We check in with the brightest comet of the year and see what's next, plus an update on Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1), which still shows signs of life.

The post Grab Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS by the Tail appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Fading Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS poses high in a moonless sky for its fans with binoculars and telescopes, even as we wave farewell for at least a hundred thousand years, maybe forever. Meanwhile four brighter, more permanent members of the solar system await attention.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 25 – November 3 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Newfound Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1) could dazzle – or fizzle.

The post There Won't Be a Second Bright Comet This Month (Update) appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The thin crescent Moon pairs beautifully with Venus low in Monday's twilight. And be on the lookout for any Taurid fireballs this week!

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 1 – 10 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The stars betray that we've tipped from the season of warm evenings to the cold (or at least crisp). And the Moon this week skims Saturn, then the Pleiades.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 8 – 17 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

[Originally published by Responsible Statecraft, the journal of the Quincy Institute]

How did this suddenly become the summer of “the draft”?

There are a number of proposals in the annual defense policy bill (National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA) that deal with the subject. There is one to expand Selective Service registration to women. Another that would make Selective Service registration for American men "automatic."

Still another proposed amendment to the NDAA, which has also been introduced as a freestanding bill, S. 4881, would repeal the Military Selective Service Act entirely. Meanwhile, the Center for a New American Security just published an exhaustive blueprint for modernizing mobilization, including readiness to activate conscription.

All this talk has compelled “fact checkers” to insist that no, the U.S. government isn’t suddenly "laying the groundwork" for a draft.

But saying the U.S. isn’t preparing for a draft is like saying it isn’t preparing for nuclear war. Just as the Department of Defense is tasked with maintaining readiness to initiate nuclear strikes whenever the Commander-In-Chief so orders, the Selective Service System has the sole mission of maintaining readiness to hold a draft lottery within five days and start selecting draftees and sending out notices to report for induction whenever Congress and the President so order.

As such, there are currently ten thousand draft board members who have been appointed and trained to adjudicate claims for deferment or exemption. As recently as this month, states have been openly seeking volunteers to fill empty slots. And both the SSS and hawkish think-tanks have been war-gaming the government’s contingency plans to activate a draft.

[Timeline for a draft, counting from “Mobilization Day” (M=0), from SSS Agency Response Plan (ARP) Workshop (September 7, 2023)]

There’s room for argument about how likely it is that the U.S. would launch nuclear missiles or activate a draft. But there’s no question that it’s planning and preparing for both, as it has been for decades. It would seem that after years of atrophy, the government is stepping up its attention to military mobilization and readiness for a draft.

Maybe it’s time to ask whether more easy and efficient ways of tapping into human capital for war make it easier to get into one and whether it is in our best interest to do so.

[First published on Antiwar.com]

Fantasies underlying push for conscription are delusional and dangerous.

Doubling down on their recent war-game exercises and report on the (un)readiness of the U.S. to activate a military draft, Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have a new article in War on the Rocks, “Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic,” laying out why they think the U.S. needs to prepare for a draft in order to be able to win an all-out war with China over Taiwan.

CNAS and War on the Rocks like to describe themselves as “realists”. But their arguments for stepped-up planning and preparation for a draft are strikingly unrealistic, in at least four respects:

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - NA7348.P2 C44 2017

Library - Art Library, Location - OSIZ, Call number - FOLIO NA2890 .V55 2008

Library - Art Library, Location - OSIZ, Call number - FOLIO NX456.5.N49 E54 2016

Library - Art Library, Location - OSIZ, Call number - FOLIO ND653.W43 A4 1982

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - NA1188 .M87 2016

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - TR647 .H28 1984

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - BF789.C7 P3813 2009

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - N7153.T33 A4 2016

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The Houston Chronicle reports that celebrity gossip site PerezHilton.com has battled ISP takedown over claimed copyright infringement. The problem is, site-owner Mario Lavanderia is already disputing those claims in federal court, where a judge refused to grant an injunction. Instead, as the judicial process properly works, Lavanderia must be proven a likely infringer before his speech is silenced.

The DMCA, however, offers copyright claimants an easy route around the niceties of judicial process -- make it too much of a nuisance for an ISP to deal with an accused infringer as a client, and get his site removed. And this underscores the precarious nature of our reliance on private infrastructure. Even though the DMCA insulates ISPs from liability once they've received counter-notification, copyright claimants can still shower them with complaints, and ISPs are still free to bow to risk aversion and refuse to do business with challenging customers -- including those who challenge powerful copyright interests.

Los Angeles photo agency X17 Inc. sued Lavandeira in federal court last year, asking for $7.6 million in damages. The suit claimed Hilton used 51 photographs without permission, payment or credit, including images of a pregnant Katie Holmes, Kevin Federline pumping gas and Britney Spears.

A federal judge denied the company's motion for an injunction against the site, although the lawsuit continues, as does another filed on behalf of several other photo agencies. A lawsuit filed by Universal Studios claiming the site posted a stolen photo of Jennifer Aniston from the film "The Break-Up" is also pending.

X17 co-owner Brandy Navarre said the company has sent more than a dozen notices to the Australian Web hosting company Crucial Paradigm in the past two weeks, demanding that copies of copyrighted photos on the Perezhilton.com site be removed. "They quickly realized it wasn't worth taking on this liability just to host this one client who was a repeat infringer," Navarre said Thursday.

Tuesday, Crucial Paradigm sent a strongly worded letter to the company that represents Lavandeira, saying it had received numerous complaints of copyright violations and warning that one more complaint would result in the site being taken offline.

"Please note that with any other provider this would have been done a long time ago, and moving your site to another provider will not solve this issue," the letter read. "Continued abuse is leaving us more liable each day, which we can't afford."

PerezHilton.com appears to have found a new host in short order, but other critics with fewer resources often find themselves chilled well short of any judicial decision on the merits of their defenses.

Location: Main Library- Shelved Alphabetically

Location: Main Library- PK6393.T33N39 2014

Location: Main Library- DS269.P3N35 2015

Location: Main Library- PK6562.24.A93B33 2015

Location: Main Library- PK6561.B323Z87 2011

Location: Main Library- PK6406.B375 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6561.K43N87 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6561.I37G43 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6562.36.A77S53 2015

Location: Main Library- PK6562.35.A93R89 2012

Location: Main Library- PK6562.16.A73T8 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6562.29.A67D37 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6562.32.A75N35 2013

Location: Main Library- DS356.A97 2014

Location: Main Library- PK6451.A572Z52 2014

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Location: Main Media Collection - Video record 42295 DVD

Location: Main Media Collection - Video record 42409 DVD