The death toll for Category 4 Hurricane Helene is now up to 64 .  Surprisingly enough, South Carolina is up to 23, with Florida at 11, with 10 of them from the Tampa Bay area.  Perry and Tallahassee had none.  Note that the dangerous quadrant is to the northeast ( 0 to 90 degrees ).  These numbers are expected to further rise.  There is particular worry about North Carolina.   4.8 million lost power.   Notice how the eye of Helene has circled back to Tennessee. I read an article by John Crisp on  Live on Mars? How about life on Earth? What should be the priority of NASA?  Send people to the Moon and Mars?  Or minimize mammoth expenses by focusing on telescopic explorations to find life in our solar system and beyond? I once worked on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at the NASA Ames Research Center, and eight years ago Harry Jones, who works there, speculated that the  cost of the first human mission to Mars would be $500 billion . When President G.W. Bush in 2004 announced

To follow-up on the Kamala Harris - Tim Walz ticket, some humor.  Read Laura Yuen's op-ed,  No, Walz isn't old.  He's 60 (which is the new 40 ).  To quote. Joe Biden is old. Now that he’s dropped out of the race, we all can agree Donald Trump is old. Kamala Harris looks youthful. Tim Walz appears oldish, but he’s only about six months older than Harris. Our governor, who was announced as Harris’ vice presidential running mate, acknowledges the disparity. The former teacher attributes his graying appearance to having supervised a high school lunchroom for 20 year s. Retorted Walz:   You do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me . By the way, Brad Pitt is also 60.   Photo taken this year , in an article that says he is worth $400 million. Yuen also had a dig at Trump:   The lines on his face come from the worry of protecting Minnesotans during COVID-19, and the glee from being swarmed by schoolkids when he signed a free-lunch bill into law. When I’m the age of

I watched on Netflix last night:   Einstein and the Bomb .   Rotten Tomatoes  reviewers gave it an 83 rating. What surprised me was that while I knew it was his letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that got the U.S. going on the Manhattan Project, security reasons did not allow him to participate in the effort.  The film  Oppenheimer  covers the building phase of the Atomic Bomb, and a portion of it shows  Oppie meeting with Einstein . So I thought this morning, what can go wrong today to instantly eliminate us.  It then occurred to me that a nuclear war between Russia and the Free World would probably be it.   One list  has climate change at #1, nuclear warfare #2, pandemics #3, social media #4, The Butterfly Effect #5, quantum computing #6, AI #7, the death of all bees #8, asteroid impact #9 and alien invasion #10. But climate change will take time to kill us, and there are reasons to believe that we will gain control someday when decision-makers get truly serious. The war in Uk