Miraz Jordan

All on for Mars:

The United Arab Emirates is about to launch its first mission to Mars. It will be the Arab world’s first flight to another planet.

The SUV-sized spacecraft, called the Hope probe, …will reach Mars by February 2021.

Also launching soon: NASA and China.

a detailed DNA analysis of the genomes of more than 800 Polynesians and Native Americans, both modern and prehistoric, [shows] evidence of contact … as far back as 1200 CE.

…a single contact event … between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group

Source

Oh, there was a blast from my youth, when the good music was! The Shangri-Las ‘Leader Of The Pack’ .

Many thanks to @agilelisa for introducing me to musicians Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei. I found this enjoyable 30 minute video: Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei at the National Immigrant Integration Conference. A wonderful fusion of Appalachian and Chinese music. And in 2 languages. ♬

If you enjoy both nature and words then this 22 minute episode of Brit Garner’s Nature League is for you: Nurse Sharks and Other Strange Names

Brit investigates how the nurse shark and other species got their intriguing English names.

Seems one may have come from Portuguese.

Matariki is the time when Māori celebrate the new year. The Matariki star cluster is known to many of us as Pleiades. 🌟

Now the year turns and we look towards spring. Already our peach and nectarine trees are showing buds. We have 15 more minutes daylight than at solstice. 😎

This Micro Monday I suggest @kimberlyhirsh , a space mermaid sparkle goth who also is a doctoral candidate in information and library science. Nice variety of posts.

This applies to Covid-19 testing done in Aotearoa New Zealand, but tests elsewhere may well use the same methods: Coronavirus testing - how does it work?.

Some excellent videos of how a nasal swab is done and how samples are processed. Great informative science article. 🦠

This may be handy for other users of the fabulous NetNewsWire RSS reader from @brentsimmons — an Applescript to grab an article summary and its link and mash them together ready for further editing after pasting:

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	tell current article
		set mySummary to summary
		set myLink to permalink
		set myReport to "x" & myLink & mySummary
		set the clipboard to myReport as string
	end tell
end tell

We enjoyed Netflix ☛ The Old Guard with Charlize Theron, even though I’m a bit over superheroes. This had some nice gentle touches on various issues around immortality and the point of living, and whether we can do good in the world. 🎬 Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood.

These drongos make me angry. Aotearoa New Zealand has no community transmission of Covid-19 because we all put in the effort to achieve that. Arrivals must remain isolated. Four people so far have bust out of isolation:

• climbed fence
• cut fence
• escaped
• broke window

🦠

For those following along with my shifting my Time Machine backup to a new hard drive: I set my MacBook Pro to backup to the new drive around 8pm. When I had to let the dog out around 2am it had completed its backup. 🥳 Whew. I’d anticipated another 24 hours of inconvenience.

And finally, after something like 32 hours of preparing to copy the backup from one drive to another, then copying about 750GB out of 950GB, I got an error message and copying ceased. 😫 I seem to have backups from February 2020 to March 2020… ‼️

Woohoo, after about 28 hours of ‘preparing’ finally my backup is copying to a new hard drive. Estimate for copying 1TB is ‘about a day’.

And there at dawn, from behind the low hill, a thick column of grey smoke pushes up towards the sky, becoming thicker after about 20 metres and then forming itself into a broader cloud as it meets moving air.

Half a dozen paddocks away someone, solving a problem for themselves, has lit a green waste fire. For now the smoke drifts away, away from them and away from us. It forms a hazy screen over the golden glow from a rising sun largely hidden by clouds.

The fire has plenty of fuel, but as morning wears on the wind shifts. By lunchtime the smell of smoke is heavy by the front door. I'm relieved I chose not to do washing today, but am sad I have to keep all the doors and windows shut tight. I try to avoid going outside.

Now this unknown person's solution has become my problem. This is no tiny trickle of smoke from a household woodburner. This is a mass of unhealthy offensive particles produced by someone who didn't feel like letting nature take its course or removing their green waste to one of the region's approved stations.

In order to save themselves some space or a few dollars they're dumping their offensive waste on the rest of us.

This week it was this fire. Last month it was another one several kilometres away, but the smoke was clearly visible for days. A few months ago billowing clouds of smoke from the other direction led to 5 days of sore throat misery, rewashing 3 loads of clothes and bedding and then having to dry it all indoors with the house sealed.

It's hard to discover who's in charge of regulating and monitoring such outdoor fires, but it seems to be a combination of Fire Emergency, the Regional Council and the District Council.

It seems Fire Emergency allow the fires.

Horizons Regional Council strive to maintain clean air in the region and say "smoke from open fires must not go beyond the boundaries of your own property."

Meanwhile Horowhenua District Council manage smoke nuisance complaints.

It's handing off the problem on a large scale.

How hard it is to understand why in this era of heightened concern for our health and environment such outdoor fires are even permitted at all. We don't allow people to dump their rubbish on the side of the road, or to tip old engine oil into the streams. Why is it that folks can pour smoke into the air?

First published in Ōtaki Today, July 2020, Page 23.