I wrote this article a year ago about the comparative sizes of the U.S. Military, and in broad strokes the numbers are still good today. Trump just said that we need to add another $50 billion a year to our military spending. Seriously?

Still more true than ever. Thanks, Voltaire.

Scientists at Harvard are working on to resurrect the woolly mammoth from extinction through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering. According to the scientist leading the ‘de-extinction’ effort, the team could be just two years away from creating a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo, in which the genes extracted from the frozen remains of woolly mammoth would…

via Harvard Scientists Claim They Could Resurrect Woolly Mammoth From Extinction Within Two Years — Sparkonit

In the wake of the Flynn resignation, it’s more important than ever for every concerned American to read Red Notice to fully understand Putin’s Russia and how it operates. Very frightening, particularly if the Trump people subscribe to this method of operation. I say you should RUN to the bookstore and pick up Red Notice.

Yeah!

November 22, 1963 – John F. Kennedy is assassinated. February 21, 1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated. April 4, 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. June 5, 1968 – Robert Kennedy is assassinated. In the span of five years the citizens of the United States lived through four very traumatic assassinations. I was […]

via Fear of the unknown — Ends and Beginnings

Stumbling across a five-year-old post about a beautiful German poem, I added an Addendum today highlighting a musical rendition that is as powerful as the poem itself. My friend Eric, in the comments below in 2011, was helpful with translations that will give the English reader some sense of the content. I will not even try this, I won’t be able to do it justice. But listen to the music. It needs no words.

Recently I heard Trump ridicule wind turbines because they “kill all our birds.” The president of the United States should know his facts better and not spout out nonsense. People actually listen!

Estimates about bird deaths from wind turbines vary greatly, but opponents of wind turbines, like fossil fuel industrialists and owners of golf courses, generally estimate on the high side.

I found a Smithsonian article that states that we kill between 140,000 and 328,000 birds a year in the United States with wind turbines. This is based on a study searching for the results of many other studies. We will never be able to have an exact number, but this is pretty close.

However, there are many causes of deaths for birds that are much more devastating. Supposedly, for every bird killed by a wind turbine, 2,800 birds are killed by cars. I certainly have hit my share of birds over the years. Critics often point out raptor birds as the victims, because those are the cool and rare ones. Researchers have identified the leading causes of deaths of raptors to be (1) shooting, (2) poison and (3) cars.

The leading causes of deaths for birds are buildings, power lines, cats, automobiles and pesticides, in that order. One study actually found that feral cats alone kill 3.7 billion birds in the United States every year. That is 10 million birds a day. Compare that to the estimated 2 per day per wind turbine.

No matter what study you believe, and what numbers are accurate even by a factor of 100, claiming that wind turbines should not be used to reduce killing of birds makes no sense whatsoever.

But then, there is Trump.