For the first time, scientists using data from NASA’s Curiosity rover measured the total organic carbon – a key component in the molecules of life – in Martian rocks.
“Total organic carbon is one of several measurements [or indices] that help us understand how much material is available as feedstock for prebiotic chemistry and potentially biology,” said Jennifer Stern of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We found at least 200 to 273 parts per million of organic carbon. This is comparable to or even more than the amount found in rocks in very low-life places on Earth, such as parts of the Atacama Desert in South America, and more than has been detected in Mars meteorites.”
Organic carbon is carbon that is bound to a hydrogen atom. It is the foundation for organic molecules, which are created and used by all known forms of life. However, because organic carbon can also come from nonliving sources, its presence on Mars does not prove the existence of life there. For example, it can come from meteorites, volcanoes, or be formed in place by surface reactions. Organic carbon has been found on Mars before, but prior measurements only produced information on particular compounds, or represented measurements capturing just a portion of the carbon in the rocks. The new measurement gives the total amount of organic carbon present in these rocks.
Although the surface of Mars is currently inhospitable for life, there is evidence that billions of years ago the climate was more Earth-like, with a thicker atmosphere and liquid water that flowed into rivers and seas. Since liquid water is necessary for life as we understand it, scientists think Martian life, if it ever evolved, could have been sustained by key ingredients such as organic carbon, if present in a sufficient amount.
Curiosity is advancing the field of astrobiology by investigating Mars’ habitability, studying its climate and geology. The rover drilled samples from 3.5 billion-year-old mudstone rocks in the “Yellowknife Bay” formation of Gale Crater, the site of an ancient lake on Mars. Mudstone at Gale Crater was formed as very fine sediment (from physical and chemical weathering of volcanic rocks) in water settled on the bottom of a lake and was buried. Organic carbon was part of this material and got incorporated into the mudstone. Besides liquid water and organic carbon, Gale Crater had other conditions conducive to life, such as chemical energy sources, low-acidity, and other elements essential for biology, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. “Basically, this location would have offered a habitable environment for life, if it ever was present,” said Stern, lead author of a paper about this research published June 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Now for some Tweets.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Glenn Greenwald sports his sexism and puts on his sub collar as he rushes to defend his dom Clarence Thomas, Iraq continues to suffer with no leadership, Alec Baldwin interviews Woody Allen and much more.
Let's start with some stupidity.
Glenn Greenwald. You know I try to bite my tongue because he has been under attack.
But Glenn is a sexist and I say that over and over and people come along in drive-by e-mails insisting that's not the case. He's a sexist pig.
Everything Hillary Clinton said about Clarence Thomas is no doubt true of herself -- she's one of the great projectionists. That however does not make Clarence Thomas a nice person.
Glenn is supposedly concerned about something more than the elites. I don't give two s**ts what Clarence's peers on the Court say about how nice he is. The reality is that he's an abuser and a piece of garbage. Ask Anita Hill and the other women who ready to testify before the Senate however then-Senator Joe Biden would not allow their testimony.
Glenn and his buddies all kicked Felicia Somnez because their buddy -- though they never reveal their circle jerk -- remember it was the circle jerk that brought Glenn to prominence as a blogger back in the day -- got suspended. For making a joke. Making a sexist joke in an office environment already reeling from sexism and doing so after he had already received multiple warnings this year alone. Instead of defending the person who was fighting an institution, they made it about Pig Davey -- noted liar who got fired for lying earlier. It was only after trash like Jeff Bezos -- who has no concept of importance of a functioning press -- bought THE WASHINGTON POST that Pig David was allowed back to the paper. And Pig David has no self-respect so he tucked his tail between his legs and went running back. Felicia is not the only woman at THE POST who has complained to HR about David this year.
But Glenn and the Michael Traceys and the Jimmy Dores and all the rest didn't care.
To them sexism in the work place is something they're all for. Witness Jimmy's behavior towards Ana when they were on THE YOUNG TURKS together and witness his rage at Ana in the years since versus the way he talks about Cenk. He just calls out Cenk. He wants to obliterate Ana.
It's going to be funny if Jimmy does try to run for president. (No party is electing him. No one apparently would vote for him so he has to be 'drafted' in what they're calling a new political party but most parties have chapters and hold primaries.)
Glenn dismisses what happened to Anita Hill and other women. He also dismisses Clarence's known record at the EEOC which further goes to the harm Little Clary did to women in the workplace.
No, Glenn rushes to insist, Clary Thomas is a good guy.
What a load of garbage and what a knee jerk response from a sexist pig.
These little boys need to take a look at themselves.
They're trying to raise awareness on Julian Assange and all they're doing is pissing off people. A friend at THE NEW YORK TIMES has a bet with me. He's convinced I'm going to blow their pathetic defense out of the water. He's referring to the fact that there is a good reason that the press -- corporate -- is not rushing to defend Julian.
We covered it here years and years ago. And they just lied -- that includes John Pilger. They lied because a truth was uncomfortable.
The press does have a reason to ignore him. And it's not a novel reason that they've just invented. It's a longstanding reason. I've tabled that until after Julian's free. I've bit my tongue on it for several years now. A friend at THE TIMES is convinced that I'm going to explode with it at any minute. He's been convinced of that for over two years.
I don't think I am -- I could be wrong. But I don't think I am. If I were going to, I'd probably refer to the court record on this right now.
To be clear, the person I'm dictating this too just said some are going to think I'm referring to the two women who brought complaints against Julian. I am not referring to those women or to their complaint. I'm referring to something else that came up in the case and is a matter of public record and sworn testimony.
Anyway, Glenn lying for Clarence like this?
Glenn's a pig and shouldn't be fathering a daughter if he's not willing to address his sexism. He's aging poorly -- the skin is falling off his face as though his face is a boiled chicken -- so I'm not sure how old he is. 55. I was just told he was 55.. He looks 60 at least. He needs to grow the hell up.
He's also wrong about Hillary in this case. He wants you to know -- because he has a penis so he is the norm, right? He wants you to know that Hillary couldn't have known much about Clarence at all.
Really, you're so eager to trash her that you're going to make that stupid comment?
Hillary knows everything about the people around her. She always has. Not to help them, not to assist them. But like The Terminator, she scans the room. Everyone is a potential competitor for Hillary and that's why she's always made it a point to know as much as she could about everyone around her. And certainly Clary stood out. He graduated in 1974. The first African-American to get a JSD from Yale Law School was Pauli Murray and she did that in 1965 -- not even ten years before Thomas graduated from Yale with his JDS.
Glenn always does what he calls thinking by reflecting on himself. He has no idea what Yale was like in the early 1970s and he doesn't have the common sense to grasp that his class of 1994 (not at Yale, of course) wasn't reflective on 1974.
Our point today was to open with Julian Assange. US President Joe Biden is persecuting Julian. Not the head of the Justice Dept. The decisions are not made on that level and you really do have to be a broken down, failed musician like David Rovics to think otherwise. Of course, you can also be a coward to scared to call out Joe Biden.
But calling out Joe Biden is the only thing that might get the US to drop the efforts to extradite Julian to the US. So why aren't people doing it?
And Glenn goes on FOX NEWS and tosses out Hillary hatred (which is fine, hatred of Hillary is not sexism) and then goes on to offer this ridiculous defense of Clarence Thomas.
Glenn, are you hoping that Clarence gets his way and strips you of the right to marry, strips you of certain legal rights regarding sexual relations?
Are you?
Is that what's going on?
Miles Striker is an Iraq War veteran and we try to be understanding about veterans. We also call out the loons who deserve to be called out. Miles is one.
Little Miley came across our radar back in May of last year when Ava and I had to critique the world of fetish porn. From "Media: Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs:"
He's an Iraq War veteran who makes fetish porn. He started out in femdom porn (female dominant). He's done plenty of straight porn. Sadly, he decided to move over to gay porn. Even worse, some gay men have embraced him.
They shouldn't have.
Now domination may or may not be your fetish. If it is, enjoy -- whether as a fantasy or in reality. And humiliation and shame may be your kink as well.
That's your thing.
We have no problem with that.
Where we have a problem is with the garbage he does for the gay community. Ty brought a particular video to our attention: GAY RIGHTS REVOKED.
This is a POV -- point of view -- video. He speaks to someone unseen.
He announces at the beginning, to the f**got (his term), that the US government has revoked gay rights -- something he always knew would happen, he says -- and this was either by the Courts or the Congress -- don't expect to follow his storyline because he never thought it out -- he's a dumb ass -- in real life and in the video.
And now he is going to burn the brow of this f**got neighbor, someone he burned before. Back then, Miles had the police knock on his door for the hate crime. That's over because, as Miles asks, "How can you hate a thing?" Miles announces that the house is now his house and that he'll be pissing down the throat of the 'thing.' Won't be screwing him or getting oral sex from him, but he'll piss down the throat of the 'thing' and puts the ash from his cigarette on the tongue of the 'thing' repeatedly.
This performer, Miles Striker, won an award from the porn industry.
The LGBTQ community should not be encouraging this, they should be calling him out and they should be joined by many other voices.
Maybe Glenn's one of Miles Striker's biggest fans and has been longing for the day when GAY RIGHTS REVOKED could become true? I don't know.
I do know that a normal person doesn't go out of their way to defend someone like Clarence Thomas who has put in writing that he wants to overturn marriage equality and to make sodomy illegal again.
That's who Glenn Greenwald wants to defend as a good guy.
There's nothing to defend there and Glenn comes off like a sub when he does so. I really would have thought Glenn were the top in that relationship. But apparently he's a sub (and that's not a bottom for those who don't know -- a sub is more along the lines of the person Striker is speaking to in the video we described above).
We noted in yesterday's snapshot that a former college student shot two professors in Iraq. AFP reports:
Two Iraqi university professors were gunned down in the Kurdish regional
capital Irbil on Tuesday prompting the arrest of a disgruntled former
student, authorities said.
Shootings as a means of settling scores are far from rare in Iraq — its
legacy of war and sectarian conflict mean the country’s 40 million
people count some 7.6 million firearms, according to figures from the
Small Arms Survey.
A Soran University engineering professor was shot dead in his home in
the early hours, and the dean of the Salaheddin University law faculty,
Kawan Ismail, was killed on campus shortly afterwards, provincial
governor Omed Khoshnaw told reporters.
Police believe the shooter did not originally intend to kill the
engineering professor, but rather his wife, who is a law professor at
the same university and was away from home at the time, Khosnaw said.
On the political front there is . . . no new news. The political stalemate continues. AHRAM reports:
“The Iraqi people were waiting for steps to be announced by the strong and popular Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr to form a national and reformist government and not a consensual government,” Jinan Ali, an activist who participated in the Tishreen (October) protests in Iraq in 2019, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The protests forced changes in the Iraqi elections law and Independent Higher Electoral Commission and obliged the government of former prime minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi to resign in December 2019.
“One of the demands of the Tishreen protests was to put an end to the policy of muhasasa [power sharing by sectarian quota] or what they call ‘consensual government’ that has achieved nothing since the first general elections in 2006,” Ali said.
“This policy has led to chaos and corruption and increased the percentage of Iraqis living under the poverty line,” she added.
Ali is not optimistic that the kind of government the protesters wanted to see will now be formed after the resignation of the Sadrist Bloc, the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament after last year’s elections, and the formation of the Save the Nation Alliance with the Siyada (sovereignty) Alliance of Parliamentary Speaker Mohamed Al-Halbousi, a Sunni Muslim, and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) of Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.
The Coordination Framework (CF) led by former prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki includes all Iraq’s Shia political parties and movements except the Sadrist Bloc, and the Sunni Al-Azm Alliance and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of late Iraqi president Jalal Talbani wants to form a consensual government with it.
We're ten days away from nine months since the October 10th elections.
Iraq is still facing the pandemic (as we all are around the world). In addition, they're facing cholera -- and the country's had their first cholera confirmed death this year. In addition, there are the issues of climate change -- drought especially. And there's no leadership at the top.
In this climate, MIDDLE EAST EYE reports:
On the morning of 25 June, three men claiming to be from National Security Service forces, stormed a training workshop on gender-based violence in Iraq’s southern city of Basra.
The men, who were wearing civilian clothes and had arrived in a tinted GXR vehicle, told the organisers of the Advocacy Campaigns Against Gender-Based Violence workshop, set up by al-Firdaws Society, that training on such topics is not allowed, both now and in the future.
Fatima Bahadly, founder of al-Firdaws, condemned the attack on the workshop and demanded that the authorities in Basra release a public statement regarding the incident.
“[They need to] clearly explain the circumstances to the media outlets, or we will otherwise go to the judiciary and follow up all the legal means to secure our rights,” Bahadly told Middle East Eye.
Bahadly, a prominent Iraqi rights activist whose 26-year-old son was found shot dead last year, has received death threats over the years for her work on human rights issues in Iraq and has faced severe social pressure from her own tribe.
In yesterday's snapshot, this appeared:
Two quick notes. Everyone in the community is depressed regarding ROE. I don't think there's going to be an edition of THIRD so if that proves to be the case as today unfolds, Ava and I'll post our TV piece late this afternoon (PST). I believe it's 10:00 am EST that, on INSTAGRAM, Alec Baldwin is going to be interviewing Woody Allen live. I consider Alec a friend. I know Woody but we're not friends and weren't when he was with Mia (who was a friend). I'm sure it'll be an interesting interview and if it makes it up on YOUTUBE we'll gladly repost it.
The public account got over 60 e-mails insisting I had trashed Woody Allen in the comments above. As Keesha says, this is a private conversation in a public square. If you're going to make judgments, try to do a little research.
I don't like Woody as a person. I never have. That is up here and at THIRD. He's a great artist. We don't connect. That doesn't make him a bad person. My comments yesterday was "quick notes" -- I do consider Alec a friend (he's nuts when it comes to Ukraine but, in fairness, he's not as nuts as Jane is -- I am well remember a smarter Jane Fonda than the one we've got today). Woody and I never got along. Sometimes people don't. It doesn't mean that we fought. It doesn't even mean that we hate each other. It just means there's never been a connection there. He is a great artist.
I have defended him regarding Mia's allegations which I believe are lies and I say that as a former friend of Mia's (I dropped her). Dylan has doubts about what she's saying. She should. I believe Woody's innocent -- and that has been the findings in the investigations that have taken place. Dylan's comments at 7? You mean when Mia was taping her own daughter nude? You mean when Mia dropped that tape off at TV news station hoping they would air -- but they didn't want to air kiddie porn?
The HBO documentary was a bunch of lies from a bunch of liars.
Ava and I covered it in "TV: Back into the cesspool" and at the end of that you can see these links:
"The award for best self-created drama goes to Mia Farrow (Ava and C.I.)"
"TV: Another idiot for the idiot box"
"Mia and the meanings for America"
"Mia and her brood drag whatever's left of the name through the mud"
"Dylan whines to Maureen Orth who passes it on to Janet Maslin"
"Media: "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!""
"He's a criminal (Ava and C.I.)"
"Natalie Wood: The lies that remain repeated (C.I.)"
"Deep Thoughts From Roh-Roh Farrow"
"MEDIA: Hannah Gadsby is the 21st century's Jimmy Swaggart"
Those are only some of the pieces I've written and co-written regarding this issue.
Here's Alec's interview with Woody Allen.
The following sites updated:
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Denzel Curry: Tiny Desk Concert53 minutes ago
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Impeach him already8 hours ago
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Graham Elwood8 hours ago
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Reading, conman Avenatti and more9 hours ago
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Where is the special prosecutor?9 hours ago
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