Find all the latest Magic Chronicle: Isekai RPG codes here!

From research to "me-search."

Along with eclipse-related activities, try some pet projects, library kits and litter monitoring

Bats, dolphins, National Parks and a 12-hour Zooniverse Palooza are coming up for Citizen Science Month.

Delve into the past with these projects, steeped in history

"Quantum phenomena are mysterious and often counterintuitive."

A new study explains the problem of cyberattacks in space and how to help anticipate novel and surprising scenarios.

An experimental aircraft could someday play a role in providing internet access to rural areas or disaster zones

"Brain-computer interfaces are a groundbreaking technology that can help paralyzed people regain functions they’ve lost."

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

As unpleasant as this guilt is, the good news is that those feelings, if you listen to them, can help encourage healthier choices for you and your kids.

Artificial neural networks mimic human brains, but the technology has its roots in physics.

People often contract schistosomiasis through water contaminated with infected snails and feces.

Find some of our favorite resources for the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse, including apps, video explainers, children's activities, and books.

The post Eclipse Apps, Books, Videos: Resources for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Astronomy doesn't deserve its reputation as a tough, expensive hobby. You just need to begin with the right advice.

The post Astronomy for Beginners: How to Get Started in Backyard Astronomy appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Location: Law Library- TL787.Y43 2016

Location: Special Collections x-Collection- PS3554.I294C73 1966

Location: Special Collections Hevelin Collection- PS3553.L548E44 1960

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Main Library- PL8703.J65 1980x

Location: Main Library- JQ3515.T33 2014

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Main Library- DS247.K86A4924 2014

Location: Main Library- BP10.J383A452 2010

Location: Main Library- BP134.A5S55 2015

September's partial lunar eclipse will be the first and only time the Moon ducks into Earth's umbral shadow in 2024. The Moon also occults Saturn and hides members of the Pleiades this month.

The post Harvest Moon Takes a Quick Dip in Earth's Shadow for a Partial Lunar Eclipse 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.

The Moon starts the week low in twilight with Venus and Spica, then steps eastward past Antares and the Sagittarius Teapot. Meanwhile, the recurrent nova in Corona Borealis is still keeping us waiting.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, September 6 – 15 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The Moon occults Saturn before dawn on Tuesday morning, then the Moon skims the edge of Earth's shadow for a partial lunar eclipse that evening. Meanwhile, Jupiter and Mars shine in fine view late at night.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, September 13 – 22 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

In this dark-of-the-Moon week, the Cygnus Milky Way crosses the zenith, and Arcturus, Capella, and Fomalhaut come to a certain balance.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, September 20 – 29 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

On these moonless evenings, Cassiopeia shows some of its inner workings. The Circlet of Pisces offers a very red star next to a little-known cross. From Vega, Lyra points away from the head of Draco.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, September 27 – October 6 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The waxing crescent Moon passes Venus, then Antares, in the western twilight. Several days later, Comet Tsuchinshan starts stealing the twilight show for everyone in the world's north temperate latitudes!

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 4 – 13 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS enters its week of glory for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Don't let any clear twilight slip by!

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 11 – 20 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS fades and shrinks as it rises high into a darker sky. Venus passes Antares. The waning Moon passes the Pleiades, Jupiter, and Mars. Arcturus becomes the Ghost of Summer Suns.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 18 – 27 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.

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.

Astronomers have identified a distant stellar tagalong to the binary system V404 Cygni.

The post Newfound Stellar Companion May Explain Black Hole System appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Take a flight through Grus, one of the famous “southern birds” constellations.

The post Get to Know the Southern Constellation Grus, the Crane 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]

Two proposals that would radically alter the current system for registering Americans for a future draft were introduced recently in Congress without any hearings or debate.

They raise practical issues about whether any draft today would even be possible.

As part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the House voted this month to make registration with the Selective Service System of all draft-eligible men ages 18-26 “automatic.” In addition, the version of the NDAA on its way to the Senate floor would expand draft registration to include young women now, too.

Debate about the draft has typically been framed around whether the U.S. “needs'' a draft. Debate about women and the draft has been framed around whether women “should” be required to register. But the bigger question we face is three fold: will women sign up voluntarily (if in fact registration is not “automatic”), is “automatic” registration based on other databases feasible, and can registration or a draft – for men and/or women -- even be enforced.

When I was invited to testify before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) in 2019, I told them that “any proposal that includes a compulsory element is a naïve fantasy unless it includes a credible enforcement plan and budget.... Women will be more likely to resist being forced into the military than men have been, and more people will support them in their resistance.”

[I'm often asked, "Why should we care about draft registration if there isn't going to be a draft?" In the article below, which was first published earlier today on Antiwar.com, I look at what war planners say about why draft registration is an important weapon in the arsenal of military strategy, even if there isn't going to be a draft -- and what that says about why draft registration ought to be equally important to antiwar activists, even when an actual draft isn't active or likely.]

[Stages of mobilization for war. Image from CNAS report based on Department of Defense mobilization plan. Note the absence of a Congressional declaration of war at any stage up to and including total military mobilization.]

A new report released 18 June 2024 by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) provides a remarkably candid window into the flawed and dangerous thinking of military strategists who support continual "readiness" for an on-demand military draft, even while they claim -- perhaps truthfully -- not to prefer a draft, even as Plan B, but only as Plan F for "Fallback" in case of prolonged and total war. (Thanks to longtime anti-draft activist Eric Garris of Antiwar.com for bringing this report to my attention.)

The CNAS report is intended to show supporters of the current bipartisan mainstream U.S. foreign policy and military consensus why the U.S. should step up planning and preparation for a draft as a tool of deterrence. But for those outside that consensus who think current U.S. policy is already bellicose enough, especially those who assume that opposing draft registration and other steps toward readiness for a draft should be a low priority for antiwar activists because the U.S. will never again (or at least not soon) activate a draft, the CNAS report provides an important lesson in how preparedness for a draft is itself a tool of war, even in "peacetime".

The CNAS report shows how its authors want to use readiness for a draft, and the circumstances in which they think it should be used.

The fundamental argument of the CNAS report is that a "credible" capability to quickly activate a draft is an important deterrent, especially to other great-power military "peers" and potential adversaries.

As with nuclear weapons, to speak of readiness for a draft as a deterrent is another way to speak of preparation for a draft as a threat. As also with nuclear weapons, that threat is itself a weapon.

Preparation for a draft is used as a weapon when it is used to threaten escalating war to another level of death and destruction, even when that threat isn't carried out. The "credibility" of U.S. readiness to implement a draft -- stressed repeatedly in the CNAS report -- is relevant only to the use of that readiness for a draft as a threat.

Proponents of draft registration and readiness for a draft such as the authors of the CNAS report argue that if, and only if, the great-power enemies of the U.S. believe that we are able and willing to activate a draft, we can use that threat of draft-enabled rapid and total military escalation and total war as a tool of diplomatic and military policy.

Resistance to planning and preparation for a draft is thus a way to rein in those policies that are based on the ability to rush into total war, and the threat to do so.

[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 - F2230.1.A7 K39 2016

Library - Art Library, Location - OSIZ, Call number - FOLIO N7330.S5 S53 2015

Library - Art Library, Location - LIB, Call number - N6604.M37 G67 2015

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