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When it comes to health care, President Donald Trump has promised far more than he has delivered. But that doesn’t mean his administration has had no impact on health issues — including the operation of the Affordable Care Act, prescription drug prices and women’s access to reproductive health services............ Continue Reading

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What lies at the edge of an expanding supernova? Subtle and delicate in appearance, these ribbons of shocked interstellar gas are part of a blast wave at the expanding edge of a violent stellar explosion that would have been easily visible to humans during the late stone age, about 20,000 years ago. The featured image was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is a closeup of the outer edge of a supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop or Veil Nebula. The filamentary shock front is moving toward the top of the frame at about 170 kilometers per second, while glowing in light emitted by atoms of excited hydrogen gas. The distances to stars thought to be interacting with the Cygnus Loop have recently been found by the Gaia mission to be about 2400 light years distant. The whole Cygnus Loop spans six full Moons across the sky, corresponding to about 130 light years, and parts can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, details about how lightning is produced remains a topic of research. What is known is that updrafts carry light ice crystals into collisions with larger and softer ice balls, causing the smaller crystals to become positively charged. After enough charge becomes separated, the rapid electrical discharge that is lightning occurs. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to about three times the surface temperature of the Sun. The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound known as thunder. Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average 44 lightning bolts occur on the Earth every second. Pictured, over 60 images were stacked to capture the flow of lightning-producing storm clouds in July over Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. Follow APOD in English on: Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter

Photo by Joe Randall

The past few days, have been wild.
I am living with an elderly child.
A child; my loved one I see,
Who asks all these questions of me.
Did you know my parents, I had?
I have nothing. No Mom or Dad.
She knows we have friends, I recall
But doesn't know names, not at all.
She remembers our granddaughter, by name,
For all others, it's not the same.

First came the Lord,
a beastly virus
and the rest,
bringing all
their fleas,
to a love fest.
Not liking Citizens
of this
grand land,
he was in control
of this,
under his command.
He cares not
for others,
it was the word,
for he
was committed
to take
Democracy away.
Rid his kingdom
of those
with dark skin,
was his desire,
so it was said.
He was well
started
with over 200,000
citizens dead.
Don't ask me
questions about
those all gone.
Next question,
as I am ,
now moving along.
It is a fake
virus,
is what he said
and it matters not
if you count
all the dead.
If you think
this funny,
it is not a joke,
for a real demon,
has you now,
by the throat.
Here's what you do,
get off your rear
and please vote Blue.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Observe the Moon each night and its visible sunlit portion will gradually change. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or synodic month is completed in about 29.5 days. They look full, but top left to bottom right these panels do show the range of lunar phases for a complete synodic month during August 2019 from Ragusa, Sicily, Italy, planet Earth. For this lunar cycle project the panels organize images of the lunar phases in pairs. Each individual image is paired with another image separated by about 15 days, or approximately half a synodic month. As a result the opposite sunlit portions complete the lunar disk and the shadow line at the boundary of lunar night and day, the terminator, steadily marches across the Moon's familiar nearside. For extra credit, what lunar phase would you pair with the Moon tonight?

Photo by Marcella Giulia Pace

How old must you be
to stop having a fantasy?
Is there a certain age
to be used as a gauge
and stop behaving like a teen
age boy or somewhere in between?
Perhaps there is a notion,
as we age there is no emotion.
For me, it isn't true
as I feel connected, to you.
Emotions help you to relate
and avoid being a reprobate.

The anguish of love.
The anguish of denial.
The anguish of hate,
All last a while.
There is nothing easy,
About life on this day,
Except to work hard,
Keeping the dogs at bay.

The darkness of shadows.
A stillness of night,
Will show us our errors,
revealing our plight.
There will be no tomorrow
for many this day,
as the Co-vid virus,
has taken them away.
Two hundred thousand souls
are no longer here,
while this petulant child
plays golf, without fear.

I say to you now
and I'll say it again.
How can you measure
the strength of a man,
who will not accept
responsibility of his command?

When your loved one, says to thee,
"I don't have any of my family.
My parents are gone and I see,
You no longer like much of me."
I then explain about our history.
Words fly past and then I see
She no longer remembers me.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (also known as M31), a mere 2.5 million light-years distant, is the closest large spiral to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch, but because its surface brightness is so low, casual skygazers can't appreciate the galaxy's impressive extent in planet Earth's sky. This entertaining composite image compares the angular size of the nearby galaxy to a brighter, more familiar celestial sight. In it, a deep exposure of Andromeda, tracing beautiful blue star clusters in spiral arms far beyond the bright yellow core, is combined with a typical view of a nearly full Moon. Shown at the same angular scale, the Moon covers about 1/2 degree on the sky, while the galaxy is clearly several times that size. The deep Andromeda exposure also includes two bright satellite galaxies, M32 and M110 (below and right).

Photo by Adam Block