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Friendly North Korea: A joy to Americans

Looking for a summer vacation getaway? Let me suggest the beautiful, friendly North Korea, a.k.a. the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). There you can visit the beautiful Tumen River, which shares a border with Russia in the northeast, or swim through the Amnok River on your way from North Korea to China. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to experience a flood catastrophe like what happened in August of 2007 there.

If this isn’t enough reason for you to book your tickets right away, let me tell you more. You thought that the U.S. had a free, democratic government? Well, we don’t have it in our name like the DPRK does. As we have all learned before names of countries with the words “democratic” and “people’s republic” makes them instantly legitimately safe and intelligent.

Just don’t forget to get in touch with the DPRK’s tourism organization, called “Ryohaengsa” because it will get you set up with one or two permanent tour guides. (That is, as long as you’re not from the U.S. or South Korea, because if you are, you won’t be permitted to enter the country.)

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Big ole black hole

(NERD ALERT)

Like many children, when I was younger I dreamed of being an astronaut. The thought of flying into “outer space” to see all kinds of planets and moons was the coolest thing to me in the world and, honestly, it’s still pretty much the coolest thing to me in the world. As I got older, I began to learn more about the solar system and became especially fixated on something called black holes.

Black holes basically rule out everything that we could learn from physics. They are formed from the cores of supermassive stars once they collapse. And there’s something called escape velocity, which means that the larger the mass, the faster you have to travel to escape its pull. With that in mind, this means that black holes are so massive that nothing can escape them, including light. (To make this even more intense, please don’t forget how fast the speed of light is at 186,000 miles per second.)

To further understand black holes, we can look at dear Mr. Einstein who developed the general theory of relativity. This theory states that gravity affects time, which means that the more massive an object (a.k.a. has a greater gravitational pull), the more it can slow down time. So, obviously, since black holes have the highest gravitational pulse, the concept of time is completely diminished. Essentially, there’s no time.

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