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Happy Holidays to all our patient and loyal listeners! Like James Brown's infamous band, The JB's, let's keep this post tight and out of sight!  Check out our post Xmas edition of Afronerd Radio's Grindhouse broadcast-airing this Sunday at 6pm eastern on BTalk 100.   The topics to be unpacked are as follows:  our impressions of the Christmas day release of two films (Soul and Wonder Woman 1984) that were slated for an early 2020 theatrical release but ended up on their respective streaming platforms due to the pandemic; yet another unfortunate death....John Fletcher a.k.a. Ecstasy from legendary classic hip hop act, Whodini passes at 56;

Did we ever talk about the fascinating and different animated landscape (Aztec/Mesoamerican culture) of Crunchyroll's Onyx Equinox and recently completed first season?; Dburt has apparently renewed his interest in anime during our current national difficulties (i.e. One Piece, Fire Force; Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, The Seven Deadly Sins, Haikyu!! & more); more charges of racism are being levied against the tech giant Google, especially as it concerns HBCU recruitment;  Lastly, as we approach the end of an extremely stressful year and election season, we will discuss the highlights of 2020 in the black blerd space as well as thoughts about what to expect in '21.  

*One thing that Dburt is doing (finally) is investing in cryptocurrency, courtesy of Roundlyx. We would implore our followers to investigate, discern and then explore by using our referral code: afro-87A4BF

Call us LIVE at 508-645-0100. AFTER CLICKING ON THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK, GO DIRECTLY TO AFRONERD RADIO!!! 

or This link below.....
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Now that humanity has a decent shot at sending people to Mars, it’s as good a time as any to think about the kinds of lifestyle challenges the Red Planet will pose. For instance, time itself will have to change in a significant way. As this new video from YouTube channel RealLifeLore explains, people will have to rethink what a “year” or “day” means to them. (Kind of like what happened in 2020.)

RealLifeLore has produced countless similar explainers, covering everything from how large the Pacific Ocean is to what Earth will look like in the case of catastrophic climate change. (Spoiler alert: like Tatooine.)

In this explainer, the channel notes that keeping time on Mars will be similar to but also “starkly different” from keeping time here on Earth. That’s essentially because Earth and Mars take different amounts of time to orbit the Sun. Likewise, while they both rotate on their axes, they do so at different rates.

RealLifeLore

These changes result in the Martian day (or Sol) being slightly longer than Earth’s, at 24 hours and 37 minutes. Mars’ year being much longer, at 687 Earth days. However, a “second” is equal on both planets; a second defined as a particular number of radiation cycles of a cesium-133 atom, which remains unchanged anywhere in the universe. But they still end up requiring different senses of how long a “day” or “year” is.

RealLifeLore

Along with developing a new sense of the length of days or years, settlers will also need a new calendar. For this, RealLifeLore notes The Space Science Institute has already set one up. The Institute’s calendar for Mars begins on April 11, 1955 here on Earth; making that day January 1 of the first Martian year. Which would mean as we celebrate New Years Eve 2021 on Earth, Mars is still finishing out its 35th calendar month. Which is confusing, until you remember the Martian “years” are much longer. And, as Einstein famously said, that time is just a “stubbornly persistent” illusion.

RealLifeLore

The post Here’s How We’ll Keep Time on Mars appeared first on Nerdist.

Earlier this year, scientists published a paper outlining how platypuses exhibit biofluorescence under ultraviolet (UV) light. That is, how the duck-billed mammals are able to glow like a black-light poster when lit up with the invisible light. Now, more reports of other mammals glowing under UV light are beginning to emerge. Although when it comes to understanding why they do so, it seems everyone’s still in the dark.

The New York Times recently reported on multiple instances of mammals exhibiting biofluorescence. It appears the paper on glowing platypuses inspired other members of the zoological field to take up a UV light and check their own animals—dead or alive—for the ability to glow. (And why wouldn’t it?)

Dr. Kenny Travouillon, the curator of mammals at the Western Australian Museum, for example, decided to douse his own specimens in UV light in early November. In the tweet above, he notes he “couldn’t resist trying bilbies,” which are rabbit-like marsupials. Lo and behold, the little bilbies glowed like bil-bulbs!

Jake Schoen/Toledo Zoo 

The Times notes Travouillon and his colleagues also tested a handful of other species of marsupial, and found more biofluorescence. The quills of hedgehogs, porcupines, and echidnas all shone white under UV light. As well as one species of wombat. Although another species of wombat did not, nor did any of Travouillon’s kangaroos.

Researchers at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio, likewise, used UV lights on some of their mammals. In a post on Facebook, they noted their Tasmanian Devils glow under UV light. And, in fact, say this is the first documented case of the feisty Australian carnivores doing so.

As for how the mammals are able to glow under UV light, that ability comes thanks to their having fluorescent proteins in their skin, hair, eyes, etc. These proteins absorb the UV light at one wavelength, but then emit it at another. This is why the mammals can absorb invisible UV light, but then emit it as visible light; the shift in the light’s wavelength brings it into the human eye’s visual spectrum.

The reason why these mammals exhibit biofluorescence, however, is still unclear. It’s possible there’s some evolutionary benefit to glowing under UV light—perhaps for covert signaling, or to confuse predators who hunt at night—although it seems there’s little evidence for that. Which may mean these mammals exhibit biofluorescence for the same reason we humans’ teeth and nails do. Meaning, the characteristic may simply be a fluke, and nothing more than a cool black-light party trick.

The post Scientists Finding Lots of Mammals Glow Under UV Light appeared first on Nerdist.

Police brutality and state sanctioned violence have not eased up on Black Americans in 2020. In fact, it feels like it has gotten a lot worse.  

In the summer of 2018, Lawrence “Law” Watford wrapped up filming on his short Flipped.  In that story, the shoe is on the other foot when overt racism is experienced by a white high school student. White people live in an America where white boys wear hooded sweatshirts at their own risk, and white mothers pray that their sons make it home unharmed each night. 

Watford brings back a sobering reality in his latest short film Catharsis. When a Black woman mourns the death of her child at the hands of an NYPD officer, she confronts an ambitious District Attorney. The same DA who refused to bring charges against the officer who murdered her son.

What Catharsis does is reel you in the moment you start you begin watching, clearly, you know this DA has demons his battling, and although there could be a guilty conscience somewhere in there, it’s clear his motives are for blue lives above Black ones. However, what comes next in this story is the Black woman in mourning who needs to confront the man who committed a severe injustice against her son.  It is this in Catharsis that keeps you focused and slowly builds into an intense climactic ending that is gut-wrenching.

“In an era where police killings of Black people earn 10 million YouTube views, this film is about jolting people out of their comfort zone, out of their bubble and into the unfamiliar, uneasy and perhaps frightening territory,” said Watford. 

He also adds, “I want to start a war between the person we are and the person we want to be. And in the chaos of that internal conflict is where I hope the message of this movie will  have the power to at least shift the mindset, even in the slightest degree for the shortest of moments.”

You can view the entire short film for free here:

Lawrence “Law” Watford is an avid political junkie.  Law received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Hampton University (an HBCU) and a Masters of Arts in Communications as a directing student at Regent University. Since then, he has honed his craft in varied posts on numerous feature films and television shows such as I am Legend and Law & Order SVU. As the founder of Divine Write Pictures, he is constantly seeking innovative ways to tell stories that challenge and excite audiences as he expands his body of work as a content creator, screenwriter and filmmaker. 

Watford’s last film Flipped was produced along with his partners at Tyler Street Films and received critical praise for its bold approach to addressing race in America. For more information on Law, visit www.divinewritepictures.com or www.divinewritedigital.com