Saturday, May 9, 2015

Black Bird Ad Post

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Friday, May 8, 2015

The Marvin X theory of Writing as taught to his students at the Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland

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African Liberation Day, 2015, Oakland

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Marvin X featured author at Sacramento Black Book Fair, June 5,6,7, 2015


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Thursday, May 7, 2015

Weather patterns on the Sun

The Sun's seasonal weather patterns

Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Scott McIntosh details the Sun's seasonal weather patterns and demonstrates how understanding the formation, interaction and instability of the Sun's activity bands will considerably improve forecast capability in space weather and solar activity over a range of timescales.
Magnetic variability image
Magnetic variability over the last three decades.
According to Scott McIntosh's recent article published in "Nature Communications," and in the "Daily Camera Boulder News," solar magnetism displays a host of variational timescales of which the enigmatic 11-year sunspot cycle is most prominent. This research demonstrates that Earth isn't the only planet that has a kind-of seasonal variability in its weather patterns. Bands of strong magnetic fields in the Sun's northern and southern hemispheres appear to drive variations in the Sun's solar cycle. Dr. McIntosh explains, "A good analogy for this phenomena is the Gulf Stream, these (magnetic fields) are like big, magnetized Gulf Streams that attract or repel one another." He believes that a more holistic approach to space weather can be gained by changing the focus from a singular sunspot cycle to the individual magnetic bands that comprise the cycle.
Daily Camera Boulder News: New study from Boulder's NCAR details Sun's seasonal weather patterns
Nature Communications Article: The solar magnetic activity band interaction and instabilities that shape quasi-periodic variability
What Is Solar Activity?

The Sun is always active. It has weather. It has storms. And its storms can affect Earth's weather.
  • Sunspots are magnetic storms on the surface of the Sun.
  • Solar flares are intense blooms of radiation that come from the release of the magnetic energy associated with sunspots. The NOAA ranks solar flares using five categories from weakest to stongest: A, B, C, M, and X. Each category is 10 times stronger than the one before it. Within each category, a flare is ranked from 1 to 9, according to strength, although X-class flares can go higher than 9. According to NASA, the most powerful solar flare recorded was an X28 (in 2003).
  • Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are bursts of solar material (clouds of plasma and magnetic fields) that shoot off the sun's surface. Other solar events include solar wind streams that come from the coronal holes on the Sun and solar energetic particles that are primarily released by CMEs.

Solar Flare. Credit: jpl.nasa.gov

What is a Solar Cycle?

The number of sunspots increase and decrease over time in a regular, approximately 11-year cycle, called the solar or sunspot cycle. The exact length of the cycle can vary. More sunspots mean increased solar activity—flares and CMEs. The highest number of sun spots in any given cycle is designated "solar maximum," while the lowest number is designated "solar minimum."

Eleven years in the life of the Sun, spanning most of solar cycle 23, as it progressed from solar minimum (upper left) to maximum conditions and back to minimum (upper right) again, seen as a collage of ten full-disk images of the lower corona. Credit: NASA

How Does Solar Activity Affect Weather and Earth?

Solar activity affects the Earth in many ways, some which we are still coming to understand.
  • Damage to 21st-century satellites and other high-tech systems in space can be caused by an active Sun which generates geomagnetic storms.
    Even in inactive solar cycles, the Sun emits large solar flares—which could cause billions of dollars in damage to the world's high-tech infrastructure—from GPS navigation to power grids to air travel to financial services.
  • Radiation hazards for astronauts and satellites can be caused by a quiet Sun. Weak solar winds allow more galactic cosmic rays into the inner solar system. 
  • Weather on Earth can also be affected. According to Bob Berman, astronomer for The Old Farmer's Almanac: Recently, NOAA scientists concluded that four factors determined global temperatures: carbon dioxide levels, volcanic eruptions, Pacific El Niño pattern, and the Sun's activity. 
  • Global climate change including long-term periods of global cold, rainfall, drought, and other weather shifts may also be influenced by solar cycle activity, based on historical evidence:
Times of depressed solar activity seem to correspond with times of global cold. For example, during the 70-year period from 1645 to 1715, few, if any, sunspots were seen, even during expected sunspot maximums. Western Europe entered a climate period known as the "Maunder Minimum" or "Little Ice Age." Temperatures dropped by 1.8 to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Conversely, times of increased solar activity have corresponded with global warning. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the Sun was active, and the European climate was quite mild.

Yearly-averaged sunspot numbers from 1610 to 2008. Researchers believe upcoming Solar Cycle 24 will be similar to the cycle that peaked in 1928, marked by a red arrow. Credit: NASA/MSFC

Solar Cycle 24

As of January 15, 2015, we are over six years into Cycle 24.
  • The solar minimum occured in 2008 and 2009; during those two years, there were almost NO sunspots, a very unusual situation that had not happened for almost a century. Due to the weak solar activity, galactic cosmic rays were at record levels.
  • Solar Maximum: The Sun's record-breaking sleep ended in 2010. In 2011, sunspot counts jumped up.  In February of 2012, the sunpot numbers reached a peak of 66.9.

    In late 2013, NASA reported, "The sun's global magnetic field is about to reverse polarity." The sunspot number climbed into the 70s. This is still very low. By February of 2014, sunspots averaged 102.8 spots a day, which is the first time the cycle broke 100. 
  • In April, 2014, the sunspot number peaked a second time, reaching 81.9. This is likely the solar maximum.  Many cycles are double peaked, however, this is the first time the second peak was larger than the first peak (in February, 2012).
  • Cycle 24 has been a weak solar cycle—the smallest since Cycle 14 (which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906). What will happen next?  Stay tuned!
What does all this mean?
  • Quiet-to-average cycles mean a cooling pattern over the next few decades. Temperatures have been colder than it would have been otherwise. Sunspots are similar to a bathtub of lukewarm water; if you trickle in cold or hot water, it may take a while to notice the difference. If this cooling phase on Earth, however, is offset by any warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases, they also raise the question of whether an eventual warming cycle could lead to more rapid warming on Earth than expected.
Would you like a call the next time the Sun erupts? X-flare alerts are available from http://spaceweathertext.com (text) and http://spaceweatherphone.com (voice).
 
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Chinese build ghost town in Angola, Africa



The ghost towns of China, Ireland and Spain - full of large empty house estates - may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa.
Built for people who never move in, they leave those who did with a worthless property they cannot sell.
Perched in an isolated spot some 30km (18 miles) outside Angola's capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units.
Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).
Spanning 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres), the development is the largest of several new "satellite cities" being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola, and it is believed to be one of the largest new-build projects on the continent.

The jewel in Angola's post-war reconstruction crown, Kilamba is the star of glossy government promotional videos which show smiling families enjoying a new style of living away from the dust and confusion of central Luanda where millions live in sprawling slums.
But the people in these films are only actors, and despite all the hype, nearly a year since the first batch of 2,800 apartments went on sale, only 220 have been sold.

Eerily quiet

When you visit Kilamba, you cannot help but wonder if even a third of those buyers have moved in yet.
The place is eerily quiet, voices bouncing off all the fresh concrete and wide-open tarred roads.
There are hardly any cars and even fewer people, just dozens of repetitive rows of multi-coloured apartment buildings, their shutters sealed and their balconies empty.
Only a handful of the commercial units are occupied, mostly by utility companies, but there are no actual shops on site, and so - with the exception of a new hypermarket located at one entrance - there is nowhere to buy food.
After driving around for nearly 15 minutes and seeing no-one apart from Chinese labourers, many of whom appear to live in containers next to the site, I came across a tiny pocket of life at a school.



The people looking after the lawns cannot afford to stay here
It opened six months ago, bussing in its pupils in from outlying areas because there are no children living on site to attend.
One student, a 17-year-old called Sebastiao Antonio - who spends nearly three hours a day in traffic getting to and from classes from his home 15km away - told me how much he liked the city.
"I really like this place - it's got car parking, places for us to have games like football, basketball and handball," he said.
"It's very quiet, much calmer than the other city, there's no criminality."
But when I asked if he and his family would move there, he just laughed.
"No way, we can't afford this. It's impossible. And there is no work for my parents here," he said.
His sentiments were echoed by Jack Franciso, 32, who started work at Kilamba as a street sweeper four months ago.
"Yes, it's a nice place for sure," he said.
But then he sighed: "To live here, you need a lot of money. People like us don't have money like that to be able to live here."

No mortgages

And therein lies the problem.
Apartments at Kilamba are being advertised online costing between $120,000 and $200,000 - well out of reach of the estimated two-thirds of Angolans who live on less than $2 a day.
However, Paulo Cascao, general Manager at Delta Imobiliaria, the real estate agency handling the sales, told the BBC that the problem was not the price, but difficulty in accessing bank credit.
"The prices are correct for the quality of the apartments and for all the conditions that the city can offer," he said.

"The sales are going slowly due to the difficulty in obtaining mortgages."
A new legal frame work has recently been introduced to allow local banks to give mortgages, but for the majority of Angolans, even the few with well-paid office jobs, just finding enough cash for a deposit would be a struggle.
"The government needs to start giving priority to building low-cost housing because great majority of the population live in shacks with no water, electricity or sanitation," Elias Isaac, country director at the Angolan Office of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA), told the BBC.
"There is no middle class in Angola, just the very poor and the very rich, and so there is no-one to buy these sorts of houses."
According to Mr Cascao, the government has recently announced a portion of the apartments at Kilamba will be designated social housing, which people on low incomes can rent long-term at low prices.
No-one is quite sure how that scheme will work or who will be eligible, and cynics have dismissed it as a vote-winning stunt ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on 31 August.
There is also the issue of what will happen to all the full-cost apartments if they do not sell.
Kilamba was financed by a Chinese credit line - which Angola is repaying with oil - so it has technically been paid for.
But if the houses go unsold, then the Angolan government will be left with stock on their hands and a potentially wasted investment.

Election pledge

Manuel Clemente Junior, Angola's deputy construction minister, staunchly defended the scheme and said it would definitely be a success - although he seemed convinced it was possible to purchase a flat for $80,000, much cheaper than is advertised.
"It is with absolute certainty, an excellent project," he told the BBC.
Responding to the complaints about Kilamba's isolated location, he said: "There are always people who criticise but thanks to the new highways which are being built, as a location it is only going to be about 15 to 20 minutes from the city centre."
The city of Kilamba is a government flagship project that goes some way to helping President Jose Eduardo dos Santos fulfil his famous 2008 election pledge to build one million homes in four years.
Allan Cain, head of Angolan non-government organisation Development Workshop that specialises in urban poverty alleviation, has welcomed the investment, but has some reservations.
"What we have been advocating for is a programme of upgrading in situ where people are living now, something which is considered to be international best practice," he said.
"I don't think many places in the world can afford actually to displace and re-house whole populations of cities."




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APA Psychologists complicit in CIA torture program

Study accuses psychologists group of complicity in CIA torture program

April 30, 2015 

Washington, DC, American Psychological Association (Image from wikipedia.org)
Washington, DC, American Psychological Association (Image from wikipedia.org)

The American Psychologists Association, the largest professional scientific organization of its kind, was secretly complicit in the adoption of torturous interrogation tactics used by the United States against detainees, a new report suggests.
A study released this week by noteable anti-torture critics reveals that an analysis of emails from the inbox of a deceased US government contractor demonstrates compliance on behalf of the APA with regards to the drafting of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs, developed under President George W. Bush.

APA officials was in cahoots with members of the Bush administration, including Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors, when the government struggled to codify policies for its torture program following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 200, according to the report – an effort led by psychoanalyst and anti-war activist Stephen Soldz as well as Nathaniel Raymond and Steven Reisner – two members of the group Physicians for Human Rights.

“The APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House and the Department of Defense to create an APA ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture program,” the authors say.

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