Super old dress

A dress was found in an ancient Egyptian cemetery. This dress is considered the oldest known cut, tailored, and fitted piece of clothing. The dress is somewhere between 5,100 and 5,400 years old. It is suspected that it belonged to a socially elite women a little before Egypt's first dynasty of kings that appeared around 5,100 years ago.

I chose to write about this because I find stuff from Egypt cool and like to learn about ancient culture almost as much as I like to learn about ancient wars, almost.

The Captain Underpants Candidate

I had a chance to discuss politics with some friends this week, and my conservative friends are just as troubled by Trump as I and my more liberal friends are. This article was a confirmation of my theory that it is the very very dumb people of the country who are responsible for his rise in popularity. Sigh. 

http://wapo.st/1Qj5Ioi

Brutally Honest Letter

This is a letter someone named Reilly Flaherty got two weeks after losing his wallet at a show by the band “Wilco:”

He posted it on instagram, along with the tagline, “Thanks… I think?”

He says that at first he thought it was hilarious, but soon he got angry. Having already canceled his credit cards and replaced his driver's license, what had been given back was of no worth to him anymore.

He did admit, however, that he wasn’t completely angry at the wallet thief, stating, “You gotta respect honesty.”

I think that it’s kind of funny, and… that’s pretty much it. I guess it was interesting enough to keep me remembering it, because it was at least the first thing I saw on the news this week (unless it was last week… hmm).

Here’s one of the news sites with the story on it:

http://nypost.com/2016/02/16/i-needed-weed-man-who-found-wallet-returns-license-not-cash/

A lesson from Vietnam

Since we are reading about guerrilla warfare, I wanted to post a graph that everyone should be aware of. This is our troop levels in the Vietnam War:

Notice that we had half a million troops in Vietnam, but we still lost the war to guerrillas.

Now consider a few quotes from our leaders, and ask if they have learned any lessons from Vietnam.

"I don't believe that anything like a long-term commitment of 150,000 Americans would be necessary." -- Richard Perle

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark." -- Donald Rumsfeld

"If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat." -- Gen. Anthony Zinni

"For at least a year now, I have called for two additional brigades, perhaps three." -- Barach Obama

(A brigade has up to 5,500 troops.)

There is this robot that someone invented. It delivers your groceries to your door and saving everyone trouble.  It has 9 cameras and a GPS to help it navigate. It also has a two way audio system  just in case someone tries to steal it. You would be crazy to try to steal it though because you would be easily recognized through the cameras and audio and there are sensors too.
I think that this is a cool idea, but I don't know how well it would work. Here is the website.
Here.

Self-driving 'ground drones' are heading to London to make deliveries across the capital

The iconic mopeds of delivery drivers everywhere are set to be ousted by 'ground drones' that can navigate city streets by themselves.  

After more than 3,000 hours of testing in London, Starship Technologies' delivery bots are scheduled to start local deliveries in Greenwich next month. 

The robot was invented by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis who hope their machine will be appealing for small businesses who could send up to 20lbs of goods to local customers.

Unlike robots designed to resemble humans, the Starship’s bot is purely functional with a large compartment to hold deliveries, the equivalent size of two grocery bags.

Each six-wheeled  'ground drone' is almost completely self-driving. It is constantly connected to the internet, using 3G technology to find its way to the customer's address.

Walking on the pavement at about 4mph (3km/h), robots can complete local deliveries within five to 30 minutes from a local hub or retail outlet.

• The boxy drone can 'walk' at 4mph, cross the road and avoid obstacles
• The battery-powered bot is going to start delivery trials in Greenwich
• If anybody tries to snatch it, it alerts an operator and takes images of a thief

 My Opinion: THIS IS FREAKEN' COOL. 

Resources: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3459854/The-end-courier-Self-driving-ground-drone-takes-streets-London-make-drops-capital.html

Gun statistics

This isn't a current event, but it does relate to this week's reading. I was curious about the statement on page 46 that guns are used far more often in self defense than they are in a crime. I don't think there is a lot of data to back up this statement, since likely no one collects actual reports of guns used when they don't harm anyone, but in my research I found this study. It has a lot of statistics compiled from the FBI databases. I thought it was interesting that criminal homicides vastly outnumber justifiable homicides (which is where homicides committed as self-defense would fall).  http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

DRUNK MONKEY TERRORIST IN BRAZIL

It was a regular February day in Patos Brazil when a capuchin monkey invaded a bar. After it had drank it's fill on the leftover rum on the table it proceeded to chase the men around with a large kitchen knife it had somehow come into possession of. It didn't bother the women. After it tired of chasing the men video footage shows it stabbing the roof of the establishment. Fire fighters were able to capture the monkey and release it back into the wild (without the knife) but the people living near the forest reported aggressive behavior from the monkey.

Local authorities are trying to decide whether or not said monkey should be kept in permanent captivity.

I thought this was interest because I'd never heard of a monkey drinking rum before and yeah.

Crispr-Cas9

Crispr-Cas9 is a program that allows people to change the DNA in living creatures. The first term in its name is an acronym that stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” which is a description of the genetic basis of the method, and the second part, Cas9, is the name of the protein that makes it work.

How it works is it uses the mechanism our body uses when a virus comes into our body. Our body makes some RNA that connects with the virus DNA, which is then cut by a special protein called Cas9, destroying the DNA. They have figured out a way to use this process to change the area the protein targets and cut a certain part of the DNA. The DNA will try to repair itself, most likely causing some sort of mutations. But the scientists will usually want to be more precise than that. So, they will put a different strand of DNA which connects to the broken ends of the original DNA. (At least, that’s my take on it)

I think that this could help a lot with genetic diseases and similar things, but it’s kind of scary at the same time. With this, they could change anything in people's genetics—and your genetics are pretty much the basis of who you are.

Sources:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/crispr-dna-editing-2/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pp17E4E-O8

New Hampshire SuperDelegates

Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire democratic primary, by 60% to 38% of the popular vote. So Sanders won 15 delegates, while Clinton won 9. But Clinton also won the support of all 6 "superdelegates", meaning for electoral purposes she tied with Sanders, 15 to 15.

(https://theintercept.com/2016/02/17/voters-be-damned/)

SuperDelegates where introduced into the party to give party leadership more of a role in selection of candidates. But is this democratic or elitist? The Republican party also has superdelegates. What can we do if we don't like it? Nothing. Bustle.com has a good summary of the situation, and as they say:

The GOP and the Democratic Party are non-governmental organizations, and so they can basically set whatever rules they’d like regarding delegates and how they’re distributed. - bustle.com

The reply to that argument, is that the primary are paid for with taxpayer money, to the tune of 400 million dollars. It seems that big parties get to have their cake and eat it too, at taxpayer expense.

Trump not Christian?

Pope Francis said Thursday that GOP front-runner Donald Trump "is not Christian" if he calls for the deportation of undocumented immigrants and pledges to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Pope Francis claims that Trump is not Christian. The Pope says, "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel,"

Trump immediately had a retort calling the Pope's comments "disgraceful," and he said, "No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith,"

I think that Pope Francis may not be wrong. Trump claims to be a Presbyterian Christian, but he doesn't know how to make a correct scripture reference. During a speech at a campaign event at Liberty University in Lynchburg in front of a bunch of Christians, he said, “We’re going to protect Christianity. I can say that. I don’t have to be politically correct… Two Corinthians, 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame.” and anyone who has been to church knows that you would say that as Second Corinthians. So, I think that Trump isn't really Christian; he is just pretending to be. 
Here are links to the websites I used.
Click here. 
And here.

New Window to Study the Universe!

Scientists have detected the very first known gravitational waves. The waves were created by the merging of two black holes 1.3 billion light years from earth. One of the amazing things about this discovery is that Einstein predicted their existence before there was any proof and we now know he was, once again, right.  Another neat thing is that they had just barely gotten the LIGO operational when they detected the blip that made the black hole merging event known. These disturbances are no bigger than a fraction of the width of a proton so really really really really small. The reason this is a big deal is that it is a new tool with which to observe and explore the universe. Back in Galileo's day, all scientists had was their eyes and the early telescopes. Then telescopes got much better and we added infrared and radio wave technology and were able to learn a lot more. Gravitational waves are like a new window with which to study the universe. 

Here is a simplified explanation that is really helpful. 

Zika Virus Outbreak

The Zika Virus is a virus that is mainly prevalent right now in South America. It’s thought to be spread mainly by the Aedes aegypti (Yellow Fever) mosquito, but also partially by the Aedes albopictus (Asian Tiger) mosquito.

The symptoms of this virus are mild, including headache, joint pain, eye pain, muscle pain, itching/rash, and fever, and only 1 in 10 people affected experience any noticeable symptoms at all. Even if they do, the symptoms go away within 2-7 days, and after you contract it once you are immune to contracting it again. Compared to the other, seemingly more serious diseases that the mosquitoes who carry it spread (dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever), the Zika Virus is relatively mild. So why is the world making such a big deal about it now?

The Zika Virus has been connected to an outbreak of Microcephaly in newborns, with the child usually being born with an unnaturally small head and having impaired intellectual performance. When a pregnant woman contracts the Zika Virus her child is usually born with Microcephaly. Women in affected countries, mainly Brazil, are being advised to wait to become pregnant for a few months or even years until more information is found about the virus, and women in other counties are being advised to postpone any travel to these countries.

Perhaps why no one has made a big deal about the virus before now is because in the past, it has been contained to the small countries it had been in for a long time, where most everyone was already immune.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus_outbreak_(2015%E2%80%93present)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/health/what-is-zika-virus.html?_r=0

Gravitational Waves

I found this really cool article about scientists detecting gravitational waves. It is aparently a really big deal and will possibly let us see back in space time even back to when the earth was created. They detected the waves because of two black holes that joined together and caused a big enough gravitational wave that we were able to detect it.  "The fact that we are sitting here on Earth feeling the actual fabric of the Universe stretch and compress slightly due to the merger of black holes that occurred over a billion years ago - I think that's phenomenal. It's amazing that when we first turned on our detectors , the Universe was ready and waiting to say 'hello ',"

-Prof Sheila Rowan
 That was just a very very breif version of the article I read. This is just a really amazing discovery that I think is awesome and I wanted to share it withe you. Here is the link just in case you want to go look for yourself.

The Importance of Talking to People who Think Differently than You

I am a fan of SmarterEveryDay on YouTube and was really impressed with this video he made after interviewing President Obama. I think it has some great takeaways for everyone, and is especially relevant to our Current Events class.

Life, Animated: Autism and Disney

Democracy Now did a long interview with the the filmmakers and subject of a Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, called "Life, Animated", about an autistic boy who loves Disney films, and learns to reconnect with the outside world through them. They talk about the compensating gifts that autistic people have, and the need to go into their world to connect with them.  By through learning to connect with people that way, they learn to connect with people, and eventually to reconnect with the larger world.