The New York Times reports:
Ever since the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine began last spring, upbeat announcements were stalked by ominous polls: No matter how encouraging the news, growing numbers of people said they would refuse to get the shot… But over the past few weeks, as the vaccine went from a hypothetical to a reality, something happened. Fresh surveys…
Tag: Christmas
How San Francisco Got a Very Special Monolith on Christmas Day
Ananda Sharma, founder of the app Gyroscope, describes to a local TV station the monolith he discovered during a Christmas-morning jog under a candy-cane red sunrise. “I think I smelled it before I saw it…” He spotted a double rainbow and wanted to peek at that too. At first, he thought the monolith was “a big post,” but as he got…
Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html…
Redox OS 0.6 Released With Many Fixes, Rewritten Kernel Memory Manager
Redox OS, the micro-kernel based Rust-written operating system, is out with a new Christmas release. From a report: Redox OS 0.6 was released on Christmas Eve with many bug fixes and new features. Redox OS 0.6 features a complete rewrite of its RMM kernel memory manager, improvements to its Relibc C library implementation, Pkgar as a new package format, and Rust…
What Are You Paying For in a $300 Chess Set? Mostly the Knights
If you bought a wooden chess set after watching “The Queen’s Gambit,” the price you paid was most likely dictated by just four pieces. From a report: The knights alone can account for as much as 50 percent of the cost of a nice wooden set. While the rest of the pieces can be machine-made, the knights are carved by hand…
Famous Earthrise photo taken on Christmas Eve
A Christmas Eve photograph showed humans their home world from a whole new perspective. This is the photo that’s said to have launched the environmental movement. It’s “Earthrise,” the iconic photo taken by astronaut William Anders on the 4th orbit of the moon aboard Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/apollo-8-earthrise-december-24-1968-new-simulation…
What Scientists Know About the Coronavirus Variant Spreading In the UK
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Several European countries have banned flights from the U.K. over fears about a new coronavirus variant that has forced millions of people in Britain to cancel their Christmas plans. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Italy all announced restrictions on U.K. travel. Others will likely follow suit as scientists warned that the…
Could the Christmas Star visible tonight actually be the Star of Bethlehem?
Did the biblical “Star of Bethlehem” come back in 2020? It wouldn’t be crazy to think so. But it’s not the only possibility. Source: https://www.livescience.com/was-christmas-star-really-jupiter-saturn.html
How to photograph Monday’s Winter Solstice from your phone
Another great photo opportunity occurs Monday after sundown: the Winter Solstice and the sighting of the “Christmas Star.” Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-monday-winter-solstice.html…