NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket on July 07, 2003

NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket: Opportunity is a rover that has been working on Mars since January 2004.

Originally intended to last 90 days, the machine crawled more than the distance of a marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.1 kilometers) between its landing day and when the rover was last heard from on Mars, on June 10, 2018. As of that time the odometer on Opportunity read 28.06 miles (45.16 km).

One of Opportunity's greatest scientific findings was confirming the presence of standing water on Mars for long periods. The rover uncovered the presence of hematite, gypsum and other rocks on Mars that tend to form in water on Earth, and also found evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems. Opportunity demonstrated it was possible to operate a rover for more than a decade on another planet, overcoming engineering and driving issues as it continued to perform scientific work.

Opportunity fell silent when a global dust storm swept across Mars in June 2018. The rover requires solar power for operations, and during heavy dust storms there are too many particles in the air to allow sunlight to reach Opportunity's solar panels. As of December 2018, after the dust began to clear, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had initiated recovery operations for Opportunity but received no response.

Space.com / Wikipedia / Smithsonian / National Geographic / NASA / NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket on July 07, 2003 (YouTube)

U.S. President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States on July 07, 1981

U.S. President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States: President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona court of appeals judge, to be the first woman Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

On September 21, the Senate unanimously approved her appointment to the nation’s highest court, and on September 25 she was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Sandra Day was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1930. She grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona and attended Stanford University, where she studied economics. A legal dispute over her family’s ranch stirred her interest in law, and in 1950 she enrolled in Stanford Law School. She took just two years to receive her law degree and was ranked near the top of her class. Upon graduation, she married John Jay O’Connor III, a classmate.

Because she was a woman, no law firm she applied to would hire her for a suitable position, so she turned to the public sector and found work as a deputy county attorney for San Mateo, California. In 1953, her husband was drafted into the U.S. Army as a judge, and the O’Connors lived for three years in West Germany, with Sandra working as a civilian lawyer for the army. In 1957, they returned to the United States and settled down in Phoenix, Arizona, where they had three children in the six years that followed. During this time, O’Connor started a private law firm with a partner and became involved in numerous volunteer activities.

In 1965, she became an assistant attorney general for Arizona and in 1969 was appointed to the Arizona State Senate to occupy a vacant seat. Subsequently elected and reelected to the seat, she became the first woman in the United States to hold the position of majority leader in a state senate. In 1974, she was elected a superior court judge in Maricopa County and in 1979 was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals by Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat.

Two years later, on July 7, 1981, President Reagan nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring justice Stewart Potter, an Eisenhower appointee. In his 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan had promised to appoint a woman to the high court at one of his earliest opportunities, and he chose O’Connor out of a group of some two dozen male and female candidates to be his first appointee to the high court.

O’Connor, known as a moderate conservative, faced opposition from anti-abortion groups who criticized her judicial defense of legalized abortion on several occasions. Liberals celebrated the appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court but were critical of some of her views. Nevertheless, at the end of her confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, the Senate voted unanimously to endorse her nomination. On September 25, 1981, she was sworn in as the 102nd justice—and first woman justice—in Supreme Court history.

Initially regarded as a member of the court’s conservative faction, she later emerged from William Rehnquist’s shadow (chief justice from 1986 to 2005) as a moderate and pragmatic conservative. On social issues, she often voted with liberal justices, and in several cases she upheld abortion rights. During her time on the bench, she was known for her dispassionate and carefully researched opinions and was regarded as a prominent justice because of her tendency to moderate the sharply divided Supreme Court.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Reagan Library.gov / National Archives.gov / U.S. President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States on July 07, 1981 (YouTube)

Understanding Military Terminology - Mutual Support

(DOD) That support which units render each other against an enemy, because of their assigned tasks, their position relative to each other and to the enemy, and their inherent capabilities. See also Close support; Direct support; Support.

Joint Publications (JP 3-31) Joint Chiefs of Staff - Joint Publications Operations Series

The Old Salt’s Corner

“Sailors Love”

Though I have seen both storms and gales

The time that I have spent at see

The loving winds that fill my sails

Is the woman that waits home for me

these long dark nights I stand my watch.

While she is left home on shore alone

I hope she knows my heart is caught

I've left it there with her at home.

For every time our lines are heaved

Her heart is left to sit and wait

I can't imagine or believe

Her love for me can be so great.

The ships will sail for months on end

While she stares lonely from the shore

Across the waves the love she sends

Will see me safely home once more.

From foreign shores I send my love

At home for me she burns the fires

To woman shes the step above

My love my love my one desire.

And on that day when we return

Her beauty will be waiting still

The time apart of no concern

Her love for me is iron will.

The day this sailor leaves the sea

A dept of love I must repay

A thousand years will never be

A payment for a single day.

So gather around so you can hear

If you should doubt gods love in life

Its standing right there on the pier

My gift from god my navy wife.

~ Michael Felton

“I’m Just Sayin”

“It was one of those March days

when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:

when it is summer in the light

and winter in the shade

is the person you decide to be.”

“Happiness is a gift

and the trick is not to expect it,

but to delight in it when it comes.”

~ Charles Dickens

“Thought for the Day”

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all.

The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield

all our irritations and resentments flit away

and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

“When we remember we are all mad,

the mysteries disappear

and life stands explained.”

~ Mark Twain

“What I Learned”

“Seeing is believing.”

“Seek and you shall find.”

“Shoulda, woulda, Coulda.”

~ Anonymous

Second Hand News (Links to Articles from Week 27 - July 01, 2019 - July 07, 2019)

Trump makes history crossing into North Korea • New White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham bruised in scuffle with North Koreans as Trump meets Kim at DMZ • Servicemembers give Trump a gift in Korea • Senator Ted Cruz called for the Justice Department to investigate the mayor of Portland after a conservative journalist was attacked by Antifa members

Sanders campaign fundraises off man arrested for inducing panic at a 2016 Trump campaign rally - where fearing an assassination attempt, Secret Service swarmed Trump to protect him • Six-foot alligator deadly threat to migrants crossing the Rio Grande • Julián Castro: 'We already pay for the healthcare of undocumented immigrants. It's called the emergency room' • AOC mocks Ivanka Trump for talking with foreign leaders at G20 Summit • 10 confirmed dead in Dallas-area plane crash

Editor's Picks: House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes says there's something 'off' about plan to have Mueller team testify • Federal judge blocks Trump from using $2.5B in military funds for border wall • House Judiciary calls for DOJ inspector general investigation into discrimination claims at FBI Academy • Reporters and activists pile on journalist after antifa attack • That was fast: Donald Trump-Jimmy Carter détente crumbles • Leaked email from Google employee refers to Ben Shapiro, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Prager University and others as Nazis

Commentary - Washington Secrets - Red Alert: Anti-Trump fever takes threatening turn • In debates, Democrats move toward open borders • Democrats have an election truther problem Washington Examiner

North Korea calls Trump's DMZ meeting with Kim 'historic' and an 'amazing event' and confirm that both nations have agreed to further denuclearization talks • 'We understand each other': Trump says he is closer to a trade deal with China after his 'excellent' meeting with President Xi Jinping and insists the two countries are 'back on track' • Iran's enriched uranium stockpile 'passes 300 kg limit' set under nuclear deal • China confirms testing its intercontinental submarine missile after a mysterious light in the sky sparked speculations of the experiment of the nuclear weapon • Pope Francis praises President Trump's historic handshake with Kim Jong Un in the DMZ

'Could be worse... Ivanka could have been a bartender 18 months ago': Piers Morgan and AOC get into Twitter spat after the freshman lawmaker questioned Ivanka Trump's role in the White House representing America abroad despite not being elected • Sarah Sanders attacks AOC for 'wasting her time on Twitter' after the Democrat targeted Ivanka 'for being someone's daughter' • 'She should be removed from Congress': Holocaust survivor, 93, blasts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for 'spreading anti-Semitism' by comparing migrant detention centers to concentration camps, saying she deserves a 'Nobel Prize for stupidity' • 'Attacked by Antifa, bleeding, they stole my camera': Shocking video shows the moment a conservative writer gets punched, kicked and 'milkshaked' at a Portland rally

Ten dead in horror plane crash at a Texas airport: No survivors after a private jet suddenly veered left, flew into a hangar and burst into flames just moments after take off • Bombshell report claims Boeing 'outsourced the development of its 737 MAX software to $9-an-hour temp workers' before two fatal plane crashes

How a back injury saw a Boeing designer on $100,000 slip into opioid addiction and become the 'Cyborg Bandit' - one of the FBI's most wanted - after losing his job and robbing 30 banks in just one year • Photo albums of the Nazis: German soldiers mock their fallen enemies and celebrate meeting Hitler in personal pictures they took on the front line Daily Mail UK

The Democrats aim to take away the private healthcare & What is to be done?

Harris challenges Biden, and how did the Midwest hear it?

What kind of U.S. cyberattacks on Iran?

The Europeans seek a workaround on the Iran sanctions & What is to be done?

Facial recognition software and the long goodbye to privacy and non-transparency online. John Batchelor (07/01/2019)

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES: JUDICIAL WATCH: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT GRANTED IMMUNITY TO HILLARY CLINTON’S LAWYER WHO DESTROYED 33,000 EMAILS • ‘Investigating the Investigators’ - New York Mayor’s Communist Roots Shine in Florida Presidential Campaign Rally - Judicial Watch Exposed Sandinista Ties in 2013 • Judicial Harassment of President Trump on Census

Hillary Clinton’s lawyer who destroyed emails and got immunity, the judicial harassment of President Trump in the Supreme Court’s census case, and Judicial Watch suing the FBI for Anti-Trumper Andrew McCabe’s records • Judicial Watch Statement on Supreme Court Ruling Blocking Citizenship Question for 2020 Census • Nicaraguan Military Arrests Four ISIS Terrorists Planning to Enter U.S. Via Mexico • Half of Nation's Border Patrol Workforce Reassigned to Humanitarian Support Duty, 100,000 Migrants Slip into U.S. • Deep State Secrets: Declassify the Sater Files Judicial Watch

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: Why Do We Say 'Bless You' When Someone Sneezes?

We learn a number of social cues from an early age. It’s impolite to cough without covering our mouths.

We say thank you when people give us things like money or cake. And when someone rears back and explodes in a violent expulsion of sneeze, we say bless you.

Why do we do this? What does a blessing have to do with sneezing?

Did anyone ever believe a demon flew out of our noses as we sneezed one out?

Recorded civilization hasn’t done such a great job of tracking this peculiar ritual.

Mentions of the bless you reaction date back to as early as 77 C.E., though no explanation is usually given. What is clear is that people tended to acknowledge sneezes as a sign of good health that prompted salutations. Greeks and Romans followed up a projection of mucus with phrases like live long and may Jupiter bless you.

That positive connotation changed with Pope Gregory I while Europe was in the throes of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, in the 6th century. Because sneezing was a symptom of illness, the Pope thought it would be proper to say God bless you as a little extra insurance from what was otherwise near-certain death.

There was also a pervasive myth that the heart would briefly stop while sneezing, likely due to changes in blood flow that might cause a brief delay between heartbeats. People may have said bless you to make sure the heart would continue beating rather than stop altogether, or as a form of congratulations:

Bless you, John. That sneeze didn’t kill you.

Cultures who believed spirits could either be ejected or evil spirits transmitted during a sneeze may have also adopted the phrase to help ward off such exchanges.

However it came about, it’s clear we’ve adopted a blanket policy when it comes to sneezing.

When people don’t say bless you, we begin to suspect they don’t care about our well-being. As etiquette columnist Miss Manners once observed, it’s considered more rude for people getting hit with snot shrapnel to bypass the bless you than it is for the person detonating the germ bombs to fail to say excuse me.

Leave it to a plague to make a lasting impression on people.

Library Of Congress • Mental Floss • Quora • Wikipedia • Phrases.org UK / Why Do We Say 'Bless You' When Someone Sneezes? (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

Drifter: Sailor who at all times lacks the ability to stay focused. Also called drift-pack, or in the very extreme case “COMNAVDRIFTLANT/PAC”, a parody of “COMNAVDRIFTLANT/PAC”.

Drop a Chit: The act of filling out a request chit.

Drop your cocks and grab your socks: A saying that the petty officer of the watch yells in the sleeping quarters when it's time for everyone to get up. Often done in boot camp. Alternatively, “stop your grinnin' and grab your linen”.

D.U.B. (Dumb Ugly Bitch): Woman enrolled in the Naval Academy.

Ducks (Submarine Service): The time 22:22. Refers to the resemblance of the numbers in a digital display resembling a line of ducks. At times, ducks will be marked by the ship control team (Diving officer of the watch, Helmsman, Planesman, and Chief of the Watch), sonar shack (Sonar Supervisor, Broadband, Narrowband, Class), and fire control team (Fire Control Technician of the Watch). “Stand by to mark ducks ... Mark. Quack Quack Quack Quack.” Leave it to Bubbleheads :).

Durka (used attributively / as an adjective, derogatory): Related to the Middle East..

Dynamited Chicken: Chicken a la king or chicken cacciatore.

Wiktionary.org

Just for you MARINE

DRMOed: To dispose of an item by taking it to the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO).

Drug Deal: To obtain needed supplies, equipment or services outside official channels via barter rather than theft.

Dry fire: Dry fire, Practice firing of a weapon without using ammunition in order to refine body position and other shooting fundamentals.

DTG: Date-Time Group,, a numeric code denoting the time and date of a message.

Dual-cool or Double-trouble: A Marine that possesses both the parachutist and diver badges, usually associated with the Reconnaissance community.

Dummy Cord: Lanyard or tether used to secure a piece of equipment to an anchor to prevent losing it.

Duty NCO or Duty: Sentry responsible for patrol and security of a specific area (usually a barracks or working space in garrison). See also fire watch and OOD.

Wikipedia.org

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission (VRM) (VRM-50) - nicknamed the “Titans”

United States Navy - Naval Air Station North Island - San Diego, California / Coronado, California - Established December 14, 2018 (Planned for future establishment).

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Better late than never:”

 Meaning: To arrive or do something later than expected isn't good, but it is better than not at all.

Better late than never is an English proverb that means though one has arrived later than expected or taken longer to accomplish something than expected, arriving or accomplishing something under late conditions is superior to not arriving or not accomplishing that thing at all.

History: This proverb is often expressed with a degree of sarcasm, apparently saying something positive but in fact merely remarking on someone's lateness. A teacher might say it to a child arriving late for school, for example.

Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have been the first person to have put the proverb into print, in The Yeoman's Prologue and Tale, Canterbury Tales, circa 1386:

“For bet than never is late, never to succeed would be too long a period.” [Better than never is late.]

However, the phrase “potiusque sero quam nunquam” which translates “as better late than never” was used by Titus Livius in his work, History of Rome, written around 27 BC.

Today, better late than never is a phrase that is often used sarcastically, to point out someone’s minimum effort, or as an apology.

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

Structural insights into tiny bacterial harpoons • Quantum computing: Testing qubits has been put in a faster lane • Automakers seek to electrify Geneva car show, fight off gloom • Embryos' signaling proteins go with the flow • Novel DNA repair mechanism preserves genome integrity • Study first to show processes determining fate of new RNA pesticides in soils • Brain study shows coupled ripples in brain areas as part of memory recall

Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

Where Are All the “Sparticles” That Could Explain What's Wrong with the Universe?

The governing theory of particle physics explains everything about the subatomic world … except for the parts that it doesn't. And unfortunately, there aren't a lot of flattering adjectives that can be applied to the so-called Standard Model. Built up bit by bit over the course of decades, this theory of fundamental physics is best described as ungainly, hodgepodge and MacGyver-ed together with pieces of string and chewing gum.

Still, it's an incredibly powerful model that accurately predicts a tremendous variety of interactions and processes.

But it does have some glaring shortcomings: It doesn't incorporate gravity; it can't explain the masses of various particles, some of which bestow force; it doesn't have an explanation for certain neutrino behavior; and it straight-up doesn't have an answer for the existence of dark matter.

So, we must figure something out. We need to go beyond the Standard Model to better understand our universe.

Unfortunately, many of the leading contenders to explain this great beyond - called supersymmetric theories - have been ruled out or severely limited in recent years. There's still a Hail Mary concept that could explain the mysterious parts of the universe not covered by the Standard Model, however: Long-lived supersymmetric particles, sometimes called sparticles for short. But depressingly, a recent search for these oddball particles has come back empty-handed. [The 11 Biggest Unanswered Questions About Dark Matter]

Not-so-super symmetry

By far the trendiest set of theories that push past the bounds of the current Standard Model are grouped together into a class of ideas known as supersymmetry. In these models, the two major camps of particles in nature (“bosons”, such as the familiar photons; and “fermions” - like electrons, quarks and neutrinos) actually have a strange sort of sibling relationship. Every single boson has a partner in the fermion world, and, likewise, every fermion has a boson friend to call its own.

None of these partners (or more appropriately in the confusing jargon of particle physics — “superpartners”) are among the normal family of known particles. Instead, they are typically much, much heavier, stranger and generally weirder-looking.

This difference in mass between the known particles and their superpartners is the result of something called symmetry-breaking. This means that at high energies (like the insides of particle accelerators), the mathematical relationships between particles and their partners are on an even keel, leading to equal masses. At low energies (like the energy levels you experience in normal, everyday life), however, this symmetry is broken, sending the partner particle masses skyrocketing. This mechanism is important, because it also happens to potentially explain why, for example, gravity is so much weaker than the other forces. The math is just a tiny bit complicated, but the short version is this: Something broke in the universe, causing the normal particles to become drastically less massive than their superpartners. That same breaking action may have punished gravity, diminishing its strength relative to the other forces. Nifty. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity]

Live long and prosper

To hunt for supersymmetry, a bunch of physicists chipped in and built the atom smasher called the Large Hadron Collider, which after years of arduous searching came to the surprising but disappointing conclusion that almost all supersymmetry models were wrong.

Whoops.

Simply put, we can't find any partner particles. Zero. Zilch. Nada. No hints of supersymmetry have appeared in the world's most powerful collider, where particles are zipped around a circular contraption at near light-speed before colliding with each other, which sometimes results in the production of exotic new particles. It doesn't necessarily mean that supersymmetry is wrong, per se, but all the simplest models have now been ruled out. Is it time to abandon supersymmetry? Maybe, but there might be a Hail Mary: long-lived particles.

Usually, in the land of particle physics, the more massive you are, the more unstable you are and the faster you'll decay into simpler, lighter particles. It's just the way things are. Since the partner particles are all expected to be heavy (otherwise, we would've seen them by now), we expected they would decay quickly into showers of other things we might recognize, and then we would've built our detectors accordingly.

But what if the partner particles were long-lived? What if, through some quirk of exotic physics (give theorists a few hours to think about it, and they'll come up with more than enough quirks to make it happen), these particles manage to escape the confines of our detectors before dutifully decaying into something less strange? In this scenario, our searches would've come up completely empty, simply because we weren't looking far enough away. Also, our detectors are not designed to be able to look directly for these long-lived particles.

ATLAS to the rescue

In a recent paper published online Feb. 8 on the preprint server arXiv, members of the ATLAS (somewhat awkward shorthand for A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider reported an investigation into such long-lived particles. With the current experimental setup, they couldn't search for every possible long-lived particle, but they were able to search for neutral particles with masses between 5 and 400 times that of the proton.

The ATLAS team searched for the long-lived particles not in the center of the detector, but at its edges, which would've allowed the particles to travel anywhere from a few centimeters up to a few meters. That may not seem very far in terms of human standards, but for massive, fundamental particles, it might as well be the edge of the known universe.

Of course, this isn't the first search for long-lived particles, but it is the most comprehensive, using almost the full weight of loads of experimental records at the Large Hadron Collider.

And the big result: Nothing.

Not a single sign of any long-lived particles.

Does this mean that idea is dead, too? Not quite - these instruments weren't really designed to go hunting for these kinds of wild beasts, and we're only scraping by with what we have. It may take another generation of experiments specifically designed to trap long-lived particles before we actually catch one.

Or, more depressingly, they don't exist. And that would mean that these creatures - along with their supersymmetric partners - are really just ghosts dreamt up by feverish physicists, and what we actually need is a whole new framework for solving some of the outstanding problems of modern physics.

• Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature

• Photos: The World's Largest Atom Smasher (LHC)

• The 11 Biggest Unanswered Questions About Dark Matter

Live Science (03/01/2019)