Supernovas, Mars, and solar sails!

We just returned from Pasadena, where Caltech - my alma mater - installed me as Distinguished Alumnus. An honor that I sincerely never expected, given the many brilliant minds I knew when I was there. Reflecting on that is humbling - even 'imposter syndroming' - though people kindly urged me to think otherwise.

In today's delayed posting, I'll be mostly taking a pause from politics... though the topic of my previous blog - about the likelihood of blackmail poisoning top levels of the U.S. republic - remains horrifically plausible... 

...especially now that prominent members of one party are openly admitting that their party is suborned in this way, by foreign powers.

Only now, let's move on to news from out there!

== Space News! ==

I've already posted elsewhere about the incredible "chopstix" landing-grab of a returning heavy-lift SpaceX booster stage. The concept is now proved, even though a whole lot more incremental steps are needed. 

Don't let any polemical jibber-distractions take away from the wonder that was achieved by Gwynne Shotwell and her SpaceX team.

Anyway, as for that distracting blather... well... I recall when there was a similar problem with Frank Zappa -- vast accomplishments that he seemed bent on contiuously spoiling with audience-insulting rants -- until (at last) Zappa listened to the fans shouting he should "Shut up and play your Guitar!" 

The ratio of ravings to accomplishments seems similar, this time. And what will be remembered (whether or not that wise example is followed) is the 'guitar.'**

 == The next steps in space exploration? ==

On this Future in Review (FiRe) podcast, I'm interviewed by the brilliant Berit Anderson - focusing on the near and mid-future of human spaceflight, especially Artemis and other planned missions to the Moon. (Incidentally, the annual FiRe Conference - one of the most visionary gatherings on the planet - has been postponed due to landslides.)

Also.... Just released: a newly-updated version of  Project Solar Sail: 21st Century Edition: A collection of stories and essays exploring the future of lightships and solar sails in propelling interplanetary... and then interstellar... exploration!

This volume (which I edited with Stephen W. Potts) offers classic contributions by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and others... plus new material, including by JPL scientists exploring the latest technologies and vast potential for sails in the future of space exploration. 

== A Red/WET Planet? ==

Geophysical/seismic data from the old Mars InSight lander indicates a lot of water – frozen or even liquid – sloshing deep, deep under the surface of Mars. If the water-rich layer now detected deeper below the surface were consistent around the entire globe of Mars, there would be enough water to fill ancient oceans, and then some. 

And while we’re there…

NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - is pleased to announce the 2024 NIAC Phase III award to the mighty pioneer of applications of spaceflight to future biology, and vice versa, Lynn Rothschild: “Mycotecture Off Planet: En Route to the Moon and Mars.”  

In other words, growing space habitats with the help of fungi and mushrooms! A house that protects you from vacuum and radiation... and that you can eat!  For a list of all early stage NIAC research, please visit the Funded Studies page. 

The Curiosity Mars rover rolled over a rock, accidentally crushing it open to reveal yellow crystals of elemental sulfur! - the first time sulfur has been found in its elemental form on Mars.

A fine article about my friend & colleague (and half of a mighty fencing team) Geoff Landis, epic scifi author and incidentally superstar NASA scientist, proposing ways to explore Venus. See also Land-Sailing: Venus Rover, where Landis introduces younger readers to methods of exploring - and traveling across - the surface of Venus.

Speaking of Venus…. re-analysis of data from the 1990s Magellan probe appears to show that volcanoes there are still active!

== Gettin’ a little galactic wit it ==

Many of you are familiar with Lagrange points – L1 through L5 – where gravity balance between two objects (the smaller orbiting the larger) creates ‘tidepools’ where even-smaller things can gather. Temporarily or (in the case of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid clusters) permanently. Here Anton Petrov talks about a (slim) possibility that there might be such a point between our sun and the galactic center.  It would not be able to collect much, with other stars whipping by over millions of years. But still… I do talk about galactic tidepools in Infinity’s Shore!

Mysterious brightening of a distant galaxy: Did this galaxy suddenly brighten, doubling in infrared frequencies, a 10 fold increase in X-rays)… because its central black hole ate a star?

Getting cosmic. Has the James Webb Space Telescope allowed researchers to resolve the “Hubble Tension” or discrepancy in the rate of expansion of the universe?  It may have just been exaggerated… or possible we simply needed a better tool. 

Two huge galactic clusters were colliding at 1% of light speed, billions of years away/ago, heating their gas clouds prodigiously as drag slowed them down… "These cluster collisions are the most energetic phenomena since the Big Bang…"  But while drag slowed the gas and stars, the galaxies’ dark matter apparently kept rolling on ahead at the original velocities, separating dark from regular matter clumps. This is pretty good reporting on how much detailed sleuthing is involved in figuring all this out.

== Truly mind-stretching! ==

Incredible. About 20 seconds into this video by Anton Petrov (one of the best ‘casts about new discoveries in space) you’ll see an amazing image from the Webb Space Telescope. A very deep field photo that dives into the faint past, beyond redshift-3, this one image captures eighty(!) supernovae taking place ‘simultaneously’ (as seen from Earth today) in a single, narrow frame. Each in a different galaxy. 

There are so many things this tells us.

1. Since any one supernova only remains stand-out visible for a few weeks (maybe a bit longer in infrared, the Webb specialty), this means there ‘are’ absolute gobs of them happening out there…

2. …or there used to be gobs of them, since we are in this case peering way back in time, making it a wee bit less surprising, since early star formation must have led to a great many giant, 1st generation stars, of the kind the burn bright and then blow themselves up with core-collapse supernovas… seeding later generations with heavier elements. Certainly, nothing like this rate is occurring “today”… (our redshift <1 era.) Though Betelgeuse is simmering...

3. Since each of the circled supernovae happened in a different galaxy… and it had to be happening a lot, in order for these brief bursts to be so common in one patch of deep sky... it gives you a truly boggling idea how many galaxies there are. A mind stretch that I can only perform for a few seconds at a time. Read more: NASA's Webb opens new window on supernova science..

That we are a civilization capable of building such a wonder as the Webb… and perceiving and marveling at such wonders… fills me with joy! And also fear that we might throw it all away, in a fit of anti-modernity angst, Pushed by powerful fools bent on restoring us to feudalism’s darkness.

More impact news...

Recent chemical and isotopic analyses from samples obtained by coring into the Chicxulub, Mexico's crater site in the Yucatan peninsula, indicate that the 66-million year old mass-extinction event was likely caused by the impact of a carbonaceous asteroid, originating from the outer solar system, rather than a comet.

As for the moon... Bombardment and impact vaporization of meteorites hitting the lunar surface appear to replenish and maintain the moon's extremely thin atmosphere.

Watch this simulation of a black hole tearing apart a star. 

And...You can help find black holes: a new app, Black Hole Finder - enables citizen scientists to help identify singularities in astronomical images collected by BlackGEM telescopes in Chile. 

And yeah. Again. ALL of this is under threat by ingrates with a lunatic grudge against not only scientists, but every fact-using profession. A too-seldom-mentioned aspect of this dire fight for the only civilization that ever brought us all these wonders... and that now stands poised to venture the stars.

If we decide not to blow it.

====

====

** Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep Comix appears to no longer support the beautiful series DON'T LOOK BACK, which featured Guitar spaceships!  You could nag him to repost it?  

Or else enjoy... and be terrified by... APOCAMON, revealing what fate some of our neighbors believe and fervently salivate for, from from the Book of Revelation. OMG read that one and know what they want and plan for us! People who want this are not nice and they are openly telling you what they want for you.

Republicans admit “We’re blackmailed!” – Plus quick/partial fixes for the Electoral College

There's not a lot of time left, so let’s go for the carotid on a couple of major political points that could benefit from a little ‘judo.’

== Republicans denouncing the subornation ==

Remember Madison Cawthorn, the rising young Republican star Congressmember, who was suddenly dumped by the GOP, for revealing ‘orgies’ amid upper ranks of the party? That huge over-reaction - destroying him for offhand (and likely stoned) remarks on shock radio - reflected almost-certain desperation to silence truth; otherwise he'd a got a slap on the wrist. 

But was it true? I've long posited that the behavior of so many top GOPpers – e.g. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz – can only be explained by blackmail. Mere corruption is insufficient, because any merely-corrupt official can say ‘that’s enough bribery for this year; if I keep saying more shit, I’ll look suspicious or insane.’ 

Blackmail, on the other hand, is insatiable. You simply keep doing whatever the blackmailer demands, even if it makes you look like an idiot, or hypocrite, or both, as in the multiple times when Graham tried to say "I'm done with Trump!" hoping that it would end his ongoing humiliation... followed the next day by utter groveling. 

I mean, do you have an even remotely plausible alternate theory?

This isn't new. Russian secret services have been expert at ‘honeypot traps’ ever since the czars.  Look up the Moscow US embassy Marine guards (1980s) as just one example.

Now, yet another Republican Rep has spoken out, even more explicitly than Cawthorn. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett warns that fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have been lured into honeytraps with sex workers and drugs. 

"Republicans aren’t backing important efforts, such as Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s crusade for Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, under orders by big backers and Russians."

Seriously read this.  It’s not getting the attention it deserves and this fellow is at least partially a hero. Or watch this. 

== It’s the Republican defectors who will make the biggest difference, stupid ==

Above, I showed how an honest and decent conservative Congressmember has stepped up to denounce the blackmail subornation of his party. Others recently used insane rhetoric and mad conspiracy theories about hurricanes as their own excuse to step up and partially reject the madness.  

Not as much courage as we need from them. But we'll take what we can get.

Then of course there's the long list of former Trump officials – his ‘adults in the room’ during Trump v1.0 – who have nearly all denounced him. From Tillerson & McMaster to Kames Mattis and John Kelly, to even far-right schmucks like John Bolton and Bill Barr. As many as a hundred have said "even I can't stomach the insanity and treason."

To which Tump's answer is that in Trump2.0 there will be NO adults in the room. Total brownshirt time. 

Which is why I urge the zillionaire oligarchs, murder sheiks and "ex" commissars who have pulled Trump's puppet strings for decades to watch the movie Cabaret, especially the last 5 minutes. Because if he does get back into office on a MAGA sig-heil-wave, none of those masters will ever again ‘control him.’ Not with blackmail or anything else.

In fact, you oligarchs and Kremlin guys need yet another film... watch Angela Lansbury’s chilling soliloquy near the end of The Manchurian Candidate to see what Don will likely do to his former masters, once the strings are cut.

But let’s add yet more pertinent movie overlaps! This interview with former Trump Communications Director Scaramucci is interesting. “Scaramucci on Trump: "He's going to lose because he's getting boring."

 

Dig a little, and you'll see that the Mooch is describing the "Howard Beale Scenario." (Watch the last 10' of Network and get truly scared!) 

Still, the part of his interview that I resent - because if it does happen, Mooch will get all the prediction points - is when he gives 40% that odds ol' Two Scoops won't even make it to the election or inauguration. 

While I was there lots earlier - with lower odds - I hedged it with the election that actually matters - the Electoral College. Which is where the fix may be in.

== It’s the Electoral College, dummy ==

Okay, three big points about the Electoral College, America’s weird (insane) but unchangeable Constitutionally gerrymandered gimmick favoring Red America.

Make that four points. The first? Um why are there two Dakotas? And shouldn’t just one state – Ida-Wyo-Mont – span the northern Rockies?

But no, let’s get practical. The core aim of the Trumpists has been openly declared… for GOP governors and others in some Harris-won states to refuse to certify enough electors, so that the count for president will be invalid, so that the choice will be ‘thrown to the House.’ Hence, even if Dems win a sweeping, crushing victory in November, you might still see Trump get in! 

Because at that stage - in another insanely dumb Constitutional provision - the House votes by delegations – one vote per – and Republicans have 26 delegations vs 24 for dems.

Now, that nightmare assumes there won’t be brave and patriotic Republican Congresswomen or men in some of those reddish delegations, who decide to put country first, the way Alexander Hamilton (bravely) swung the 1800 election to Jefferson, instead of Aaron Burr. That might happen. 

Or else some of YOU will be heroes who help swing just one or two of those delegations blue. In some cases it could come down to just one Congressional race. Look around. There may be some tight races you can help with. And that's where $100 could make a lot more difference than donating to Kamala.

== More Electoral College partial fixes within reach! ==

Okay, two more. I have elsewhere ruminated on the Wyoming Rule. If the dems get real power in Congress, they should pass it, so that all Americans get at least roughly equal representation in the lower house, as was intended. And if that happens, not only will blue states get more representation in the larger (~560 members) House, but the coloration of the Electoral College will change forever.

Only let’s swing to another of my proposals, One which no one else has broached, but that could (well, maybe) make a real difference this year.

In Polemical Judo I mentioned a possible action by one hyper rich person (say a Mark Cuban?) A bold yet totally legal move that could (possibly) get us past whatever tricks the Project 2025 schemers have in mind, to screw up certifications and throw it to the House. 

Briefly: rent a whole mountaintop luxury hotel with minimal - highly vetted - staff. Then announce that for two weeks ...

"Only certified Electors may come as guests. Upon arrival from their home states, they can just stroll and enjoy the views and meals and discuss with each other anything they like. Or else they could - at their own volition - convene the first actual Electoral College in U.S. history. As would be their prerogative! And this year, such a gathering just might be one more bulwark against shenanigens." 

Again, no coercion or persuasion. Just show up by individual choice, eat, stroll and chat with others who just happen to be there at the same time, without any of those others being anyone but fellow electors (and minimal staff of trusted cooks). And if you just happen to decide to convene a meeting - formal or informal - well…

Suppose this happened. Watch how quickly the stalling states would rush to certify! 

Though note. No matter how carefully Trumpists have ensured the GOP elector slates are party hacks – and most dem electors would likely be loyalists as well – some would likely talk it over, suddenly moved by the genuine (not ceremonial) power in their hands. 

Moreover, as one of the candidates (you-know-who) fulminates volcanically against this "trickery!!" just enough of them might listen to their conscience and reason…

… and act to save the Republic.

The dangerous chimera called 'scientism'

The crusade to discredit all fact-using professions is an existential threat to us all -- a deliberate effort to lobotomize-away any influence by folks who actually know stuff.  

One of the core elements of this campaign is to deride modern science as a 'mere religion'. A religion called "scientism'. That cult incantation - aiming to cancel out all nerds and every kind of 'expert' - is promoted in this article.

One raver, denouncing Scientific America's endorsement of pro-fact candidates, said: 

"...worshippers at this new altar seem determined to usher in a new post-modern utopia in which science and religion are fused once again. In that light, they cannot help but endorse Kamala Harris because their consciences won’t allow them to do otherwise. It’s not a choice dictated by science, but by theology."

Parse it. The fundamental goal is to demean fact-professions by their own standards, by calling them (without any hint of evidence, or irony) mere boffin-lemmings, yelping in unison as they worship the current paradigm and repress dissenting views.

Of course this is the masturbation-incantation of morons who know nothing about how science works, but desperately seek to justify their war against it. To which I routinely reply:

"Step up now with $$$ wager stakes.

Let's start by forming an eclectic group to visit the research university nearest to you. 

There we'll knock on twenty random doors, to see if even one person matches your egregiously dumb and insulting slander toward those who strive to advance understanding of the universe.*

"If you knew any scientists at all, you'd know we are the most COMPETITIVE beings that this species - that this planet - ever produced. A young scientist only gets anywhere by finding some corner of a standard model and poking at it until something gives. And thus the model improves... or else gets replaced.

"In fact RIGHT NOW I demand that you name a fact-based profession that is not warred upon by Fox n' pals. Go on, name one. One fact profession whose members aren't mass-fleeing your mad cult. (I can name one, but can you?)

"Not just science but also medicine and law and civil service, ranging all the way to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. *

"The latter, mostly lifelong republicans, can now see that the Republican Party has become a Kremlin-serving treason cult. Few of those current and former officers have become committed Democrats! But almost all have left the GOP madness in disgust and taken long showers."

*(And yes, as we enter the danger days of October surprises, even possible Reichstag fires and McVeighsions, we need to pray for the skilled dedication and good work of 80,000 fine men and women heroes in the F... B...I...)

== The underlying narrative of the 'scientism' schtick ==

The entire premise of this campaign to discredit every center of influence other than oligarchy is simple. It boils down to smart people are stupid. 

Parse it. Sure, we all know that:

"High intelligence and knowledge don't automatically make you wise." 

That's a truth we all understand. 

But today's Kremlin-led, foxite cult to sabotage the West has converted that truth into the following lie: 

"High intelligence and knowledge automatically make you unwise."

When it is parsed that purely, they always shrink back and deny it. But they also know that psychotically rephrased version is exactly the campaign pushed by the entire Fox-o-Sphere cult, in their war vs. all fact using professions. 

In their relentless yammer campaigns against universities! The flawed jewels built by the GI Bill generation, that have been responsible for most of the wonders that - for 80 years - truly made America great..

== The current U.S. struggle ==

 

Again, want super-strong evidence that the Republican Party has changed and been hijacked? Well, there are the Cheneys… and hundreds of former GOP officials, including almost every high ‘adult in the room’ during Trump’s Presidency, who have issued public denunciations with signature pages ten or more pages long. 

(There will be NO such 'adults in the room,' during any Trump II.)

And then there’s this…

…showing how likely it is that Ronald Reagan would despise today’s Republican love affair with the same ‘evil empire’ - (slightly relabeled) - that he fought against.  I show jpegs of Reagan’s own 1970 re-election flyer. Only jeepers, look at how progressive and liberal he was on so many issues, compared to today’s open Confederates. Golly.

== And finally, pictures are more persuasive! ==

 

I worked hard on this image, which encapsulates in one montage a partial panoply of deplorables who are best buds with Donald Trump. It has so much content, you may need to copy and expand, before you share it around. But in this case the sheer number makes it hard for residually sane Republicans (and we all know a couple) to shrug off. 

And peeling away just half a million such residual decents is really all we need. So use this!

Get them to look at the gloating faces of Trump & Lavrov & Kisliak in January 2017, when they were DT's first and most-beloved guests in the Oval Office, long before any ally, giggling that the USA had fallen to them so perfectly.

 Look at the faces up close and read the caption. And remember Trump raving that he "fell in love' with Kim Jong Un. 

 This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers have called him a direct threat to the nation. But that won't last if he's elected. Those folks will all be arrested and silenced. There will be no further 'adults in the room."

 But we proved resilient.  And we will, yet again. This renaissance is just beginning.

Reflecting on AI accountability for misinformation - and solar powering the revolution

The Great Big AI Crisis of 2024 will likely wreak its worst harm via political misinformation and manipulation this year (next month!) But it’s swamping its way into science, as well. 

“It is not always so easy to spot the use of AI. But one clue is that ChatGPT tends to favor certain words… such as meticulous, intricate or commendable.” 

Of course all such detection cues are temporary.  Even when we point them out to each other (as I just did), that only helps train the systems to avoid overusing them.

So, is it hopeless to dream of escaping the Age of Tsunamis of Lies? 

None of the palliatives proposed by the geniuses and mavens of AI - ranging from 'moratoriums' to EU style regulations to 'privacy rules' stand any chance of helping much. Only one thing will even possibly work and that is siccing AI programs onto each other, competitively, with incentives for them to tattle on misinformation, as I describe here in Wired: Give Every AI a Soul - or Else.

And more vividly detailed? My keynote at the May 2024 RSA Conference in San Francisco – is now available online.   “Anticipation, Resilience and Reliability: Three ways that AI will change us… if we do it right.”  

Let's dive in to how that could work.

== AI, Ai Ai!!! ==

In all of those places, I've pointed out that we already developed one fairly effective method for detecting and deterring liars, foiling harm doers and preventing a return to 6000 years of lobotomizing feudalism. Imperfectly, by far! But light years better than any prior culture.

Was it carefully-deliberated and designed laws? Those can help, but no. Paternalistic protection by the state? Ditto, and dangerous. The method I'm talking about – the one innovation that gave us everything – has been to flatten the playing field and empower a wide enough diversity of citizen-players, so that we can pit elites and potential predators against each other. 

It's called reciprocal accountability.

Lawyer vs. lawyer, for example. And the one area where we’ve made the greatest advances? The most effective reciprocal accountability system of all: science.

Scientists are the most competitive creatures our species ever produced. Young scientists are like top guns roaming Main Street, looking for a paradigm or pompous theory-pusher to topple with the six-gun of evidence. They make their mark by finding at least a small chink in the current standard model to critique. 

(And yes, this is diametrically opposite to the slanderous image of wimpy consensus-hugging eggheads that's pushed by anti-science cult media.)

The results are very often positive sum. Negatives and falsehoods get canceled out by competition, while positives can combine through better-tested models, new alliances, and cooperation. 

In other words, a healthy market.

(Politics is supposed to be like that, by the way. And it was, overall, till a mad cult waged open war against the very concept of negotiation, turning our political institutions zero-sum and now negative sum.)

All of which leads back to my notion about Artificial Intelligence. That we should try emulating, in this new ecosystem, the one and only method that ever reduced misinformation and predation among organic humans. Again, I am calling for reciprocal accountability on cyber beings, applied by cyber beings.

While I may be alone in offering institutional innovations to achieve this, some groups have lately been coming up with practical methods.

“To pinpoint when a language model might be confabulating, the new method involves asking a question multiple times to produce several AI-generated answers. Then a second LLM (Large Language Model) groups these answers according to their meaning; for instance, “John drove his car to the store” and “John went to the store in his car” would be clustered together.” Leading to a new metric “semantic entropy.”

“Other anti-hallucination methods have used LLMs to evaluate generated answers, through approaches such as asking a single model to double-check its own work. But the paired system improves on this...” 

So, yeah. The idea is starting to gain (a little) traction. Sic em on each other. But with incentives that reward those who do us all - and Truth - the most good.

When did I speak of a 'new ecosystem'? Here's an earlier posting where I talk about that...

Are we making new kinds of 'ecosystems'? 

... and how we organic humans (orgs) will still control - maybe for another decade or two - the new ecosystem's 'sun.' 

And if we handle this power wisely, it may shine upon the fabled 'soft landing' alongside our new cyber children.

And speaking of the sun...

== The solar revolution is here ==

This article in the Economist discusses how solar power's recent huge boom may be only the beginning. 70 years after first introduced by Bell Labs... and frequently sabotaged by filth merchants:

"Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over..."

...Much as I portrayed in EARTH in 1990. Though by now the question is why are the lords of carbon still backing the Denialist Movement, when this revolution can't be delayed any longer? And when denying all the heat waves and tumbling glaciers and acidifying oceans and super storms only makes you look like a jibbering loony?

Economies of scale have taken over now and batteries and methane and new nuclear will handle surge capacity, so why do they continue to back a cult bent on wrecking the planet that they must live on, too?

Well, the Russians and Saudis are still utterly fossils (and fossil-dependent) and plausibly they are the ones holding blackmail on almost all high Republicans. And unlike mere corruption (which can sometimes think long term), blackmail is always imminent and near term. It is only about satisfying the blackmailer today.

THAT - fundamentally - is what the Ukraine war is about and it is why the GOP is slavishly devoted to a Kremlin and slightly-relabeled KGB that they once despised. And it is why Ronald Reagan would spit in their eyes. 

== Future Tech ==

An interesting report - The Battery Mineral Loop - suggests that we may be recycling precious battery elements much more efficiently pretty soon, and that the race to mine them may be a temporary thing, lasting as little as 1.5 decades. Which is still a bridge we need to accomplish with careful management, good politics and lots of science. 

Australians have developed night vision optics so thin they might be barely noticeably different from your normal glasses.

Great news that soon computer chips will be able to store the energy they need for rapid operations right on the chip, itself, through new micro-capacitors. 

Oh, is it possible to find something positive, even lightening, from a Trump action? I have long demanded examples where a Republican U.S. administration had major, palpable comparative positive outcomes for the nation and world as a whole, and not just benefiting narrow, conniving cabals. Certainly, when the Trump guys sold off the U.S. Helium Reserve to buddies, for almost nothing, those pals immediately jacked up prices for the element that’s utterly necessary for many medical uses, such as supercooled imaging systems. And quantum computers.  

Only now the deal might (accidentally and unintentionally) benefit us, as a major new source of Helium has been found deep under Minnesota. Like the recent phosphate discoveries in Norway, it may be good news for civilization… and bad for market-cornering cheaters…

…till we get the mother lodes from asteroids, that is.

So... what now?

Now YOU do your bit for the Enlightenment, for science and civilization. 

Check your voter registration and those of friends! Give or volunteer if you can. Wear this. And remember that earlier victories in the recurring U.S. Civil War always led to golden eras. 

Imperfectly!  But we moved forward, correcting errors made by every prior generation. Making new ones for the next to correct! But moving ahead.

Toward the stars.