Kudos to Charlotte Pence

I have a difficult time coming up with ways to compliment anything even remotely related to the current U.S. administration, but since I'm striving to be a more positive person, I try.

Then along comes Charlotte Pence, daughter of Vice President Mike Pence. Granted, she doesn't actually have anything to do with the administration, but I have to take what I can get. She announced that she had bought a copy of John Oliver's book "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo." The book, whose star bunny is gay, parodies Charlotte's book, "Marlon Bundo's Day in the Life of the Vice President."

She noted that profits from both books were benefiting worthy causes and they are. Charlotte's raises money for A21, a nonprofit combating human trafficking, and Tracey's Kids, an art therapy program for pediatric cancer patients, whereas John's book is aiding Trevor's Project, a suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth and AIDS United.

Kudos to Charlotte Pence.

Worst week ever?

Trump has been president for about 58 weeks and there are several articles claiming that it was his worst week ever. I'm pretty sure I've read the exact same headlines every week.

How many worst weeks ever can one idiot have before he loses his job?

The first stars, and dark matter

Scientist recently announced that they've discovered "fingerprints" of the earliest stars. These aren't your garden variety neutron, red giants, or yellow dwarfs (shout-out to my favorite ball of hydrogen and helium eight light minutes away). These were the pioneers of "today's" stars, big, blue, fast-living and fast-dying.

This is amazing. These stars were around only about 180 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. When they collapsed and exploded, the universe welcomed its first heavy matter (everything other than hydrogen, helium and a smattering of lithium). These stars were really the first baby steps of what makes us possible. Most people aren't aware that somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent of our bodies is made from elements created in an exploding star.

Now these puppies apparently acted a little weird and one scientist has proposed that it's because their hydrogen interacted with dark matter. This is getting beyond me, but it seems until now dark matter was believed to only interact with normal matter through gravity. I'm not touching this one.

Isn't science great?
Blog Navigation