Going Green

Avatar photoby

Rare, green comet to pass by Earth Wednesday – ABC News (go.com)

A rare green comet that has been traveling through our solar system for the last month is expected to make its closest pass to Earth between Wednesday and Thursday, according to NASA and astronomers. During that time, the comet will be 26 million miles away from the planet, according to astronomers.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered last March when it was already inside the orbit of Jupiter. It is distinguishable by its green glow.

NASA scientists said the comet made its closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, on Jan. 12. The comet was first visible to stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere at the beginning of the month followed by the other half of the planet a few weeks later.

“The comet is now visible all night long from northern latitudes but will surely fade from easy observation during the next few weeks,” NASA wrote on its site Tuesday.

The last time the comet passed by Earth was 50,000 years ago, according to NASA.

💬 Add your voice: Comment on today’s post
Share

47 thoughts on “Going Green”

  1. Thanks to trail friend BiD for alerting us to this rare occurrence.  here’s what she posted yesterday afternoon:

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/world/green-comet-c-2022-e3-watch-scn/index.html
    “The comet can be distinguished from stars by its streaking tails of dust and energized particles, as well as the glowing green coma surrounding it.”
    “If clouds or inclement weather get in the way of skywatching, The Virtual Telescope Project [hyperlink in story] will share a livestream of the comet in the skies above Rome.”

  2. to perk up your morning, another blast from the past going green

     

    at times it seems like the ’60s were 50,000 years ago

  3. a little about that spunky group for those on the trail who were either not around then or too young to be aware of at the time, here’s part of the blurb that accompanied the above vid:

    To a lot of casual listeners during the early ’60s, the New Christy Minstrels were the embodiment of popular folk music. If they’re not remembered (or written about) in a very serious way, it’s mostly because of their image: ten well-scrubbed, usually smiling young men and women singing upbeat songs about Paul Bunyan or hopping freight trains, or doing optimistic renditions of Woody Guthrie tunes.
    The New Christy Minstrels began with Randy Sparks, a singer/guitarist who started out in the late ’50s mixing folk and folk-style songs with Broadway material. He was leading his own trio by the start of the new decade, and saw the possibility of putting together an ensemble of ten voices, big enough generate a major sound but retaining the basic texture of a folk trio. He combined his own trio with the Inn Group — which included a young Jerry Yester — and added four more members, including Dolan Ellis and also Art Podell, who had been part of the duo Art & Paul. The group name came from Christy’s Minstrels, a 19th century performing institution founded by Edwin Pearce Christy (1815-1862). Their debut album, Presenting the New Christy Minstrels: Exciting New Folk Chorus, was released by Columbia Records in 1962. It won a Grammy Award and peaked at number 19 in a two-year run on the Billboard charts. The group also scored a minor hit that same year with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” With help from two new managers, George Greif and Sid Garris, the group was booked onto The Andy Williams Show for the 1962-1963 season. And it was then that the original lineup deconstructed — fully half the group left, and the first round of replacements arrived, including Barry McGuire and Barry Kane; jazz-pop vocalist Peggy Connelly (soon replaced by Gayle Caldwell); singer/banjo man Larry Ramos; and Clarence Treat on upright bass. This version of the New Christy Minstrels immediately won over critics and audiences alike, beginning with an engagement at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in the summer of 1962. The new lineup made its recording debut with the concert album In Person. In the spring of 1963, the group recorded an album, Ramblin’, which was highlighted by a McGuire/Sparks collaboration called “Green, Green.” McGuire had originated the song, which was completed with Sparks’ help, and the recording was embellished by the presence of a memorable 12-string guitar riff provided by Nick Woods. It was the performance by Barry McGuire on lead vocals, however, that seemed to most capture the public’s interest, and “Green, Green” peaked at number three, the first hit single by the group.
    [continues]

  4. moving on with “fifty shades of [green]”

    Rep. George Santos is stepping down from his committee assignments after a talk with Kevin McCarthy, the former president may face indictment over his payment to Stormy Daniels, and Stephen looks into some recent zoo animal disappearances.

  7. “People whose eyes are too close together should not be trusted 
     

    Take note and you will start to notice that having eyes that are too close together is a common trait among criminals and otherwise unsavoury characters. im not saying everyone with close eyes is bad, but most of them are. im not sure ive ever met a really great person whose eyes are too close together, but that might just be my personal experience.”

    Posted by WombatCrusher

     

  10. sturge, me thinks you’ve got your hypes mixed up.    hypotelorism (abnormally close) or hypertelorism (abnormally far apart)?

    just plain ol’ “hype” describes the floriduh man as well

  13. Speaking of the Possum, some friends of mine were in his band when George was booked into an outdoor festival type thing in indiana somewhere.  (Shouldnt Indiana have to change its name?)
    Anyhow, the festival was put on by a local farmer who sunk some serious cash into it. George was the only big name he could afford, the rest were small timers or locals.  So George escaped from his handlers and slipped away, didnt make the show.  The band almost got ruint and they beat on and pelted the tour bus all the way out of the venue.  
    They didn’t call him The Possum for nothin…….

  14. Hey… let me be the first to say here….
    Thank you Tom Brady!  Thank you for the 20 years you played for the New England Patriots… sports may never see the likes of that again…

  17. R&R HOF nominees this year include Kate Bush, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine, Warren Zevon, Cindy Lauper The Spinners, Iron Maiden, Cheryl Crow and a few others.
     
    Warren and willie are on my list.

  20. Sturg, money. (& btw, I’m sure there are plenty of R&R purists (is that a thing?) who’d argue against Willie, saying he ain’t rock and roll).

  21. about brady: last year he just gave up football for the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent.  this year maybe he means retirement for good or at least retirement from the field to become a talking head sports media star.

  22. Pogo
    Except for Willie, as I don’t think he ever pretended to be R&R, they all belong in there, some of them way past due.
    I guess Willie can go in for his dope smoking  and his irritating the powers that be. I guess that is R&R.
    Jack

  23. But Willie oughta get let into anywhere there is to get let into.  
    And basically I guess I just have a problem with ALL halls of fame.   

  24. jack, “irritating the powers that be” was also hinted at in a good article a couple years back called

    Willie Nelson: Songs Only Hardcore Fans Know – Rolling Stone

    here’s a sample they wrote about his Write Your Own Songs:

    “>With just a traditional country beat and three-plus minutes, the ever-defiant Nelson offered the ultimate “fuck you” to the Nashville suits. Originally recorded as a duet with Waylon Jennings for the 1982 collaboration album WWII, Nelson cut his own version for the soundtrack to his 1984 film Songwriter. Both pack the same slap-in-the-face wallop, however, with Nelson singing directly to “Mr. Music Executive” and his ilk, beseeching them to mind their own damn business and let the artists do their job. At one point, Nelson even asks, “Is your head up your ass so far that you can’t pull it out?” Music Row, you got owned.

  25. another sample from rolling stone is his hands on the wheel where they praised a great line:

     Nelson reaches and holds notes that grab you by the denim collar and don’t let go — a case can be made for the line “there’s deceivers, and believers and old in-betweeners” being one of Nelson’s all-time best vocal runs. 

  26. When I worked for KNAX FM radio, it started as Adult Contemporary so lots of rock.  They completely switched format to modern country while the AM KFRE remained classic country.

    The motto for the midnight changeover was:  “Rock and Roll has grown up and moved to the Country”

    Country artists belong in the R & R Hall of Fame

     

     

     

  27. Jann Wenner sure knows how to market to boomers.  The nominees are selected purely to generate these arguments

  28. Pat
    So many people have made Willie Nelson songs famous. I remember when Willie was doing the outlaw stuff. I was talking tto my sister, she “he just sings all those old songs” I replyed, “thats  because he wrote all those old songs” Over 60 years of writing hit music, gotta be a record.
    BTW here is  Nora Jones singing the same song.

     

  29. Jamie
    As R&R artists as they aged moved one of three places, R&B, country or pop.
    Rock n Roll lived on screwing the next young wanna be. Of course modern country lives with the same model.
    Jack

  35. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/opinions/mike-pompeo-book-bergen/index.html

    “Never Give an Inch” combines Pompeo’s case that he would be a terrific US president with considerable elements of the score-settling memoir.

    “If you have seen Pompeo on television of late, he is almost unrecognizable because he has lost so much weight. Pompeo told the New York Post he lost 90 pounds…”

    “Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

  36. I love how the little Tik-Tokkers  have ‘discovered’ Kate Bush and Linda Ronstadt. 

    So far, ice hasn’t taken down the power lines yet. (Why don’t they bury them?) Another 1/2” is expected before morning.  

    BB – The local news had a clip of a guy jogging on the ice; he was wearing shorts and a hoody. He ran over to give a car a little push, as it had no traction on the ice. He was from Finland. He was un-phased by the ice. He’s been here twice before; once, during a flood and again, during a tornado.

  37. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/for-more-sustainable-affordable-housing-just-add-mushrooms/

    This one’s for C’Bob –

    “Mix corn stalks with hemp and mushroom roots, pour the mixture into molds that resemble the shapes you need, and voilà, the building material will grow all by itself. In five days!”

    “His unconventional ideas might stem from Benjamin’s background in art. He studied philosophy and history, and played in an indie-rock band before working in various tech startups and turning to architecture.”

    “This year, however, Benjamin will test the concept for the first time on a large scale and build a 300-unit affordable housing complex in Oakland, California.”

    “A “mushroom sandwich.” On his screen, Benjamin pulls up the colorful renderings of the Oakland project: Between the fiberglass shell and the interior walls, filler grown from mushrooms and hemp will serve both as natural insulation and carbon storage.”

    “In Oakland, the first three 12-unit houses that will start to be constructed in April will serve as test cases. One will have conventional insulation. The second will have insulation made from hemp and resin. The third will have mycelium-hemp insulation. “Like a petri dish experiment at the scale of buildings, we will compare the energy consumption, acoustics and livability of the three different scenarios,” Benjamin says. The goal: To streamline the production of affordable housing units in a way that is sustainable, fast and cost-effective.”

    “With a combination of pre-fab housing, high-performance facades and sustainable insulation, Benjamin hopes to unlock subsidies that the Biden administration has promised for sustainable affordable housing.”

    “Even the US military has turned to Ecovative with a $9.1 million defense research contract: When a soldier gets wounded in the field, first aid medics could grow a protective structure from mycelium where needed. And NASA is seriously contemplating mycelium structures on Mars.”

  39. bId – power, cable and whatever lines are buried in the Denver Front Range region because it makes more sense to spend a few extra dollars having the lines not exposed to the rough elements than pay multiple times trying to repair. 
     
    Time for another rant about “artifical intelligence”. It is not.  It is now possible in many ways seen by regular people than ever before.  It takes a lot of “horse power”, powerful computers with lots of memory to run the programs making the algorithm function.  We, computer people types, worked on it from the dawn of the electron tube and transistor.  Our constant restriction was computers that were not powerful and memory that was huge and costly. 
     
    But, each year, both restrictions were reduced a little bit.  And, finally, memory became something massive in little packages.  You can do a lot with limited computer power if you have a lot of memory to play in.  And, computer power has increased each year and in smaller packages too.  Specialized computers became easier to create to help processing specialized programs. 
     
    All of that means that AI is the media darling.  The displays of ChartAI and the other systems are just so wonderful.  If you are playing with those, remember what you are entering is just training the systems.  The “astounding” outputs, so real they confuse the experts, are the results of lots of programming and more programming and even, more programming.  I enjoy the amazement of those seeing results. 
     
    I dream of what we could have done decades ago with the power of today.  Yeah, we did stuff years ago, but were limited by our computers and memory.  Also, we did not call it artificial intelligence. We called it all sorts of things.  Autonomous control, would be one.  And, for much of what we wanted to do, we knew it would be possible in the future.

  40. Coincidentally, i tried just last night to turn a teenager onto Willie, but i don’t know if it’ll stick, them old tunes are rather far-removed from what “the kids” are into, today

  41. Willie is having a two-day (because he has two birthdays), 90th birthday bash in LA.  

    https://ktla.com/news/california/willie-nelson-to-celebrate-90th-birthday-with-all-star-concert/

    The party…”will take place on April 29-30 and feature Nelson and dozens of performers, including Neil Young, Chris Stapleton, Lyle Lovett, Miranda Lambert, Rosanne Cash, Snoop Dogg, The Chicks, Kacey Musgraves and many more.”

    “Additional performers include Norah Jones, Tom Jones, Tyler Childers, Warren Haynes, Ziggy Marley, Sturgill Simpson, Allison Russell, Beck, Billy Strings, Bobby Weir, Charley Crockett, Edie Brickell, Leon Bridges, Margo Price, Nathaniel Rateliff, Orville Peck, Sheryl Crow, The Avett Brothers, The Lumineers, and Nelson’s sons, Lukas Nelson and Micah Nelson, the latter of whom performs as Particle Kid.”

  43. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/politics/hunter-biden-laptop-contents-letter/index.html

    “Attorneys for Hunter Biden on Wednesday asked state and federal agencies to investigate a computer repair shop owner, Rudy Giuliani and number of right-wing political figures involved in disseminating contents of his laptop, alleging that they committed computer and other criminal violations in their effort to “weaponize” the laptop contents against his father.”

    “…mark the first time President Joe Biden’s son and his legal team have publicly acknowledged that it was his personal data purported to be found on a laptop left at the Delaware repair shop.”

    “Hunter Biden’s attorneys accuse computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac of unauthorized access of the laptop and distributing its contents to the New York Post for a story published in the weeks before the 2020 election.”

    “The letter asks for investigations into Garrett Ziegler, John Paul Mac Isaac, Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani and Stephen Bannon.”

    “There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me,” Hunter Biden said in a 2021 CBS interview while promoting his memoir. “It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the – that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.”

    “Mac Isaac has said he acquired the laptop in April 2019 when Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off in his shop for repairs.”

    “Biden signed a contract with Mac Isaac, which included a policy stating that if the laptop was not picked up within 90 days, it would become Mac Isaac’s property, according to the repair shop owner’s book. Mac Isaac writes that Biden never came back for the laptop.”

    Umm, this doesn’t look like a good move, does it?

    Hunter dropped off the laptop, signed a contract, never picked it up, it became the property of the shop owner after 90 days (does the contract say anything about the contents of the device?), then Hunter gave several what-ifs about the laptop, and now he admits it was his.

    Is this just throwing legal spaghetti at the wall to see if it will stick?

  44. Wenner used to be the issue with the HOF. But …

    Wenner was also a co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and for many years was not only a member of the  nominating committee but the Chairman of the institution. (Specifically, he dropped out of the nominating committee after 2006 and resigned from the Chairman position in 2019.

    Im sure the current members still have his email or cell, but unless they put their balls in a blind trust , he’s not the problem these days, but he’s certainly a good symbol of the problem. 

  45. I guess I feel about the HOF the way I feel about award shows.  I like the fashion, and I suppose I feel validated when something/someone I like wins an award.  However, it’s really kind of silly and sad.  Art is not a competition.

    The award shows are money-making/marketing endeavors. Folks will go to (or stream) the shows that win awards.  They will be exposed to some new artist or band, or feel the need to go to a concert of a favorite when the Grammy’s roll around this month. 
     
    HOF: Someone with clout started a club and then decided, publicly, who gets in and who is snubbed. I suppose they have to snub someone to make admission feel special.

    The timing is hilarious. Aerosmith was admitted in 2001, while Chet Atkins was admitted in 2002. Huh?

    Boston, even though they didn’t put out a ton of albums, they were the soundtrack to a certain period of time. However, not being in the HOF isn’t going to make their audience forget about them.

  46. Ohio needs something, let it be that 🤷‍♂️ 

    Follow-up: the kid says he likes Willie, hope for the future 👍

Comments are closed.

Join the Trail Mix

Get an alert when Craig goes live, and the link when our Open Thread heats up.