Airbrush

To correct my error, Kobe retired less than 4 years ago, in 2016. When I heard the news driving in my car it impacted me like hearing John Lennon was shot in the back and killed in 1980. Hard to imagine that someone so agile as Kobe could not slip out of a tough situation. Do rich people really need to fly around in helicopters? Is travel by helicopter safer than driving the 10 miles to and from the Staples Center in a car? Was flying just to save time?

Kobe Bryant, the star Laker who retired less than 2 years ago, his daughter, and 7 others were killed this morning when Kobe's chopper crashed in Calabasas CA. I go bike trail riding at Malibu State Park, which is about a mile from where his chopper crashed. Kobe was the kind of athlete that is likeable, a real nice guy, besides being poetry in motion. See you later Kobe! He's been immortalized in video.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe that is what Parnas & Company were doing, tracking her, although Parnas denies it. So by saying "get rid of her" and "take her out" and "do it" Trump could be merely suggesting they follow her around, trying to catch her doing something wrong. However, it sounds MORE like Trump wants THEM to do something so he won't have to get his hands dirty by firing her. He put off the firing for a year, just in case someone wanted to exercise a little initiative.

Gotcha. Sorry about that. Why would Trump tell other people to "take her out" when it is his job? Who else can fire an ambassador except the president? It sounds like he wants someone else to do the dirty work. But nobody else can fire her except for him. So how does someone else "take her out"? Obviously Trump is pleading for someone else to "take her out." How do they take her out? Raider, you want to know how I know how mob bosses talk? Just watch the movies "Good Fellas" "Casino" and the "Godfather" series. Vague, brief, short words, short sentences, active verbs. Which is considered effective writing. Trump is an excellent communicator.

Now there is a recording of Trump saying "GET RID OF HER!! TAKE HER OUT...DO IT!!" about the former Ambassador Yovanovitch. Because of Trump's mannerisms this sounds very much like encouraging SOMEONE, anyone, to KILL Yovanovitch. That is exactly the way mob bosses talk. "Take them out" means "kill them." Also Trump tweeted that Adam Schiff will "PAY A PRICE" for his performance in the Senate impeachment hearing.

IF our universe, or more precisely big bang, was finite in size (IF it has a finite length, width, and depth), then the Earth would have a location relative to the center of the finite-sized universe. Maybe not the center, but the Earth would have coordinates of x, y, & z axes, measured from the true center of the universe. Right?

Could you please explain what you mean by "In the case of photons it is the null geodesic that becomes curved not the spatial volume" in plain English? Thank you.

On the subject of being allowed to do or say outrageous things because you're "a star," I believe I heard Trump say in his last rally something like "If I say something a little bit false, the news is all over it! They make such a big deal about it!" or something like that. Did anyone catch his remark? He is suggesting that he should be allowed to say things "a little false." And his crowd didn't notice it was weird.

Has anyone noticed that the recent explanations from Trump, about the "imminent threat" make it seem LESS imminent? If Soleimani WAS preparing an attack on 4 US embassies, as "D-day" and "H-hour" approaches, for the attack on 4 embassies, the leader would be less engaged. The plot is well-planned and the leader is not an operator. The operators would have been rehearsing and every operator involved in the attack would be engaged in review, questioning each other, showing they had all memorized their roles, and Soleimani would be not engaged. So killing Soleimani would NOT disrupt the plot, but more likely motivate the operators to carry out the attack they were rehearsing, to avenge the death of their leader. There was no such attack, so such an attack was probably not planned on 4 US embassies. For this reason, IMO, Soleimani, on the scale of imminence, seemed like less an "imminent" threat, and Trump's action less legal.

The subject of "super-habitable" planets is very interesting. Imagine a planet that is MORE ideal for life than Earth, and resistant to natural disasters and mass extinctions. For example, consider a super-earth where a giant asteroid hits, or super volcano erupts, it would not be a total disaster. Like the dinosaur-killer asteroid Earth experienced 65M years ago, would not be such a big deal. It may not have wiped out the dominant life form, such as dinosaurs on Earth. Perhaps on such a planet human-like creatures would never evolve because of the dominant, intelligent lizard creatures. Or maybe the dominant life form is an intelligent octopus-like creature. The sky is the limit for a super-habitable planet.

According to reports from Iranian officials, it sounds like they recognize a subtle "state of war" exists between Iran and the USA. The Iranians will retaliate somehow because of the US killing of their general Soleimani. They already destroyed a $100M drone, attacked shipping, and attacked Saudi oil production. Here is what Trump tweeted in 2012: "Polls are starting to look really bad for Obama. Looks like he'll have to start a war or major conflict to win. Don't put it past him!" https://heavy.com/news/2017/08/trump-twitter-obama-north-korea-war-poll-approval/ Is this insight into the mind of Trump? DOES HE BELIEVE that starting a war will help him win the election?

Dark matter explains galaxy rotation, motion of galaxies in clusters, and gravitational lensing. It seems like about 85% of all matter in the universe is this dark matter. Maybe there are many tiny particles that permeate space, that add up to massive proportions. Think of them like tiny plankton in ocean water, enough to feed giant whales, so the whales grow massive.

Do you mean that one million parsecs is about 3.26 million light years? That would mean one parsec is about 3.26 light years. Thanks!

Very interesting. Here are a few questions: How many light years is one Mpc? What is "LSS"? Do you agree that on the color diagram (above) the dark blue areas would evolve into voids, and the warmest areas are red where more matter exists and where galaxies would evolve? On the map the great, dark-blue region in the middle resembles the Atlantic Ocean (is this where the Great Cold Spot is?) with N & S Americas to the left and Europe/Africa to the right.

We had 2 cat sisters, from the time they were tiny tots. They both lived over 20 years. The last cat lived to almost 22. The secret to longevity in cats is feed them healthy food, and train them to stay inside the house most of the time. Have toys, games, and places for them to climb and hide INSIDE the house. They loved to sleep in a closet. Outdoors is dangerous to cats. Both of our cats wanted to go outside often, so I tried to supervise them in our back yard as much as possible. It is best to let them explore outside in a back yard that has a wall around it and is not easy for them to escape. When our cats were 7 years old, we adopted a little one-year-old dog. The cats didn't like him at all, and they always hissed when he got too close or even looked at them the wrong way. They always avoided him. The 3 of them co-existed very well for 14 years! After one cat died at age 20, our dog passed away 7 months later when he was almost 15. Then 7 months after that our last pet died in her bed. The passing of a dog or cat, that you loved for many years, is very difficult to accept. 2 years later we adopted another little dog, who is now 2 years old.

That is very interesting, since I had always assumed, when looking at the CMB map, that the blue "cold" regions would become voids and the red "warmer" regions were where stars and galaxies would form. And yet you said "cooler/denser area" may have corresponded to a galactic cluster, and the warmer areas became voids. Then I found this on Wikipedia where a great cold spot is thought to be a great void. "The CMB Cold Spot or WMAP Cold Spot is a region of the sky seen in microwaves that has been found to be unusually large and cold relative to the expected properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Various alternative explanations exist, including a so-called Eridanus Supervoid or Great Void." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot On this map you see colors ranging from blue to red with yellow and green in between. https://www.bing.com/search?q=wmap+microwave+sky&FORM=R5FD2

Yes, how can you NOT be a TV star when you host a reality TV show for 14 years? The point I was trying to make is how much knowledge does the candidate bring to the presidency? Trump only has a BS degree in economics. That is why he is just literate enough to read a teleprompter. Was that economics degree a "soft" program for children of rich people? Trump's reality show, The Apprentice, was ABOUT apprentices to the Trump Organization. How much knowledge gets generated in that kind of Trump-only environment? The knowledge that Trump brings to the presidency is unimpressive, and yet he thinks he is a know-it-all. He is clearly not curious. What else has be done besides be boss of the private Trump Organizations and conduct a reality show that is about his own organization, year after year for 14 years? Besides his fake Trump University. "At age 13, he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school.[7] In 1964, Trump enrolled at Fordham University.[8][9] Two years later he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.[9][10] While at Wharton, he worked at the family business, Elizabeth Trump & Son,[11] graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics.[9][12][13] Profiles of Trump published in The New York Times in 1973 and 1976 erroneously reported that he had graduated first in his class at Wharton. However, he had never made the school's honor roll.[14]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Early_life_and_education

My question is how does a zero-sized singularity grow to an infinite size?

General U.S. Grant was a "star" of the Civil War. I can't think of any other presidents that were "stars" before they became president, can you? Trump is an exceptional case, someone who THINKS they are smart becoming president, because they were pampered all their life. Most presidents start as lawyers (they have to actually read difficult material and pass challenging exams), then years of experience in the House, Senate, or Governor, before running for president. Trump ran for president as a publicity stunt and never really expected to win. He was surprised that he won the election. He has shown he is not intelligent in many ways, yet calls himself a "stable genius" who knows more than his generals (as Hitler did). He won the presidency by the force of his own delusions, confidence, and talent as a conman, skills he developed by hosting a reality program for 14 years. Important to note, he also correctly identified a huge proportion (between 1/4 and 1/3 of Americans) with grievances that he cleverly amplified for them, while bashing the "deep state." And he benefited from Russian help, and finally Comey reporting Clinton's emails just before the election.

I don't think you are wrong. The cold areas DO correspond to voids, and warmer areas DO correspond to regions where there are galaxies.

I don't believe we know it was a "point." It could have started from any shape or size. A universe of infinite size also started out as infinite in size.

After listening to Michael Moore's interview yesterday I realize that the next election has 3 possibilities: 1 Trump just barely wins; 2 Trump just barely loses; 3 Trump loses in a LANDSLIDE because just a small fraction of the non-voters actually vote out of fear of 4 more years of exhausting drama. In the perpetual Peanuts analogy, Lucy is Nancy Pelosi, Mitch (and Trump also) is Charlie Brown, and the football is the Articles. Mitch and Trump both take turns charging at the ball to kick it, and Nancy pulls it away each time saying "Only when you promise a fair trial."

Interesting leverage Nancy Pelosi has holding the Articles out of their reach. She should sweat the GOP for as long as possible, without interfering with primaries. This is now a war of attrition. Every time the GOP asks for the Articles, so they can quickly throw it into the fire, Nancy will say "Only if you promise to a real, fair trial with relevant witnesses." This Charlie Brown and Lucy repetition will work the effect of (Trump's own tactic of constant repetition) it will make more non voters (there are 100 million Americans that DON'T VOTE) step up and actually vote. Doesn't the House get more authority now to issue subpoenas after impeachment has been approved in the House? Don't subpoenas have more force now? They should AGAIN subpoena everyone relevant to this case.

Nancy Pelosi just had her say, following Mitch and Chuck, 30 minutes each. She won't talk about impeachment anymore. The senate is not getting the Articles until Mitch is a good boy, and agrees to have a REAL senate trial with relevant witnesses, like Bolton and Mulvaney. How long can Nancy delay sending the Articles to the senate? Now is a good time for a few weeks of sweating the GOP. Maybe the poles will start moving, and GOP senators start taking notice of their own popular support.

George Washington was a star of the Revolution, and Eisenhower was a star of WW2. Then there was Jesse Ventura, the star wrestler, governor of Minnesota for 4 years.