Category Archives: Uncategorized

apotropaic:

Apotropaic magic (from Greek apotrepein “to ward off” from apo- “away” and trepein “to turn”) is a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye. [Wikipedia]

From the Artifact column of Archaeology (November / December, 2016):

Found during recent renovation work [at St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge], behind the wainscoting between a window and a fireplace, the well-worn shoe was put there almost three centuries ago as an apotropaic item intended to ward off evil and bad luck. Popular magic of this kind was a relatively widespread phenomenon in England between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, with shoes being the most common items secreted, explains [archaeologist Richard] Newman. While the discovery of concealed items is by no means uncommon, he says “it’s always exciting because practical magic represents a silent tradition—there is no documentary record of the practice of concealment—and archaeology allows us to explore an otherwise little-known facet of the social lives of those in the past.”

This report from NewScientist (8 October 2016) is interesting:

… an ink has been developed that can be used to 3D print bone implants in any size, shape and form – from leg bones to entire skulls. And because the implants are flexible, they can be cut into the perfect shape in the operating theatre.

The ink is made from hydroxyapatite, a mineral found naturally in bone, and PLGA, a polymer that binds the mineral particles together and gives the implants their elasticity. …

Once in place, the implants are rapidly infiltrated by blood vessels and gradually turn into natural bone (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/bq8r). This offers a cheap and versatile way to repair an injury.

Turns into bone? Wow. I wonder what limitations there might be. Could they print a middle ear and have it work?

How many levels of parody can there be? My Arts Editor sends me this article by ReverbPress‘ Timothy Bertrand, reporting on the dissolution of Trump’s Policy Advisors Group:

The Donald Trump campaign neglected to pay so many D.C. policy advisers and staffers, many of them have quit, according to a new report from The Washington Post. Beginning in August, staffers at Trump’s Washington, D.C.-based policy shop have been unhappy about missing wages, poor management, and general abuse of the staff.

“They use and abuse people,” a former staffer told reporter Josh Rogin. “The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.” He also called the office a “complete disaster”.

Several former staff members say they were promised financial compensation for their hours of hard work poring over documents, writing policy memos, and organizing meetings and briefings. The leaders of the shop, former chiefs of staff Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, later told the staff members that they were unpaid volunteers.

It’s like a parody of a cartoon parodying a banana dictatorship. I’m not even sure who’s more at fault – Trump’s organization for not handling this professionally? The folks who turned out to be “unpaid volunteers”, for not clarifying the situation from the get-go? Trump for skimping on everything he could possibly skimp on, like any “good businessman” – without realizing he’s not in the world of business anymore?

I’m agog. I mean, the guy doesn’t even have charisma. How does he retain this high level of support in the polls?

38 North‘s Martyn Williams checks in on the latest television developments in North Korea:

TV viewers in North Korea are no longer tied to watching shows at the time they air. The country has begun an “Intranet” Protocol Television (IPTV) service providing access to live and catch-up TV, according to a report carried by Korean Central Television on Tuesday, August 16. The IPTV service demonstrates greater media accessibility to the DPRK’s four TV channels, previously available only through a simple, one-time over-the-air broadcast. North Korea’s state TV appears likely to expand its potential reach by making programming available outside of its traditional 3pm to 11pm broadcast time, and free up viewers to tune in at their convenience.

The DPRK’s new streaming service demonstrates a technological advancement for the country, as it is run off North Korea’s Kwangmyong intranet, and could become an indicator of intranet accessibility in North Korean households.

But Williams has a caution for North Koreans thinking of using the service:

However, there is the question of availability: it is unclear how many apartment buildings and houses in North Korea have access to the kind of high-speed data service that such a service relies on. There is also the issue of control and monitoring, as with such a service, monitoring of what programs are watched per household is technically possible.

The UK has not yet achieved the ecstacy of Brexit (or will it be the agony), but there are already chewy bits showing up in their beer. Lawfare‘s Shannon Togawa Mercer analyzes:

Despite that, the tension surrounding foreign workers in the United Kingdom and their post-Brexit status has already begun to mount. After the September Tory conference to which I alluded above, Home Secretary Amber Rudd distributed a controversial briefing note suggesting that companies may have to aggregate and disclose to the government a list of the foreign workers in their employ. The note precipitated responses from more than 100 business leaders condemning the plan on the grounds that it would “hurt the economy, hurt workers’ rights and hurt Britain’s standing as a tolerant country.” The Government, in response, clarified its intention to “consult with businesses…on how [to] do more encourage [sic] companies – to incentivise them – to look first at the British labour market.” While no formal policy has changed, at least one other instance of ambiguous government policy has suggested a burgeoning panic regarding the government’s approach to foreign workers. On October 8, the Washington Post reported that professors at the London School of Economics (LSE) accused the British Foreign Office of making foreign academics ineligible to advise the government. The Foreign Office has denied any policy change post-Brexit, but reports coming from foreign professors at LSE have garnered a lot of press.

There’s been talk of a hard Brexit. Is that the only option?

While exiting from one of the four freedoms is a non-starter from an EU perspective, there may be a way to thread the needle in a softer Brexit. The Guardian reported in July that senior EU officials may consider allowing for an “em ergency brake” on the movement of people for a period of several years in order to avoid a shock to the EU economy and allow the U.K. to stay in the single market while assuaging the immigration concerns expressed in the process leading up the referendum. In exchange, the rights of EU citizens in the U.K would be protected for the term of the “emergency brake.” Further to the potential for a compromise, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has recently broken with May’s stance on immigration, suggesting that foreign students should not be counted in net migration numbers. Even more recently, former Tory leader Michael Howard, an oft-described eurosceptic, has said that he “think[s] the Government should make it clear now that those EU citizens who are currently living in this country would be allowed to stay in this country, would be allowed to carry on working in this country, would be allowed to carry on studying. I don’t think we should wait for any question of reciprocity.” If there are fractured opinions in Whitehall, the red-line of immigration control may fade into a fuzzier gray.

Probably not good enough for Scotland. I’m still betting on a breakup of the UK, now that Scotland has less reason to stick around.

Get a clue, take a cue …

From the Yale Record:

This year’s presidential election is highly unusual, but ultimately no different: The Yale Record believes both candidates to be equally un-endorsable, due to our faithful compliance with the tax code.

In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country—a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.

The Yale Record has no opinion whatsoever on Dr. Jill Stein.

Eugene Volokh and Paul Levy of The Volokh Conspiracy discuss a new way to game the legal system:

There are about 25 court cases throughout the country that have a suspicious profile:

• All involve allegedly self-represented plaintiffs, yet they have similar snippets of legalese that suggest a common organization behind them. (A few others, having a slightly different profile, involve actual lawyers.)
• All the ostensible defendants ostensibly agreed to injunctions being issued against them, which often leads to a very quick court order (in some cases, less than a week).
• Of these 25-odd cases, 15 give the addresses of the defendants — but a private investigator (Giles Miller of Lynx Insights & Investigations) couldn’t find a single one of the ostensible defendants at the ostensible address.

Now, you might ask, what’s the point of suing a fake defendant (to the extent that some of these defendants are indeed fake)? How can anyone get any real money from a fake defendant? How can anyone order a fake defendant to obey a real injunction?

They go on to explain that by filing and winning a libel suit against someone who doesn’t exist, but who authored a libelous comment, those who want to erase stories from Google can show Google that judgment, and Google will remove the story from its indexes.

A later blog post indicates that these filings are being dismissed:

And Monday evening I learned that yet another pending case that shares the same pattern — similar procedural strategy, similar language in the documents, similar lack of any connection between the ostensible defendant and the ostensible defendant’s address in any public records — had been voluntarily dismissed, on the day that Paul Alan Levy and I put up our post on the subject. That case is Carter v. Quinn, filed in Florida state court, and it seems to have been an attempt to get Google to deindex a Charleston Post & Courier article about a sex crime arrest (though note that the arrest might not have led to a conviction). The article went up in January 2014, but then in July 2016 a comment was posted to the article. (The comment has been deleted in the past few weeks, but the people at the Post & Courier assure me that it wasn’t deleted by them.)

The infinite plasticity of the Web will let digital crimes pop up and disappear like the virtual particles of physicists.

Did anything like this happen before the Web?

Steve Benen on MaddowBlog provides a useful public service – context! – with regard to the rise in ACA rates which has caused a ruckus:

No one should characterize this as good news, but some of the details are getting lost in the shuffle. For example, the vast majority of Americans are covered through their employer, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA. Those on the individual marketplace may face steep increases, but (a) it will depend a lot on where they live; (b) federal subsidies are also increasing, which will soften the blow and insulate most of those covered through the individual market; and (c) this will be a concern for a tiny percentage of the population.

Of course, if you’re in that sliver of the population, it doesn’t much matter whether or not you have a lot of company. All that matters for these consumers is that coverage is going to be a lot less affordable. The question then becomes what happens next.

The fact remains, regular medical checkups and care will greatly reduce the cost of medical care to society – and if that means we have to subsidize the users of the ACA a little more, we’re still well ahead of the game. I’ve been wondering about the mad panic displayed by the local Republicans when Dayton shot his mouth off with “… but the reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.” [minnesota.cbslocal.com] The cries of “it’s totally broken” and “we must destroy the monster” have been annoying, and makes me wonder if they ever try thinking. Perhaps there should be an inquiry into why the rates have gone so high? Perhaps they made an actuarial mistake – or perhaps there’s some collusion. How much higher will taxes need to rise in order to lower the effective rate increase to, say, 10%? What are we talking here, anyways?

Not to be snarky or anything, but has anyone calculated how much rates would drop if the salaries of the C-suite execs of the participating companies were dropped to reasonable levels? Say, no more than half a million a year?

A reader remarks concerning the original post on this thread:

You’re awfully optimistic. Didn’t they say those same horrible things about Obama, too?

Yes, and now they’ve had 8 years of being wrong. I figure eventually it’ll be like a lake eating away at the thin wall – the believers will finally shriek ENOUGH!, and run away from them. Especially those who’ve been RINO-ized.

Like Josh Barro.

A reader is skeptical about this result:

This looks suspect to me. It’s counter logical in multiple dimensions, for one. Schacht’s conclusion seems to be a wild guess which could or may not be supported by the data. That is, the data don’t suggest that as the reason — it’s just one crazy possibility. Your remarks about (I think, if I understood correctly) about men knowing the relative numbers of competing men in order to modify their behavior is telling. I have no idea which counties have more or fewer women than men in Minnesota, for example, and I consider myself better informed than most. 20 years ago, one would have to visit a library to find that kind of thing out, too. I’d like to see more evidence.

Yes, there are some doubts. I don’t recall reading in the study as to whether there was any attempt to compensate for varying cultural traditions, for example. The results remain provocative, though.

Another reader reacts to the first:

A surplus-male population means women have a broader selection of mates for the purposes of personal protection. The greater rate of violence against women in female-surplus populations reflects the default rate of aggression that will occur in the absence of protection.

Doesn’t reflect well on male behavior.

Not in the least. It’s a view of men, stripped of the trappings of civilization, as carriers of genes that are driven to replicate. Coldly calculating as to whether rape or marry is not the kind of man I run into, frankly, in my limited experience, although sometimes this one or that one seems misogynistic.

That said, does it really reflect a default rate? I’m not sure what that might mean. In the absence of civilization? Is mankind really mankind without civilization?

Spaceweather.com describes an experiment in which the ambient radiation levels are measured:

Source: Spaceweather.com

Radiation levels in the cabin of the Boeing 767 (Condor flight 2091) tripled within ten minutes after takeoff, and were nearly 40 times ground level by the time the plane reached cruising altitude at 33,000 feet. There was no solar storm in progress. The extra radiation was just a regular drizzle of cosmic rays reaching down to aviation altitudes. This radiation is ever-present and comes from supernovas, black holes, and other sources across the galaxy.

---

Another reason to avoid flying more than a couple of times a year. Wait, what as that other reason? Oh, yeah – climate change. From the David Suzuki Foundation:

Source: David Suzuki Foundation/IPCC

How do greenhouse gas emissions from flying compare with emissions from other forms of transport, like driving?Compared to other modes of transport, such as driving or taking the train, travelling by air has a greater climate impact per passenger kilometre, even over longer distances (see graph below). It’s also the mode of freight transport that produces the most emissions.

A reader writes about differing cultural customs:

My experience in Germany with a kid was that there are a lot fewer places kids are (group-wise) accepted. One child might accompany a parent to shop, or to a restaurant, but there generally were not many seen at one time in places of business. My son was welcomed just about everywhere, and he was fairly well-behaved and spoke with adults unabashedly. Our pace of living was less a sprint than a meander, so we were able to discuss life and expectations along the way. As for grandparents giving suggestions, ours seem often unwilling to talk much about how they did things, as the environment for a school-aged child is so different from the lives the grandparents recall.

Or even the life I recall. Although I suppose I could be a grandparent at this age.

AL Monitor’s Rohollah Faghihi reports on Iran’s President Rouhani’s continuing efforts to defend the JCPOA (Iranian nuclear deal):

“In the past, if we wanted to walk or move, shackles of the sanctions obstructed our way. But today these chains do not exist. We should move, because the main obstacle has been lifted, and our banking relations with the world have been established and will be expanded day after day,” Rouhani told a crowd of people in Arak.

Another piece of evidence in the attempts to isolate GOP voters from reality comes in the form of a video message from NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre to NRA members. MediaMatters provides a handy transcript and some commentary, the latter of which I quote incompletely:

LaPierre said his prediction that Obama “would come for our guns and do everything in his power to sabotage the Second Amendment” “came true” following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, when Obama “exploited a horrible tragedy to launch a blizzard of gun bans, magazine restrictions, and gun registration schemes against law abiding gun owners all across the country.” (Nothing proposed by Obama would have violated the Second Amendment as understood in the Antonin Scalia-authored Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller. The background check bill that was voted on in the Senate after the massacre specifically prohibited the creation of registries.)

• Following terror attacks carried out by ISIS, LaPierre claimed Obama “attacked you harder than he attacked ISIS. He used the terrorism his own weaknesses and failures made possible to try to gut your right to shoot back at the terrorists he refused to kill.” (As commander-in-chief, Obama is actually carrying out a military campaign against ISIS which routinely kills the group’s leaders and fighters. Nothing Obama has ever proposed would bar citizens from shooting back at terrorists.)

• LaPierre claimed that Obama “has transformed America into a sanctuary nation for felons, criminal gangbangers, drug dealers, repeat offenders, and illegal aliens” and that “our inner cities now rank among the most dangerous places in the world.” (Although there have been upticks as well as dips, violent crime hascontinued to fall under President Obama.)

MediaMatters has several more rebuttals to LaPierre’s claims, the last being that Clinton wants to abolish gun ownership – a claim well-debunked.

But for my purposes, we’re seeing another far-right leader attempting to build a firewall around the right-wing base, isolating them from reality, by asserting that he was right about the horrors of liberal Obama – when he was tangibly wrong. I recall how shortages of ammunition were reported when Obama was elected, as gun owners scurried to buy soon-to-be banned supplies.

Those bans ever happened. Not even hinted at. Question is, are gun owners credulous fools, or will they look around and, who knows, maybe vote the bum out?

I expect we’ll be seeing more of these sorts of outright lies (I tried to find a kinder way to put that, but it was not to be) in the next few years as their predictions prove untrue. After all, it’s a big country – it may not be so bad here as it is over there, right?

And the media is not to be trusted, of course.

Maybe not even Fox News.

Yep, even Fox will get thrown under the bus if a shrinking audience forces them to become a better news source. A lesson from fiction is that the bad guys tend to chew each other up. Maybe the same will happen in real life.

A local group.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb8yga8kygU

The Vampire and the Ballerina (1962, Italian L’amante del vampiro) is a mish mash of bad and good elements. Such movies promise novelty and insight, but rarely deliver, and this falls into that category. The characters, the herd, if you will, of ballerinas and their instructors, are virtually interchangeable, dancers with little else to distinguish them. The predators, the vampires, have more going for them, a mysterious reserve married to sudden bursts of violence.

The promise comes from the choices made by the vampires. For example, a woman begins the transition from human to monster – and is destroyed, not by relatives or churchmen, but by the very vampire that has brought her to this cusp. Turns out he’s jealous of his world and does not wish to be challenged. It’s an emotional, even mad proposition – but believable. What are they trying to say with this twist?

Not much, it turns out, if anything. There are delicious hints of family dysfunction between the two vampires in this movie – but not much is really made of it. As we wait, in vain, for elucidations, the victims fall, the women fulfill the usual Italian movie stereotypes, and then they wander about at random. The men go to search for them in the forest – and find them, without explanation, in the castle.

The seams of plausibility fray, and then burst gracelessly all over the admittedly charmingly decayed castle. It could have been an interesting take on the vampire tale; it might have even been entertainingly mad, putting the powers of dance against the blood lust of the vampire. But it doesn’t dare such an outre approach to the concept; it spins meaninglessly, staggers at random, and in the end the movie falls with a ripe splat to the roof of the castle, there to turn to dust under an inexplicably invisible sun.

Regretfully, not recommended.

On Greensboro.com, longtime SCOTUS reporter Dahlia Lithwick describes the impact of the female justices on court proceedings:

The addition of more women justices, Lithwick said, has changed everything.

As recently as the Hobby Lobby case in 2014, Justice Kennedy avoided naming the actual contraceptive devices in question. It took the women in the room to say “IUD” out loud.

When the court heard Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt last October, Lithwick said, questions by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor during oral arguments pierced the pretense that the new abortion clinic requirements were about women’s safety. That law, which required abortion clinics to meet surgical center requirements, would have closed all but a handful of abortion clinics in the state of Texas.

“I have to tell you what it was like to see three women justices just strap on their skates and go,” Lithwick told the gathering. “They held a roller derby of gender in there, and it was so powerful to see the three women justices just take over the room.”

To clarify the intent of my previous post [connecting Planned Parenthood to Hitler]: Planned Parenthood has learned well the same tactics and deception used by Hitler regarding innocent lives. I was not in any way agreeing with Hitler’s words, rather, I was making a connection between the ideology he used and the arguments made by Planned Parenthood. I find both deplorable and heartbreaking.

Perhaps in light of my previous post, in which I mentioned that discovering Clinton did not lead to disaster might lead some of the GOP base to wonder about their leaders, the refusal of GOP Senators to hold confirmation hearings of Merrick Garland for the SCOTUS is not quite as deeply bewildering as it may seem (although I may have mentioned this before, but think of it as confirmation). By most accounts, Garland is a solidly middle of the road judge with impeccable credentials and a record excelled by no one.

If the GOP Senators permit themselves to be seen rejecting someone who, frankly, is acceptable to the vast majority of Americans, then once again the castle in which the leaders of the GOP base have secreted themselves becomes a little less secure. The right-wing media has blitzed the GOP base with the message that the liberals, from Clinton to Pelosi to Obama, are untrustworthy and prone to extremist actions.

Garland is a nail in the coffin of that propaganda, one that the power-hungry leaders do not care to risk. Remember Trump at the announcement of Scalia’s passing? Did he express admiration for Scalia, or sadness at his passing?

The first thing out of his mouth way “Delay, delay, delay!” Don’t even let the liberals make their official case. Then the others at that debate echoed him.

And, ironically, it may be Trump who permits that nail to be driven into the coffin. His negative impact on the the chances of the general GOP selection of candidates in the Senate may give the Democrats the majority they need, and if the current rules on filibustering SCOTUS candidates permit the GOP to continue the ridiculous circus of blockading the nomination, these can be changed, as retiring Senator Harry Reid asserts in this Talking Points Memo story:

“I really do believe that I have set the Senate so when I leave, we’re going to be able to get judges done with a majority. It takes only a simple majority anymore. And, it’s clear to me that if the Republicans try to filibuster another circuit court judge, but especially a Supreme Court justice, I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it. I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again,” Reid told TPM in a wide-ranging interview about his time in the Senate and his legacy.

“They mess with the Supreme Court, it’ll be changed just like that in my opinion,” Reid said, snapping his fingers together. “So I’ve set that up. I feel very comfortable with that.”

Then the question becomes whether Clinton stays with Garland or moves to a different candidate – assuming she wins the Presidency. While progressives may groan at the thought of Garland or a similar candidate, such a candidate may have a substantial impact on the ongoing process of reform of the GOP, as advocated by noted conservative Bruce Bartlett, by disproving the lie. By exposing one of the longest living assertions from the right-wing media concerning their loyal opposition, the Democrats and Clinton will expose the GOP base, especially those with open minds and hearts, to a bit more truth – and the leadership may lose another fingernail as it clings to power.

But the lies and obfuscations will continue. Get the popcorn, because nothing stops the desperate. But let’s hope the Senate goes to the Democrats, because they appear to be far closer to sanity than the GOP.

Credit: Defensive Driver’s Discount

It occurred to me that some readers may not realize that “burning hydrogen,” i.e., the rapid oxidation of hydrogen, results in heat (which we can use for work) and the emission of H₂O, aka water. And while for most folks the thought of water dribbling from their cars’ exhaust pipes may evoke some laughter, it actually gives me pause. Minnesota, in January, with cars dribbling water. It’s not a good thought when it turns into black ice and leaves us all piled up in the ditches.

That image on the left is what evokes deep concern for seasoned Minnesotans. Bad enough when out walking, but hitting a patch of that at 55 MPH will lead to an experience outstripping a mere roller-coaster.

But perhaps that’s easily remedied. he says, remembering some very unfortunate black ice incidents. Maybe the water, fresh from the heat of oxidation, is warm enough not to freeze to the pavement.

A reader shares his own picture:

Thank you, that’s lovely. Another reader comments:

Just beautiful, Hue & Deb.

Deb took the hatchet to the garden today. Half the hostas are gone, the sage has been pushed back to its natural territory, the oregano has had its top taken off, and the irises were chopped flat. And on the weekend we took down the last of the tomato plants. The rear of the garage looks positively bare.

’tain’t beautiful no more! Beginning to look like we’re battening down the hatches for winter. Just looking at that rain coming in, I’m thinking that might be a foot of snow if it was a little colder. Will winter storms recapitulate our summer storms of this year? Only time will tell.

But the Dusty Miller has been spared so far. Charm will get you a far piece with Deb.

Navajo on The Daily Kos has another excellent update on the pipeline activities / desecration of Indian sacred lands in North Dakota:

Last night on October 22, 2016, Dallas Goldtooth reported, via Facebook Live about the 83 arrests that happened yesterday near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation where American Indian Nations are resisting the construction of a four-state oil pipeline being constructed under the Missouri River, the water source for 17 million people. My detailed news timeline on Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) v. The Water Protectors can be read here if you need it. …

Various people on the ground reported night-before-last on Facebook that:

• Four semi-trucks worth of pipe were being delivered to the burial sites that were desecrated on Labor Day.
• Photos show them parked ON the desecrated grave sites with trucks. Cranes, pipes, and equipment are being delivered.
• Helicopters are overhead. [The ‘copters are constant, keeping the camps awake at night.]
• At least one new blockade is set up, facilitated by the national guard, north of camp, on highway 1806, just south of Fort Rice.
• Bi-plane is now circling.

These are all shots over the bow to incite our people to gather and force us to protect our ancestral burial sites.

It may be getting cold, but the coleus seems unfazed.

NASA published further information on the Plutonian features tentatively identified as clouds a few days ago:

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

[Alan Stern, principal investigator] said that Pluto’s complex, layered atmosphere is hazy and appears to be mostly free of clouds, but the team has spied a handful of potential clouds in images taken with New Horizons’ cameras. “If there are clouds, it would mean the weather on Pluto is even more complex than we imagined,” Stern said.

Meanwhile, the New Horizons space probe is not inactive, but is instead observing Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs):

Both Hubble and cameras on the New Horizons spacecraft have been aimed at KBOs over the past two years, with New Horizons taking advantage of its unique vantage point in the Kuiper Belt to observe nearly a dozen small worlds in this barely explored region. MU69 is actually the smallest KBO to have its color measured – and scientists have used that data to confirm the object is part of the so-called cold classical region of the Kuiper Belt, which is believed to contain some of the oldest, most prehistoric material in the solar system.

“The reddish color tells us the type of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 is,” said Amanda Zangari, a New Horizons post-doctoral researcher from Southwest Research Institute. “The data confirms that on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons will be looking at one of the ancient building blocks of the planets.”