Category: They Made a Movie About This

They Made A Movie About This

BLUF:
As a species, we are not anywhere close to fully understanding the Earth’s incredibly complex climate system — or the extent of the role we humans play in it. And we certainly are not at a place where we need to scrap the efficient fossil-fuel energies that we know work in favor of “green energy” technologies that are not currently up to the task.

Unfortunately, Texas is currently finding that out the hard way

Severe Winter Weather Across Southern United States Blamed on Global Warming

In their frenzy to blame every bit of unusual weather on climate change (which used to be called global warming), climate alarmists have more than once claimed that the warming Earth can also cause hideous cold weather. Now, the horrendous wintry weather that’s been downing power lines and freezing windmills in Texas is being blamed on — you guessed it — global warming.

Today’s example of counterintuitive weather phenomenon comes from MIT climatologist Judah Cohen, who has been quick to attach the wintry weather in the southern United States to global warming. “The current conditions in Texas are historical, certainly generational,” said Cohen, who is also the director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. “But this can’t be hand-waved away as if it’s entirely natural. This is happening not in spite of climate change, it’s in part due to climate change.”

Cohen was one of a slew of authors of a 2019 article linking a phenomenon known as Polar Amplification to extreme winter weather events. Polar Amplification — known in the northern hemisphere as Arctic Amplification — suggests that the polar areas of Earth are warming far quicker than mid-latitude and equatorial regions due to several reasons, a key one being the reported loss of sea ice, as open water reflects sunlight less than sea ice.

In a nutshell, the “out-of-control” warming of the polar regions supposedly causes big swings in the jet stream and also may weaken the so-called polar vortex, which allows extremely cold weather to escape further southward than usual. “The energy escaping from the jet stream bangs into the polar vortex so it starts to wobble and move all over the place,” Cohen said. “Where the polar vortex goes, so goes the cold air.”

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Skynet smiles

Army is working on Frankenbots with living tissue to better robot capabilities

The thought of living tissue and machinery meshed together brings up images of grotesque cyborgs and far-future sci-fi films, but at the Army Research Laboratory a robot with living, organic muscles may not be that far off.

ARL’s Combat Capabilities Development Command is teaming up with universities in North Carolina to develop studies in bio-hybrid robotics.

The idea is just as fantastical as you may be imagining. ARL wants to fuse living tissue with cold metal to build robots that may be able to gain the agility and versatility of living creatures.

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They made a movie about this.
It’s called Schindler’s List.
You’d think the Germans, of all people, would be appalled at this, but I think it was Reagan who said something like freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction, and it’s been 2+ for them.

Germany to hold quarantine breakers in refugee camps and “detention centers.”

Germans who repeatedly refuse to quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 will be held in detention centers — and even under police guard, according to reports.

Officials in the state of Saxony — which is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in the European nation — have already approved plans to hold quarantine-breakers in a fenced-off section of a refugee camp, the Telegraph said.

Another state, Brandenburg, also plans to use a section of a refugee camp.

In Schleswig-Holstein, repeat offenders will be kept in a special area in a juvenile detention center, the report said, citing Germany’s Welt newspaper.

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From last May, but as on point now, as then.
RTWT (Read The Whole Thing)

The Great UnReason of 2020: The ‘Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think’

Upon the Nazis’ rise to power, Hannah Arendt, a Jewish woman who would go on to become a considerable 20th century philosopher, had to flee with her family from her native Germany.

Once the war was over and some prominent Nazis were brought to justice, Arendt attended the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.

The experience left an indelible impression upon her, one that would shape the trajectory of her philosophical thinking.  What she observed was that, much to her surprise, Eichmann wasn’t the incarnation of evil that she expected to encounter.  His actions were monstrous, yes; but he was remarkably ordinary or “banal,” to use Arendt’s term of choice.

What struck Arendt was Eichmann’s “curious, but authentic, inability to think.”

“However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.” 

Eichmann didn’t subscribe to any “theory or doctrine,” exhibited no “particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction;” his “only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”

Note, Arendt did not intend her characterization to be interpreted as commentary upon Eichmann’s IQ.  Nor, for that matter, did she mean to suggest that he was literally incapable of thinking critically.  Rather, her point was that Eichmann showed no will to think beyond the clichés—the memes, bumper sticker slogans, and hashtags—of his day.

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How does that line go about just because you can, doesn’t mean you should?

Researchers At Large Hadron Collider Are Confident To Make Contact With Parallel Universe In Days.

If successful a very new universe is going to be exposed – modifying completely not only the physics books but the philosophy books too.

It is even probable that gravity from our own universe may “transfer” into this parallel universe, researchers at the LHC say. The experiment is assured to accentuate alarmist critics of the LHC, many of whom initially warned the high energy particle collider would start the top of our universe with the making a part of its own. But up to now Geneva stays intact and securely outside the event horizon.

No doubt the LHC has been outstandingly successful. First researchers proved the existence of the mysterious Higgs boson “God particle” – a key building block of the cosmos – and it’s seemingly well on the thanks to revealing ‘dark matter’ – a previously untraceable theoretical prospect that’s now believed to form up the foremost of matter within the universe. But next week’s experimentation is reflected to be a game-changer. Mir Faizal, one in every of the three-strong group of physicists behind this experiment, said: “Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two-dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist during a dimension [height], parallel universes can even exist in higher dimensions.” Continue reading “”

We’re living in BLADERUNNER, but without space colonies and Darryl Hannah replicants.

10 a.m. Fran SanCisco, 09/09/2020, reality

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t even believe.
Gender reveals on fire off the shoulder of Nob Hill.
I watched stunguns glitter in the dark near the Golden Gate.
All those tech bros will be lost in time, like equity in a failed startup. Time to die.

Roman Authorities Investigating Jesus For Violating Stay-In-Tomb Order

JERUSALEM—Roman authorities are investigating controversial religious leader Jesus of Nazareth for violating the Empire’s clear “stay in tomb” order. After crucifying him and laying him in the tomb, Roman guards put Him under strict orders to stay there and not come back, rising victorious over sin and death.

But Jesus, answering to a higher authority, refused to stay dead and busted out of the tomb, establishing a kingdom that would never end — again, in clear violation of the government’s orders.

“Jesus is a dangerous rebel, refusing to bend the knee to Caesar and not abiding by the law of sin and death,” said one Roman official. “He clearly broke the law by leaving the tomb, and we’re going to be issuing a citation and placing him under mandatory quarantine for these crimes.”

After coming into contact with many large groups over the course of approximately 40 days, Jesus ascended into heaven and is currently thought to be reigning on high.

Authorities are also investigating Him for planning to gather with a large multitude of every tribe, tongue, and nation. He says he currently has no plans to obey any earthly king on the matter, pressing ahead with the gathering of those who believe He died and rose again and trust Him alone for their salvation.

Today, April 11:

1783, General George Washington for the Americans, and General Guy Carleton for the British issue orders for ‘all acts of hostility’ to cease between their forces, effectively ending the American Revolutionary War

1970, Apollo 13 blasts off from Cape Kennedy.

Army Rangers Conducted the Most Successful Rescue Mission in U.S. History 75 Years Ago

After the end of the war when all the PW records could be correlated with the lists of the still missing in action, it was determined that a great uncle was one of those who had died on the Bataan Death March.

Seventy-five years ago a company of Army Rangers and Filipino guerrilla fighters conducted the most successful rescue mission in U.S. military history, freeing over 500 prisoners of war being held by the Japanese.

The raid took place at Cabanatuan prison camp, located about 65 miles north of Manila, in the Philippines.

Most of the POWs in the camp were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, which took place in the spring of 1942………

In early January 1945, U.S. forces landed on Luzon island and began the push toward Manila.

By this time, most of the American POWs had been transported back to Japan or Manchuria to work as slave laborers.

However, among those remaining were over 500 being held at Cabanatuan.

When one of MacArthur’s top generals, Sixth Army commander Gen. Walter Krueger, learned of the camp, he green-lit a mission to rescue the POWs, knowing they were in danger of being killed by the Japanese as American forces drew near……

Charlie Company of the 6th Ranger Battalion, beefed up with an extra platoon to be 120 strong, was chosen for the perilous mission to slip 30 miles behind enemy lines, undetected, liberate the camp and lead the POWs back to freedom.

They would be supported on the mission by 200 Philippine guerrilla fighters.

Opposing them would be approximately 250 Japanese guards and other troops housed at Cabanatuan, with nearly 1,000 Japanese soldiers positioned less than a mile from the camp.

Only four miles away, at Cabanatuan City, were an additional 9,000 Japanese forces……

Armed with intelligence provided by Filipino guerrillas and the 6th Army’s Alamo Scouts, Mucci and his men crossed into enemy-held territory on the morning of Jan. 28…….

The Rangers launched the raid of Cabanatuan on the evening of Jan. 30.

A P-61 Black Widow fighter plane flew low over the camp creating a diversion, so the U.S. troops could draw in close to the fence-line undetected.

Suddenly, at 7:44 p.m. local time, the night sky lit up with a fusillade of gunfire as Rangers took out the Japanese guards in their assigned sectors.

The Americans quickly broke through the front gate and fanned out into the camp.

The frenetic scene during the liberation was depicted in the 2005 film “The Great Raid.”

All the POWs were directed to go to the front gate if they could walk (or Rangers carried them). There, they were met and escorted to a nearby riverbed.

The most fragile among them were then loaded onto caraboa (ox) carts provided by the local Filipinos.

Meanwhile, less than a mile from Cabanatuan, 200 Philippine guerrillas under the leadership of Captain Juan Pajota held off nearly a thousand Japanese soldiers.

Pajota’s men managed to partially blow a bridge over the Cabu River, which ran between Cabanatuan and the Japanese forces, which prevented tanks and other heavy vehicles from crossing.

The liberated POWs, guarded by the Rangers and guerrillas, marched through the night toward the American lines, only encountering some light Japanese resistance along the way……..

 

Could Scientists ‘Hack’ the Zika Virus to Kill Brain Cancer?

I seem to remember a disaster movie starring Will Smith……….
and a re-engineered virus that cured cancer……..

The mosquito-spread Zika virus known for its links to brain damage in babies born to infected mothers has the potential to target and destroy brain cancer, scientists have found.

New research has revealed that the Zika virus breaks into brain cells by using a special molecular key, and scientists think the virus could be tweaked so that it infects only brain cancer cells, leaving  healthy cells unharmed.

The aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma often defies standard cancer treatment because the disease transforms normal brain cells into stem cells. While typical neurons stop dividing after so many replications, stem cells can reproduce indefinitely and grow a whole new tumor from just a handful of cells. Patients typically survive less than 20 months after being diagnosed with glioblastoma; even if the cancer can be forced into remission, the tumors typically regrow and take the life of the patient within 12 months.

But where standard treatments fail, the Zika virus may offer a new strategy to wipe out the deadly disease, according to a pair of studies published Jan. 16 in the journals Cell Reports and Cell Stem Cell.

“While we would likely need to modify the normal Zika virus to make it safer to treat brain tumors, we may also be able to take advantage of the mechanisms the virus uses to destroy cells to improve the way we treat glioblastoma,” senior author Dr. Jeremy Rich, director of neuro-oncology and of the Brain Tumor Institute at UC San Diego Health, said in a statement. (Rich and his colleagues authored the Cell Stem Cell paper.)