Zorro
Zorro's JournalAround the world, miles of rock are missing. Could 'Snowball Earth' be the culprit?
When the famed explorer John Wesley Powell bumped, splashed and thrashed his way down the Colorado River in 1869, he discovered one of the most striking geologic features on Earth. Not the Grand Canyon — although that too is a marvel — but a conspicuous boundary between the sunset-colored sediments of the upper walls and the dark, jagged rocks below them.
Powell had learned to read the layers of desert rocks like pages in a book, and he recognized that the boundary represented a missing chapter in Earth’s geological history. Later, researchers realized it was more like an entire lost volume, spanning roughly one-fifth of Earth’s existence, and that a similar gap existed in many places around the world.
“There must have been some sort of special event in Earth’s history that led to widespread erosion,” said Steve Marshak, a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies what has come to be known as the Great Unconformity.
New research suggests it was something special indeed. Scientists propose that several freak episodes of global glaciation scoured away miles of continental crust, obliterating a billion years of geologic history in the process.
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-snowball-earth-geology-20190103-story.html
Dickey Betts returns to performing following brain surgery
Dickey Betts ended an exciting year of ups and downs on a high note heard by rock fans around the world.
The founding Allman Brothers Band member celebrated his 75th birthday surrounded by loved ones at home on Little Sarasota Bay Dec. 12 and then about a week later appeared as the featured guest on the hit AXS TV show “The Big Interview With Dan Rather.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer concluded the month with a surprise performance, his first following successful brain surgery in September, during a New Year’s Eve show at the Grand Opera House in Macon, Georgia.
The Devon Allman Project performed with special guests Duane Betts (Dickey’s son) and Berry Oakley Jr. (another Sarasota County resident). The three Allman Brothers Band offspring were then joined by Dickey for a performance of his classic instrumental “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20190102/dickey-betts-returns-to-performing-following-brain-surgery
Navy's old-style 'bread and water' punishment to end with the new year
With the start of the new year, the U.S. Navy will no longer authorize commanders to punish low-ranking sailors with punishments of bread and water, ending a tradition that hearkens back to the days of wooden sailing vessels, broadside cannons and flogging.
Ship captains have broad authority to dole out punishment at sea. They can place sailors on restriction, give them extra duty, lower their pay grade and take half their paychecks for up to two months.
Until the change, a ship captain also had the option to confine sailors at the rank of E-3 or below to the ship’s brig for up to three days and feed them only bread and water.
Tim Druck, who served as a nuclear machinist mate on board the carrier Enterprise in the 1990s, said he was given three days of bread and water in 1998.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/sd-me-navy-bread-and-water-20190102-story.html
Winter is shrinking, Scripps study finds, posing new fire, water risks
Across the mountains of the West, the landscape of winter is changing.
Deep snowpacks that held fast through winter, then melted in a torrent each spring, are instead seeping away earlier in the year. The period of winter weather is shrinking, too, with autumn lasting longer and spring starting earlier.
The findings by Amato Evan, a professor of atmospheric and climate science with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, show changes to Western hydrology that could jeopardize water resources, flood control, fire management and winter recreation.
His results were published this month in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, and presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/sd-no-20181221-story.html
Jerry Falwell Jr. can't imagine Trump 'doing anything that's not good for the country'
Jerry Falwell Jr., 56, took over as president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., in 2007, following the death of his father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the school. He lives with his wife, Becki, in Bedford County, Va.
You said recently that conservatives and Christians should stop electing nice guys. Aren’t Christians supposed to be nice guys?
Of course, of course. But that’s where people get confused. I almost laugh out loud when I hear Democrats saying things like, “Jesus said suffer the little children to come unto me” and try to use that as the reason we should open up our borders.
It’s such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally — to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor — can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that’s the earthly kingdom, I’m about the heavenly kingdom and I’m here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. It’s a distortion of the teaching of Christ to say Jesus taught love and forgiveness and therefore the United States as a nation should be loving and forgiving, and just hand over everything we have to every other part of the world. That’s not what Jesus taught. You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way, to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/jerry-falwell-jr-cant-imagine-trump-doing-anything-thats-not-good-for-the-country/2018/12/21/6affc4c4-f19e-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html
He and his ilk are truly despicable assholes.
The Story Remains the Same
For the past 40 years, I have documented migration stories that speak of the dreams, nightmares, successes and failures for millions of people seeking a new life in the United States.
My life’s work has been a long-range documentary project that has made me an eyewitness to one of the greatest migrations in human history, a story that stretches from Central America to our border in San Diego and onward into America. It’s been the result of an exhausting amount of research, physical strength and an unwavering belief that I’m still recording history in the making
Some of my late 1970s work was done while I was a photojournalist on the staff of The San Diego Union (now the Union-Tribune). Between 1984 and my retirement in 2015, I authored hundreds of photo essays while on the staff of the Los Angeles Times. I also assigned myself thousands of hours of independent work as history was also unfolding not far from my North County home.
When the Central American caravan reached Tijuana last month, I felt compelled to continue telling the migration story. But the latest surge of a thousand people running towards the San Ysidro Port of Entry from Tijuana on Nov. 25 was unlike anything I had witnessed in the past. It also felt like a breaking news story that had already happened.
https://go.sandiegouniontribune.com/bartletti-border/p/1
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Gender: MaleHometown: America's Finest City
Current location: District 48
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 15,740
