News This Week

MEDICAL EVACUATION IN SPACE 

The medical evacuation in space this week is reminiscent of the oxygen tank explosion on Apollo 13, and astronauts are going back far into space. To read about the Apollo Space Program, see the compound posting "The Moon", August 2023, section 5) The Apollo Space Program.

CANADA AND THE CARIBBEAN 

With all the talk of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, whatever happened to the Canadian plan to buy the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean? Then Canadians would have a warm place to go in the winter, and their money would stay in Canada. There was so much talk about it but it never got beyond the discussion stage.

THE EXERCISE PRESIDENT 

Yoweri Museveni is the recently reelected President of Uganda. He is setting a great example by remaining dedicated to his fitness program at age 81.

"THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS"

There was a short story from the 1950s called "There Will Come Soft Rains". I read it when I was in community college. It was set in the well-off future, August 2026. An automated house is continuing to do everything for the family that lives there, such as automatically cooking and cleaning, not realizing that there has been a nuclear holocaust and the family has been killed. Back then the story seemed to be far in the future but time flies and August 2026 is this year.

THE PRIME NUMBER FLAG 

With all the discussion in the U.S. about adding a 51st State, whether it be Canada or Greenland or Venezuela, there is one thing that we should really give some thought to. What about the flag? Each state is represented by a star on the flag. The thirteen red and white stripes represent the thirteen original states. Adding a new state will require replacing all flags, including those on signage and paperwork.

The next question is how to rearrange the stars on the flag to fit in another one. Until 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii were added, the flag with 48 stars looked like this. Two images from the Wikipedia article "Flag of the United States". 48 is fortunately divisible as 6 x 8.

Since Alaska and Hawaii were added, the flag looks like this. The solution was to alternate five rows of six stars with four rows of five stars.

51 is a prime number. So how do we fit in another star and keep a regular pattern? 

America has five inhabited territories. These are Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Marianas Islands and, the Virgin Islands. Adding those to the flag would bring 56, which is 8 x 7. Maybe the territories could be represented by a circle, instead of a star.