Gettysburg

Diana Soliwon has an article in US News & World Report about Gettysburg, then and now:

The Battle of Gettysburg celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, and re-enactors from across the country have flocked to southern Pennsylvania in their quest to recount the history of this landmark battle.
The historic assault is believed to have been the turning point of the Civil War. Robert E. Lee led the three-day Confederate charge in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War; scholars estimate more than fifty thousands soldiers from both sides became casualties (photo, above). On the second day, deadly assaults occurred from Culp's Hill to Little Round Top and the Devil's Den.
Pickett's Charge, a massive, twelve-thousand-soldier push against the Union's center, became the Confederates' last offense. Union Brigadier General George Gordon Meade (photo, below) reportedly had nearly a hundred thousand troops, and is credited for holding the field.

Rico says he was one of those reenactors, and was happy that it didn't rain all four days, as forecast, for which we were thankful:

Two shy (therefore unidentified) ladies observing the Union artillery at the 150th of Gettysburg:

Artillery and limbers at Gettysburg:

Chris Palmer and Aubrey Whelan have an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nightfall is when the camps come to life. Campfires crackle as smoke wafts between tents, while soldiers scoop stew from cast-iron pans. Groups gather in circles as the sun descends, telling stories and singing as lanterns flicker nearby. For many spectators, reenactments are primarily seen as battle exercises, and thousands have been filling grandstands to watch the twice-daily battles commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. But it is at night, many reenactors say, when the atmosphere in camp shifts to another era, as the excitement and adrenaline of performing in battle are replaced by the timeless allure of a fireside story. "There's a certain beauty to the night," said Peter Vaughan, fifty, of Elverson, a Confederate reenactor with the Ninth Virginia, describing how darkness can heighten the feeling of Civil War living. "To me, at 2 am, seeing a bunch of candles flickering, I get it more than seeing a thousand Yankees in battle." Every day since the Fourth of July, the troops have marched back to their tents to prepare for the night after engaging in daytime battles. Camps are open to the public in the daytime, but close as it gets dark. The Union and Confederate camps are on opposite sides of the battlefield. On the Confederate side on Friday, a line of soldiers marched up the hill to camp, with drummers and flutists playing songs along the way. Once home, troops ripped off their sweat-soaked shirts, hanging them on tentpoles. They guzzled water or beer out of tin cups, while lower-ranking members filled kettles with water and placed them over the fire. The hot water is used to clean the rifles: it's poured down the gun's barrel, along with a little oil, and a brass ring is placed at the end of the gun's ramrod along with a felt patch; soldiers then shove the ramrod down the barrel. When it's pulled out, the patch is covered in black soot. Mark Trail, 57, of New Bern, North Carolina, said cleaning the rifles was a painstaking task because the inside of the barrels got so dirty. "I spent twenty years in the Marine Corps, and I'd rather clean an M-16," said Trail, watching his compatriot Roy Norman, 55, also of New Bern, clean his gun. The next order of business is generally dinner, and some reenactors eat surprisingly well. Craig Braswell, 58, of Princeton, North Carolina, was cooking 168 pieces of fried chicken in a cast-iron vat for the 11th North Carolina. Brandon McCrary, 38, of Norfolk, Virginia, said his unit, the 17th Virginia, would be wood-smoking lamb supplied by a member who is opening a butcher shop. "If we're going to be out here, we're going to be eating well," McCrary said while chopping wood for kindling. As the meals cooked, the Rebel reenactors used the last minutes of daylight to take care of everyday needs. Joanne Long, 52, of Bear, Delaware, sat with her head tilted back in a chair, soaking her hair in water and washing it. Her husband,  i, sat with his right foot in a pool of water nearby, trying to quell the swelling before he retired to his tent. With dusk quickly setting in and laughter from fellow Rebels echoing among the tents, he was finally able to just relax. "There's just something about being at the camp at night with the campfire that's very soothing," he said. In the Union encampment, the 15th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry tucked into a dinner of ham and beans after what members called a long and exciting battle. The beans had come from a can, which is about as inaccurate as this company gets. At past reenactments, beans have been cooked the very slow nineteenth-century way, in a hole in the ground. "We had salted pork at Chancellorsville. Now, that was authentic," said Mark Green, a journalist from Washington who portrays a corporal. Further into the camp, the Third Maryland Infantry was serving dinner for seventy. Women in hoop skirts lugged platters of fried chicken, while infantrymen checked pots of boiling water suspended over dozens of campfires dotting the hillside. Night in the camps, reenactor Michael Tilley said, is "good old-fashioned fun." "You laugh at things here that you wouldn't laugh at in the real world," he said, like the fact that his twin brother Ryan "deserted" from the day's battle and faced a "court-martial" the next morning. "I'm a criminal in the reenacting world," Ryan Tilley said, laughing. "It'll be a running joke now." Around campfires, reenactors slipped into and out of character, discussing the day's battles and sneaking sips of what they delicately called "adult beverages" from tin cups. Some had brewed their own, from "legal moonshine" to homemade blackberry brandy. In the cavalry encampment in the woods near the battlefield, lanterns shone through the trees while horses whickered in the darkness. "What happens in cav camp stays in cav camp," said cavalryman Zachary Huber, laughing. Around a fire in the infantry camp, the soldiers of the 88th New York said the line between past and present tends to blur at night. "A lot of us forgot we were playing today," said Jason Williams, a first sergeant from North Carolina. "You block out the grandstands and the people watching." A woman with a fife interrupted him. "It is time," she intoned and, soon after, about twenty drummers and fife players had formed a circle at the edge of the camp. Reenactors paused to hum along with The Battle Hymn of the Republic as the sun sank below the tree line. "They call all-quiet at 10 pm just to shut the musicians up," Williams said, laughing. He has been reenacting for ten years and regularly fights alongside sister Amanda, who also portrays an infantryman. Both readily acknowledge that conversations around the campfire can get a bit nerdy. "We have debates about why the war started," he said, but the experiences they share at night form deep bonds that last beyond a weekend. "By the end of the time that you're here, you're brothers," said Joe Owens, a Confederate reenactor. "For me, you become part of their family and they become part of yours."

(Photo at left) Enlisted tent recreation in the new Gettysburg museum; small and crowded.

(Photo at right) Officers' tent recreation in the new Gettysburg museum; uncrowded, because rank has its privileges.

Photos from the official reenactment website:

Spectators and signalmen on Saturday

Union infantry camp

Artillery park

Rico (with his prized Spencer) 'guarding' the artillery on Saturday

Artillery camp

The artillery colonel with his officers

Limbers on Saturday

Artillery

 Buford's dismounted cavalry

 Pickett's Charge

 The Angle

Artillery

Artillery unit headed out on Saturday, with Rico and Stefan along as 'guards'

 Spectators for the Saturday battle

Union artillery camp

 Union artillery colonel and officers

 Union artillery

Union artillery firing on Saturday

Union cavalry headed out on Saturday

 The shady tent near the food courts

 Union artillery on Saturday

 Union artillery on Saturday (note the lack of rain)

 Union artillery colonel and flagbearer

 Union artillery firing

 Union artillery firing

 The press box and spectators on Saturday

 The Union artillery camp

A woman preparing her booth for visitors

 A woman walking near the Union artillery camp

 Stefan with the Union artillery on Saturday

Zimmerman cleared, amazingly

Rico says he's disappointed, but not surprised, by the verdict, as the article by Lizette Alvarez and Cara Buckley in The New York Times explains:

George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer (photo) who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge.
After three weeks of testimony, the six-woman jury rejected the prosecution’s contention that Zimmerman had deliberately pursued Martin because he assumed the hoodie-clad teenager was a criminal and instigated the fight that led to his death.
Zimmerman said he shot Martin on 26 February 2012, in self-defense, after the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him, and slammed his head repeatedly against the sidewalk. In finding him not guilty of murder or manslaughter, the jury agreed that Zimmerman could have been justified in shooting Martin because he feared great bodily harm or death.
The jury, which had been sequestered since 24 June, deliberated nearly seventeen hours over two days. The six female jurors entered the quiet, tense courtroom, several looking exhausted, their faces drawn and grim. After the verdict was read, each assented, one by one, quietly, their agreement with the verdict.
The case began in the small city of Sanford, Florida as a routine homicide, but soon evolved into a civil rights cause examining racial profiling and its consequences— an issue barred from the courtroom— and setting off a broad discussion of race relations in America. Martin, with his gray hooded sweatshirt and his Skittles— the candy he was carrying— became its catalyst.
Even President Obama weighed in a month after the shooting, expressing sympathy for Martin's family and urging a thorough investigation. “If I had a son,” Obama said, “he’d look like Trayvon.”
When the verdict was read, Zimmerman, 29, smiled slightly. His wife, Shellie, and several of his friends wept, and his parents kissed and embraced.
Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, who lost their son a few weeks after his seventeenth birthday, were not in the courtroom. In a statement released early Sunday, their attorney, Benjamin Crump, said the family was heartbroken, and that they thanked people around the world for their support. “Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till,” he said, “as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all.”
After the verdict, Judge Debra S. Nelson of Seminole County Court, told Zimmerman, who has been in hiding and wears a bulletproof vest outside, that his bond was released and his GPS monitor would be cut off. “You have no further business with the court,” she said.
Outside the courthouse, perhaps a hundred protesters who had been gathering through the night, their numbers building as the hours passed, began pumping their fists in the air, waving placards and chanting No justice, no peace! Sheriff’s deputies lined up inside the courthouse, watching the crowd, who were chanting peacefully, but intently.
By 11:20, more than an hour after the verdict had been read, the crowd outside the courtroom had begun to dwindle; fists were no longer aloft, placards had come down.
Among the last of the protesters to leave the courthouse lawn was Mattie Aikens, 33, of Sanford. She had been standing outside since noon, holding a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona watermelon drink, which Martin was carrying the night he was shot. More than an hour after the verdict, she was still shocked. “He should have gone to prison,” she said. “He should have just got guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.”
Mark O’Mara, one of Zimmerman’s lawyers, said, “George Zimmerman was never guilty of anything except firing the gun in self-defense.”
In a news conference following the verdict, Angela B. Corey, the state attorney who brought the charges, rebuffed the suggestion that her office overcharged Zimmerman.
“We charged what we had based on the facts of the case,” she said. “We truly believe the mind-set of George Zimmerman and the reason he was doing what he did fit the bill for second-degree murder.”
Calling it a “very trying time,” Crump said he had urged Martin’s parents to stay out of the courtroom for the verdict. They were home and planning to attend church on Sunday.
Crump asked the family’s supporters keep the peace and read a Twitter post by Dr. Bernice King, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter: “Whatever the Zimmerman verdict is,” Crump read, “in the words of my father, we must conduct ourselves on the higher plane of dignity and discipline.”
Sanford’s new police chief, Cecil E. Smith, was in the courtroom for the verdict, and said afterward that while many calls were coming in from worried residents, the downtown was open and neighborhoods were calm.
Still, there was anger over the verdict. “We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP. “We stand with Trayvon’s family, and we are called to act. We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state, and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”
O’Mara disputed the notion that Zimmerman engaged in racial profiling. “His history was not as a racist,” he said. He added that, if Zimmerman was black, he likely would never have been charged. “This became a focus for a civil rights event, which is a wonderful event to have,” he said, “but they decided George Zimmerman was to blame and to use as a civil rights violation.”
While defense lawyers were elated with the verdict, they also expressed anger that Zimmerman spent sixteen months filled with fear and trauma when all he was doing was defending himself. “The prosecution of George Zimmerman was a disgrace,” said Don West, one of Zimmerman’s lawyers. “I am thrilled that this jury kept this tragedy from become a travesty.”
The shooting brought attention to Florida’s expansive self-defense laws. The laws allow someone with a reasonable fear of great bodily harm or death to use lethal force, even if retreating from danger is an option. In court, the gunman is given the benefit of the doubt.
The public outcry began after the police initially decided not to arrest Zimmerman, who is half-Peruvian, as they investigated the shooting. Martin, seventeen, had no criminal record and was on a snack run, returning to the house where he was staying as a guest.
Six weeks later, Zimmerman was arrested, but only after civil rights leaders championed the case and demonstrators, many wearing hoodies, marched in Sanford, Miami, and elsewhere to demand action. Justice for Trayvon!, they shouted.
The pressure prompted Governor Rick Scott of Florida to remove local prosecutors from the case and appoint Corey, from Jacksonville. She ultimately charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. The tumult also led to the firing of the Sanford police chief.
Through it all, Martin’s parents said they sought one thing: that Zimmerman have his day in court.
From the start of the trial, prosecutors faced a difficult task in proving second-degree murder. That charge required Zimmerman to have evinced a “depraved mind”, brimming with ill will, hatred, spite, or evil intent, when he shot Martin.
Manslaughter, which under Florida law is typically added as a lesser charge if either side requests it, has a lower bar. Jurors needed to decide only that Zimmerman put himself in a situation that culminated in Martin’s death.
But, because of Florida’s laws, prosecutors had to persuade jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman did not act in self-defense. A shortage of evidence in the case made that a high hurdle, legal experts said.
Even after three weeks of testimony, the fight between Martin and Zimmerman on that rainy night was a muddle, fodder for reasonable doubt. It remained unclear who had started it, who screamed for help, who threw the first punch and at what point Zimmerman drew his gun. There were no witnesses to the shooting.
The state presented a case that was strong on guesswork and emotion but weak on evidence and proof, O’Mara said. “Don’t connect those dots unless they are connected for you, beyond a reasonable doubt, by the state,” he urged the jury.
In the end, prosecutors were left with Zimmerman’s version of events.
The defense also had one piece of irrefutable evidence, photographs of Zimmerman’s injuries: a bloody nose along with lumps and two cuts on his head. It indicated that there had been a fight and that Zimmerman had been harmed, and the defense showed them to the jury at every opportunity.
Prosecutors built their case around Zimmerman’s persona— a “wannabe cop”— his wrong assumptions, and his words.
Zimmerman, they said, was so concerned about burglaries in his townhouse complex that, when he spotted Martin, an unfamiliar face in the rain, he immediately “profiled” him as a criminal. He picked up his phone and reported him to the police.
Then he made the first in a string of bad choices, they said. He got out of the car with a gun on his waist; he disregarded a police dispatcher’s advice not to follow Martin and he chased the teenager, engaged in a fight, and shot him in the heart. To stave off an arrest, he lied to the police, prosecutors said, embellishing his story to try to flesh out his self-defense claim.
“Punks,” Zimmerman said to the police dispatcher after he spotted Martin, adding a profanity. “They always get away,” he said at another point in the conversation, a reference to would-be burglars.
On these words, prosecutors hung their case of ill will, hatred and spite toward Martin. “This defendant was sick and tired of it,” Bernie de la Rionda, the chief prosecutor, said in his closing statement. “He was going to be what he wanted to be: a police officer.”
But no one saw the shooting; witnesses saw and heard only parts of the struggle, and provided conflicting accounts. And there was not a “shred of evidence” that Zimmerman was not returning to his car when Martin “pounced”, defense lawyers said.
The prosecution’s witnesses did not always help their case. Rachel Jeantel, the nineteen-year-old who was talking with Martin on his cellphone shortly before he was shot, proved problematic. Her testimony was critical for the prosecution because she said that Martin was being followed by Zimmerman— a “creepy-ass cracker,” he called him— and that he was scared.
But Jeantel might have damaged her credibility by acknowledging she had lied about her age and why she did not attend Martin’s wake. She also testified that she softened her initial account of her chat with Martin for fear of upsetting Fulton, who sat next to her, weeping, during Jeantel’s first interview with prosecutors.
Prosecutors also were not helped by the police and crime scene technicians, who made some mistakes in the case. Martin’s sweatshirt, for example, was improperly bagged, which might have degraded DNA evidence.
Typically, police testimony boosts the state’s case. Here, the chief police investigator, Chris Serino, told jurors that he believed Zimmerman, despite contradictions in his statements. Still, prosecutors had emotion on their side— the heart-wrenching narrative of a teenager “minding his own business” who was gunned down as he walked home with a pocketful of Skittles and a fruit drink. “That child had every right to do what he was doing, walking home,” said John Guy, a prosecutor in the case. “That child had every right to be afraid of a strange man following him, first in his car and then on foot. And did that child not have the right to defend himself from that strange man?”
Through it all, though, the defense chipped away at the prosecution’s case. The resident with the best vantage point of the fight described a “ground and pound” fight, with a person in red or a light color on the bottom. Zimmerman wore a reddish jacket. And a prominent forensic pathologist who is an expert in gunshot wounds testified that the trajectory of the bullet was consistent with Martin leaning over Zimmerman when the gun was fired.
“Let him go back,” O’Mara said to the jury, referring to Zimmerman, “and get back to his life.” On Saturday, the jury did just that.

Rico says he is surprised that the six-woman jury (and how the hell did that happen?) acquitted; they're normally tougher on 'self-defense' claims... (And that photo? Reminiscent of the old photos of Nixon, asking: 'Why is this man smiling?')

Space rocks

According to the BBC, Russian scientists are starting to examine bits of the meteor that landed there:

Scientists have released microscopic images of fragments of the meteorite that hit central Russia in February of 2013. A team from the Ural Federal University was able to analyze some of the dozens of samples as soon as they were found. But the technique they used allowed them to assess the rock's chemical make-up at the microscopic level even as they snapped pictures of the fragments. This will provide extra information on the space rock's formation and journey.
The fragments represent just a small portion of the remains of the seventeen meters in diameter body that struck the Earth's atmosphere in a spectacular trail of light over the city of Chelyabinsk.
The team, led by Ural Federal University's Viktor Grokhovsky, determined right away that the overall chemistry of the meteorite was a familiar chondrite. "The fragments contain a standard number of minerals, including olivine, pyroxene, troilite, and kamacite. These minerals that can be discovered only in outer space confirm the fragments' extraterrestrial nature," he told the Voice of Russia at the time. But far more information was in the offing.
The way differing minerals are laid out gives clues as to their origin and their journey.
The team was using a scanning electron microscope, which fires a beam of electrons focused onto a tiny part of a sample, scanning around to see how the electrons are deflected and thereby building up a detailed picture of the sample's nanometre-scale bumps and valleys. But that process causes the emission of a small amount of X-ray radiation, with the exact energy of the X-rays corresponding to the chemical element present in the focus of the electron beam.
This is where a silicon drift detector comes in: harvesting these X-rays and determining their energy. The result is a series of what are called X-ray maps: pictures of the same sample showing the presence and quantity of different elements. It is this understanding of the minerals at a microscopic level that goes far beyond simply telling us what the meteorite is made of, said Simon Burgess of Oxford Instruments, which made the X-max silicon drift detector used by the team. "For the researchers who are looking at this meteorite, it's going to be telling them information about which (mineral) phase is associated with which," he told BBC News. "When they get into more detail beyond what the main chemistry of the meteorite is, they may be looking at processes in terms of how it formed, the temperature it formed at, what its history has been since its formation, possibly things about what happened to it during its impact with the Earth. A lot of that you cannot tell just by crushing it up and getting a 'bulk analysis'; you have to look at the chemistry of the individual parts and associations between the different minerals in the meteorite."

Rico says he sometimes wishes he'd followed in his father's footsteps and become a scientist; it's fascinating...

'A Girl & a Gun' chapter opens in Pennsylvania

Jessica Parks has an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about an unlikely phenomenon:

More than a dozen ladies met in Montgomery County to bond over cervezas, guacamole, and guns.
"Hi, I'm Adrienne, and I first picked up a gun in January of 2013," said Adrienne Nicotera, 34, introducing herself as the local organizer of A Girl and a Gun Women's Shooting League. "We want to show it's not just a men's sport. And we're going to have a lot of fun."
Nicotera, a nurse and new mother from Abington, considers herself a novice, but loves shooting so much that she launched Pennsylvania's first chapter of A Girl and a Gun.
The club began in Texas just two years ago, and now has 48 chapters in 19 states. It is part of a growing movement of women into what has long been a male-dominated area.
Over the last decade, the number of women target shooters has surged nearly fifty percent and women hunters nearly forty percent, according to the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers.
Nicotera said that she, like many women, had been afraid of guns and did not want to touch one even after taking a three-hour introductory class. After the first shot, she said, "it felt amazing. I haven't put a gun down since."
Though they'd met only minutes earlier, the women were already sharing inside jokes and knowing nods. "For Christmas, my husband bought me eyes and ears," Nicotera said, using gun-range lingo for protective glasses and earplugs. "It's like getting a vacuum cleaner, but I was excited."
Abby Lutz, 25, said her boyfriend also does his gift-shopping at the gun store. "He has never bought me a piece of jewelry for my birthday. Guns are nice, but I'm like: 'It's enough.' "
Most of the women had initially started shooting at the behest of their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, or fathers. And then, like Nicotera, they "fell in love".
Lori Wicen, who owns Wicen's Shooting Range in Furlong with her husband, said that although shooting can be a great couples activity, women and men don't always learn or teach the same way. "Did you ever have a man try to teach you anything? We think so differently than they do," she said, observing that some women like to delve deeper into technical details before they begin shooting.
And there can be logistical differences: smaller hand grips, lower fences and targets, shorter rifles. Manufacturers in recent years have been trying to capitalize on these qualities, marketing pink grips, vests, and gloves, small-frame safety glasses, and stylish handbags with gun pockets. But the main reason for the club isn't to gush over gun fashion, they said. It's to socialize and practice in a more comfortable environment.
"The men are getting more accepting of women on the ranges," said Nicotera.
But they still tend to treat the ranges "like their own comfort zone, like a gentlemen's club," said Cyndi Boccuti of Ardsley. "Or like there are unspoken rules that you don't know about."
"When women learn from their husband or significant other, there's that level of wanting to impress them, to do well. It's a lot of pressure," said Christy Snow of Wilmington, who teaches at Wicen's range.
Beth Heebner of North Wales said that pressure was exactly the reason she jumped at the chance to join A Girl and a Gun. "When I go with my husband and my son, it's not even fun anymore. They're always correcting you," said Heebner, whose ex-Marine son now teaches at a gun range in Chalfont.
The group accepts women of all ages and skill levels, Nicotera said. In addition to monthly events like Girl's Night Out, she plans to organize classes and eventually get into competitions.

Rico says the comments at the bottom are as to be expected, but this is not gonna be a group that his ladyfriend joins, alas... (But 'started in Texas' is no surprise.)

Shooting from the app

The NRA has a rant about a new Google app:

This week's outrage comes to us from a rather unlikely source: the Google Play app store.  The new app is called the Gun Geo Marker, and encourages users to "geolocate dangerous guns and owners" in their communities.
According to Google Play: "Geolocation means marking dangerous sites on the map so that you and others can be aware of the risks in your neighborhood." Think about that for a minute.  The purpose of the app (other than sensationalism and profit) is to encourage people to anonymously "flag" locations in their community they subjectively deem "dangerous", and to make that information as public as possible. The probability for abuse and the certainty of inaccurate "reporting" cannot be overstated. What's to keep people from marking any location for any reason at all? Nothing. The practice is not only a serious invasion of privacy, but would also be just as dangerous and irresponsible as publishing the names of concealed-carry permit holders in local papers.
The app could enable thieves to target and steal firearms from law-abiding gun owners, while conversely advertising that other residences are "gun free" and therefore easy targets for criminals.
In a recent Fox News article, John Lott, firearms policy expert and author of the book More Guns, Less Crime, said: "This makes those who don't have guns an easier target for criminals. It's a safety issue. I've debated a lot of gun control advocates over the years, and I've never met someone who has been willing to put up a sign in front of their house indicating that their home is a gun-free zone."
Of course, there is an obvious anti-gun, anti-NRA element to all of this. The Gun Geomarker site says: "You should not be concerned merely because your neighbors are a member of any national gun advocacy organization. The actual threat, just to cite the best known organization, that the National Rifle Association and its kin present to you and your children is political. This can be seen clearly in their consistent opposition to gun safety laws that would, for example, require parents to properly secure their guns, allow prosecutors to bring charges against people who allow kids to play with loaded guns, or when they help pass laws prohibiting doctors from asking children about guns in the home in an epidemiological attempt to help prevent children from shooting other children."
The Fox News article notes that Brett Stalbaum, the developer of Gun Geo Marker and a lecturer with the Visual Arts department of the University of California at San Diego, said: "The gun rights community has been busy making personal threats (we remain unconcerned), as well as spamming the Gun Geo Marker database with false markers.  Though these fake markers are not useful for identifying dangerous guns and owners, they are certainly representative of the highly paranoid reaction we have come to expect from any attempt to improve gun safety in the United States. This kind of reaction— automatically lining up on the wrong side of reasonable measures to improve the safe use and ownership of guns— aids and abets the crisis of child shooting deaths."
That should tell you all you need to know about the app developer's political agenda.
Starting down this type of path not only leads to inaccurate, invasive, and dangerous "flagging", but is has the potential to take us from "land of the free" to "spy on your neighbor, comrade" very quickly.

Rico says it's the usual anti-gub bullshit, and he was going to suggest false flagging as a hobby, but you should definitely flag any anti-gub people you know...

Still paying for the Civil War

Some things are a surprise, as Allie Bidwell's article in US News & World Report explains:

The last surviving soldier from the Civil War died more than 55 years ago, but the government is still paying out a veteran's pension benefits.
As of January, the child of one Civil War veteran is still receiving benefits from her father, according to records from the Department of Veteran's Affairs. Last year, two children of veterans were still on the benefits roll for Civil War pensions, but the numbers changed when one of the children passed away.
"The Department of Veterans' Affairs provided benefits to two children of Civil War veterans for the past several years," says Randy Noller, a spokesman for the VA. "One, unfortunately, passed away last summer at the age of 93."
The other child of a Civil War veteran continues to receive benefits and lives in the southern United States, Noller said.
For comparison, the government is still paying out pensions to 58 children of Spanish-American War veterans, 2,192 children of World War One veterans, and 10,733 children of World War Two veterans.
Although Noller said he could not disclose personal information about the recipient due to privacy regulations, both The Associated Press and The Daily Mail reported that the remaining individual receives about $876 every year.
The individual who recently died was a man, born around the year 1920, who lived in Tennessee, according to The Daily Mail. The remaining individual who is still receiving benefits is a woman who was born around 1930 and currently lives in a nursing home in North Carolina, The Daily Mail reported.
Veterans' children under the age of eighteen are eligible to receive pension benefits, and those payments can be extended if the person meets certain disability requirements.
According to VA benefits guidelines, a child may be eligible if he or she "became permanently helpless" before turning eighteen. Noller said that the children of the Civil War veterans were mentally handicapped and deemed incapable of caring for themselves.
The last Union veteran, Albert Woolson, died in 1956 at 109, and the last Confederate veteran, John Salling, died in 1958 at 112.

Rico says he wonders in what century we'll still be paying off our current GI benefits...

Temporarily inexplicable

Michael D. Lemonick has a Time article about mysterious stuff from space:

It’s a recurring theme in astronomy: observers see a blast of energy out in the cosmos, scratch their heads in confusion for a while, and finally uncover the existence of something entirely surprising and new. It happened with quasars (now known to be gigantic burps from black holes swallowing hot gas), pulsars (fast-spinning neutron stars sending out blips of radio noise hundreds of times every second), and even the Big Bang itself, first seen as a stream of microwaves slamming into Earth from all directions, nearly fourteen billion years after the event itself.
Now it may be happening again. Back in 2007, astronomers detected a burst of radio noise, lasting maybe a second or so, the cause of which was totally unclear. There was reason to suspect it came from beyond the Milky Way, and must be extremely powerful to be visible at all. But it never repeated, and neither did a second, similar blast seen in 2011, making it very tough to puzzle out what was going on. Maybe both events were just some sort of rare fluke.
But a new paper in Science makes that seem very unlikely. Using the giant Parkes radio telescope in Australia, astronomers have recorded four more of these mysterious bursts, and when the scientists extrapolated across the entire sky, they concluded that perhaps ten thousand of these blasts are popping off every day, all over the heavens. “It’s still a mystery what they are,” says lead author Dan Thornton, of the University of Manchester, in the UK. “But at least it’s not a mystery that they exist.” In fact, Thornton and his co-authors claim that the observations reveal what he calls a “new cosmological population” of energy blasts, whose true nature is unknown.
At the time of the first observations, back in 2007, there was some talk that the original burst might have come from inside the Milky Way. There was a way to test that proposition: radio outbursts generally come in a range of frequencies; channels, essentially, like those on a radio dial. As they speed through the empty spaces in our galaxy, the waves run into loose electrons that linger between the stars. The electrons slow the radio waves down a bit, with the lowest-frequency waves slowing the most. A radio burst that was emitted in a fraction of a second might be received over a longer period, depending on how far the burst had been traveling, and through what part of the Milky Way.
The first and second bursts were indeed spread out, or dispersed, this way, and the first, especially, seemed to be too dispersed to have originated in our own galaxy. But the second was marginal, leaving astronomers stuck. The four new blasts, however, were unmistakable. “The dispersion is so high,” says Thornton, “that from what we know, they could not have come from the Milky Way.”
Instead, he says, he and his co-authors estimate that whatever is sending out these radio bursts is located between five and ten billion light-years away, a substantial fraction of the way out to the edge of the visible universe.
So that’s the “where” of the mystery, but nobody has a good idea yet about the “what”. Some of the possibilities of the blasts cause include: evaporating black holes (something predicted by Stephen Hawking), or giant black holes eating neutron stars. Or, writes Cornell astronomer James Cordes, tantalizingly, in a commentary also appearing in Science, “they could represent an entirely new class of source”.
The only way to figure it out is to follow up on the radio bursts with observations by visible-light, X-ray, and other telescopes to try and get a glimpse of whatever’s going on from another perspective. That’s how astronomers figured out the inner workings of gamma-ray bursts, which turned out to be a special kind of exploding star and, just as with gamma-ray bursts, it will be important to do those follow-ups quickly. “We discovered these events about a year after they happened,” says Thornton, by which time any lingering visible or X-ray glow from the triggering event would long since have faded. “But now we’re working on real-time alerts.”
If those can be organized— and given the fact that one of these blasts probably goes off about once every second around the clock— it might not be long before pulsars, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, and other blasts of cosmic energy welcome a new cousin to the family.

Rico says space is, as ever, even more amazing than we can imagine...

WW2 in color

Unpublished color photos from the Normandy invasion, 6 June 1944:

On the anniversary of D-Day, LIFE.com presented a series of previously unpublished color photographs made in northwest France by Life photographer Frank Scherschel. The impulse behind posting the gallery, meanwhile, is really no more complicated than this: to commemorate those Allied troops who fought and died; to honor those who fought and lived; and to mark the occasion by also remembering what happened to countless towns— and townspeople— in northwest France and around the globe when the Second World War unleashed hell in the very midst of their lives. Frank Scherschel (1907-1981) was an award-winning staff photographer for Life well into the 1950s. His younger brother Joe was a Life photographer, as well.
In addition to the Normandy invasion, Frank Scherschel photographed the war in the Pacific, the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth, the 1956 Democratic National Convention, collective farming in Czechoslovakia, Sir Winston Churchill (many times), art collector Peggy Guggenheim, road racing at Le Mans, baseball, football, boxing, a beard-growing contest in Michigan, and countless other people and events, both epic and forgotten.
Information on the specific locations or people who appear in the photographs in this gallery is not always available; Scherschel and his colleagues simply did not have the means to provide that sort of data for every single one of the countless photographs they made throughout the war.

Armor in Avranches

 British troops with Nazi flag.

 French house, German sign

 Clearing debris in St. Lo

 DUKW on the beach at Normandy

 GI resting near the Rapido River in Italy*

 GIs in a French town

 GIs in northwestern France

 GIs marching toward Rome*

 Armor in a French town

  A jeep in a French town

 LSTs on the beach at Normandy

 Medics on the road toward Rome*

 Monte Cassino*

 Northern France

 On the road to Rome*

 GIs with destroyed German tank

 Ruins in Northern France

  GIs with destroyed German tank near St. Gilles

 Armor headed toward Rome*

 Tank headed for Rome*

 GIs in a French town

 Ships on the beach at Normandy

 Jeeps in Mariguy

GI in northwestern France

Rico says that many of the Italian campaign photos (those marked with an asterisk) were taken by Carl Mydans, a Time/Life photographer that Rico knew (along with his son, Seth, who now works for Time, and his daughter, Misty) after Rico's parents bought the Mydans' house (now torn down by a Google millionaire) in Palo Alto, California.

None? Jeez (no, not him)

Courtney Subramanian has a Time article about missing Coke in California:

Though not something typically envisioned as part of a Passover feast, West Coast dwellers who were hoping to enjoy a frosty Coca-Cola with their seder are out of luck. For the second year in a row, the soft-drink giant will not offer a kosher version of its soda in California.
Last year Coca-Cola modified its manufacturing process in California to comply with a state law that would require the soda to bear a cancer warning label, the Associated Press reports, and the company was unable to find a suitable replacement for a kosher version. In 2011, California listed 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MEI, as a carcinogen, and forced soda manufacturers like Coca-Cola to reduce levels of the chemical that is found in the caramel coloring used to give Coke its signature brown hue.
Coca-Cola is normally sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, while the kosher version uses sugar, as Jews typically avoid corn products during the holiday. The company has since directed its manufacturers to reduce 4-MEI levels in the caramel processing nationwide but has yet to determine a kosher formula in accordance with California’s law. Coca-Cola is still using its previous caramel process in other states to provide kosher soda for Passover. But that doesn’t mean that Coca-Cola from the other 49 states is carcinogenic. Coca-Cola issued a statement explaining that the caramel coloring conforms with worldwide laws. “In other states, we are able to provide kosher for Passover products using our traditional caramel, which is safe and complies with all Federal regulations, as well as regulations throughout the world.”
According to the AP, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola said the company has made progress on developing a kosher product without high levels of 4-MEI, but that the shelf-life sustainability is still under review. The company aims to roll out a product for next year’s Passover holiday. We’ll stick with the Manischewitz for this year.

Rico says there are some Jewish kids in Los Angeles who're gonna be pissed, come Passover. (But they can solve the problem by buying the made-in-Mexico product, which still uses sugar and not, gag, corn syrup, as Jehovah intended...)

Cool, but not here

Samantha Grossman has a Time article about the latest from Coca-Cola:

Good news for those of you who enjoy a nice cold Coke: the company has rolled out a new bottle made entirely from frozen water. Bad news for those of you who don’t live in Colombia: it’s only available in Colombia.

This icy new drinking vessel is shaped like the traditional glass Coke bottle and has the company’s name etched into the ice, according to Coca Cola’s website. Alas, right now you can only find it in Colombia, and there’s no word yet if Coke will introduce it in any other countries. But apparently it’s pretty popular so far; according to the site, beachside vendors have sold an average of 265 bottles per hour.

If you’re at least a marginally curious person, then perhaps you’re wondering how this works. Basically, these bottles are made of silicone molds filled with micro-filtered water, frozen to -13° F. Once you’ve drunk all the Coke, the bottle melts away. Oh, and each bottles come equipped with a rubber red band to make it easier to hold the vessel. The band then  doubles as a bracelet.

Coke is touting the environmentally friendly nature of these melt-away bottles but, as ABC News points out, they require so much extra refrigeration that it basically cancels out the eco-friendly aspect.

Rico says and you'll never take one back for the deposit, either. (Remember that?)

Scam for the day

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Not tea...

Rico says it's yet another classic:

Sherlock season 3, almost

Rico says finally...

Sherlock, the modern-day rendition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic series, is being filmed for its third season right now. Actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have been spotted out on the streets and episode titles released. When can fans expect to watch the first episode, The Empty Hearse? Find out in this article, or watch the trailer: