and Obama's domestic US energy policy he has no constructive Plan B.

As a result of Trump's impulsive action, Saudi Arabia has now been permitted to take extraordinary measures, with the full support of the US, which essentially constitute war on Qatar by economic means. Moreover, Qatar has been presented with a detailed ultimatum including a draconian prohibition in dealings with Iran and the scope for rapid escalation is clear.

Today's events in Tehran an attack on the Majlis and an unprecedented suicide bombing at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini provide a grave challenge to President Hassan Rouhani and his colleagues in Iran's government. Trump's top military/security team is extremely antagonistic to Iran, and clearly hope and expect that Iran will act stupidly and aggressively in response to this provocation.

What is Iran's Smart Move in this difficult position?

The Smart Move

In my view, the smart, and unexpected, policy for Iran would be to propose a constructive regional initiative based upon energy/resource co-operation and resilience. This may perhaps commence with a humanitarian offer to Qatar of essential supplies through international waters.

What appears to be a unilateral US-backed resource grab by Saudi Arabia creates an opportunity for Russia, Iran & Qatar (who between them possess more than 60% of global gas reserves) to collaborate in launching a networked physical and financial global market in natural gas based upon a new settlement between gas producers and consumers.

The market in Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) is key to such a new settlement. While historically the global natural gas market has been fragmented and largely bilateral due to deliveries via static pipelines, the last five years has seen massive new production and infrastructure for liquidising and decompressing Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). The combination of diversity of supply, flexibility of delivery and homogeneity of gas (there are many grades and qualities of oil, but CH4 is CH4) has now led to an over-supplied global 'buyer's market' in natural gas. The emergence and convergence of a global LNG price is strikingly illustrated by this chart.

I believe based upon my experience of implementing the UK Natural Gas Balancing Point Futures contract in 1995 as a Director of what is now ICE Europe that the potential now exists for a global gas 'Balancing Point' physical gas market price based upon the price at which LNG is delivered into and out of global LNG infrastructure. This could enable financial energy credit instruments (not derivatives) based upon this price which are issued, traded, cleared and settled within a global energy clearing union.

The EU, which is fuming at Trump's America First antics, as well as China, India and Turkey (whose President Erdogan has offered to intermediate), could be expected to support a new global gas market settlement, while neutral countries like Norway and Switzerland could be expected to facilitate it.

So my advice to President Rouhani is to play chess where Trump is playing the fool, and to begin a process of depoliticised energy diplomacy based upon competition for quality of energy as a service and cooperation to reduce energy costs within a new natural gas global market paradigm.

Chris Cook is a former director of the International Petroleum Exchange. He is now a strategic market consultant, entrepreneur and a commentator.

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Detonation; Enthusiastic Racing – TruckTrend Network

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As a fan of things that go fast, I have drag racing near the top of my must-watch motorsports list. I have been fortunate enough to attend some Outlaw Diesel Super Series events, and Ive noticed that Im definitely not the only one enjoying the thrill of the drags. The number of people who come out to spectate continues to grow, as does the total count of competitors who enter each event. More and more diesel jockeys are eager to see what they and their rigs can do on the strip. This ever-increasing enthusiasm for diesel drag racing is amazing to witness, and its definitely growing the sportin both popularity and competiveness.

In April 2017, I attended the Rudys Diesel Performance season-opening event at Piedmont Raceway in Julian, North Carolina. It was a great two days of diesel madness, highlighted by the Outlaw Diesel Super Series drawing 165 competitors to the venue to wage war in six different drag-racing classes. The category with the largest turnout was our own (well, ours and ATS Diesel Performances) 7.70 Index Class, with 62 truckers reporting to the staging lanes for the first round of eliminations. For every race across all classes, the stands were packed to near capacity with cheering spectators watching vehicles roar down the eighth-mile.

As the enthusiasm continues to increase for this type of drag racing and the competition gets more heated, drivers willingness and desire to push themselves and their vehicles to the next level will rise. Competitive people want to winthey will not voluntarily let themselves sit idly or settle for second best. Their free time is spent at the track testing and racing, or in the garage prepping and building.

It is not an easy endeavor to put the right combination of components together. The engine alone has so many different ways it can be manipulated for power. Combine that with the complexity of the rest of the drivetrain, and you have a lot to get right. Getting everything to sync together and perform at its peak is a chess game. One move can take you forward or set you back. But that desire to be on top pushes people to keep trying and experimenting with new ideas.

Ingenuity and creativity are the things that really push motorsport technology forward. The guy or gal who can really think outside the box and bring something completely different to the table may have the key to winning. I understand there are rules in many classes that limit what can be done to an engine or vehicle, but he or she who has an ability to apply new concepts to the sport (a mechanical principle or technology that is not normally associated) could gain an advantage, and any edge, even a slight one, can be rewarded with a spot on the podium.

Racing has traditionally been the cornerstone for research and development of performance parts. That need and desire to go faster and win has stirred the creativity in many an individual and opened their eyes to ways of creating more power, speed, or efficiency from what is many times the simplest concept. Most ideas or theories have to be proven through trial and error. But, in the end, the sacrifice of time and energy (and money) proves it could definitely be worth it.

There is a reason auto and truck builders around the world support racing in one form or another and why they pump money into research and development. Racing is where a lot of new technology is born and where that technology is proven. Many of the advances made in competition will make it into what is driven on the road. The fastest production cars in the world owe much of their performance ability to peoples desire to race and win.

Even the new high-powered diesel pickup trucks on the market today owe much of their torque and power to racers and enthusiasts desires to improve their engines. Manufacturers pay attention to what is being done to the powerplants they produce, and then analyze what works and what doesnt perform as expected.

As more people continue to enjoy the excitement of racing diesels, the more the technology will develop, which will continue to push the industry and racing to new levels. Im waiting to see what the next big step forward is and where it comes from. Never count the little guy out.

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Astronomy | Define Astronomy at Dictionary.com

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Contemporary Examples

Occult literally means hidden from view, which is why we use it both in astronomy and to refer to secret knowledge.

After To Die For, Affleck moved to New York and attended Columbia University for two years, majoring in physics and astronomy.

His specialty was astronomy, a subject in which he had made several major discoveries.

Cosmic ray observations are more challenging than many other forms of astronomy.

Muslims made many discoveries in mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, astronomy and psychology.

British Dictionary definitions for astronomy Expand

the scientific study of the individual celestial bodies (excluding the earth) and of the universe as a whole. Its various branches include astrometry, astrodynamics, cosmology, and astrophysics

Word Origin

C13: from Old French astronomie, from Latin astronomia, from Greek; see astro-, -nomy

Word Origin and History for astronomy Expand

c.1200, from Old French astrenomie, from Latin astronomia, from Greek astronomia, literally "star arrangement," from astron "star" (see astro-) + nomos "arranging, regulating," related to nemein "to deal out" (see numismatics). Used earlier than astrology and originally including it.

astronomy in Science Expand

astronomy in Culture Expand

The science that deals with the universe beyond the Earth. It describes the nature, position, and motion of the stars, planets, and other objects in the skies, and their relation to the Earth.

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Astronomers explain the formation of seven exoplanets around Trappist-1 – Phys.Org

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June 8, 2017 Astronomers from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) explain with a model how seven earth-sized planets could have been formed in the planetary system Trappist-1 (here an artistic impression). The crux is on the line where ice changes in water. Credit: NASA/R. Hurt/T. Pyle

Astronomers from the University of Amsterdam have offered an explanation for the formation of the Trappist-1 planetary system. The system has seven planets as big as the Earth that orbit close to their star. The crux, according to the researchers from the Netherlands, is the line where ice changes in water. Near that ice line, pebbles that drifted from outer regions to the star receive an additional portion of water and clot together to form proto-planets. The article with the model has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

In February 2017, an international team of astronomers announced the discovery of a system of seven exoplanets around a small star, Trappist-1 (see report on eso.org). It was against the prevailing theories of planet formation that so many relatively large planets orbited so close around a small star. Researchers from the University of Amsterdam now come up with a model that explains how the planetary system could have originated.

Until now, there were two prevailing theories for the formation of planets. The first theory assumes that planets are formed more or less on the spot where they are now. With Trappist-1, that is unlikely because the disk from which the planets had originated should have been very dense. The second theory assumes that a planet forms much further out in the disk and migrates inward afterwards. This theory also causes problems with Trappist-1 because it does not explain why the planets are all about the same size as the Earth.

Now, the Amsterdam researchers come up with a model where pebbles migrate instead of complete planets. The model begins with pebbles that are floating from outside regions to the star. Such pebbles consist largely of ice. When the pebbles arrive near the so-called ice line, the point where it is warm enough for liquid water, they get an additional portion of water vapor to process. As a result, they clot together into a proto-planet. Then the proto-planet moves a little closer to the star. On its way it sweeps up more pebbles like a vacuum cleaner, until it reaches the size of the Earth. The planet then moves in a little further and makes room for the formation of the next planet.

The crux, according to the researchers, is in the clotting of pebbles near the ice line. By crossing the ice line, pebbles lose their water ice. But that water is re-used by the following load of pebbles that is drifting from the outer regions of the dust disk. At Trappist-1, this process repeated until seven planets were formed.

Research leader Chris Ormel (University of Amsterdam): "For us, Trappist-1 with its seven planets, came as a welcome surprise. We have been working on pebble aggregation and sweepup by planets for a long time and were also developing a new ice-line model. Thanks to the discovery of Trappist-1 we can compare our model with reality."

In the near future, the Amsterdam researchers want to refine their model. They will run computer simulations to see how their model withstands different initial conditions.

The researchers still expect some discussion among fellow astronomers. The model is quite revolutionary because the pebbles travel from the outer part of the disk to the ice line without much activity in between. Ormel: "I hope that our model will help answer the question about how unique our own solar system is compared to other planetary systems."

Explore further: Temperate earth-sized worlds found in extraordinarily rich planetary system (Update)

More information: "Formation of TRAPPIST-1 and other compact systems." Chris W. Ormel, Beibei Liu & Djoeke Schoonenberg. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201730826 . Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/1703.06924

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We’ve just found the hottest planet ever – Astronomy Magazine

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Astronomers with the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope(s) (KELT) survey have just announced an amazing find: the hottest gas giant ever discovered. In fact, the planet is so hot that its hotter than most stars, and its only a few thousand degrees cooler than our own Sun.

The planet, KELT-9b, is about three times the mass of Jupiter and twice its size. Its discovery was announced by B. Scott Gaudi of The Ohio State University and Karen Collins of Vanderbilt University at a press conference Monday afternoon at the 230th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. We are very excited today to announce the discovery of KELT-9b a gas giant planet hotter than most stars. And I want to emphasize thats not a typo, Collins said during the press conference. She went on to explain that KELT-9b is so hot because of its sun, the brightest, hottest, most massive known transiting gas giant planet host star. Concurrent with the announcement, the work was also published online as a letter in Nature.

That host star is roughly 2.5 times the mass of our Sun, and is rotating so quickly (about once a day) that its more of a flattened egg shape than a sphere, like the planet Saturn. Every time KELT-9b transits across the face of its sun, the light coming from the star drops by only one half of one percent. The star, which is a hot, blue star, radiates not only in the optical, but also puts out huge amounts of ultraviolet (UV) light. Its massive output, coupled with KELT-9bs close proximity, boosts the temperature on the planets day side to about 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,300 Celsius). Because the planet is tidally locked, the same side always faces its parent star; astronomers currently think that the night side is much cooler, due to the atmospheres poor ability to transfer heat from the broiling day side to the rest of the planet. But even still, that cool side is hot: The night side would probably look like a red dwarf to our eyes, Gaudi said at the press conference.

Furthermore, KELT-9b is orbiting its star perpendicular to the hosts axis of rotation. That means rather than circling in the same plane as the stars equator, as our planets circle the Sun, KELT-9b flies over its parent stars north and south poles with every 1.5-day orbit it completes. This odd orbit, Gaudi said, likely precesses as well, which means the planet may stop transiting its sun as seen from Earth within about 150 years, depending on the rate of this precession. Astronomers would then have to wait several thousand years before transits could be seen again.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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