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Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| From SciAm, an astronomically bad idea. āSpace Advertisingā Could Outshine the StarsāUnless Itās Banned First  Astronomers are racing to protect the dark skies as private companies seek to place large advertisements in Earth orbit Yes, I know there are worse things going on: human trafficking, slavery, rape, murder, war, celebrity gossip (to name but a few). That doesn't stop me from hating this as well. Imagine stepping outside to stargaze on a clear summer night, only to see no stars but rather the garish glow of advertisements streaming across the sky. As usual, science fiction came up with this first. The dystopia subgenre, anyway. This seemingly science-fictional scenario isnāt actually implausible: private companies are inching closer to launching swarms of tiny maneuverable satellites to create billboardlike displays big and bright enough to be seen from the ground. Just when you think we've reached peak capitalism, something like this gets floated. It's one thing to loft satellites up there to broadcast shows and provide internet connectivity, both of which result in a barrage of ads. But they're optional ads. You don't have to tune in or connect, and you can remain blissfully ad-free. This, however, would be inescapable, unless you just stay inside all the time. The suddenly all-too-real prospect of large-scale space advertising prompted Piero Benvenuti, former general secretary of the International Astronomical Union, to raise the issue in February during a subcommittee meeting of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the United Nations body that governs the use of space for peace, security and development. Speaking of internet connectivity, astronomers are already bitching about Starlink satellite constellations, which tend to be bright and get in the way of observations. Starlink (whatever your opinion of its company's CEO) at least serves a useful function, in theory, providing internet access in remote locations. This? This would serve no useful function to anyone who isn't doing the actual advertising (and even then, it's questionable). āThere is absolutely no reason why you should use space in such a useless way to advertise commercials,ā Benvenuti says. Well, I wouldn't say "absolutely no reason." Obviously, someone thinks there's a reason, and that reason is money. In 2020 Russia granted Avant Space a patent for a laser-based technology to project messages, logos and other images for advertisers onto the sky. Hey, look, actual space lasers. And they're not Jewish. Their vision, Sitnikov says, is āto prove that space is not just for scientists, not just for the militaryāit is entertainment, too. And people like entertainment.ā It depends on the entertainment. I don't consider ads entertainment. I consider them an interruption of my entertainment. Yes, on occasion, there are entertaining commercials, but they are exceptions. In 2000 such concerns helped to spur the U.S. Congress to pass a federal law that banned the issuance of launch licenses to companies for the purpose of ferrying payloads for obtrusive space advertising. That's nice and all, but at my last count, there were at least six countries and one European Union with their own space capability, and the US is only one of them. This region of space around Earth is home to thousands of defunct rocket stages, dead satellites and discarded hardware that all zip around our planet at dangerously high speeds. On the plus side, maybe this orbital debris can finally have a good purpose: destroying the ad lasers. But, as the article notes, such collisions would create even more debris. In case you can't tell, I'm completely against this idea. I hate ads to begin with, and appreciate astronomy (not to mention the simple beauty of the night sky, which is hard enough to see from most places now). Hey, maybe the US Space Force can finally get something to do: take down the ads. |
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