NASA Faces Awkward, Unfortunate Spaceflight Gap
Reality bites: NASA faces awkward, unfortunate spaceflight gap.
Year: 2011
House approves 2011 budget deal in 260-167 bipartisan vote
With substantial numbers of Republicans and Democrats voting against, the House today nonetheless approved last week’s budget deal for the 2011 fiscal year by a vote of 260-167.
Next important deadline: on May 16 or so the federal government should reach its debt limit.
A revolt on the right over budget deal?
A revolt on the right over budget deal?
“There is a gut feeling in some quarters today that the Boehner-Obama deal could be in bigger trouble than anybody realizes.”
Taxing the rich will not solve the problem
Because it is often claimed that we can solve our federal budget problems by closing loopholes and increasing taxes on the wealthy, I thought I’d share this video from Bill Whittle, dramatizing this Iowahawk essay.
We can argue all day about whether we should increase taxes on the wealthy, but that is not going to solve our debt problem. Even if we confiscated every penny of profit from every person or corporation earning more than million dollars a year, we would still not make the slightest dent in the federal deficit.
Our federal government is simply spending money it doesn’t have. We need to cut spending, and cut spending drastically, in order to gain some control over this problem.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to me the American people or Congress are yet willing to face this fact.
Marvel ends publication of Fantastic Four comic
After 588 issues, Marvel to end publication of the Fantastic Four comic book.
The Obama adminstration in 8 charts
The squeals at NOAA
The pig squeals at NOAA: The agency’s administrator told Congress yesterday that the 2011 budget deal will cause great harm to weather monitoring.
Note that NOAA is getting $4.5 billion in the 2011 budget, $700 million more than the weather agency got in 2008.
Only in Washington is a budget increase of almost 20 percent in three years called a draconian cut.
Budget problems might delay JWST until 2018
The telescope that ate astronomy: More budget problems for the James Webb Space Telescope, with its launch likely delayed again until 2018.
Experiment fails to find dark matter
The uncertainty of science: An underground experiment in Italy has failed to detect dark matter, as theorized by scientists.
In a paper published online last night, the XENON100 researchers report three events detected during a 100-day run of the experiment last year that might have been due to dark matter1. However, as they expected to see between 1.2 and 2.4 background events — interactions mostly caused by a radioactive contaminant in the xenon — their result is statistically negative and therefore rules out the existence of many of the more strongly interacting and heavier WIMPs.
Boeing moves forward on its commercial manned capsule
Boeing moves forward on its commercial manned capsule.
Budget deal cuts this year’s deficit by just $352 million, not $38 billion
They really do think we are all fools: Last week’s budget deal actually cuts this year’s deficit by only $352 million, not $38 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
And they might be right.
Three Little Kittens
An evening pause: So cute. Just don’t mess with them!