The Influence of Climate Change on Time

Global warming is transforming time itself. Humanity is well-known for its lasting impact on the environment. From industrial revolutions to global conflicts, man has done exponential harm to the ecosystem. The releasing of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels is a contemporary development that has made dramatic and dangerous changes to the planet’s climate. The warming of the Earth’s ice sheets is an example of this phenomenon. Although this reality has been internationally acknowledged for some time now, a new discovery has dramatically magnified its significance.

The swift melting of the ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica is collectively shifting more mass towards Earth’s waistline, scientists say. Earth’s rotation has slowed down as a result. Factors related to the Earth’s spin, including changes to the rotational speed of Earth’s core and shifts in the planet’s distribution of mass around its surface, impact the speed of Earth’s rotation about its axis.

The totality of mankind’s indifference towards Earth’s natural processes has brought about this seismic development. For example, the internationally agreed-upon coordinated universal time has been impacted by the Earth’s slower rotation. Leap seconds, being extra ticks that international timekeepers agreed to add to the universal time, will need to be removed rather than added to the universal clock in order to ensure that the balance between the Earth’s rotation and atomic clocks remain in sync.

This recent discovery emphasizes the far-reaching implications of climate change. Contrary to the claims of some, science has shed more light on the relevance of global warming to the future of humanity and the rest of the biosphere. It is within mankind’s interest to remain diligent and respectful of the severe threat that climate change poses towards current and future generations. Only time will tell how serious mankind is about preserving a balanced orbit, and ultimately a healthier Earth.

Kennedy Boy

President John F. Kennedy is widely known for his work towards integration and the success of the Civil Rights Movement during the early 1960s. He is also famous because of his commitment to laying the groundwork for defeating the Soviet Union during the Space Race to the moon. A short-statured young black man from Kansas City, Kansas served as a trailblazing intersection of these two efforts made by the short-lived Kennedy Administration.

Edward Dwight Jr. was born in 1933. It was very early on that Dwight became fascinated and inspired to pursue a career in flight. Despite growing up in a racially segregated environment, Dwight was thrilled to discover that a black Air Force pilot named Dayton Ragland had found his way onto the front of a local black newspaper. After graduating with a degree in engineering in 1953 at the age of 20, Dwight chose to enlist into the United States Air Force. He trained to become a test pilot throughout the remainder of the 1950s, and reached the rank of captain while serving in the U.S. Air Force.

During this same period, as the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, America transitioned from the well-seasoned President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the youthful President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960 largely behind his great contrasts with the former president and legendary general, wanted to take a more deliberate stance against segregation. Coinciding with the rapidly escalating Cold War and the Space Race, the Kennedy White House determined that selecting a black astronaut would help it win the admiration of the black community.

One day, Dwight received a letter from President Kennedy, in which he was offered an opportunity to be an astronaut. After being discouraged by many of his peers and superiors not to take on this challenge, Dwight secretly mailed in his information and within days received an assignment to enter the Aerospace Research Pilot School. It was there that Dwight earned the nickname “Kennedy Boy”.

While at the pilot school, Dwight faced great obstacles. These included blatant racism and the ever present fear of death while training as a test pilot. Chuck Yeager was the first commandant of the U.S. Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School. He intentionally worked to psychologically break Dwight’s will and self-esteem through relentless racism and neglect. Dwight’s mental toughness and determination to succeed, fueled by his mother’s inspiration during his development, ultimately opened the door to public attention and media exposure on a global scale.

Dwight was mesmerized and thrilled by the space training that he received at the height of his acclaim. However, great disappointment awaited him. The new group of astronauts that NASA ultimately selected did not include Dwight. He had been snubbed. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas not long afterwards in November of 1963. Dwight resigned from the Air Force in 1966 after being forced out of NASA’s astronaut program.

Conclusively, although it is easy for one to perceive Dwight’s pursuit of space travel as a failure that fell short of the mark, it can be said that Dwight was a true trailblazer for those black astronauts who would follow him in the decades that followed. America still had a long ways to go towards true racial equality in the military during the 1960s. But the efforts that were made during that era by African Americans, both in military and civilian life, echo loudly into the present.

JFK JR : THE GOOD MAN

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, dumped the American public into unprecedented depths of shock and sorrow. Their young president, who had swiftly grabbed the admiration of the American people, had been in the White House since January of 1961. His confident charm, beautiful wife, and youthful children took on a life of its own. Camelot dominated the American psyche during those early years of the 1960s. JFK was the first American president born in the twentieth century, and he represented the hopes and dreams of a nation mired in the thick of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. His failure at the Bay of Pigs, followed by his cool demeanor during the Cuban Missile Crisis, tempered a public still reeling from the hysteria of the 1950s McCarthyite era. But the Kennedys in the White House was about much more than politics. They symbolized a new, youthful wave in popular culture. To this day, Jackie Kennedy is considered a trailblazer in the fashion world and beyond. However, John and Jackie’s son would cement his own legacy.

John Jr., otherwise known as “John John”, grew from infancy into adolescence and manhood, marching to his own beat. When so many under similar circumstances would have crumbled under the pressure of the Kennedy legacy, John Jr. found peace and purpose in being a good Samaritan. Although he was strongly influenced by the attitudes of his mother, John Jr. was determined to write his own story. One of adventure and high-risk. He knew that it could have been seemingly effortless to be the great extension of his father’s ambitions. But instead, JFK Jr. gladly took on the challenge of becoming a good man.

JFK Jr. first caught national attention on his third birthday, which also unfortunately coincided with his father’s funeral ceremony. On that cold, November day in 1963, he made a now iconic salute towards his slain father’s flag-draped casket. The heartbreak and sorrow captured in that moment can’t be summed up into words of any kind. It was a moment that was timeless and representative of a society at a particularly vital point in its brief history. John F. Kennedy symbolized the best of a new generation of Americans. Those who had come of age during and after the Second World War. A youthful president, a determined supporter of domestic freedoms and the advancement of minorities, an Irish Catholic, and an extension of the “old money” filthy wealth of the Kennedy legacy, which was largely amassed by his father Joseph Kennedy Sr. His controversial assassination in Dallas, Texas significantly altered the course of American History.

In the years that followed her husband’s death, Jackie Kennedy moved John Jr. and his sister Caroline to the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. After graduating from high school, John attended Brown University, where he graduated with a major in American Studies. Kennedy co-founded a discussion group on social issues at Brown, including the ongoing South African apartheid. He visited South Africa while in college, and the appalling conditions motivated him to urge U.N. ambassador Andrew Young to speak on the issue at Brown University. After working for a year at the Office of Business Development, in 1989 Kennedy headed Reaching Up. Reaching Up was a nonprofit group that provided educational and other opportunities for employees working with disabled individuals.

That same year in 1989, Kennedy Jr. earned a J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law. What followed were two failed attempts at the New York bar exam, which gained much media attention. After passing the exam on a third attempt in 1990, he spent the next four years working as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

In 1995, John Jr. co-founded George, a politics-as-lifestyle and fashion monthly magazine. Each new issue consisted of interviews written by Kennedy, as well as his editor’s column. Two years later however, the magazine began to fail. The magazine ultimately went under in 2001.

Kennedy met Carolyn Bessette, who worked in the fashion industry, in the mid 1990s. They married in September of 1996 during a private ceremony in Georgia. Bessette was a private citizen, unlike John Jr. She struggled with the extreme spotlight cast upon her as a direct result of her marriage to Kennedy.

Shortly afterwards, Kennedy began taking flying lessons in Florida. He received his pilot’s license in the spring of 1998. Family members, including his late mother Jackie and his sister Caroline, had long feared John Jr.’s airborne aspirations. However, John Jr. was determined to conquer the skies, as it was a skill that he had long dreamed of mastering since childhood.

On July 16, 1999, JFK Jr. departed New Jersey in his aircraft with his wife and sister-in-law. The plan was to attend the wedding of one of his cousins. The plane went missing off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, and the bodies of the three were discovered on July 21, 1999 by Coastal Guard and Navy divers, still strapped into their seats at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Conclusively, the Kennedy Curse continued to take on a life of its own. One might ask, what did this young man truly accomplish during his time on Earth. It certainly wasn’t as storied or decorated, particularly within the political realm, as his father and his uncles. However, John Jr. was a social icon during his development into adulthood. He committed his life to using his prestige to travel the world and meet some of the planet’s most influential individuals, including Mother Teresa. He used his time at Brown University to explore controversial subjects, like the ongoing South African apartheid. He expressed his interest in politics and its intersection with fashion culture through George, which reflected John Jr.’s creative approach to understanding the relevance of political life to popular culture. In many ways, Kennedy was ahead of his time in terms of his ability to make these connections, and ultimately understand their significance. And within these settings, John Jr. displayed his natural gifts.

We’ll never know what a John Kennedy Jr. political career might have looked like. However, John Jr. was determined to walk down his own path. The life of an American Prince, bothered by extreme levels of sorrow in response to family losses, was not without its challenges. When he did find love, their union was short lived as a result of what many have identified as the Kennedy Curse. However, we can say that in life John Jr. used his prestige to try to make a positive impact on the world. He wanted to be known as a man who chose to be good, rather than accept notions of greatness related to his family legacy. We can say that although a flawed man, John F. Kennedy Jr. was an independent, and genuinely good man.