Page 14 DeJcuemly b1e0r, 240, 1240 14 EL SEGUNDO HERALD One Man’s Opinion Another Man’s Opinion O’Slinkycare Time To Face This Evil Head On Looking Up Best View Yet of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Follow Us on Twitter @heraldpub Like Us on Facebook By Gerry Chong Two good ol’ country boys, Caleb and Jesse, sat around jawin’ and reminiscing ‘bout the old days. “Jesse, ‘member before all the young ‘uns had those cell phones and fast thumbs, all we played with were simple things like Slinkys? Simple coil of metal that a kid could push off the top of a staircase and watch it tumble from step to step? Us kids would all laugh and clap as it ended in a heap down at the bottom.” “Yup, kind of reminds me of O’Slinkycare. We started out in April, at the top stair, laughing and clapping over 8 million claimed signups. But then we Slinky’ed down to 7.7 million because 300,000 didn’t pay their premiums. Then we Slinky’ed down again to 7.2 million because a whole bunch more didn’t qualify for subsidies. Then we found out that 400,000-500,000 more didn’t have heath care at all, but just had dental care, so we landed with a thud at the bottom of the stairs at 6.7 million. Down, down, down went the slinky. “Now remember, 5 million signed up for the government program only because Obama cancelled their private insurance programs, claiming they didn’t meet his standards, so maybe only 1.7 million voluntarily signed up. Maybe, young ‘uns otta frown instead of clap and laugh at O’Slinkycare’s fi rst year.” “Yeah, Jesse, but they’ve put a second Slinky on the stop stair, starting another series of tumbles. The original projection for year two was 13 million signups. But just as we thought, Slinky tumbled to 9.9 million, and then tumbled again to 9.1 million, and the By Cristian Vasquez A lot of noise and speculation has been made with regards to the recent circus that the NFL has created due to its horrendous handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence incident. During the Thanksgiving Weekend Rice’s suspension was lifted and the man is once again employable within the NFL. I’m not here to rally behind Rice to be signed by any team, nor to ask for his livelihood to be forever taken away from him. I seek something more meaningful and which would help everyone who has ever been caught in the cycles of domestic violence. While I hope to be accurate in my assumption that not a person reading this would be okay with domestic violence; what I am not sure about is how willing we as a society are still to do more than talk about the evils of domestic violence and actually act to prevent such behavior. The NFL’s immediate response was a suspension and a series of PSAs with current and former players and commentators denouncing such acts of aggression. However, what we do when the spotlight is on us and when nobody is looking greatly affects our reaction to any scenario. I was blessed to be raised in a household where violence was not an issue. We were raised to help anyone in need, without expecting anything in return. Yet, even with those values, I do recall domestic violence situations with neighbors in which we called the cops and asked to remain anonymous. While such phones calls might have prevented future harm or simply delayed the cowardly acts of one individual seeking to be emboldened by their dominance over another, I now wish we hadn’t remained anonymous. In order to control and effectively eradicate an evil such as domestic violence, we must stare it in its face. Only then will the millions of victims that live in fear will be able to understand and accept that there are those of us who will help without fear of retaliation. Is it a lot to ask a victim of violence to step forward and face their aggressor alone. So for anyone that has to urge to use the “she/ he choses to stay with them,” your mentality is part of the problem. Victims of domestic violence need more than an anonymous phone call to the local police department. They need support; they need a network of people who will help make sure that they never fall victims to another person’s aggression. It doesn’t matter what Ray Rice and his wife do from this moment forward, nor how many PSAs the NFL airs. The only way we can prevent, and maybe one day end, domestic violence is if we all stand up to this demon together. It is heartbreaking to see people abused by the ones they love and are supposed to trust. It hurts even more to realize that in some cases good people stayed quiet and did little or nothing to help. Let’s show a little more courages stop hiding from domestic violence. • year has just begun. “How we’ll get from 6.7 million at the end of year one, to 9.1 million in year two is a total mystery to me, so we’ll see if the government bean counters can make Slinkys climb up stairs and defy gravity.” “Ahhh, Caleb, the government’s work is never done. Now they’ve put a third Slinky at the top of the stairs, but they’ve put off until 2016 pushing it off the cliff. Remember O’Slinkycare called for major companies to either provide full time employees with health insurance or pay a fi ne. “So the corporations responded rationally, reducing the hours of full time employees and hiring more part-timers to fi ll the gap. The O’Slinky people call these new hires “job growth.” When slinky-three gets pushed off, millions of previously employer-insured full-timers will become part-timers; requiring a choice between inferior Medicaid coverage or the most expensive alternative, individual coverage. Down, down, down goes slinkythree. “Bungled O’Slinkycare had cost tens of billions of dollars to create; its father called Americans “stupid” for approving it; and New York’s Democratic Senator says his party shouldn’t have done it in 2010, since only 5% of people didn’t have health insurance, and 85% were happy with their private insurance. Now O’Slinkycare is this President’s proudest achievement.” “Jesse, maybe us country folk ain’t as smart as city folk, but watching O’Slinkycare’s follies is more fun than playing computer games.” • “In order to control and effectively eradicate an evil such as domestic violence, we must stare it in its face.” Based on press releases from NASA and ESO, provided by Bob Eklund Scientists have produced a new version of what is perhaps NASA’s best view of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa. The mosaic of color images was obtained in the late 1990s by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. This is the first time that NASA is publishing a version of the scene produced using modern image processing techniques. The image features many long, curving and linear fractures in the moon’s bright ice shell. Scientists are eager to learn if the reddish-brown fractures, and other markings spattered across the surface, contain clues about the geological history of Europa and the chemistry of the global ocean that is thought to exist beneath the ice. In addition to the newly processed image, a new video (http://youtu.be/kz9VhCQbPAk) details why this likely ocean world is a high priority for future exploration. Hidden beneath Europa’s icy surface is perhaps the most promising place in our solar system beyond Earth to look for presentday environments that are suitable for life. The Galileo mission found strong evidence that a subsurface ocean of salty water is in contact with a rocky seafloor. The cycling of material between the ocean and ice shell could potentially provide sources of chemical energy that could sustain simple life forms. “Spooky” Alignment of Distant Quasars NASA’s Galileo Spacecraft took this new image of Europa, an icy moon that orbits Jupiter. This is the largest, clearest image yet of Europa’s surface. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. The team has also found that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the vast structures in the cosmic web in which they reside. Quasars are galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centers. These black holes are surrounded by spinning discs of extremely hot material that is often spewed out in long jets along their axes of rotation. Quasars can shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together. A team led by Damien Hutsemékers from the University of Liège in Belgium used the VLT to study 93 quasars that were known to form huge groupings spread over billions of light-years, seen at a time when the universe was about one-third of its current age. “The first odd thing we noticed was that The Jewelry Source 337 Main St. El Segundo. 310-322-7110 www.jewelrysourceUSA.com ©2007 ‘The Top 100 Worst Christmas Gifts Ever’ some of the quasars’ rotation axes were aligned with each other—despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years,” said Hutsemékers. The team then went further and looked to see if the rotation axes were linked, not just to each other, but also to the structure of the universe on large scales at that time. When astronomers look at the distribution of galaxies on scales of billions of light-years they find that they are not evenly distributed. They form a cosmic web of filaments and clumps around huge voids where galaxies are scarce. This intriguing and beautiful arrangement of material is known as largescale structure. The new VLT results indicate that the rotation axes of the quasars tend to be parallel to the large-scale structures in which they find themselves. So, if the quasars are in a long filament then the spins of the central black holes will point along the filament. The researchers estimate that the probability that these alignments are simply the result of chance is less than 1%. •
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