"Hurricane Helene caused deadly and destructive flooding when it swept through the Southeast on Sept. 26-29, 2024."

Heavy equipment working near dry brush sparked a destructive wildfire near Riverside, Calif., in September 2024.

Linguists explore how climate may shape language, revealing links between weather conditions and vocal sounds.

When it comes to mental illness, we’ve come a long way since the days of superstition and sorcery. But we still have work to do.

The massive networks of neurons in our brains produce complex behaviors, like actions and thought. Now physicists want to understand the laws that govern this emergent phenomena.

What is the psychology behind keeping secrets? How the things we hide affect our wellbeing. Here are some ways to cope with them.

Get Solitaire Grand Harvest free coins now, new links added daily. Only tested and working links, complete with a guide on how to redeem the links.

Tired of running out of boosters for Match Masters? Find new Match Masters free gifts, coins, and booster links right here! Updated Daily!

Tired of running out of energy on Family Island? We have all the latest Family Island Free Energy links right here, and we update these daily!

A COVID-19 conspiracy theory is the latest in a long line of myths about the pineal gland.

I look at how COVID-19 is driving mental health research

Should a paper on deaths following surgery have been published as a Christmas special?

Celebrate astronomer Maria Mitchell, observe World Water Day and prepare for Citizen Science Month

It's a packed week, with Earth Day, Arbor Day, The City Nature Challenge and more!

Protect bird migrations in honor of Global Big Day.

It's time to enjoy and document these fleeting wonders of nature.

"Quantum phenomena are mysterious and often counterintuitive."

Can food technology really change society? Yes, just consider the seismic impact of the microwave oven.

As told in this month’s Sky Tour astronomy podcast, Orion, the Hunter, dominates February’s evening sky, but he seems unaware of the cosmic prey that surrounds him.

The post February Podcast: Orion and His Cosmic Critters appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Come along on a guided tour of the stars and planets that you’ll see overhead during October. Ponder the Moon’s whereabouts; spot four planets and a fast-moving comet, and watch for meteors shed by Halley’s Comet.

The post October Podcast: The Moon’s Waxing and Waning appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Location: Special Collections x-Collection- QB145.C49 1960

Location: Special Collections x-Collection- QB43.I64 1961

Location: Special Collections x-Collection- TL521.A541485 1968

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Location: Special Collections Hevelin Collection- BD511.Y6 1928

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Is Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS falling apart? How bright will it likely get? We try to answer those questions and more.

The post Status Report and Expectations for Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

An updated forecast predicts observers across the northern and central U.S. may see the aurora two nights in a row — on Oct. 4th and 5th — in the wake of one of the Sun's most powerful flares this solar cycle.

The post Second Chance: Solar Flare Might Spark Aurora Friday and Saturday Night appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Travel to the faraway and long ago by riding a quasar's beam.

The post Find a Quasar in the Sky Tonight and Time Travel to the Early Universe appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Treat yourself to a comet bright enough to see plainly even in moonlight. Tsuchinshan-ATLAS beckons at dusk!

The post Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Climbs, Brightens and Delights! appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Astronomers have, for the first time, mapped the 3D filamentary structure of a famous dandelion-shaped supernova remnant.

The post Astronomers Map a Dandelion Supernova appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Scientists have found possibly the oldest and largest crater on Venus — and it's like none they've ever seen on our sister planet.

The post Oldest and Largest Impact Crater Found on Venus appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

"Firestorm erupts over requiring women to sign up for military draft", reads the headline on a story today on TheHill.com.

Unfortunately, that firestorm amounts mostly to an exchange of sound bites and social-media posts, not a real debate, much less a hearing with independent witnesses, in either the House or Senate. It focuses on the proposal included in the Senate version of the annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) to expand registration with the Selective Service System to include young women as well as young men, rather than on what may be a more significant proposal in the House version of the same bill to try to make draft registration automatic by basing the list of potential draftees on information aggregated from other Federal records rather than provided by registrants themselves -- denying potential draftees the chance to indicate their opposition to being drafted, and to obstruct the mobilization for total war, by opting out of draft registration.

Most importantly, the current "debate" ignores both the profound and quite possibly insolvable practical problems with trying to compile a registry of potential draftees from other existing Federal databases, and the more fundamental issue with any contingency planning or preparation for a draft: the way that, even when a draft is not active, the perceived availability of a draft as a fallback emboldens warmakers to embark on wars that people wouldn't volunteer to fight.

[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.

Generative Artifial Intelligence [sic] is one of the issues I've been working on with the National Writers Union and other allies.

Travel writers and others may be interested in the presentation I gave on Artificial Intelligence and Real Writers this issue to the Bay Area Travel Writers at our virtual meeting in September:

• Video (1 hour)
• Slides

Additional resources mentioned in my presentation:

• National Writers Union (NWU): Platform and Principles for Policy on Generative AI
• International Federation of Journalists (IFJ): Call to action on 'articifial intelligence'
• International Authors Forum (IAF): Principles for Artificial Intelligence and Authorship

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

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Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - NK3631.H57 A35 2015

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