Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy National Gardening Day! No John Hammond frankenflowers here.
The first garden club in America was founded in January 1891 as The Ladies Garden Club of Athens, Georgia.




“The flight of the Apollo 13 to the moon is in serious jeopardy this morning and is not going to make a moon landing.”

- CBS middle-of-the-night coverage, April 14, 1970




‘That was super!’

— Commander John W. Young

April 14, 1981: after having orbited Earth 37 times, John Young and Robert Crippen successfully brought America’s first space shuttle, Columbia, back to Earth, landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.




April 14, 1986: USAF & USN aircraft carried out Operation EL DORADO CANYON, as ordered by President Ronald Reagan—in retaliation for the Libyan government’s involvement in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed one off-duty American soldier and mortally wounded another.  Refueling tankers, especially the KC-10, played a key role in getting F-111s to their targets. 7 women flew on the tankers. 24 U.S. Air Force F-111s departed Royal Air Force (RAF) Base Lakenheath along with five EF-111s from RAF Heyford.



45 aircraft in total, 300 bombs dropped, 48 missiles fired. 35 bombed, 1 missed, 1 lost, 8 aborts. 227 hits, 5 misses, 48 homing missiles. Wiki

As each F-111 aircraft exited the target area, they gave a coded transmission, with “Tranquil Tiger” indicating success and “Frostee Freezer” indicating that the target was not hit.


AIR FORCE Magazine, March 1999

1986 - Operation El Dorado Canyon

Although the mission was deemed a success, it was not without controversy. The Navy later claimed that the entire operation could have been accomplished using Navy assets. Furthermore, the commander of the 48th TFW believed that the original concept of a small group of F-111s had grown too large, leading him to believe that there was little chance to surprise the Libyan defenses and the number of aircraft would allow air defenses time to concentrate on the second wave of attackers. However, proponents of the larger strike force believed it would do significantly greater damage to the targets and was worth the risk. The attack killed 37 people and left 93 injured. Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi and appeared visibly shaken when he appeared on television 24 hours later to protest the strikes. Operation EL DORADO CANYON showed that the Air Force could successfully make precision strikes against targets thousands of miles away, an early example of the U.S. Air Force's Global Reach capability. Problems encountered during the operation were also addressed, and five years later the F-111s Pave Tack targeting system destroyed more targets than any other aircraft during Operation DESERT STORM.

Capt Gregory Ball, USAFR, Ph.D.

Eileen A. Bjorkman is a writer, pilot, aeronautical engineer, and retired Air Force colonel. As the sixth woman to graduate from the USAF Test Pilot School, she is widely recognized as an Air Force trailblazer. She was a flight test engineer during her Air Force career, flying more than 700 hours in twenty-five different types of military aircraft, including fighters such as the F-4 and F-16. She retired from the Air Force in 2010 as a colonel after thirty years of active-duty service. She is also a civilian pilot with more than 2,000 hours of pilot time. She is currently the Executive Director at the Air Force Test Center, Edwards Air Force Base, California and is the first woman to hold that position.

Interview with Eileen A. Bjorkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-I_HA-FQQ


April 14, 1999: A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history. The storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in its path. In total, over 20,000 properties and 40,000 vehicles were damaged during the storm with more than 25 aircraft damaged at Sydney Airport.



Sydney Hailstorm 1999 (short news compilation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0zOhjSeNyc


April 14, 2003: The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%. Although this was reported to cover 99% of the euchromatic human genome with 99.99% accuracy, a major quality assessment of the human genome sequence was published on 27 May 2004, indicating over 92% of sampling exceeded 99.99% accuracy which was within the intended goal. Level "complete genome" was achieved in May 2021, with only 0.3% of the bases covered by potential issues. The final gapless assembly was finished in January 2022. Did Covid have a role in that completion?

Funding came from the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as numerous other groups from around the world. A parallel project was conducted outside the government by the Celera Corporation, or Celera Genomics, which was formally launched in 1998. Most of the government-sponsored sequencing was performed in twenty universities and research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China, working in the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC).

Back in 1990, the human genome project was considered highly controversial.
One of the big criticisms was that we'd get "enormous reams of uninterpretable and often useless data, essentially a computerized catalogue of genes".

Later, along came bioinformatic analysis of that "useless data" which led to breakthroughs like CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) of DNA sequences, in which today seems to be their holy grail gene editing platform.



Human Genome Project (Wiki)  |  Great 15-Year Project To Decipher Genes Stirs Opposition


The Blue Origin all-female crew have safely landed back on Earth following a brief trip to "Space". Katy Perry said she felt deeply connected to the "strong divine feminine" after her spaceflight alongside an all-female crew.  I'm all for launching celebrities into space. I don't understand the letting them come back part.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZPjFnFvtM

Katy shared that she brought a daisy with her to space, a nod to her daughter Daisy, but also as a symbol of something greater.

"Daisies are common flowers, but they grow through any condition," Perry said. "They are resilient. They are powerful. They are strong."

Probably just a coincidence, but an interesting one.

Aside from launching the day after Palm Sunday - which seems a bit weird - April 14th is a very potent date of events.

1561 – A celestial phenomenon is reported over Nuremberg, described as an aerial battle.

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.

1894 – The first ever commercial motion picture house opens in New York City

1906 – The first meeting of the Azusa Street Revival, which will launch Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement, is held in Los Angeles.

1909 – Muslims in the Ottoman Empire begin a massacre of Armenians.

1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins to sink.

1935 – The Black Sunday dust storm, considered one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl

1944 – Bombay explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor kills 300

1958 – The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.

1981 – STS-1: The first operational Space Shuttle, Columbia completes its first test flight.

1986 – The heaviest hailstones ever recorded fall on Bangladesh, killing 92.

1994 – Twin U.S. Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down twin U.S. Army helicopters in Iraq

1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.

2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced.

2006 – Twin blasts triggered by crude bombs in the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi

2014 – Twin bombs detonate at a bus station in Nigeria, killing at least 88 people - Boko Haram claims responsibility.

2023 – The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is launched by the European Space Agency.


In case you thought she was the first diva in space:

On October 18, 1963, French scientists launched the first cat into space on a Veronique AGI sounding rocket. The cat, named "Felicette," was successfully retrieved after a parachute descent. No word on her singing aboard.

Laika and Her “Children”—Animals in the Space Race


LOL, some idiot 'vibe coder' is gonna accidentally take down the power grid or something...


LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything


May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes.
May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. Hail Eris.




Monday words...



The SS Botany Bay was the sleeper ship launched by Khan (the same character as in the later movie Wrath of Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban) in the original Star Trek episode “Space Seed”. The name was given because they launched the ship to escape losing a conflict and sought a better home in the stars.

Here's one version: