Images of Saturn's Moon Daphnis

Carolyn Porco writes:

Our recent close up images of Saturn's rings, taken from orbits that have Cassini plunging through the ring plane and scraping the outer part of the main rings, have started to arrive here on Earth!

Take a look at our latest, incredibly detailed image if Daphnis! This is the 5-mile-wide icy moon that we discovered early in the mission occupying the Keeler gap near the outer edge of the rings. It creates waves in the gap's edges that are actually mountainous piles of ring rubble ... a startling find that we couldn't have made until the equinox of 2009, when sun angles on the rings were shallow and even the slightest protuberances cast long tell-tale shadows.

Our new picture of Daphnis shows details not only on its surface, but also structures formed by its gravitational effect on the rings.

Stay tuned! There will be more to come to Cassini's dramatic end at Saturn. The thrill of discovery never gets old.

People Love 'Alternative Facts'

Wet California

Now virtually the entire state has at least average precipitation for the season, and many parts have much more.

La La Land Interrogation - SNL

Very charming movie, and I loved the way it used LA geography. So, you better like it too, or else....

Addiction, and Politics

(h/t: John).

Housesitting The Cat

This weekend, I house sat Gabriel and Eleanor's cat, Rex.

I stared at the cat. The cat stared back.

I was surprised the cat wasn't the least bit bothered by a stranger in its house. It was as if I had been there all along - a familiar piece of furniture unaccountably come to life.

The cat's appointed refuge was the bathroom. Released from its confines, the cat would head straight to a houseplant to drink from the water at its base. (No accounting for taste.) Apart from that, the cat appeared not to drink at all, and to eat very little. Instead, the cat dug its claws into a favorite cardboard box. And preferred to sleep. Boy, did that cat sleep.

So, I read my Tony Hillerman book, "Sacred Clowns", watched Figure Skating, two episodes of the Twilight Zone, and an old Kirk Douglas movie about New Mexico (1951's 'Ace in the Hole') on the TV.

And I stared at the cat. And the cat stared back.

SNL Is Superb These Days!

Kellyanne Conway 'Conway' Sketch is over the moon!

Beck Bennett's Putin is superb!

Aetna, And Its Lying Ways

Judge finds that Aetna lied, lied, lied about its reasons for withdrawing from Obamacare exchanges:

Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.

Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood. In fact, says Judge John D. Bates, Aetna made its decision at least partially in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed. Bates made the observations in the course of a ruling he issued Monday blocking the merger.

Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court, in part by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice Bates found came close to “malfeasance.”

Aetna tried to leverage its participation in the exchanges for favorable treatment from DOJ regarding the proposed merger. — U.S. District Judge John D. Bates

The judge’s conclusions about Aetna’s real reasons for pulling out of Obamacare — as opposed to the rationalization the company made in public — are crucial for the debate over the fate of the Affordable Care Act. That’s because the company’s withdrawal has been exploited by Republicans to justify repealing the act. Just last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) cited Aetna’s action on the “Charlie Rose” show, saying that it proved how shaky the exchanges were.

Bates found that this rationalization was largely untrue. In fact, he noted, Aetna pulled out of some states and counties that were actually profitable to make a point in its lawsuit defense — and then misled the public about its motivations. Bates’ analysis relies in part on a “smoking gun” letter to the Justice Department in which Chief Executive Mark Bertolini explicitly ties Aetna’s participation in Obamacare to the DOJ’s actions on the merger, which we reported in August. But it goes much further.

Among the locations where Aetna withdrew were 17 counties in three states where the Department of Justice asserted that the merger would produce unlawfully low levels of competition on the individual exchanges. By pulling out, Aetna could say that it wasn’t competing in those counties’ exchanges anyway, rendering the government’s point moot: “The evidence provides persuasive support for the conclusion that Aetna withdrew from the on-exchange markets in the 17 complaint counties to improve its litigation position,” Bates wrote. “The Court does not credit the minimal efforts of Aetna executives to claim otherwise.”

Indeed, he wrote, Aetna’s decision to pull out of the exchange business in Florida was “so far outside of normal business practice” that it perplexed the company’s top executive in Florida, who was not in the decision loop.

“I just can’t make sense out of the Florida dec[ision],” the executive, Christopher Ciano, wrote to Jonathan Mayhew, the head of Aetna’s national exchange business. “Based on the latest run rate data . . . we are making money from the on-exchange business. Was Florida’s performance ever debated?” Mayhew told him to discuss the matter by phone, not email, “to avoid leaving a paper trail,” Bates found. As it happens, Bates found reason to believe that Aetna soon will be selling exchange plans in Florida again.

Good Intentions

It figures:

A Rhode Island activist who was on a mission to walk across the country barefoot was struck and killed by an SUV while walking on a Florida highway on Saturday afternoon.

Mark Baumer was walking on the shoulder of Highway 90 in Walton County, Fla. when the driver of the SUV veered off the road and hit him, ABC News affiliate WEAR reported on Sunday. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

...Baumer said he was hiking across the country to “save earth” and to raise funding for the FANG Collective, a non-profit organization that protests the natural gas industry.

Shaggy's Dancehall Track 'I Got You', with LaToya Bufford and Catherine Chiemelu, at Zincon

I was trying to find a certain Shaggy song, and stumbled past this. I remember now! This is my instructor, LaToya Bufford, with her good friend Catherine Chiemelu (who I think is based in Oklahoma these days), at Zincon 2016.

One Of The Rainiest Januarys On Record In Sacramento

2.19" of rain today in Downtown Los Angeles. Impressive! More than a third of monthly rainfall so far (3.98"), for a total of 6.17" so far in January.

Meanwhile, January, 2017 is the rainiest month on record at Sacramento Executive Airport (9.88": since 1941), and the third-rainiest at the downtown Sacramento station (since 1877):

Year Inches of Rain
1911 12.72
1995 12.35
2017 9.90

Clearest Sign Yet There's A Purge Coming At The CIA

If I was an intelligence analyst at the CIA (I actually interviewed with them in 1987, so it's not so far-fetched), I'd be very worried, and planning for Trump's swift purge:

He also said things that must have baffled many of the 300 CIA employees who gathered for the visit, came in on a day off to see their new boss. He repeated the line, which he’d uttered many times during the campaign, that we should have “taken the oil” in Iraq (a notion that is politically daft, economically unnecessary, and militarily all-but-impossible) and that maybe we’ll have the opportunity to do so now. He also said that he suspected most of the people in the room voted for him in the election—a comment that, whether true or not, is appallingly inappropriate to make to intelligence analysts, who pride themselves on their independence and fear political encroachment above all else.

Those in the intelligence community were already anxious about their relationship with Trump before he took office thanks to his reaction to the report on Russian interference in the election, as well as his appointment of Michael Flynn, a conspiracy-minded retired general who is bitter about being fired as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.

If Trump or his staff thought this speech would allay that distrust and suspicion, they are even more deluded than they sometimes seem.

Sean Spicer's Lies And Mischaracterizations

Many. Too many:

All White House spokespeople spin—it’s part of the job. But it’s one thing to deflect attention from unflattering facts and trying to reframe uncomfortable realities in a more favorable narrative. What Spicer did was markedly different: he listed a number of highly specific and easily verifiable claims.

R. D. Wolff Provides A Light In These Dark Times

I was very-pleasantly surprised today, while listening to KYDS radio (FM-91.5), which is Sacramento's best radio station (because their playlist is so jarring and unpredictable). They featured a political gloss of news headlines by pop-analytic economist R.D. Wolff. With his New York-inflected accent, it's as if Bernie Sanders is gently explaining the news that confused you the first time you heard it.

Wolff's radio program is a revival of a radio form that died out 70 years ago. People keep trying to revive the form, but most efforts fail.

In the Thirties, various pop-analytic radio economists of the Left struggled to present their analyses on under-powered AM radio stations across the country, competing against radio evangelists and the big networks. Most of these folks were union activists on the front lines of battles against corporate power. The Red Scare of the late-40's swept them off the air. Many of their hard-won lessons died with them, to our loss.

The absence of such radio personalities in the Sixties helped doom the radical politics of the time, when the inspiration was more spiritual and less political.

The reemergence of such a radio form is a very welcome development. Every damned thing that was learned the hard way in World War I and Depression days has to be relearned again from scratch. And just as the presence of these radio folks helped make New Deal reforms stick, and their absence in the Sixties helped doom reforms then, their reemergence now may help derail Trump and his wrecking crew:

Two links: R. D. Wolff and Democracy at Work.

Liking The Signs At This Dark Time

Where Indices Stand On Inauguration Day

Adam Ramirez in Austin, TX, posts:

Posting this so it will come up in my Facebook memories.

Inauguration Day 1/20/2017
Gas: $2.09
S&P 500: 2,271.31
Dow: 19,819
NASDAQ: 5560.7
Unemployment: 4.7%
Uninsured rate: 9.1%
College degree attainment: 32.5%
Median wage: 29,930.13

Bumping Higher On The Lists!

We have 11 days left in the month, and it's already the 3rd-wettest January on record at Sacramento Executive Airport (which has been recording since 1941). We will have just one more large storm this month, coming in on Sunday, and it's likely we'll reach first place. After that, it's likely we'll have nothing until about February 5th.

For the record, these Januarys are:

Year Inches of Rain
1978 9.14
1997 9.05
2017 8.91

Using the longer record of the "Downtown" Sacramento met station (which goes back to 1877), we're already the 9th wettest January on record:

Year Inches of Rain
1911 12.72
1995 12.35
1896 9.76
1909 9.65
1978 9.61
1993 9.37
1916 9.35
1878 9.26
2017 8.94

Last night, I took a look at the CNFRC QPF forecast. It looks like we'll reach 10.50 inches of rain for the month, which will put us first and third on these lists, respectively.

Janis Joplin's Demo For "Me And Bobby McGee"

Sweet!:

When singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson penned the lyrics to “Me And Bobby McGee” in 1969, he supposedly had ex-lover Janis Joplin on his mind – but somehow, we don’t think he had any inkling of an idea that this would be one of the final songs ever recorded by the legend, or that it would go on to become her swan song.

Watching Popcorn Pop

Wow!

At 1,300 frames per second, the kernel leaps from the heating element, full of starch and joy, and explodes into its fluffy final form before tumbling down in a cloud of steam. Before it pops, the pressure inside reaches around 135 psi and its internal temperature hits 356 degrees fahrenheit.

But that’s not slow enough. At 30,000 FPS—1,250 times slower than real time—you can watch the kernel’s insides expand peel the hard hull apart like a rose blooming.

Trump's Inaugural Crowd Wasn't Large Enough, So They Used Obama's Crowds For Twitter

More cheese whiz:

The original image showed flag-waving crowds in front of the US Capitol.

But it was changed about an hour later, amid claims from Mr Trump's opponents that crowds at his inauguration were not as large as in 2013.

El Chapo Comes To New York

I guess Walter White turned down the DEA post:

Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who gained fame for his daring prison escapes and an interview with Hollywood stars while a fugitive, has been extradited to the United States to face trafficking and other charges, authorities from both countries said.

A plane carrying Guzman landed Thursday night at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip, N.Y., according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Graceful Exit

I Wonder Where Last Night's Filming Will Go?

Bunnies Are The Best

Nutbush City Limits

Awesome Protest

Caitland wonders:

"Don't grab me by the pussy. But here, stare at my tits because I'm mad at the patriarchy."

I don't understand what she was expecting to accomplish by doing this. I truly don't. Yeah, it's her right to peacefully protest. But really?

I reply:

Dissonance and protest are bosom buddies.

Inauguration Day Protest Comes Right To You

Restless night. As the rains accelerated, I was out knocking down puddles before they became hazards. Went to bed again around six.

Woke up at noon. Missed going to any demonstrations. But one of the nice things about urban areas is, if you oversleep, they now have this app that delivers demonstrations to your doorstep:

As Dry As Arrakis Here In Sacramento

This week's Drought Monitor is out, and shows virtually no changes from last week. We're still as dry as Arrakis here in Sacramento.

Oh! The photo from yesterday! Of course!

Jordan Martinez stops everything to jerry-rig a rope in order to prevent The Anaconda from smacking into the wet overhead electrical line as it's drawn under the ground.

More Hands Make Light Work

And so, as the plumbers cleaned up after themselves, I started cutting tree branches from the fallen limb.

Lots of work. Eventually the plumbers left.

Then the handyman next door came over. We started sawing on the main branches. I brought out my chain saw, but it no longer seems to work. So we used his Skilsaw and Sawzall and hacksaw instead.

I worried about him. I could hear his labored breathing. But we got the wood cut and he hauled the main branches away. I stacked the rest of the foliage for eventual removal by ordinary city means.

Daylight Reveals Driveway Chaos

Busy morning. City inspector taking a look at my sewer line. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the fallen tree limb, which fell from next door's eucalyptus, and expertly avoided touching any city property, telephone lines or parked cars as it fell smack in my driveway.

Sure Is A Wet January Around Here

We have 13 days left in the month, and it's already the 7th-wettest January on record at Sacramento Executive Airport (which has been recording since 1941). Since we only need 1.02 inches to reach first place, and two more storms are forecast to arrive within the week, the likelihood we'll reach first place is very high.

For the record, these Januarys are:

Year Inches of rain
1978 9.14
1997 9.05
1995 8.81
1993 8.63
1969 8.50
1967 8.42
2017 8.12

Tomorrow I can look at the official downtown Sacramento precipitation readings, which go farther back, to 1877, and include even-more-epic Januarys (like 12.72 inches in 1911).

[UPDATE]
Using the longer record of the "Downtown" Sacramento met station (which goes back to 1877), we're already the 12th wettest January on record, with a good chunk of the month to go.

Year Inches of Rain
1911 12.72
1995 12.35
1896 9.76
1909 9.65
1978 9.61
1993 9.37
1916 9.35
1878 9.26
1969 8.90
1952 8.65
1895 8.42
2017 8.11

Apocalypse Now

Given the strength of the storm that came roaring in today, I was reluctant to drive to Davis for the monthly DMTC Board Meeting this evening, but duty called.

I don't know what happened to Davis traffic tonight - presumably the high winds and horizontal rains - but traffic was bollixed worse than I had ever seen. The miles-long rows of automobile headlights in all directions made it appear as if everyone was trying to leave Davis all at once, just as I was arriving. It was the Apocalypse, and everyone heard the news but me.

At the Board Meeting, I silently fretted about the large oak tree that looms above my house. The momentum arm on its largest branch is incredible. It's just a matter of time before all that wood comes through my roof. Would it be tonight?

After the Board Meeting, I went shopping at Target, and was surprised again by just how few people were there. The roads were deserted in all directions. When it is the Apocalypse, you don't hang around.

The biggest surprise of all was arriving home in Sacramento and discovering a eucalyptus branch weighing several hundred pounds sitting in the driveway where I usually park. The young and vigorous eucalyptus tree growing next door had a hidden flaw. If I hadn't gone to the DMTC Board Meeting, my car would have been smashed. Meanwhile, the precarious oak tree remains as poised as ever. I'll break out the chain saw tomorrow morning.

Moral: Be contrary when the next Apocalypse comes around. Don't run away - make friends with the Zombies.

Sewer Highlights

Worker ecstatic after finally succeeding in coaxing thick cable through broken-pipe section of sewer line.

Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" comes to mind.

Jordan Martinez stops everything to jerry-rig a rope in order to prevent The Anaconda from smacking into the wet overhead electrical line as it's drawn under the ground.

And so now the sewer line is in the ground, ready for inspection, before finishing cement work. I can use the facilities again. But with all the rain and digging, it's a real mud bowl out there.

Mud

The sewer workers arrived and started getting into the muck just as the arriving storm intensified. Fun!

We should stage a mud-wrestling competition. One of those girls-gone-wild things.

Not just girls. Invite guys too. The fellow who is digging the holes is strikingly-handsome.

Wonder if the passing DMV workers are game?

New Mexico Rates 51st Among The 50 States

Come on, it's not THAT bad! The ABQ Journal article noted:

New Mexico ranked 51st among the 50 states ... New Mexico ranked particularly poorly on poverty (50th), unemployment (48th), violent crime rate (48th), divorce rate (46th) and the percentage of two-parent families (47th). The only relatively positive metrics were the infant mortality rate and the “family fun” ranking, in which the state ranked 18th. It was around the middle on child care costs (27th) and came in at 36th on housing affordability.

Meanwhile:

To help with the evaluation process, WalletHub’s data team compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 40 key indicators of family-friendliness. Our data set ranges from “median family salary” to “housing affordability” to “unemployment rate.” Read on for the complete ranking, relocation advice from experts and a full description of our methodology.

Sewer Line Repair Starts

The Cement Saw just revved up. And so, it starts. Out with the old sewer; in with the new.

Things Are Looking Up

I guess this is optimism in today's America. Instead of gladiatorial combat, we'll merely perish cold and alone under bridges:

Kendzior agrees with Pepinsky that Trump-style authoritarianism won’t look like it does in other countries. The question, then, is how to make Americans care about the incremental degradation of constitutional values and political norms.

Puzzled By The Dissonance Regarding NM Snowpack

This article is pretty optimistic, but the Western Regional Climate Center maps show an average sort of winter. I wonder which narrative will win out?:

https://www.abqjournal.com/929039/weekend-rains-hit-records.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A soggy weekend set rainfall records in Albuquerque and other New Mexico cities and added to a healthy snowpack shaping up in the state’s northern mountains.

High water content in the snowpack in New Mexico and Colorado bodes well for the spring runoff later this year.

“The snowpack is doing well,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Guyer said Monday. “So we’re going to have some runoff, finally.”

A good snowpack is welcome news, because New Mexico hasn’t had a good runoff since 2010. Last year was among the warmest on record, and a dry, windy spring robbed the state of much of its snowpack.

...Albuquerque International Sunport received 0.66 inch of rain Sunday, beating the previous Jan. 15 record of 0.48 inch, set in 1895.

Roswell received 0.33 inch of rain Sunday, beating a 1924 record. And Clayton in far northwestern New Mexico got 0.65 inch, beating a 1980 record.

But snowpack remains the state’s best news.

High-elevation areas of northern and central New Mexico have normal or above-normal snowpack, but the southern mountains are lagging, Guyer said.

Snowpack in the San Juan Basin around Chama is 177 percent of normal, packing 15 inches of liquid water, he said.

New Mexico also will benefit from Colorado’s healthy snowpack, which should feed New Mexico streams and rivers this spring.

In the Cumbres Pass area of Colorado, north of Chama, the snowpack has 26 inches of liquid water, Guyer said.

“That’s a lot of water,” he said.

Snowpack in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains is 150 percent of normal in some areas.

...The heaviest snowfall was recorded at the 10,000-foot Magdalena Ridge Observatory west of Socorro, which racked up at least 18 inches.

...Storm totals
Snowfall totals, Saturday and Sunday
Ski Santa Fe 15 inches
Ski Apache 14 inches
Sandia Peak Ski Area 14 inches
Angel Fire Resort 9 inches
Red River Ski Area 9 inches
Cuba 7 inches
Tucumcari 3 inches

Albuquerque rainfall totals, Saturday and Sunday
Coors and Coors Trail NW 1 inch
Arenal and Unser SW 0.98 inch
San Francisco and Barstow NE 0.98 inch
Constitution and Girard 0.98 inch
Irving and Golf Course NW 0.89 inch
Gibson and Carlisle SE 0.84 inch
Indian School and Tramway NE 0.84 inch

2015's "Jupiter Ascending" - Bureaucracy Scene

2015's "Jupiter Ascending" was a pretty bad sci-fi movie, but its Bureaucracy scene is pretty good:

Meanwhile, Near Tucson

I Could Watch This All Day

It's just the way I would have handled it.

Garry Kasparov Wonders

Garry Kasparov wonders:

I'm still waiting for Trump to say something about global affairs that hasn't literally been said first by the Kremlin.

Pet Selfie

Apparently from Reddit somewhere....

Donald Trump Press Conference Cold Open

Fortune Cookies Get More Meta All The Time

A New Episode Of "The Twilight Zone"

Scottish Newspaper Sunday Herald Likens Trump’s Inauguration to ‘The Twilight Zone’ in TV Listing.

There Is No One Alive Who Is Youer Than You

Noncooperation With Evil

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

APD Shootings Dramatically-Reduced From 2010

In the good news category, the Albuquerque Police Department has dramatically-reduced the number of times they fired their weapons. In 2010, they were shooting at everything that moved, including each other. A lot of people were injured and killed for no good reason. It was time to introduce some discipline:

Albuquerque police fired their weapons just seven times in the line of duty. It was the fewest by the department in a calendar year in at least seven years – and evidence, police officials say, that the hours of training officers have completed and policy changes called for in a settlement between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice are working.