Mars is the darling of many planetary scientists, who continue to visit it through increasingly advanced robotic explorers. But don’t forget that our planetary neighbor is adorned with two moons: puny Phobos, a lumpy mass 17 miles across; and diminutive Deimos, just 9 miles long. Their names in ancient Greek may mean “fear” and “dread’, but the aesthetics of these Lilliputian space potatoes inspire anything but.
They don’t look anywhere near as interesting as the volcanic or icy-ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn, nor is their desolation as extreme or diverse as Earth’s moon. But that hasn’t stopped generations of planetary scientists from being eager to get a closer look at the ramshackle duo.
The Soviet Union and, later, Russia have tried three times to reach Phobos, but software errors and launch disasters have doomed every attempt. Scientists in the U.S. have tried and, so far, failed to convince the powers-that-be at NASA that a mission to the two moons will be worthwhile. The next great hope is Japan, which is aiming to launch a heist mission to Phobos in 2024 that will try to steal some of its rocks.
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A close-up view of Phobos, the larger of Mars’s two moons. It is 17 miles across.Credit…NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Near the end of the 19th century, New Yorkers out for a drink partook in one of the more unusual rituals in the annals of hospitality. When they ordered an ale or whiskey, the waiter or bartender would bring it out with a sandwich. Generally speaking, the sandwich was not edible. It was “old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese,” wrote the playwright Eugene O’Neill. Other times it was made of rubber. Bar staff would commonly take the sandwich back seconds after it had arrived, pair it with the next beverage order, and whisk it over to another patron’s table. Some sandwiches were kept in circulation for a week or more.
Bar owners insisted on this bizarre charade to avoiding breaking the law—specifically, the excise law of 1896, which restricted how and when drinks could be served in New York State. The so-called Raines Law was a combination of good intentions, unstated prejudices, and unforeseen consequences, among them the comically unsavory Raines sandwich.
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Three men feast on free lunch in this drawing by Charles Dana Gibson. Image from the Public Domain.
Württemberg is a region (Anbaugebiet) for quality wine in Germany and is located in the historical region of Württemberg in southwestern Germany, which today forms part of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.Under German wine legislation, Württemberg and Baden are separate wine regions.
Joel Carmel was raised in London’s Jewish community. He was passionately committed to defending Israel from its many critics, whom he believed was biased and did not grasp the constant threats to its security from the Arabian world.
He went to Israel as soon as he could, joined the army, and rose to the rank of second lieutenant. He served in the West Bank territories, which Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967.
The West Bank is home to 2.8 million Palestinians, as well as more than 500,000 Jews, who are often described as settlers.
When he witnessed the occupation as a soldier, he said he came to realize that Israel’s policies were as much a force for violence as the terrorism it was supposed to prevent.
Carmel said he left the army determined to prove that “you can be a patriotic Israeli and criticize the occupation.”
He now works with Breaking the Silence, an organization of military veterans that says it hopes to show the Israeli public what daily life is like for Palestinians living under the occupation.
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An Israeli soldier kicks a Palestinian flag in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on January 29.
When the honor guard placed Representative John Lewis’s coffin in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, the civil rights icon’s body lay upon the same catafalque that President Abraham Lincoln’s did.
It was a fitting tribute: The raised box that once supported the president most responsible for ending slavery now carried the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda, a man who dedicated his life to ensuring that with freedom came equality.
“Under the dome of the U.S. Capitol, we have bid farewell to some of the greatest Americans in our history,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during an emotional ceremony Monday afternoon to honor Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endured numerous arrests and beatings in his lifelong push for civil rights. “It is fitting that John Lewis joins this pantheon of patriots.”
Speakers recalled Mr. Lewis’s remarkable rise in American life, from a farmhouse in Pike County, Ala., with no running water or electricity to his leading role in the effort to end segregation and his ascent to the halls of Congress.
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Mr. Lewis’s coffin inside the Capitol Rotunda.Credit…Pool photo by J. Scott Applewhite
President Donald Trump’s racially charged warnings to suburban voters about crime and housing face a fundamental headwind: the suburbs themselves are much more racially diverse than even two decades ago.
In contrast to the stereotype of homogenous communities of White families behind white picket fences, in many of the largest suburban counties around America Whites now compose only about half or less of the population.
That’s especially true in the Sun Belt suburbs around cities such as Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, which are emerging as critical election battlegrounds in 2020 and beyond.
But the diversification of the suburbs extends even to the classic “bedroom” communities of the Northeast, like the suburbs of New York City and Washington, DC. Of the 488 US counties, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program classifies as suburban in larger metropolitan areas, the White share of the population fell in 468 of them from 2000 to 2019, according to calculations by demographer William Frey.
Cornwall is a county on England’s rugged southwestern tip. It forms a peninsula encompassing wild moorland and hundreds of sandy beaches, culminating at the promontory Land’s End.The south coast, dubbed the Cornish Riviera, is home to picturesque harbor villages such as Fowey and Falmouth. The north coast is lined with towering cliffs and seaside resorts like Newquay, known for surfing.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
