Category: Animals / Insects / Water Life / Plants / Nature
Peace & Justice History for 6/20
| June 20, 1960 Nobel Prize-winner in Chemistry Linus Pauling [for study of the nature of the chemical bond and the determination of the structure of molecules and crystals] defied the U.S. Congress by refusing to name circulators of petitions calling for the total halt of nuclear weapons testing. Pauling later won a second Nobel, a Peace Prize, for his work championing nuclear disarmament.  Linus Pauling Interview with Linus Pauling on the peace movement, 1983 |
| June 20, 1965 Hundreds protested following a military coup in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. The military, under chief of the armed forces Colonel Houari Boumedienne and his National Revolutionary Council, had deposed President Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of an independent Algeria (following the withdrawal of French colonial control). On the news at the time |
| June 20, 1967 Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston, Texas, of violating the Selective Service law by refusing induction into the U.S. Army (during the Vietnam War). The World Heavyweight Champion had claimed conscientious objector status on the basis that he was a Muslim minister. The conviction, for which Ali was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, was later overturned by the Supreme Court.  “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” |
| June 20, 1982 2500 were arrested during a two-day blockade of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco, the principal American nuclear weapons research facility, operated by the University of California. |
| June 20, 1995 Shell Oil gave in to international pressure and abandoned its plans to dispose of the Brent Spar oil-drilling platform and its contents into the North Atlantic. The environmental group Greenpeace spearheaded the effort to prevent Shell from sinking the rig, its members boarding and occupying it as a tactic to stop the deep sea disposal, and to call attention to the issue peacefully. Shell’s plan would have dumped toxic and radioactive sludge into the ocean just west of the British Isles. A month later, at the Oslo and Paris Commission (OSPARCOM) meeting, 11 out of 13 countries agreed to a moratorium on the “dumping” of offshore installations, pending agreement on an outright ban.  Greenpeace climbers on Brent Spar platform  Shell ships use water cannons against Greenpeace activists on board the rig. Read more about Greenpeace and Brent Spar |
| June 20, 2002 The U.S. Supreme Court declared executing mentally retarded individuals convicted of capital crimes to be unconstitutionally cruel [Atkins v. Virginia]. Besides being in line with a consensus among state legislatures, the court found that “Their deficiencies [the mentally retarded] do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal culpability.” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june20
Starry, Starry Night … & Happy Birthday, APOD!
APOD is 30 Years Old Today
Image Credit: Pixelization of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night by Dario Giannobile
Explanation: APOD is 30 years old today. In celebration, today’s picture uses past APODs as tiles arranged to create a single pixelated image that might remind you of one of the most well-known and evocative depictions of planet Earth’s night sky. In fact, this Starry Night consists of 1,836 individual images contributed to APOD over the last 5 years in a mosaic of 32,232 tiles. Today, APOD would like to offer a sincere thank you to our contributors, volunteers, and readers. Over the last 30 years your continuing efforts have allowed us to enjoy, inspire, and share a discovery of the cosmos.
“Gibberish: Flash Fiction Friday – Up in Smoke”
(I’ve seen, as I’ve followed her, that Jeannine is a brilliant writer, and this is seriously O.Henry-level work. Enjoy! -A.)
The Peaceful Takeover by Jeannine
The future belongs to the children… though maybe not OUR children. Read on Substack
Scoot’s Assignment: Write about a smoke break, including corrosive judgement, a character who is overjoyed, and the phrase, “wouldn’t you know it.”
Peaceful Takeover
The party was loud and boisterous, but the drinking games were boring for sober spectators like Ellie. She’d just stepped outside for some fresh air and a break from the nonsensical cacophony when she noticed a strange, red light out near the garden shed. Thinking it might be a fellow teetotaler having a smoke break, she walked out towards the red glow to say “hello,” but paused when she realized that she didn’t smell any smoke… and what had appeared in the dark to be a garden shed was actually some sort of spacecraft. But by then it was too late.
“Ah, hello, I’m overjoyed to meet you,” rasped the figure. It stepped closer, and Ellie saw a reptilian face, gazing at her through the ruddy illumination cast by some sort of penlight. “Wonderful, I can’t detect any of that alcoholic poison in your bloodstream. You’ll make a lovely host mother,” the creature proclaimed. Ellie promptly fainted.
She was awakened by bird song as the sun began to rise. She realized that she was lying on the ground in her host’s backyard, but the UFO and ET were both gone. She leaped up as she heard a voice behind her, dripping with corrosive judgement, “Well, wouldn’t you know it? Here she is. What are you doing out here, you scared the hell out of us!” It was her buddy, Harry, the one who’s dragged her to this disastrous shindig. Great, now he thinks she was passed out drunk, and he’ll never invite her anywhere again. Though considering how this night had gone, that might not be such a bad thing. She decided that it would be best not to mention Lizardman, though, lest she incur even more criticism.
🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎
A few weeks later, Ellie missed her period. She’d been worrying about what the reptilian extraterrestrial might have done to her during the hours that she’d spent lying unconscious on Harry’s lawn. The positive pregnancy test confirmed one of her worst fears.
After a lot of soul searching, she decided to keep the unexpected baby. At 42, she wasn’t likely to have another opportunity. So she duly set off to visit Doctor Abrams. “Well, because of your advanced maternal age, you’ll need to be more careful than usual. Let’s do an ultrasound and see how the little guy is doing.” He ran the probe over Ellie’s belly, commenting as he worked: “Hmmmm, nice strong heart beat. Good, it seems very healthy. But… what the hell is that? It looks like a tail!” Dr. Abrams was getting more worked up by the second. Ellie stared at the screen, realizing that her unborn child looked familiar… the tiny fetus bore a strange resemblance to the lizard-like creature from Harry’s garden. Her contemplations were interrupted by the thudding sound of Dr. Abrams falling to the floor in a dead faint. Ellie quickly dressed and rushed home.
But she knew she couldn’t stay home. She was nervous that somebody from the hospital might show up, demanding that she abort her alien pregnancy. She needed to find a place that would be safe for her and her future offspring.
🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎
Ellie’s childhood friend, Bert, lived out in the country. Bert was a lovable goofball and they’d always been best friends. He liked animals better than most humans, and worked as a veterinarian. Even though he was legally limited to the treatment of nonhuman animals, he was always open to helping out with a little illicit medical aid to his human friends when necessary. Bert was a bit ‘out there,’ but Ellie knew he was someone she could trust. Bert always accepted absolutely everything at face value. He not only believed Ellie’s bizarre story about her immaculate conception of a baby space lizard, he was super excited at the prospect of being allowed to deliver the scaly child.
“Ellie, this is so COOL,” he crowed. “I can’t wait to meet your baby! Can I be its godfather?”
Ellie smiled and nodded. Maybe the next few months wouldn’t be so bad after all.
🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎
Ellie’s pregnancy was uneventful. The labor wasn’t too bad, either. Ellie supposed the fact that her baby girl was smaller than an average human child made everything easier. Bert was great. He coached her through the whole thing, and was only slightly freaked out as he examined the newborn, announcing, “Whoa, no umbilical cord! I wonder how she was nourished? Maybe sort of like a parasite?” Realizing that such thoughts were unworthy of a doting godfather, he contented himself with cooing at the little lizard girl as he cuddled her. At least HE didn’t pass out. Ellie named her Ignatia, but affectionately called her Iggy.
🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎
Ellie and Bert raised young Iggy together. His veterinary skills helped in figuring out how to tend and feed the growing creature. They home-schooled her, realizing that there was no way that she would be able to attend a public school. She was a bright and affectionate child, and as her dietary needs progressed from crickets and mealworms to larger sources of protein, she respected the squeamishness of her foster parents and was discreet in the capture and consumption of her prey.
Eventually, the day that Ellie had expected and feared arrived. She looked out the window into the backyard one night and saw that the spaceship had returned. This time, she invited the extraterrestrial into their home and introduced Bert and young Iggy. “You’ve done very well! Thank you for taking such good care of the young one! She has grown up stronger and wiser than I could have ever hoped.” She — for as it turned out the older lizard creature was female — explained how her race had been scouting around various planets, seeking a home for their future children. When a possibly suitable planet was located, they then sought out suitable hosts to carry their eggs and raise the offspring to adulthood. Ellie’s pregnancy had been the result of an implanted lizard person egg.
Bert was worried. “But what about us humans? I’m not sure that the average Homo sapiens is sapient enough to get along with your species.”
The lizard woman grinned, a potentially terrifying sight if not for the fact that they knew she was friendly. “You’re right,” she agreed, “but fortunately for us and unfortunately for your species, your race is slowly dying out. Iggy’s children will have a clear playing field, someday in the distant future.”
Ellie was sad, but she realized that this fate had been a long time coming. At least she would be able to help raise Earth’s next dominant species. “But how will she reproduce,” she asked, “are there more like her?”
“Iggy’s the only one of her kind on Earth, but she will someday be able to handle the job herself. You see, we reproduce by parthenogenesis, one offspring every twenty years. That is why we are all female, and is also why our species will never overrun the resources of this planet,” she explained. “I must fly off to check on the others. I am most grateful and will see to it that you will never lack for anything.”
Ellie and Bert knew that their biological genetics would be lost to history. The human race was doomed. But their values, their beliefs, their thoughts, their legends, their dreams — these would live on in Iggy’s memory and she would teach her descendants to remember as well. And maybe that would be enough.
Note: This story was inspired by a comment by Theresa Greene
in Chris J. Franklin’s most recent House of Haiku prompt post, “Alien.”
Here is the conversation that sparked the peaceful takeover: (snip-go see!)
“Small Southern Specialty”
“High-altitude Flycatcher”
The prettiest stick
“Golden Slippers”
Women Fasted, Amnesty Int’l Founded, and Much More in Peace & Justice History for 5/28
May 28, 1892 The Sierra Club, America’s oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, was organized in San Francisco with wilderness explorer John Muir as its first president. The organization’s initial effort was to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. Muir introduced President Theodore Roosevelt to Yosemite the following year, inspiring him during his presidency to establish the U.S. Forest Service, create 5 national parks, and sign the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” – John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)  John Muir The Sierra Club today |
May 28, 1961 Amnesty International (AI) was founded on this date in Great Britain. It is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights, particularly as laid out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Members of AI help maintain a media focus on political prisoners, and organize public pressure to afford them their legal rights and obtain their release. Visit Amnesty International Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Amnesty International projects |
| May 28, 1963 Black and white civil rights advocates were attacked as they sat-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. They were defying state laws against serving “colored” citizens at “whites-only” public facilities. According to John Salter, AKA Hunter Bear, one of those who sat in: “This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I’m covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things.”  Attacked for trying to eat at Woolworth’s (L to R): John Salter (Hunter Bear), Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Anne Moody. More photos and the story of the struggle against segregation Freedom Movement Bibliography |
| May 28, 1982 Seven women fasted for 10 days in Springfield, Illinois, in support of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the Illinois state legislature. The amendment had already been ratified by 35 other states of the 38 required. |
| May 28, 1998 Pakistan exploded five underground nuclear devices in response to India’s most recent nuclear tests.  Since the British partitioned the subcontinent in 1947, there have been three wars between the two countries and numerous border clashes over the disputed Kashmir province. Kashmir had a majority (77%) Muslim population at the time of partition, but became part of predominantly Hindu (80%), though constitutionally secular, India.  Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, widely proclaimed as the ” Father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb,” stands in the access tunnel inside the Chagai Hills nuclear test site before Pakistan’s 28 May 1998 underground nuclear test. Read more |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may28
Milky Way News-
The Milky Way Has a Mysterious ‘Broken Bone’
Galactic bones, filaments of radio-wave-emitting particles, run through our galaxy, and one of them has a fracture. New analysis suggests collision with a neutron star may have caused it.
A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University
If you look at the Milky Way through a powerful telescope, you’ll notice that close to the center of the galaxy there are elongated filaments that seem to outline its spiral shape. Scientists have a nickname for these structures: “galactic bones.” Recently, astronomers found that one of the Milky Way’s bones is “fractured,” and they believe they’ve now found a possible culprit: a neutron star that may have collided with it.
According to NASA, these bones are huge elongated formations of energized particles that spiral along magnetic fields running through the galaxy. The particles release radio waves, and so are detectable using radio telescopes.
Scientists have found several such bones in the galaxy, but one of the most striking is called G359.13142-0.20005, also known as “the Snake.” It is a 230-light-year-long filament that appears to have a fracture. It is also one of the brightest. One of the first explanations was that some as yet undetected body had disturbed the filament.
A study by Harvard University, published in the journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, set out to test this hypothesis. The research team involved found signs of a pulsar, a neutron star spinning at high speed, in the same region as the broken bone. These stars are extremely dense, and are the small remnants left after the explosion of a supermassive star.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, along with the MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa and the Very Large Array in New Mexico—two systems that detect radio waves—scientists found what appear to be traces of a pulsar in the filament. Based on data from these observatories, they estimate that this pulsar impacted the bone at a speed of between 1,609,000 and 3,218,000 kilometers per hour. The suspected collision is thought to have distorted the magnetic field of the bone, causing its radio signal to deform.
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The structure G359.13, with the fracture visible on its right-hand side. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University
In the above image provided by NASA, the Snake can be seen, and there is a body that appears to be interacting with the structure, in the middle of its length. It is possibly the aforementioned neutron star.
Pulsars are alternative versions of a neutron star where, in addition to being compact objects, they rotate at high velocities and produce strong magnetic fields. At the moment there is no instrument that can see them directly due to their size and distance, but radio telescopes can detect the electromagnetic waves they emit and hear them by converting these into sound.
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
Scottie's Playtime 