I’m going to be away from this spot, “It Is What It Is“, for a few days. I won’t have full access to a PC or laptop.
I still have the capacity to keep an eye on what happens in the blogosphere while I’m away.
I’m not able to just disconnect, particularly with what is going on in our world at this time.
There are so many problems, issues, conflicts, injustices, bigotry, destruction, killing, wars ….. We need to stay informed and educated about “happenings“.
I will leave you today with a message.
As noted above, we won’t find peace until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, as Mr. Sweitzer noted.
‘Tis the season …
We are all in this together. Be kind to on another.
I am a citizen of the world
and my home is my abode:
Rivers, lakes and valleys
are my sources of life;
Trees, birds and mountains
are my pride!
I am a citizen of the world
and my home is my abode:
Seas, fishes and oceans
are my sources of hope;
Shorelines, rocks and beaches
are my cliches!
I am a citizen of the world
and my peace is your company:
My children, relatives and friends
are my sources of strength;
Their love, care and tender touch
are my tabernacles.
I am a citizen of mankind
and the whole world is my abode.
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.
But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
Facebook Timeline
~~GALLERY~~
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There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan gives the best speech ever about humanity and how foolish we behave. Pale Blue Dot is one of the most important and reflective speeches about the human condition and our place in the Universe. The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images.
Music
“The Earth Prelude” by Ludovico Einaudi, Antonio Leofreddi, Laura Riccardi & Marco Decimo
Puerto Ricans (Spanish: Puertorriqueños; Taíno: boricua) are the inhabitants or citizens of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Puerto Ricans do not treat their nationality as an ethnicity but as a citizenship with various ethnicities and national origins comprising the “Puerto Rican people“.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred to as mainstream Puerto Rican culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early Spanish settlers, along with other Europeans arriving later such as the Corsicans, Irish, Germans and French, along with a strong West African culture which has been influential.
Puerto Ricans commonly refer to themselves as boricuas. “The majority of Puerto Ricans regard themselves as being of mixed Spanish-European descent. Recent DNA sample studies have concluded that the three largest components of the Puerto Rican genetic profile are in fact indigenous Taíno, European, and African”.
Recent Measurements of Pluto and Charon Obtained by New Horizons
“This graphic presents a view of Pluto and Charon as they would appear if placed slightly above Earth’s surface and viewed from a great distance.
Recent measurements obtained by New Horizons indicate that Pluto has a diameter of 2370 km, 18.5% that of Earth’s, while Charon has a diameter of 1208 km, 9.5% that of Earth’s.”
It’s 3 billion miles away (4.7bn km) and has never been seen in detail but now Pluto, at the very edge of the solar system, is on the brink of being revealed in a new light. On Tuesday, July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft sweept past the icy dwarf planet and sent back the clearest ever images of it. David Shukman reports.
Google Doodle Celebrates Pluto Flyby by NASA’s New Horizons
Today, July 14, 2015, NASA will make history when its New Horizons spacecraft becomes the first mission ever to fly by Pluto, and the folks at Google are celebrating with an appropriately celebratory Google doodle.
The animated Google Doodle shows the Pluto flyby as New Horizons whips by the dwarf planet at a mind-boggling 31,000 mph (49,889 km/h). Launched in 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft has traveled for more than nine years and across 3 billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers) to reach Pluto.
You can watch NASA’s Pluto flyby webcast on Space.com, beginning at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), which will originate from New Horizons’ mission operations center here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where more than 1,000 guests, dignitaries and reporters are expected to attend the historic encounter.
~~GALLERY~~
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According to Google, today’s Pluto flyby doodle is meant to celebrate the unprecedented encounter with Pluto at the edge of the solar system.
“Today’s Doodle was created by Kevin Laughlin in honor of New Horizons’ intrepid voyage to Pluto’s distant corner of the solar system,” Google representatives wrote in a statement. “Celebrate this scientific breakthrough on NASA’s New Horizons YouTube page, where you’ll find videos detailing the extraordinary discoveries the space probe uncovers.”
Already, New Horizons has beamed to Earth spectacular images of Pluto, but those images will be a their best today, when the probe approaches within 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the dwarf planet and snaps its closest and most detailed views.
Google Doodle ” Pluto Will Send Earth a Love Letter Tomorrow “!
Published on Jul 13, 2015
Tomorrow, (July 14, 2015) when New Horizons makes its historic flyby of Pluto, it will be focusing in on just one face of the dwarf planet.
In this latest photo captured by the space probe’s black-and-white LORRI camera, you can see that face — defined by a large, bright heart-shaped feature — beginning to rotate into view.
Only the top half of the heart is visible on the left side of this image, but come tomorrow, New Horizons will capture the valentine in full.
~~New Horizons Pluto Flyby Google Doodle ~~
~~Published on Jul 13, 2015~~
Google celebrates New Horizons Pluto Flyby Google Doodle on 15th, July 2015
New Horizons Pluto Flyby Google Doodle
After nine years and three billion miles, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will zip past Pluto and its five moons on Tuesday morning. Google celebrates this event with an animated Google Doodle. Thanks to the power of planetary physics you can watch the space probe pass by on your computer right now.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched on January 19, 2006, as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program.
Built by the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute, with a team led by S. Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched to study Pluto, its moons and the Kuiper Belt, performing flybys of the Pluto system and one or more Kuiper Belt Objects.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched on January 19, 2006, as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. Built by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute, with a team led by S. Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched to study Pluto, its moons and the Kuiper Belt, performing flybys of the Pluto system and one or more Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).
New Horizons is the result of many years of work on missions to send a spacecraft to Pluto, starting in 1990 with Pluto 350, with Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal of the “Pluto Underground“, and in 1992 with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Pluto Fast Flyby; the latter inspired by a USPS stamp that branded Pluto as “Not Yet Explored”.
The ambitious mission aimed to send a lightweight, cost-effective spacecraft to Pluto, later evolving into a Kuiper Belt Object mission named Pluto Kuiper Express. However, because of underwhelming support from NASA and a growing budget, the project was eventually cancelled altogether in 2000.
Google Doodle Celebrates Sally Ride’s 64th Birthday
Today, May 26, 2015, American astronaut Sally Ride would have have been 64 years old.
She died in 2012, but her work lives on as an inspiration to young women who want to touch the stars.
Ride was indefatigable in promoting education, in promoting the need to explore space, and working to get girls more involved with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As the first American woman in space her place in history was secure, but she knew what this implied for her as a role model, and maximized that leverage.
Google has helped promote her message today in a series of lovely Doodles, animated images that come up when you open the home page of the search engine.
Dr. Ride was immortalized when NASA named the GRAIL spacecraft impact site after her. But her legacy was secured by her own doing, by her actions. And we thank her for them.
The astronaut and physicist worked to motivate young people, especially girls, to become interested in science and math.
On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride made history when she became the first American woman in space. On Tuesday, Google honored what would have been her 64th birthday with an animated Google Doodle.
Ride was born in Los Angeles on May 26, 1951. While finishing her Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1977, she applied to join NASA and was among one of six women selected to be astronaut candidates.
At the age of 32, Ride became the first American woman in space while on board the Challenger space shuttle. She made another mission into orbit the following year, also on board Challenger.
Ride’s partner Tam O’Shaughnessy wrote in a blog post that while in space Ride “realized how important it is for all of us to take care of our fragile home in space, and became an environmentalist.”
After leaving NASA, Ride became the director of the California Space Institute and professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego. She saw how girls were being put off from pursuing careers in science and math and worked to inspire young people, especially girls and minority students, to keep up their interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects.
Google celebrates Sally Ride’s 64th Birthday with five animated Google Doodle on May 26, 2015. Sally Ride was an American physicist and astronaut and became the first American woman in space in 1978 at the age of 32.
~~Sally Ride – Mini Biography~~
~~Published on Aug 29, 2013~~
Watch a short biography of Sally Ride, who became the first American Woman in space as part of the Challenger shuttle mission on June 18, 1983.
It Is What It Is 