Published in 1957, John Day Company, New York

COSMIC VIEW
The Universe in 40 Jumps
Kees Boeke

ISS High Definition Live Streaming Video of the Earth (HDEV)

Currently, live video of Earth is streaming from an external HD camera mounted on the ISS. The camera is looking toward Earth with an occasional solar panel passing through the view.

Welcome to Solar System Live, the interactive Orrery of the Web. You can view the entire Solar System, or just the inner planets (through the orbit of Mars). Controls allow you to set time and date, viewpoint, observing location, orbital elements to track an asteroid or comet, and a variety of other parameters. Click on the title of any control to display a help page explaining it, or go directly to the help table of contents. You can compose a request with custom settings and save the results in your browser's hotlist or bookmark table, allowing direct access to Solar System Live with all the controls preset to your own preferences. You can plot the orbit of an asteroid or comet by choosing it from the object catalogue and clicking the “⊚” (orbit) button.

Other astronomy and space software available from Fourmilab includes:

• Earth and Moon Viewer
• Terranova: a new terraformed planet every day, and Terranova Planet Maker
• Your Sky makes custom star maps for any location on Earth at any date and time

The idea: Making scale models of the solar system is a useful way to learn about it. Here are various related pages.

This is a copy of Kees Boeke's book, COSMIC VIEW: The Universe in 40 Jumps (1957).

Kees Boeke's Cosmic View is a classic on learning about the scale of things. It is similar to the Morrison's Powers of Ten, but aimed at a younger audience. Its legacy includes Charles Eames's film Powers of Ten, the resulting book by Philip and Phylis Morrison, and several similar books which followed. Unfortunately, the problems Kees hoped to address, including peoples' understanding being fragmented by scale, remain as pressing today as they were in 1957. I place it online in the hope of encouraging awareness and activity in this area. Comments welcome - Mitchell Charity.

If you enjoy this book, you might also like my A View from the Back of the Envelope. http://www.vendian.org/envelope/

A note on copyright. I have placed this book online without permission. It has been 4 decades since Cosmic View was written, 3 since Kees Boeke died, and perhaps 2 since the last printing. Out of print, difficult to find, and largely forgotten. My hope is this noncommercial posting will further Kees's goal that every child and grownup develop a "cosmic view". If the current copyright holder, whomever that now is, should ever raise objection, the attached pages may go away.

intrepid defenders of the faith are unceasing in their efforts, demanding who do you believe: them, or your lying eyes and ears. The latest foray involves recently circulated photos of Sydney Harbor taken some 140 years apart. //

The photographs may reflect “different tidal stages,” Gary Griggs, Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, told Reuters.

An absolute global rate of sea-level rise has been recorded since 1993 by orbiting satellites, Prof Griggs said.

“This rate has averaged 3.42 mm/yr. but over the past decade or so has increased to 4.77mm/yr. over the past 10 years,” he said. //

“Local rates, whether Sydney or San Diego, provide sea level changes relative to land. Where the land is rising or sinking will produce different local rates. So, in Sydney, the land has been rising over the period of tide gauge measurements producing lower than global sea level rise rates,” he (Gary Griggs, Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz) added. //

Beemer4
6 hours ago
The Spanish built a fort in Saint Augustine in the late 1600's. It included a moat which was filled by the ocean. The Atlantic will have to rise many feet to get back to the point water will start filling the moat. Looking at that fort and the one in Key West makes it obvious the oceans are much lower than 200 to 300 years ago. It is almost as if this is a normal cycle. //

Red in Illinois
6 hours ago
“Unsettled” by Steven Koonin is one of the most straight down the middle books on Climate change I’ve read. Even though he was the Under Secretary of Energy during Obama, he is a straight shooter on climate hysteria.

He gives tons of facts with context (usually what alarmists leave out).

Ina nutshell, yes the climate is changing, humans are likely a small contributing factor, natural forces are mostly responsible (as always throughout earths history). Most green energy proposals won’t make much difference except enrich many progressives. //

UpLateAgain Red in Illinois
6 hours ago edited
Yep. Watched climatologist Joe Bastardi the other day talking about storm frequency and severity as influenced by Global Warming. He's really a climate historian as much as a meteorologist and climatologist, and according to him the storm cycles in the US in the early 30s were roughly 28 times more frequent and intense than last year. He doesn't deny mankind is having an influence on climate, but essentially says it is so minuscule as to not really warrant consideration.

For a woman to take her husband’s name is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. //

When a woman gets married, her identity changes in the sense that being a wife to her husband becomes part of who she is. The same thing happens to a man, taking on the identity and responsibility of being a husband to her. What Richards is reacting so viscerally to is likely not the tradition of a name change so much as the giving of oneself that marriage demands from both parties. It’s a foreign concept to our self-promoting society, a disconnect she admits when she broadly concludes that “marriage is rooted in misogyny.”

“When I got married in 2009, I changed my last name to my husband’s,” Richards continues. “But it never felt right. It never felt like ‘me’. And how could it? I’d had my name, my identity, for 30 years. Yet overnight, I was expected to become someone else.”

Yes, Victoria — husband and wife alike are expected to “become someone else,” though in most ways not overnight. Marriage is not simply a transactional arrangement in which two self-sufficient people engage in a trade-off that is always instantaneously profitable to both of them. It requires self-sacrifice, on some days with no immediate or equivalent return. It is a lifestyle of dying to self out of love for another, giving yourself to the other person — and in a healthy marriage where both spouses give such love, both spouses receive it.

The beautiful paradox of a loving marriage is that you don’t lose yourself, even though you give yourself away. //

Taking your husband’s surname is a reflection of your respect for who he is and for his leadership of the new family your marriage begins. It’s a commitment to your newly pledged unity. That respect and unity, in all their many forms, are vital to the process of “becoming one” — husband and wife coming together to submit their own sins and selfishness to the sanctifying covenant of marriage. That act of becoming one is an act of loving submission, on both sides. //

While there are legitimate, practical reasons for a woman not to take her husband’s name in some circumstances, many times that name change is a declaration that “I am not so insecure in my own worth or so vain of my own perceived image and independence that I’m unwilling to mark my commitment with this external symbol.” It is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. It communicates the willingness to give, serve, and love that healthy marriages demand from both spouses, albeit sometimes in different and complementary ways.

The sophisticated chemistry involved in making the different colors and explosive behaviors of fireworks are seldom appreciated by the “ooh aah” crowds attending the displays, but suffice it to say that if you know, you know, and if you don’t, the show will still be impressive. However, fireworks can be even more impressive when viewed from above, or level with, the “bombs bursting in air.” Enjoy these looks at fireworks displays as seen from the Avgeek’s perspective.

When Cate & McGlone of Hollywood produced the film “JET MAINLINER Flight 803” for United Airlines in 1960, the subject of the film, the Douglas DC-8-21 airliner, had been in production for only a few months. Many of United’s initial batch of DC-8s were DC-8-11s which were upgraded to DC-8-12s and subsequently brought up to the DC-8-21 specifications over the next few years. United eventually became the largest DC-8 operator. The film, uploaded to Youtube by PeriscopeFilm, stars the United Airlines DC-8-21 Jet Mainliner.

As to that pilot shortage we keep hearing about, there are, in fact, two shortages, the effects of which are overlapping. One is short-term and pandemic-related, per above. The second is more systemic and longer term.

Carriers are now taking on hundreds of new-hire pilots every month. This, combined with the lingering effects of the pandemic reshuffling, finds training departments overwhelmed, with long backlogs for classroom time, simulator slots, line certification flights, etc. Pilot training is modular, and it does not happen quickly. New-hire training can take several weeks, as can moving from one aircraft type to another, or upgrading from first officer to captain. Many pilots are sitting at home, waiting their turn. Thus, it’s less a dearth of pilots than a training system overload.

Then we have the other, more systemic shortage. As I talked about in this older article, this is a significantly bigger problem at the regional carrier level than at the majors. All of the legacy airlines are currently hiring, and although they’re having no trouble filling their slots, those pilots have to come from somewhere. This is causing a ripple effect downward through the industry. The regional sector has all but reinvented itself in a plea for new-hires, offering salary and benefits packages heretofore unheard of for entry-level airline pilots.

For decades, the salaries and working conditions at regional carriers were laughably substandard. In many cases pilots were asked to foot their own training costs, only to earn poverty level wages in return. And as the regional sector expanded, taking over more and more mainline flying, a job at a regional often meant an entire career at a regional. This led to fewer and fewer pilots getting into the business, helping create the shortage we have today. These companies now have little choice but to significantly improve pay scales and benefits, both to entice new-hire pilots and to retain the ones they already have. You could say they had it coming; there never needed to be a shortage in the first place.

Overall passenger numbers are still off about 15 percent from 2019. The problem is, the 85 percent who are back are being crammed into an infrastructure that can’t handle them.

What nobody is talking about, meanwhile, is the issue of airspace and runway saturation. It was bad enough pre-pandemic. Now, several upstart carriers are pumping even more airplanes into a system at or beyond maximum capacity. It’s especially bad in the eastern half of the U.S. Things run fairly smoothly when the weather is good, but the minute a storm develops, blocking off air routes, the delays and cancellations start to cascade.

Even on clear-weather days, the taxiway queues at airports like Newark or La Guardia can be hours long. Airlines need to better rationalize their schedules and, in many markets, consolidate departures to help reduce congestion. To this end, the short-haul widebody jet is a concept whose time has maybe returned.

A federal district court ruled last week that the Biden Department of Justice must hand over documents related to Biden’s executive order federalizing elections before the 2022 midterms and not after.

The two-dose, protein-subunit vaccine is intended for a primary series, not boosters.

A “study” finding that COVID mitigation efforts in schools, including forced masking, were highly effective in stopping disease spread — and cited by the CDC and most states as the scientific basis for school mask mandates — was authored by LA County Office of Education bureaucrats, including the daughter of the county’s Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

Although study authors are required to disclose any conflicts of interest — and Ferrer is given a shout-out in the acknowledgements — the study states that no conflicts of interest were disclosed. //

Like her mother, Kaitlin Barnes is not a medical doctor. Barnes does not even have a scientific background or a Ph.D. in any field. Her professional background is a combination of her parents’ professions; Kenneth Barnes has had a long career in urban planning and community organizing. //

The study, published in August 2021, concluded that students who went to school during the winter of 2020-21 tested positive for COVID at a much lower rate than their peers who did not attend LA County schools. The authors also concluded that, therefore, the protocols in place in LA County were responsible for this.

As reported by Just the News on Wednesday, the latest information appears to be the most damning yet; particularly for the Department of Justice:

In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents.

The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours before Trump left office on noon of Jan. 20, 2021. //

The documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president though Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary. //

So let’s see: lawfully declassified documents, a very concise memo from Trump’s then chief of staff; yet the DOJ usurps presidential powers and blocks declassification, claiming some bogus security excuse.

Meadows told JTN on Tuesday he was “dismayed” that the DOJ ignored a lawful instruction from a sitting president and said it was part of a larger dynamic within the permanent federal bureaucracy (see: “deep state”) to repeatedly undercut Trump and protect itself. //

Meadows in his 2021 memo said White House lawyers told him the DOJ’s last-minute concerns were not legitimate because the executive office of the president was exempt from the Privacy Act.

In the interview on Tuesday night, he said he agreed in the final minutes of the presidency to let DOJ make redactions “out of an abundance of caution” and expected the DOJ would comply with Trump’s order. //

Former Trump adviser David Bossie, head of the Citizens United watchdog group — as I noted at the top, one of the groups targeted by the IRS — said the episode is a pointed reminder that the permanent bureaucracy in Washington wields so much power it can thwart the actions of a duly elected president. Not only true, as we’ve learned; but it should scare your socks off if you think about it, properly.

What the greenies don’t understand, or can’t understand, or refuse to understand, or perhaps understand but pretend they don’t, or can’t, is that with fossil fuels, we can make an inhospitable climate more hospitable. The greens instead insist that fossil fuels have made and continue making an already hospitable climate inhospitable. But of course, any sentient human being knows this is violently foolish.

To prove how foolish this is, ask the people wiped out in Pompeii how hospitable the climate was on that day.

Or perhaps we might ask the 300,000 who died in 1839 during the deadly Cyclone how nice Mother Nature was on that lovely morning in India.

Or maybe the 1,000,000 who died in Bhola, Bangladesh, in 1970 from that weather event might have a different opinion.

Or we could ask the 2,000,000 dead Chinese who perished in 1887 during the Yellow River Flood. If not them, how about the 4,000,000 Chinese who perished 50 years later in yet another Yellow River Flood, this one occurring in 1931?

The 230,000 Chinese who died in 1975 during Typhoon Nina probably weren’t huge fans of the weather. Nor the 8,000 who died in the San Zenón hurricane in the Dominican Republic in 1935. And then there’s the 3,100 who died during the Cuba hurricane in the Cayman Islands in 1932…

Out of curiosity, how much C02 was in the atmosphere in 1887? Or in 1931? How about 1975?

Yeah, folks, don’t let the alarmists fool you today. Sure it’s hot. Of course, it’s hot. It might even be record-breaking hot. Records are made to be broken. It is July. We are in the peak of Summer.

The strategy from a public policy standpoint should be energy abundance and energy reliability so that as many people throughout the country, indeed throughout the world, have access to air conditioning during heatwaves and heaters powered by natural gas during winter freezes, as much of both as we can make possible through technological innovation, human ingenuity, sound market principles, and minimal government interference.

In other words, memo to politicians: Shut up and get out of the way. Allow the private sector to provide energy resources to those most in need of them, especially when they are most in need of them. In other words, don’t just do something; sit there.

Because even though the weather outside is frightful, the AC is so delightful. And since we’ve no place to go, let it blow, let it blow, let it blow…

Guide for using 112 Call Editor

This guide describes how to create custom calls for 112 Operator using the Call Editor Tool. Before reading this guide please read our Workshop Guide to get a better understanding of how mods work in 112 Operator. It's strongly advised to play 112 Operator, to get an understating of how the game works.

Rsync, or Remote Sync, is a free command-line tool that lets you transfer files and directories to local and remote destinations. Rsync is used for mirroring, performing backups, or migrating data to other servers.

This tool is fast and efficient, copying only the changes from the source and offering customization options.

Follow this tutorial to learn how to use rsync with 20 command examples to cover most use-cases in Linux. //

Note: Be careful how you use the trailing slash in the source path when syncing directories. The trail plays an important role. If you enter the trailing slash on the source, the rsync command does not create the source folder on the destination; it only copies the directory's files. When you do not use the trailing slash, rsync also creates the original directory inside the destination directory.

Whether you're in the mood for a gritty suspense novel, a lighthearted rom-com, or thoughtful literary fiction, there are fiction books for you releasing in the first half of 2022.

Brilliantly accessible game compares favorably to the best Studio Ghibli films.

The indie gaming genre of "silly animal exploration" has produced a bunch of fun and unique experiences. We've loved pantomiming as the following: hellraising goats, car-driving bears, and (if you'll allow it into the genre) bendy, walking slices of bread.

But three years ago, Untitled Goose Game propelled the genre to its zenith. Its production values, accessibility, and uniquely dry sense of humor were a noticeable step up from the genre's typical "glitching barnyard animal" gimmick, and the result was a breakout hit. At that point, I quietly wondered: Where else can video games featuring unexpected animal heroes go?

The answer, delivered by this week's Stray, is quite compelling. This brief yet memorable adventure is a refined take on the concept, as if it were made by an arthouse film studio. It lands somewhere between the eerie, atmospheric exploration of the first Half-Life and the childlike whimsy of a classic Studio Ghibli film. And it stars a cat: not an unrealistic talking cat with bulging eyes and Acme-brand hammers, but a puzzle-solving, nap-taking, tiny-hole-exploring cat who scurries on four paws and pretty much always lands on its feet.

Crucially, the developers at the new studio BlueTwelve nail an important contrast. The developer's realistic take on a domesticated virtual cat, as much in its aesthetic as its controls, somehow fits perfectly in a surreal underground world full of robots, neon lights, and mysteries. In fact, this contrast helps the game draw out humor one moment and kindness the next—which is one of many reasons I recommend playing Stray right meow.

Did you say meow?

Beware of “free” or super low-cost VPN services. Proper VPN services are not cheap to operate, so the revenue for the service has to come from somewhere. And there are countless “free” VPN services that are anything but, as we’ve seen with 911.

In general, the rule of thumb for transacting online is that if you’re not the paying customer, then you and/or your devices are probably the product that’s being sold to others. Many free VPN services will enlist users as VPN nodes for others to use, and some even offset costs by collecting and reselling data from their users.

All VPN providers claim to prioritize the privacy of their users, but many then go on to collect and store all manner of personal and financial data from those customers. Others are fairly opaque about their data collection and retention policies.

I’ve largely avoided wading into the fray about which VPN services are best, but there are so many shady and just plain bad ones out there that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one VPN provider whose business practices and transparency of operation consistently distinguish them from the rest. If maintaining your privacy and anonymity are primary concerns for you as a VPN user, check out Mullvad.net.

Let me make clear that KrebsOnSecurity does not have any financial or business ties to this company (for the avoidance of doubt, this post doesn’t even link to them). I mention it only because I’ve long been impressed with their candor and openness, and because Mullvad goes out of its way to discourage customers from sharing personal or financial data.

To that end, Mullvad will even accept mailed payments of cash to fund accounts, quite a rarity these days. More importantly, the service doesn’t ask users to share phone numbers, email addresses or any other personal information. Nor does it require customers to create passwords: Each subscription can be activated just by entering a Mullvad account number (woe to those who lose their account number).

I wish more companies would observe this remarkably economical security practice, which boils down to the mantra, “You don’t have to protect what you don’t collect.”