beecee

Not meant to be...just a peculiarity and a probable error by me in not clicking that "display as a link" bar at the bottom. Of course not! but your position seems to be bordering on that sport does more harm then good. On that I strongly disagree, for the reasons stated. Joigus'article raises some valid points about the IOC, but sport is far more then the IOC and some of its misgivings.

Reasonable comment, personally, I do my brisk walk early mornings, before assuming the couch potato position! With regards to the interesting article, some valid points are made, some are also superficial. With regards to the following from your article..... " Self-selected for the entirety of its history, the IOC appoints no independents, tolerates no critical voices and is completely opaque in its operations. The idea that such an organisation should have special status at the UN and claim sovereignty over the global governance of sport is untenable. Sport does offer an extraordinary canvas for the celebration of human possibilities. It is a universal language in a perilously fragmented world. It deserves better than to be captured by the IOC, better than to be drowned in its pieties and bound to its pernicious business model." I fully support the highlighted part, but do not believe that "sport" per se is "captured by the IOC, it is simply one aspect, albeit being far the largest. The IOC certainly as per the article, needs reform, but sport in general will survive...football, cricket, golf, gymnastics, weight lifting, snooker, darts, swimming will all prevail, as will those not mentioned. We also have world titles in many sports, and international rivalry and competition, such as exists between Australia and New Zealand, and Australia and England. While the IOC needs reform, and while other undesired aspects of sport exist, my focus, if I was in a position to focus, would be on world wide demilitarisation and elimination of all nuclear weapons. Clean up the IOC, clean up all the other undesired aspects of sport certainly, but accept the fact that sport is universal and a celebration of all that is good, to quote that article. On other aspects of the Olympic games, the entrance of all the nations at the opening ceromony, participating, has me personally more in admiration of the fart arse little countires and municipalities, with only a handfull, literally of participants, and the other tiny Pacific Island nations that lack the professional, scientific research abilities and equipement, to facilitate top performances from its athletes, that nations like the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and others have. They still send teams while obviously little or no hope of medals, just the glory and chance to participate. Probably I am biased to some extent, that being having played plenty of sport [and still do] and the fact that my nation prides itself on sporting competition, probably more then most.

It is around 67 minutes long narration...please don't let that put any one off! Extremely awesomely interesting in its detailed description, that signifies what science in general is all about.

The following is probably a well known, scientifically based story, about a time when the Earth suffered an almighty blow. It is lengthy, very lengthy, and at the same time detailed, very detailed. I actually followed it by the audio reproduction, which I recommend to others. As I said, very detailed and descriptive, and for an amateur novice such as myself, some of it quite revealing. Hope all take the time to listen and/or read..... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died?itm_content=footer-recirc The Day the Dinosaurs Died: By Douglas Preston March 29, 2019 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: a small extract: On August 5, 2013, I received an e-mail from a graduate student named Robert DePalma. I had never met DePalma, but we had corresponded on paleontological matters for years, ever since he had read a novel I’d written that centered on the discovery of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex killed by the KT impact. “I have made an incredible and unprecedented discovery,” he wrote me, from a truck stop in Bowman, North Dakota. “It is extremely confidential and only three others know of it at the moment, all of them close colleagues.” He went on, “It is far more unique and far rarer than any simple dinosaur discovery. I would prefer not outlining the details via e-mail, if possible.” He gave me his cell-phone number and a time to call. I called, and he told me that he had discovered a site like the one I’d imagined in my novel, which contained, among other things, direct victims of the catastrophe. At first, I was skeptical. DePalma was a scientific nobody, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas, and he said that he had found the site with no institutional backing and no collaborators. I thought that he was likely exaggerating, or that he might even be crazy. (Paleontology has more than its share of unusual people.) But I was intrigued enough to get on a plane to North Dakota to see for myself. DePalma’s find was in the Hell Creek geological formation, which outcrops in parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, and contains some of the most storied dinosaur beds in the world. At the time of the impact, the Hell Creek landscape consisted of steamy, subtropical lowlands and floodplains along the shores of an inland sea. The land teemed with life and the conditions were excellent for fossilization, with seasonal floods and meandering rivers that rapidly buried dead animals and plants. Dinosaur hunters first discovered these rich fossil beds in the late nineteenth century. In 1902, Barnum Brown, a flamboyant dinosaur hunter who worked at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, found the first Tyrannosaurus rex here, causing a worldwide sensation. One paleontologist estimated that in the Cretaceous period Hell Creek was so thick with T. rexes that they were like hyenas on the Serengeti. It was also home to triceratops and duckbills. The Hell Creek Formation spanned the Cretaceous and the Paleogene periods, and paleontologists had known for at least half a century that an extinction had occurred then, because dinosaurs were found below, but never above, the KT layer. This was true not only in Hell Creek but all over the world. For many years, scientists believed that the KT extinction was no great mystery: over millions of years, volcanism, climate change, and other events gradually killed off many forms of life. But, in the late nineteen-seventies, a young geologist named Walter Alvarez and his father, Luis Alvarez, a nuclear physicist, discovered that the KT layer was laced with unusually high amounts of the rare metal iridium, which, they hypothesized, was from the dusty remains of an asteroid impact. In an article in Science, published in 1980, they proposed that this impact was so large that it triggered the mass extinction, and that the KT layer was the debris from that event. Most paleontologists rejected the idea that a sudden, random encounter with space junk had drastically altered the evolution of life on Earth. But as the years passed the evidence mounted, until, in a 1991 paper, the smoking gun was announced: the discovery of an impact crater buried under thousands of feet of sediment in the Yucatán peninsula, of exactly the right age, and of the right size and geochemistry, to have caused a worldwide cataclysm. The crater and the asteroid were named Chicxulub, after a small Mayan town near the epicenter. One of the authors of the 1991 paper, David Kring, was so frightened by what he learned of the impact’s destructive nature that he became a leading voice in calling for a system to identify and neutralize threatening asteroids. “There’s no uncertainty to this statement: the Earth will be hit by a Chicxulub-size asteroid again, unless we deflect it,” he told me. “Even a three-hundred-metre rock would end world agriculture.” In 2010, forty-one researchers in many scientific disciplines announced, in a landmark Science article, that the issue should be considered settled: a huge asteroid impact caused the extinction. But opposition to the idea remains passionate. The main competing hypothesis is that the colossal “Deccan” volcanic eruptions, in what would become India, spewed enough sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause a climatic shift. The eruptions, which began before the KT impact and continued after it, were among the biggest in Earth’s history, lasting hundreds of thousands of years, and burying half a million square miles of the Earth’s surface a mile deep in lava. The three-­metre gap below the KT layer, proponents argued, was evidence that the mass extinction was well under way by the time of the asteroid strike. In 2004, DePalma, at the time a twenty-­two-year-old paleontology undergraduate, began excavating a small site in the Hell Creek Formation. The site had once been a pond, and the deposit consisted of very thin layers of sediment. Normally, one geological layer might represent thousands or millions of years. But DePalma was able to show that each layer in the deposit had been laid down in a single big rainstorm. “We could see when there were buds on the trees,” he told me. “We could see when the cypresses were dropping their needles in the fall. We could experience this in real time.” Peering at the layers was like flipping through a paleo-history book that chronicled decades of ecology in its silty pages. DePalma’s adviser, the late Larry Martin, urged him to find a similar site, but one that had layers closer to the KT boundary. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Again, I advise listening to the "pleasing" audio of this lengthy story. A story that impressed me as a non scientist novice, on the beauty and logic of science and the scientific method. The story may be well known today [the article is from 2019] but the detailed description of the before time,the effects and after time are awe inspiring.

My sport, my music, and my VB! My times for complete relaxation, is putting on a cd/blue ray of some of my favourite music [probably Nana Mouskouri, but that is entirely subjective] ...a very important part of my life.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-collisions-matterantimatter-pure-energy.html Collisions of light produce matter/antimatter from pure energy: Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—have produced definitive evidence for two physics phenomena predicted more than 80 years ago. The results were derived from a detailed analysis of more than 6,000 pairs of electrons and positrons produced in glancing particle collisions at RHIC and are published in Physical Review Letters. The primary finding is that pairs of electrons and positrons—particles of matter and antimatter—can be created directly by colliding very energetic photons, which are quantum "packets" of light. This conversion of energetic light into matter is a direct consequence of Einstein's famous E=mc2 equation, which states that energy and matter (or mass) are interchangeable. Nuclear reactions in the sun and at nuclear power plants regularly convert matter into energy. Now scientists have converted light energy directly into matter in a single step. The second result shows that the path of light traveling through a magnetic field in a vacuum bends differently depending on how that light is polarized. Such polarization-dependent deflection (known as birefringence) occurs when light travels through certain materials. (This effect is similar to the way wavelength-dependent deflection splits white light into rainbows.) But this is the first demonstration of polarization-dependent light-bending in a vacuum. more at link.............. the paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.052302 Measurement of e+e− Momentum and Angular Distributions from Linearly Polarized Photon Collisions ABSTRACT: The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and antimatter from photon collisions is experimentally investigated through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ultraperipheral Au+Au collisions at √sNN=200  GeV. The measurements reveal a large fourth-order angular modulation of cos4Δϕ=(16.8±2.5)% and smooth invariant mass distribution absent of vector mesons (ϕ, ω, and ρ) at the experimental limit of ≤0.2% of the observed yields. The differential cross section as a function of e+e− pair transverse momentum P⊥ peaks at low value with √〈P2⊥〉=38.1±0.9  MeV and displays a significant centrality dependence. These features are consistent with QED calculations for the collision of linearly polarized photons quantized from the extremely strong electromagnetic fields generated by the highly charged Au nuclei at ultrarelativistic speed. The experimental results have implications for vacuum birefringence and for mapping the magnetic field which is important for emergent QCD phenomena.

I too welcome both, and hope my strong opinion on sport and my arguments against the negative side, [particularly with Peterkin], was reasonably fair and equitably put and not too...cut throat, shall we say? Thanks for that Peterkin. Commit this version to memory matey! ☺️

Another moment of great comradery, after a minute of cut throat competitiveness, among hundreds of other moments from the supreme athletes of the Olympic games...this one features the embrace after the men's 100mtr freestyle, between the olympic title holder, Aussie Kyle Chalmers, and the new title holder, American Caeleb Dressal, who beat him to the gold medal by a small fraction of a second. Another great sporting and Olympic moment must be the bronze medal winner of the men's surfing title, Owen Wright, who 5.5 years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him paralyzed and unable to walk, let alone surf. The story here...https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/27/from-devastating-injury-to-olympic-medal-australias-owen-wright-makes-surfing-history The many disciplines of sport are full of incredible moments like this from all round the world, many of the stories not making it outside their home town, or country of birth.

Incredible read that is actually more about the history of late 19th century physics/chemistry and 20th century physics, from the Curie's, Bequeral, Roentgen, Rutherford and company, through to Meitner Bohr Bethe and Einstein, up to your Feynman's Oppenheimer and company and the Manhatten project... Then naturally, about the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets and the dropping of Little Boy and Fat Man, and the terrible aftermath.

Correction noted!! Thanks. I certainly hope so too. Since that great movie, "Concussion" much has changed in body contact sports, not the least being my Rugby League. Each club has a Doctor, who in association with the NRL Doctor, has the power to pull a player off the field, if they think he has suffered a head knock, which we call a HIA [Head Injury Assessment]..step 1 involves the trainer assessing the player on field. If he fails some basic tests he is off for 15 minutes to undergo further tests. If he fails those tests, he is off for the game, and more then likely instructed to rest for a period of weeks or months. More then one head knock can see a player outed for the season. While obviously the club does not want any repercussions involving being sued etc, they are looking after the players interests also...this also extends to the immediate family. Even looking at a more "docile" sport, like cricket, we had a player a few years ago, killed by the impact of a cricket ball, when he ducked into the delivery line of the ball. Science and sport are progressing hand in hand.

While obviously I am pro sport for the reasons given, the aspects of sport that have had me turning off the TV, or having a good laugh, was/is the world championship wrestling, and the never ending goodie v's the baddie. Still obviously even in that "pretend" nonsense, fitness is of prime necessity, as well as agility. Not sure if it is still doing the rounds now, but was always good for a laugh in the seventies. The other which I didn't see too much of, was the roller derby crap. Getting to individuals, there was Don King, boxing manager, who also was a negative quality in that game.

Read his book "The First Three Minutes" written in a nice simplistic as possible manner. One of my favourite reads just behind "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"

Not sure if giving answers is appropriate in the homework section. There are various methods in calculating astronomical distances, based on how far away it is.....stellar paralex or triangulation, Ceipheid variables, and type 1a supernovas are three that come to mind. Your other question re Proxima Centauri A and B, needs some thought. Proxima Centauri is part of the Alpha Centauri system, the other two being Alpah Centauri A and B. It is probably confusing somewhat, but there is no Proxima A, while there is Proxima b and c. Note! in lower case. I beleive you should google the rest, sorry.

Bingo! While already being fully vaccinated [2 doses AstraZeneca] I wear my mask at all times when stepping outside my front door. With my Mrs so far only having one dose, and me being the nominated shopper, while she stays indoors, I have also undergone three tests so far...all thankfully negative. Sydney at this time is in lockdown with 170 cases reported yesterday, 60 of those out in the community, this delta varient is proving hard to get on top of. Australia though is a victim of its own success in controlling the virus last year, with only around 11%? of the population vaccinated. Thankfully that is improving as we speak/type.

We have all kinds of individuals that go to make up society, many undesirable [the redneck boofheads that stormed the White House] and sport also has individuals that detract from that discipline, as opposed to the sprt discipline itself. My error and poor choice of words...I do though respect the efforts, sacrifices in any discipline that some chose to undergo to achieve, the pinnacle of that discipline. No problem, seriously. Sport in all its forms, artistry and skill [and despite some undesirable qualities] will continue, as will the Olympic games.

I respectfully and fervently disagree. If someone has the talent to achieve further success, further pushing his abilities to the limit, and the rest of the qualities that do exist in all sport, why hold him/her back? Are you going to hold a talented science student with Einstein like potential back, because it may put him on a pedestal above his fellow students? I'm sure his or her peers in that or any circumstance/discipline would disagree with you. I payed $350/seat to see Andre Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra in 2008, [1] because I like him, and [2] because I could afford it...I payed $50/seat [best seats in the house] to see Nana Mouskouri in 1976...Both are multi millionares....I'm not. Professional first grade footballers have a short playing career and while they earn millions and the sensible ones are able to set themselves and there families up for life, again, they also have to make sacrifices to achieve a place amongst the top echalon of players. I failed to meet that standard, but don't begrudge those that did. As an aside, some of our first grade players are also doctors [Dr George Poponis] and Lawyers [Kevin Ryan] and many more in fact. There are undesirable aspects in sport, both amateur and professional...pushy parents being one...cheating being another...any "cut throat" aspects you mention at times...still isn't the pursuit of wealth and fame what we all like to set out and do?...and funnily enough achieve? As long as it's done fairly and with reasonable consideration. We also have a scheme in Australia, where in reality anyone from any family [poor or otherwise] is able to attend Uni and get doctors and/or Lawyers degrees etc etc...Its called HECS and the educational cost while obviously high, are deferred until the course is finished and the participent gets a job in that profession, and starts paying according to his or her earnings. https://www.studyassist.gov.au/help-loans/hecs-help In short, there are undesirable aspects in any human endeavour, even science and obviously also sport. But just as the benefits of getting a astrazeneca two dose vaccine, far, far outweighs the minimal risk, so to the the benefits derived from sport, both amateur and professional, outweigh the undesired qualities pushed by some.. Back later, need to watch some more Olympic games sports!!😉 Gee that's a rather wise post. Think I'll give you a Like!!😉

If you see one of these, be afraid, be very afraid! 😲 The Sydney Funnel Web spider. A habit one needs to get into if living in Sydney or surrounds, is empty out one's shoes before putting them on, although thankfully, I have never seen one in the wild as yet, despite living most of my adult life in Sydney. Seen plenty of them...big and scary blighters !!

The reason/s that only a relatively small number make it to the top, is because of the difficulty, complications, and sacrifices that need to be made. Some people do better then others in every profession, including that of sport. The vast majority play sports for the fun, interactions, and health benefits. The vast majority stay "amateur". You should visit Sydney/Melbourne/Australia post covid 19 on any Saturday arvo, and watch 5, 6, 7, year olds, and all age groups playing and having fun at many sports. The vast majority of sport is amateur, at least in my country. 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds plus many into their teens and adult hood, are not getting payed. They play for the fun of it, the companionship, even against opponents, and as mentioned before, learning life's desired qualities. Of course as with any discipline, including science, there are exceptions and undesired traits. That's one of the possible pessimistic, undesired traits in some, as in any profession. Science is part and parcel of sport today, amateur or professional. You cannot escape it. You start off as an amateur...you show some talent...you enjoy the sport...you make friends...you learn discipline...you learn how to take defeat graciously, just as the great man in science, named Einstein did, when he admitted to his greatest blunder...You are not forced to play sport in most situations, although again, as in any discipline, there maybe exceptions.

With the still current Sydney and Melbourne partial and full lockdowns, we had some anti-lockdown/anti-vax/"so called" freedom of choice groups undertake violence inspired marches in both cities last Saturday. An estimate of 3000 took part in the Sydney protest, highlighted by violent actions, including assaulting Police, and extreme cruelty to the horses of the mounted Police. Thankfully many have and were arrested, and as "close up" photos are splashed across TV screens, the arrests continue. It was obvious both marches were highly orginized before hand, as the following article shows. Sad though is that it seems to have been over seas inspired by a particular German based group.... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/27/who-behind-australia-anti-covid-lockdown-protest-march-rallies-sydney-melbourne-far-right-and-german-conspiracy-groups-driving-protests Also found this science article at.....https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-byproduct-pandemic-paranoia.html Another byproduct of the pandemic: paranoia: The COVID-19 pandemic increased our feelings of paranoia, particularly in states where wearing masks was mandated, a new Yale study has shown. That heightened paranoia was particularly acute in states where adherence to mask mandates was low, the researchers report July 27 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. Increased feelings of paranoia were also associated with greater acceptance of conspiracy theories, the researchers found. "Our psychology is massively impacted by the state of the world around us," said Phil Corlett, associate professor of psychology and senior author of the study. "From a policy standpoint, it is clear that if a government sets rules, it is important that they are enforced and people are supported for complying. Otherwise they may feel betrayed and act erratically." more at link................... the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01176-8 Paranoia and belief updating during the COVID-19 crisis: Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world seem less predictable. Such crises can lead people to feel that others are a threat. Here, we show that the initial phase of the pandemic in 2020 increased individuals’ paranoia and made their belief updating more erratic. A proactive lockdown made people’s belief updating less capricious. However, state-mandated mask-wearing increased paranoia and induced more erratic behaviour. This was most evident in states where adherence to mask-wearing rules was poor but where rule following is typically more common. Computational analyses of participant behaviour suggested that people with higher paranoia expected the task to be more unstable. People who were more paranoid endorsed conspiracies about mask-wearing and potential vaccines and the QAnon conspiracy theories. These beliefs were associated with erratic task behaviour and changed priors. Taken together, we found that real-world uncertainty increases paranoia and influences laboratory task behaviour.

Been answered I see. It is an individual profession, that has its limitation in being over a short life span. Sport in general teaches many of life's desired values, not the least being discipline. People enjoy watching sports people at the peak of fitness compete...some enjoy in making the sacrifice to play a particular sport, and attempts to reach the top of that profession...some are not interested in sport in any of its many artistic forms. More importantly, in today's world, science plays a dominate roll in top rated sports, amateur or professional.

A small percentage make it to the top. The majority of the rest have competitive fun, and probably maintain a far more healthy lifestyle. As a young man I aimed and wished with all my might to play first grade Rugby League. Two things stopped me...Firstly, I wasn't good enough, secondly I had a medial meniscus [cartlidge] removed, which was more complicated then todays "in and out" key hole surgery tecniques. It didn't affect me not having a normal childhood, nor the fun and antics of a young adult, all that I willingly would have sacrificed to have reached the top level. My Son started playing Rugby League at the age of 7, and for two years his coaches remarked to me he had skills similar to one of our past greats, a bloke called Artie Beetson, who was made an "Immortal" of our game. While as a parent I was thrilled with this potential, my Son was more interested in music and IT. I didn't stand in his way in the least, and in fact bought him his first guitar, a Fender guitar...he went on to play in a band and then uni etc for his IT awards and certificates. Thos that aim and wish to reach the top of their chosen profession, be it a Doctor, Laywer, or Sportsman, all need to make sacrifices.

There is good and bad in any human endeavour you can wish to name. Our Ariarne Titmus beat the American, Katy Ledecky probably the greatest female swimmer ever yesterday. Here are some photos of them after the event. Naturally Katy would still have been disappointed..... I mentioned Rugby League earlier, a tough, body contact sport that I played in my younger days and a sport I know something about...Like our NRL professionals from different teams getting together after a game for drinks. I have even seen [and been involved in] in the heat of the competitive moment, two opposing players slugging it out on field, and having drinks after the game. Sport is certainly competitive. Is that bad? Perhaps possible with certain individuals, but like the defeated great American Katy Ledecky, it also teaches us humility, and how to lose graciously and accept defeat when it comes. The Olympic games and the Olympic legacy, will imo be with us for all time. I'm not talking about extravagant opening and closing ceremonies by the way, I'm speaking of supremely fit young men and women, competing to be the best and accepting losing graciously, The good in sport, far outweighs any possibly negative outcomes. The following video is at the Montreal Olympic games of 1976, and the story of the perfect "10" by Nadia Comaneci and the sheer beauty and artistry involved. There have been incidents in Sydney and Melbourne, where fans have made arseholes of themselves, some shouting out racist remarks...In those incidents unruly behavior has seen them banned for a period from attending any game. Again, as I said earlier, there is good and bad in every endeavour. I wear my team's colours when I attend a Rugby League match, and my best mate who supports another team, wears his...I shout out encouragment to my team, and express displeasure when the other side commits an illegality. I fail to see anything retrogressive in reasonable team supporters. Obviously the team I support in RL is/was the team I played for when younger...just as obviously, I am probably biased to some extent, but certainly not biased enough in the extreme to not be able to appreciate excellence by any oppossing team. Sounds like the redneck clowns that stormed the White House, urged on by Trump, but yeah we also have that variety...thankfully, in the minority!

It maybe beneficial analy probing the dumb yokel rednecks urged on by Trump to storm the White house to find out what makes them tick? 😉

You make a valid point there. Inthe Sydney based NRL Rugby League, over the last few years, there have been rule changes to make the game faster. This has resulted in far more season ending injuries, such as ACL [Anterior cruciate ligament] to name just one.

I forget where I first heard the proposition of a very "far in the future" obviously advanced Earth species of humans, finally discovering the secret to warp speed, and building a ship to facilitate this, and then over taking a generation type star ship built and sent to the stars, centuries earlier, and the many weird possibilities that such a scenario would raise.