It’s Saturday, May 8, 2021, and we’ll have a truncated Hili dialogue today in honor of Honey’s ducklings who faced travails and death in the past week.
News of the Day:
Just one piece today: David Attenborough has turned 95 (h/t Matthew Cobb):
Happy 95th birthday to national treasure Sir David Attenborough! 🎂
His 1975 Christmas Lectures broke the cardinal rule of broadcast television: "never work with animals or children" – and they were awesome. Watch here: https://t.co/YkM0X52cGB pic.twitter.com/eZbN8XWP7K
— Royal Institution (@Ri_Science) May 8, 2021
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 580,452, an increase of 688 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,285,811, an increase of about 13,740 over yesterday’s total.
Today Hili has an exhange with Szaron rather than Andrzej:
Szaron: The most important thing is trust.Hili: I have no trust that you will stop devouring everything from my bowls.
Szaron: Najważniejsze jest zaufanie.Hili: Nie mam zaufania do tego, że przestaniesz mi wyżerać wszystko z moich miseczek.
A caption from Elzbieta showing Mietek: Do cats get bored when it rains? (This comes from a Polish song about children getting bored when it rains.)
A meme from Bruce:
From A Different Type of Art on Facebook.
Because the world has gone insane, Titania’s predictions are always fulfilled:
TITANIA’S PREDICTIONS
(part 13)On 18 October 2018, I called out Disney for its rape culture.
On 6 May 2021, the Independent concurred. pic.twitter.com/I8RedYoE2y
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 7, 2021
From Ken. The GOP is kvetching because Biden didn’t mention “God” in his National Day of Prayer publication. Fox News’s beef:
Both former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump mentioned “God” in their National Day of Prayer proclamations, but Biden’s proclamation never mentions God, only Americans’ “many religions and belief systems” and the “power of prayer.”
Even that is too religious for me. Even the existence of a National Day of Prayer violates the Constitution’s First Amendment, and I believe the FFRF has fought it over the years. It’s palpably unconstitutional!
Morning Greatness: Biden’s National Day of Prayer Proclamation Leaves Out ‘G-d’ https://t.co/zVXPL5qiIH
— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) May 7, 2021
From Luana. It’s okay if CNN explains Critical Race Theory, but this is far from an objective discussion, and fobs off the critics as conservatives and Trumpers. But of course all liberal media is this way now.
Critical race theory is a concept that seeks to understand inequality and racism in the US. To get a deeper understanding of what the theory is — and isn't — we talked to one of the scholars behind it. https://t.co/hBNebh99EU
— CNN (@CNN) May 6, 2021
From Simon, who says, “We need an easy exit button that’s out of the camera’s line of sight.”
Everybody waving when a zoom chat ends pic.twitter.com/zv5X2HWFzf
— Oded Rechavi 🦉 (@OdedRechavi) May 6, 2021
Tweets from Matthew. See this article for a short but unsatisfying explanation of why only half the penile armamentarium is used in each copulation.
It’s out! Our in-depth study of the amazing echidna penis 😃Everything you wanted to know & more -like how it only uses 2 sides each time 🌋@BioSci_UniMelb @MarilynRenfree @DrTeethAl @Caleb_McElrea #UQ #beca_unimelb #CWS #PunIntended #ReproRocks #echidnas https://t.co/ojO4MkHYWL pic.twitter.com/8E9Duc7WNA
— Dr Jane Fenelon (@janefenelon) May 7, 2021
This is perhaps the best of several reasons why we should not have capital punishment in the U.S. Lee wasn’t even allowed to get the weapon DNA tested!
Ledell Lee was executed by lethal injection in Arkansas in 2017. Four years later, new DNA testing revealed that genetic material on the murder weapon — which was never previously tested — in fact belongs to another man, lawyers said.https://t.co/Dz4UAHB1LT
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2021
The sound of Ingenuity, the Mars drone! I believe the sound was captured by a laser-associated microphone on the Rover: check the linkin the tweet
I’ve seen what the #MarsHelicopter can do – and now I’ve heard it.
🎧 Grab headphones and listen to the otherworldly hum of Ingenuity’s blades as it headed south to scout a new area on its fourth flight.
How I captured both sight and sound: https://t.co/95J9X3bcyO pic.twitter.com/Lw44x7kqYZ
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) May 7, 2021
There is air on Mars, or at least some kind of atmosphere. There must be, or the helicopter wouldn’t work.
Nor, the parachutes that slowed Perseverance‘s descent to Mars’s surface. I think the atmosphere on Mars’ has about 1% the volume of Earth’s.
0.6% of the “air” pressure, so about 170 times the volume for the same mass of air. Since the helicopter’s rotors work by moving air mass downwards, they need to displace that 170-odd times as much air volume per unit time, hence the high RPM.
The pressure varies considerably with the Martian season, as a significant part of the atmosphere boils off/ freezes onto the polar ice caps as the seasons change.
No air on Mars? Yes there is, though thin as per Jeremy, Ingenuity flight demonstrates that there is air. It is about the density of Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 ft altitude if I recall correctly the balloon drop of the Mars airplane flight test about twenty years ago. Also we have watched video of “dust devils” from the rover over the past month. You were just messin’ with us to see if we were paying attention this morning…right?
Also i think that yesterday’s post of the 1.5 hour panel discussion on CRT was very good. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Yes, I fixed that error; there is certainly an atmosphere. Otherwise a helicopter couldn’t fly!
Do we know what the speed of sound is on Mars?
I’m not sure about the speed of sound on Mars, but there’s some interesting information about the challenges of flying a helicopter in the Martian atmosphere here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)#Design
Probably a little too detailed, but the speed of sound on Mars is buried in here somewhere! http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0249.shtml
“Mars has a lower speed of sound, around 540 mph (~240 meters per second), compared to about 760 mph (~340 meters per second) on Earth.”
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/sounds/
Although they mentioned Doppler shift in the helicopter recording, I couldn’t hear it or detect it in a running FFT analysis (which isn’t as shiny as it might sound), and the audio volume didn’t change except for noise. As an experienced audio manipulator, I’m not sure what to think of it.
So long as we are on “off-world” news, I’m surprised WEIT did not mention the spent Chinese booster rocket weighing 22 metric tons that will likely reenter the atmosphere around midnight (EDT) tonight. If it falls on schedule, Mexico, central Florida and parts of Western Europe and eastern Africa are in its path. If we are unlucky and it makes another orbit or two, it could fall in the central or northeastern US near places like Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
https://aerospace.org/reentries/cz-5b-rocket-body-id-48275
In other news, cows invaded the tracks at Nuneaton railway station: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-57032174
Thanks. Speed of sound much less on Mars. I notice in your info on the helicopter the blade speed of .7 mach. Always on a propeller, plane or helicopter, the blades must be well below the speed of sound.
You’d hope so. I can’t remember exactly what happens when rotor tip speed approaches the speed of sound, but I do remember reading about it. It was in a technical report on a multiple-fatality, so the general message is strongly, “George, don’t do that!”
BBC Future claims that the Tu-95’s turboprop engines “power two sets of 18-foot-long blades that spin in opposite directions; they move so fast that the tips of them break the sound barrier.” Given that the Tu-95’s top speed exceeds 500mph and the plane has a reputation for extreme noise, this claim seems credible to me.
The outer blades on some modern high speed turboprops are swept, which suggests that they approach Mach.
Re Ledell Lee: no disagreement over capital punishment but this whole ‘someone else’s DNA was found’ is becoming an annoying trope, which usually bypasses the actual evidence. Lee was spotted entering the victim’s home at the time of the brutal murder, then followed leaving it, and four witnesses (one of whom spoke to him) identified him. The victim had been robbed of some new dollars, and shortly after the murder Lee paid a debt with a bill that matched with those serial numbers.
DNA is such a powerful technology now is would be odd not to find others’ DNA on items, especially dating from the time when people behaved rather blithely about touching the evidence. Lee bashed some poor woman to death for a small amount of cash, and was also guilty of other rapes, and he shouldn’t be given posthumous sympathy just because today’s hugely sensitive testing turns up undated random DNA.
I should note for our UK residents – Hamilton got (pole) for the Spanish GP. That makes 100 poles for the number one F1 driver.
Thanks Randall. I am a big Lewis fan here in the US and was out on a morning trail walk during quali today. In addition to his innate eye hand coordination a d athletic abi,ities, his power of concentration is just unbelievable.
Having a sad day here in the forest. Beloved canine passed away last night. He was 15 and happy, I like to think. He’s had diabetes since 2013, and yesterday started to go downhill fast. The vet recommended, based on his age and condition, that we give him as much comfort at home as possible rather than employing a medical intervention. So I did just that. I babied him, brushed him, gave him water and kept him warm. Obviously I know it is the natural order of things, but it is still very sad. I’m going to miss him.
I know how heartbroken you must be – but the forest is a healing place to be with your sadness and your memories.
Really sorry to hear that, yazikus – sincere condolences and best wishes.
So,sorry to hear of your loss. Only those who have loved and been loved by animals truly understand the gut wrenching grief you experience. So sad for you
So sorry about your pup. Many people don’t appreciate the hurt of losing a beloved pet. I don’t know what I’d do if m’boy “Aussie” went to that dog pound in the sky.
Here’s here, next to me right now, begging for kisses again:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Condolences Yazikus,
D.A.
NYC
The judicial murder of that poor man is shocking. It displays a biased & racist system more interested in assaulting black people than finding a murderer…
On a completely different subject, how do you tell the difference between Honey and Dorothy? They look the same to me.