Untitled

[mivoyage]

Not only did I capture this it captured me literally. :) I was out on the breaker wall ... I "should" have known better a storm brewing the next day!!! Yes my friends 1 - 3" of snow is on the way today! https://www.instagram.com/p/CMdKu_Ln1JhT4b2NCehZUb3qvTq5BUcEV7-mjU0/?igshid=4l5p9p73ooff

[mivoyage]

Tori is grown up ... it was bound to happen Congratulations on your milestone! https://www.instagram.com/p/B_vLwiqH94oSljF3f7Q692QzpmyhE9dyMH-adc0/?igshid=9gu7xhxhohp

[mivoyage]

This daily concert helps me keep my sanity!!! #concertsfromhome #klipsch #keepersofthesound #keeplistening (at Milwaukee, Wisconsin) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_aXd-LnRn6nqSqifmWWwkgRl_LwZ5nIKl599o0/?igshid=j86waf9rhtre

[mivoyage]

Women's March on Washington: live updates

A day after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, women are set to descend on the nation’s capital on Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington in protest of Trump’s election and some of the 45th president’s planned policies. Organizers say at least 200,000 people will attend the march in

[jayteo-deactivated20200613]

[inrumford]

I woke up with a headache like my head against a board, twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before.

And I went in seeking clarity.

I go to the doctor, we go to the mountains. We look to the children, we drink from the fountain. We go to the Bible, we go through the work out. We read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout.

There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

The closer I am to fine.

- Amy Elizabeth Ray, Emily Ann Saliers (Indigo Girls)

[nasa]

Ad Astra, John Glenn (1921-2016)

An astronaut. 

A pilot. 

A husband. 

A father. 

A United States Senator.

An American hero. 

An original.

John Glenn (1921-2016) was all those things and more. When he rocketed into space on Feb. 20, 1962, to become the first American to orbit Earth, the flight set the nation on course to meet ever-more ambitious goals.

The life and career of Senator Glenn eclipses those of many. In spite of his accomplishments, he was a humble and gracious man (and 4-term U.S. senator).

During Glenn’s first flight, a scheduled 30-minute test to determine whether Glenn could fly the capsule manually became a matter of life and death when the automatic system malfunctioned after the first orbit.

“I went to manual control and continued in that mode during the second and third orbits, and during re-entry,” Glenn recalled later.  “The malfunction just forced me to prove very rapidly what had been planned over a longer period of time.” Another problem seemed even more serious – telemetry indicated the spacecraft’s heat shield was loose. It seemed possible that Glenn and the spacecraft would be incinerated on re-entry.  Glenn left the retrorocket pack in place to steady the heat shield during re-entry. “It made for a very spectacular re-entry from where I was sitting,” he said. Big chunks of the burning material came flying by the window.

He wasn’t sure whether the flaming debris was the rocket pack or the heat shield breaking up. “Fortunately,” he told an interviewer,“ it was the rocket pack – or I wouldn’t be answering these questions.”

In the words of President Obama, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012: “When John Glenn blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket in 1962, he lifted the hopes of a nation. And when his Friendship 7 spacecraft splashed down a few hours later, the first American to orbit the Earth reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there’s no limit to the heights we can reach together. With John’s passing, our nation has lost an icon and Michelle and I have lost a friend. John spent his life breaking barriers, from defending our freedom as a decorated Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, to setting a transcontinental speed record … The last of America’s first astronauts has left us, but propelled by their example we know that our future here on Earth compels us to keep reaching for the heavens.  On behalf of a grateful nation, Godspeed, John Glenn.”

Glenn left the Astronaut Corps in 1964 and resigned from the Marine Corps in 1965. And, after some time in private industry ran for and was elected ti the U.S. Senate in 1974, carrying all 88 counties of Ohio. He was re-elected in 1980 with the largest margin in Ohio history. Ohio returned him to the Senate for a third term in 1986. In 1992 he was elected again, becoming the first popularly elected senator from his state to win four consecutive terms. During his last term he was the ranking member of both the Governmental Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Air/Land Forces in the Senate Armed Services Committee. He also served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Special Committee on Aging. He was considered one of the Senate’s leading experts on technical and scientific matters, and won wide respect for his work to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

In 1998, Glenn flew on the STS-95 Discovery shuttle flight, a 9-day mission during which the crew supported a variety of research payloads including deployment of the Spartan solar-observing spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, and Glenn’s investigations on space flight and the aging process.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden remembers, “Senator Glenn’s legacy is one of risk and accomplishment, of history created and duty to country carried out under great pressure with the whole world watching.”

Today, we honor him for all that he stood for and continues to stand for – grace under pressure, humility, ability, strength. 

Godspeed, John Glenn.

[usatoday]

Light beams off One World Trade Center

A stunning photo shows sunlight reflecting off of the One World Trade Center days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Ben Sturner captured the photo from Long Island City around 7:00 a.m. on Thursday.

Sturner, who owns a marketing agency, posted the photo on Twitter along with another of a striking image he took exactly a year ago of a rainbow ending on the One World Trade Center.

[postitforward]

World Suicide Prevention Day 2016

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

No matter what you are going through, you don’t have to go through it alone. There are resources available to help.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need it, Tumblr.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Available 24/7 at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Crisis Text Line: Free, 24/7 support for anyone in need. Text START to 741741.

IMALIVE: Chat confidentially with a volunteer trained in crisis intervention.

7 Cups of Tea: Speak anonymously with a trained active listener.

American Psychological Association: A resource for finding mental health care in your area.

NEDA: Help and support for people struggling with eating disorders. You can call 1-800-931-2237 or chat with them online.

To Write Love On Her Arms (@twloha): Dedicated to helping people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.

You Matter (@youmatterlifeline): You Matter was created to let people know that suicide is preventable.

NAMI (@namiorg): Dedicated to improving the lives of anyone living with mental illness. Free to chat at 1-800-950-6264.

The Trevor Project (@thetrevorproject): Confidential suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ young people. Available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386.

It Gets Better Project (@itgetsbetterproject): Communicating to LGBTQ+ youth around the world that it gets better.

[usatoday]

Georgetown to atone for its role in slavery

Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic institution of higher learning in the USA, will take a series of steps to atone for the role that slaves played in its early history, the school’s president is expected to announce on Thursday.

As part of the plan, the university will offer a formal apology for the school’s role and create an institute for the study of slavery at what is also the nation’s oldest Jesuit university, officials told “The New York Times.” It will also offer preferential status in admissions to descendants of the slaves it once kept.

[mivoyage]

About time that they did the write thing.

[usatoday]

Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem after fans boo him

This time, he wasn’t alone. Teammate Eric Reid also took a knee during the national anthem.

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

Read more about Proxima B

follow @the-future-now

[usatoday]

San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick isn’t changing his tune

Kaepernick has sat during “The Star Spangled Banner” for each of the Niners’ preseason games so far.

[usatoday]

The world has lost a comedic genius. Gene Wilder has died at the age of 83. 

[christophs]

[nprfreshair]

Gene Wilder has died at 83. We will play our 2005 interview tomorrow, in remembrance of him. 

[usatoday]

Here is the complete text of the statement from Gene Wilder’s family confirming his death and offering details. </3 “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”

[mivoyage]

What a loss...

[neurosciencestuff]

Did human-like intelligence evolve to care for helpless babies?

A new study suggests that human intelligence may have evolved in response to the demands of caring for infants.

Steven Piantadosi and Celeste Kidd, assistant professors in brain and cognitive sciences, developed a novel evolutionary model in which the progression of high levels of intelligence may be driven by the demands of raising offspring. Their meta-analysis study is available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ Early Edition.

“Human infants are born far more immature than the infants of other species. For example, giraffe calves are able to stand-up, walk around, and even flee from predators within hours of their births. By comparison, human infants cannot even support their own heads,” said Kidd.

“Our theory is that there is a kind of self-reinforcing cycle where big brains lead to very premature offspring and premature offspring lead to parents having to have big brains. What our formal modeling work shows is that those dynamics can result in runaway pressure for extremely intelligent parents and extremely premature offspring,” said Piantadosi.

In other words, because humans have relatively big brains, their infants must be born early in development while their heads are still small enough to ensure a safe delivery. Early birth, though, means that human infants are helpless for much longer than other primates, and such vulnerable infants require intelligent parents. As a result, selective pressures for large brains and early birth can become self-reinforcing—potentially creating species like humans with qualitatively different cognitive abilities than other animals.

Piantadosi and Kidd tested a novel prediction of the model that the immaturity of newborns should be strongly related to general intelligence. “What we found is that weaning time—which acts as a measure of the prematurity of the infants—was a much better predictor of primate’s intelligence than any of other measures we looked at, including brain size, which is commonly correlated with intelligence,” said Piantadosi.

The theory may also be able to explain the origin of the cognitive abilities that make humans special. “Humans have a unique kind of intelligence. We are good at social reasoning and something called ‘theory of mind’—the ability to anticipate the needs of others, and to recognize that those needs may not be the same as our own,” said Kidd, who is also the director of the Rochester Baby Lab. “This is an especially helpful when taking care of an infant who is not able talk for a couple of years.”

“There are alternative theories of why humans are so intelligent. A lot of these are based on factors like living in a harsh environment or hunting in groups,” said Piantadosi. “One of the motivating puzzles of our research was thinking about those theories and trying to see why they predict specifically that primates or mammals should become so intelligent, instead of other species that faced similar pressures.”

The key is live birth. According to the researchers, the runaway selection of intelligence requires both live birth of a single offspring and large brains—distinctive features of higher mammals.

“Our theory explains specifically why primates developed superintelligence but dinosaurs—who faced many of the same environmental pressures and had more time to do so—did not. Dinosaurs matured in eggs, so there was no linking between intelligence and infant immaturity at birth,” said Kidd.