Cronus-logically Discovered: Saturn has twenty more moons than we thought

As always: science rules, religion drools.  Hey, religions of the world: Why weren’t these mentioned in your holey (full of holes) books?

Discovery of 20 new moons gives Saturn a solar system record

With its newfound companions, Saturn nudges out Jupiter as the planet with the most known moons in our cosmic neighborhood.

Jupiter may be the solar system’s king, but Saturn has a bigger entourage: Today, astronomers announced that they have discovered 20 more moons around Saturn, bringing its total number to 82—the most for any planet in the solar system. The massive haul comes just over a year after astronomers announced 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter, but with the latest finds, Saturn’s retinue now surpasses Jupiter’s 79 known natural satellites. (Explore our interactive atlas of moons.)

Taken together, these sets of relatively small moons could help astronomers better understand the many collisions that took place in the early solar system, and they could provide ripe new flyby targets for future missions to the gas giants.

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Seventeen of the new moons orbit in the opposite direction of Saturn’s rotation. Each of these “retrograde” moons takes more than three years to trace out one orbit. The other three moons orbit Saturn in the same direction as the planet’s rotation. Two of these “prograde” moons take roughly two years to finish one orbit, while the third takes more than three years to go around Saturn.

Many of these moons may be too small to see (not much larger than Mars’s Phobos and Deimos), but they’re still moons.

The Carnegie Institution for Science is holding a contest to name the new moons, within specific rules based on the moons’s orbits and groupings.  Click to read more….

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Football Sucks: Another year, and it takes less than a month to prove it

The North American game of football needs to die before it kills more people.  The 2019 season is barely underway, and already the toll of injuries, deaths, concussions, hazing, and rapes are too many to count.

The damage done to children is criminal.  All that coaches and parents care about is “the game”, not the kids’ long term health.  They’re never told the risks when they sign up, only that they should “man up” and “be a winner”.

What galls me almost as much is the cowardice of “fans” who talk tough about what players should do while never facing the risk themselves.  And the few who have played football undoubtedly played at a much lower competitive level (e.g. 200 pound linemen running a 6 second 40 yard dash).

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Act Responsibly: MGM Vegas did, gun companies won’t

As seen on the Move On facebook page:

The difference is that the hotel didn’t imagine or expect their property to be used for such a crime. The gun companies did, and kept selling them.  How is the hotel responsible but not the arms dealers and stores that sold the weapons?

MGM Resorts To Pay Up To $800 Million In Las Vegas Shooting Settlement

MGM Resorts International has agreed to pay up to $800 million to settle thousands of liability claims stemming from the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, lawyers announced Thursday, almost exactly two years after the massacre.

On Oct. 1, 2017, a gunman on the 32nd floor of the MGM-owned Mandalay Bay resort opened fire on a crowd of people at a country music festival, killing 58 and injuring hundreds.

Lawyers representing survivors and victims wanted MGM held liable for negligence because the shooter was able to enter the hotel with luggage that held an arsenal of high-powered, assault-style weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Reputation Earned: Joe Clark’s was the last conservative government Canada ever had

With another Canadian federal election taking place on October 21, 2019, this is another repost from my facebook page.  I am absolutely NOT a conservative nor would ever vote for one, but I can respect someone with principles, honesty and dignity.  Former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark was a conservative in the traditional sense: balanced budgets and unwilling to change, but also arguing from the same facts as political opponents.  (Take Germany’s Angela Merkel, for example.)

 

 

On May 22, 1979, forty years ago, Canada held its 31st federal election. Joe Clark (born June 5, 1939, age 80) became Canada’s sixteenth and youngest Prime Minister after the Progressive Conservatives won the most seats, but not a majority, 136 out of 282.  Clark made the decision to “govern like a majority” rather than seek consensus with the Liberal and New Democratic parties. The Liberals and NDP opposed Clark’s budget and some of his plans (e.g. de-nationalization of PetroCanada), leading to a non-confidence vote in December 1979, and another federal election in February 1980. Clark would never be Prime Minister again.

The far right Social Credit party had six seats, which would have been enough to give Clark a thin coalition majority, but they did not want to cooperate. They paid for it in the subsequent election, losing all six seats and never winning another seat in three subsequent elections before disbanding. Voters were frustrated and turned away from them. Even the provincial Social Credit parties have disappeared from the political landscape.

This would mark the last time a traditional Progressive Conservative would govern Canada. Brian “the walking jaw” Mulroney destroyed the PC party with his ineptitude and corruption, leading to right wing extremist “populism” and ignorance that continues today.

 

 

Although some regard Clark as a failure, disagree with his planned policies and call him “uncharismatic”, he remains a respected figure. His reputation and legacy are one of honesty, principle, and willingness to do the right thing – even when it cost him politically.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis began on November 4, 1979, and it was Clark’s government that planned and and executed the rescue of six Americans from the Canadian embassy in Tehran on January 27, 1980, the “Canadian Caper” as it was called.  Yes, Canadians were involved despite what hollywood claimed.

Clark’s other lasting legacy of his short premiership was his handling of the Boat People crisis of 1979, providing citizenship and funding to settle 60,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere. Compare that to how the rest of the world treats boat people, refugees and migrants today.  Would Justin Trudeau have settled 20,000 Syrian refugees without Clark’s legacy to live up to?

In 1992, Clark negotiated the Charlottetown Accord, bringing all the provincial and territorial premiers to agreement (conservatives, liberals, socialists and Quebec separatists), as well as the leaders of Canada’s First Nations people, a Sisyphean task equivalent to herding cats. The Accord failed because of Brian Mulroney’s toxic personality – the voters rejected him more than Clark’s Accord.

My Blood Boils: The Mass Murdering Regime lives down to its name

On the 70th anniversary of the communists’ “victory”, the Mass Murdering Regime commits its first murder in Hong Kong.  One of the goon cops shot a child in the street and left him to die.  Beijing’s regime is worse than the Imperial Japanese regime that occupied the country.

October 10th is Taiwan’s Independence Day. It’s a national holiday, and it won’t be a celebration this year. It will be a somber ceremony in support of Hong Kong. People are angry and will be out in droves.  I plan to take photos.

Hong Kong protester shot with live round during China National Day rally

Hong Kong police have shot a protester with live ammunition for the first time in four months of demonstrations, marking a major escalation in the use of force on a day when China celebrated 70 years of Communist party rule with a triumphalist military parade.

Protests called to mark a “national day of grief” drew tens of thousands of people on to the city’s streets, across six areas, in the most widespread show yet of public anger towards Beijing.

Some gathered in central Hong Kong, while others met up across the harbour in Kowloon and the New Territories beyond. Initially peaceful, the demonstrations turned into running battles. Authorities shut down nearly half the city’s metro stations in an attempt to contain the violence.

Police in full riot gear used water cannon and barrages of teargas, while protesters threw molotov cocktails, built barricades, attacked metro stations and lit fires in the street.

The scenes, though extremely violent, did not mark a departure from previous protests until mid-afternoon, when a policeman drew his gun and fired a bullet into an 18-year-old high school student’s chest in Tsuen Wan district.

Images shared by local media showed the protester lying on the ground begging for help as he bled from his injury. “Send me to hospital, my chest is hurting. I need to go to hospital,” he said.

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The UK said the use of live ammunition was “disproportionate”, while Amnesty International called for an urgent and independent investigation.

Big help you are, England.  Instead of illegally selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, give them to Hong Kong’s citizens instead.  Or better yet, go back and reclaim the country – send in US and UK troops if you so believe in democracy.