• Some very good news: “Iran nuclear talks: ‘Historic’ agreement struck.”
World powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.
US President Barack Obama said that with the deal, “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off” for Iran.
His Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, said it opened a “new chapter” in Iran’s relations with the world.
Two of the last three presidential candidates for whom I’ve cast a vote were subsequently awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. It seems odd that the one exception was a man who began his political career as an anti-war activist. It’s quite possible, though, that after today, it could become three out of three.
• The New Horizons space probe was launched nine and a half years ago. And it just flew past Pluto a mere 12,500 kilometers from that distant world’s surface. It’ll be a little while before we get the close-up pictures from that fly-by, probably sometime tonight. For now, though, we can enjoy this photo — taken from just 750,000 km away — which is the clearest, closest photo we’ve ever seen of that former planet (or whatever we’re calling it now):
That’s a NASA photo, of course, but I snurched it from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog, which I’ll be following closely today, and especially around 9 p.m. (EDT) when we expect to have the next edition of the Best Pictures We’ve Ever Had of Pluto.
• RIP Margaret Block, freedom fighter:
Margaret had a love-hate relationship with organized religion, but she said that if “Ms. Hamer” loved Jesus so much he must have something going for him. Religion was one of the biggest impediments to the movement; but religion was also at the heart of the movement. Civil Rights Christianity didn’t survive the social trauma of the 1960s, but Margaret treasured the memory of its glorious and all-too-brief brief flowering.
• Here’s why a shipment of bubble wrap may come wrapped in brown packing paper.
• “The CDC recommends a three-step approach for responding to the heroin epidemic: Prevent people from starting heroin by identifying high-risk individuals, reduce heroin addiction by increasing access to Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), and reverse heroin overdoses by expanding the use of naloxone, a potentially life-saving drug that reverses the effects of a heroin overdose.”
This month, Pennsylvania officially begins allowing police and EMTs to be trained and equipped in administering naloxone. This should be the standard everywhere.
• When we were little kids, we used to play this game where we had to navigate our way around the house without touching the floor. Sometimes we pretended that the carpet was shark-infested waters. Other times we pretended the carpet was a pool of lava. It turns out we didn’t have to choose: “There are sharks living in a volcano.” For real.
• Somewhat related to the previous item: “Nobel Prize Winner Peter Higgs Regrets Fielding Your Physics-Based Dungeons & Dragons Questions.”
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