THIS was Lake Michigan in Chicago IL during the recent Polar Vortex cold snap. It was -45 degrees (-48 Fahrenheit) still air, NOT wind chill. I’d be wearing my snuggies, to be sure. The guys would need a fur jockstrap and a full set of longjohns on top of that! I’ve been in Chicago in the winter, it’s brutal as all hell, but this year it was extra special, as the above photo indicates.
BRRR!!
BMD
Earlier, scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey updated the coordinates of the Magnetic North Pole, saying it was gradually leaving the Canadian Arctic behind and moving toward Russian Siberia at a rate of over 55 kilometres per year, up from less than 15 kilometres in the year 2000.
More than anything, the shift of the Magnetic North Pole affects navigation systems containing magnetic compasses. While modern smartphones, vehicles, ships, and airliners are connected to satellite-based navigation systems, like GPS and GLONASS, their receivers don’t provide a sense of direction, rather, only a person or vehicle’s fixed location. As a result, navigation systems’ use magnetic compasses, or magnetometers, to provide an accurate estimate of the direction a phone, vehicle, ship, or plane is pointing in using what’s known as declination… the difference between true north and the direction of the compass. If the mathematically expected location of the Magnetic North Pole is wrong, navigation equipment will be off kilter.
For this reason, the recently announced update to the World Magnetic Model, the mathematical foundation for navigation which allows magnetic north to be precisely fixed, is crucial, and couldn’t have come a moment too soon. Accounting for the shift in the pole’s location is particularly important in areas above the 55th Parallel, which covers northern Canada, Scandinavia, and much of Russia. For most civilian purposes in Western Europe and North America, British Geological Survey geophysicist Ciaran Beggan told National Geographic:
The changes would be relatively minor. The average user isn’t going to be overly affected by this unless they happen to be trekking around the high Arctic.
However, militaries, commercial airlines, search and rescue ships and aircraft, NASA, and other agencies and groups relying on precision navigation in the high north should find the update helpful.
Over time, especially, in a scenario where Earth reverses polarity and the magnetic poles swap places, the moving of the Magnetic North Pole will affect animals, birds, and sea life that use the polls’ magnetic fields for navigation. While scientists expect them to recover, the shift may result in scenarios of birds falling out of the sky en masse, and fish dying off in large numbers. While most scientists believe this shift won’t lead to any catastrophic mass extinctions, the scenes may be frightening, looking something like the pictures of thousands of dead birds and fish in Arkansas in 2011, which some scientists thought may have been related to animals’ sensitivity to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
A more serious possible consequence of the “tug of war” between magnetic field patches in northern Canada and Siberia, which some scientists say is causing the accelerated movement of the Magnetic North Pole, is its potential to weaken the magnetic shield sparing earth from deadly solar and cosmic radiation. This could lead to increased rates of cancer in humans, or harm man-made infrastructure projects, such as power grids. However, scientists say that even in the scenario of a flip of the North and South Poles, which they don’t expect to happen anytime soon, the shift would take place slowly, taking as much as a thousand years to complete. Hopefully, this would help mitigate its effects.
5 February 2019
Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/world/201902051072151565-magnetic-north-pole-shift-implications/
On Wednesday, as broadcast by NASA, American cosmonaut Nick Hague told NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine that the teamwork of the rescue crew that helped him and Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Ovchinin to get out of the rescue capsule after their recent emergency return to Earth after a launch vehicle failure impressed him:
They had three pararescue jumpers. As soon as they had found where we were at, they jumped in to get to us as quickly as they could. In a handful of minutes, somebody was tapping on the window next to me, giving me the OK symbol, I answered back with a big smile, and then, they had the hatch open. I was amazed at the quick response of the rescue crew. You know, they practice this all the time, but they haven’t had to put it to use in 35 years. To respond the way they did is a true testament to how seriously they take their responsibilities and their job.
He praised the professionalism of the Russian team engaged in spaceflight preparations and conduct:
I wasn’t surprised by their support and how well they worked. It’s on display every day over there, and it’s a privilege to be part of it. I feel great and my physical condition is awesome.
On Wednesday morning, Hague ran a mile (1.6 kilometres) with his wife. Earlier, Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos said that Ovchinin and Hague would fly to the ISS in spring 2019, with an exact date specified later.
On 11 October, the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle failed to launch the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft, with Hague and Ovchinin on board, to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Just minutes after liftoff, the crew aborted the mission due to a booster malfunction. The two-man crew escaped in a rescue capsule and returned unharmed. Immediately afterwards, Russia launched an investigation of the incident.
18 October 2018
Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/military/201810181068988600-russia-us-soyuz-astronaut/
Editor:
Note well that the loudmouth Anglos have to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft to the ISS. The USA lacks the capability to do so because it wasted all its money on wars in foreign parts and sweetheart giveaways to the Affluent Effluent. They don’t put sanctions on this, for if they did, the big bad Anglos couldn’t get into space at all! Do note the lack of propagandistic tone in this… compared to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Fox News, trust me, the Russian media is truly a breath of fresh air. They report the news much better than their American counterparts do. Remember, the US media is under corporate control, which is much worse than state control is. If you don’t write what the oligarchs want, you’re out of a job and you don’t eat. The worm has turned, hasn’t it?
BMD
Austria’s Constitutional Court handed down a verdict that allows people to register themselves in official documents as something other than male or female if they wish. The Austrian court, in response to a request from an intersexual activist known as Alex Jürgen, called upon the European Convention on Human Rights to introduce the option of “other” or “inter” on civil register forms that ask for a person’s gender. Jürgen, whose birth name remains secret, said:
For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m recognised as what I am, how I was born.
The court emphasised in its ruling that Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention certifies the right to “an individual sexual identity” and defends “in particular, people with an alternative sexual identity”. The court decision won’t amend existing law since it doesn’t explicitly require documentation of male or female gender.
Last November, Germany became the first European country to call for official recognition of a “third sex”, a decision supported in May by the Netherlands. The third gender already received legal recognition in several countries, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, India, Pakistan, and Nepal. According to UN experts, from 0.05 to 1.7 percent of global births are intersex.
30 June 2018
Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201806301065909946-austria-court-third-gender/
Editor:
I find this more than a little disquieting. It appears to hinge upon personal choice, not objective medical criteria. It’s one thing if an intersex person or a transsexual under medical supervision asks for a change in gender on documentation, but it’s quite another if we open it to untrammelled personal whim. I know that this’ll open me up to attacks from both sides of the aisle. Those on the left will excoriate me for not being “sensitive” enough. Those on the right will vilify me for even offering a pathway to change one’s documents (they wouldn’t even accept medical vetting, I’ve found). I’d say to you to ignore the activists on both sides and keep it grounded in medical reality. That’s how it stands in most places today (including my home state of New York), and I think that it’s best kept that way. That is, there should be a limited and controlled way to amend one’s personal documents. Otherwise, it becomes anarchy and chaos. Keep it grounded and you won’t go wrong.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
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