The  James Webb Space Telescope  ( JWST ) had a successful launch on Christmas day.  This $10 billion system is on a 29-day journey to Lagrange Point 2, around a million miles away.  Note, that our Earth blocks the Sun's rays from the JWST.  We won't know if it will work until after it gets there, and first sight might not be received for three months.  In the meantime,  there appears to be no way to correct any mistake  as we did for the Hubble Telescope.  The JWST has six times the collecting size of Hubble's, and is 100 times more sensitive. The  Canary Island's La Palma Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption  which began this past September, finally ended after 85 days, the longest on record for this island: 3000 buildings destroyed. $1 billion of damage. I've always wanted to visit La Palma because I have featured it several times in this blog and one of my books as the future potential site to create a  mega-tsunami , a possible analog of the Big Island of Hawaii se

  First, from the   New York Times   this morning: With this kind of difference, you shake your head and wonder why  Republicans and mothers for their 5-11 year old children  are resisting vaccinations.  ( Click on that graphic to read it .)  In short,  regarding Republicans: ... the conservative movement for the last 50 years has been built largely around creating a “political identity emphasizing suspicion, hostility, and antipathy toward the government, particularly the social welfare state.” The right has tied its political fortunes to railing against, and eroding, collective government and civic responsibility. Forced to choose between saving lives and the paranoia that has helped their hold on their political power for decades, they have, once again, chosen paranoia. Regarding children, sure, they are far less likely to die if they get COVID-19, but almost as much as adults, they do contract this ailment, and while their symptoms are less severe, if not asymptomatic, they still s