EPA Terrorizes Couple Over Their Dream Home
The EPA’s war on a couple’s dream house has now reached the Supreme Court.
Year: 2012
Democrats regulating the dead
Democrats regulating the dead.
Democrats believe their personal preferences are so noteworthy and have such a significant bearing on the future of society that it’s only fair these indispensible preferences be imposed on the public by force of law.
Which brings us to Democrat Alvin Tillman, a third–term member of the council in Terrebonne Parish, LA, who evidently does not have enough to occupy his time. Tillman is personally offended by the chroma culprits who paint their family tombs anything but white, which is Tillman’s preferred color. “We want to stop this before it gets out of hand,” Tillman was quoted by the Associated Press. “Before you know it you’ll go out there and the cemetery will look like Mardi Gras.”
Since this is Louisiana — where being dead is no bar to exercising the franchise in favor of Democrats on election day — it could be that Tillman is simply responding to the wishes of his electoral base.
What is this stuff?
The uncertainty of science: In this week’s release of images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the science team posted the image on the right and asked, “What is this stuff?”
Here’s a hypothetical geologic history that might explain this scene: layered sediments were deposited by water or airfall (including volcanic pyroclastics). A crudely polygonal patterned ground was created by stresses in the sediments, and groundwater followed the fractures and deposited minerals that cemented the sediments. This was followed by perhaps billions of years of erosion by the wind, leaving the cemented fractures as high-standing ridges.
Of course, this story is almost certainly incomplete if not totally wrong.
Click here to see the close-up subimage from which I cropped the image on the right.
Ecliptic, the company that puts cameras on rockets
Ecliptic, the company that puts cameras on rockets. And now, its cameras will look down at the Moon from the Grail spacecraft.
Check out the company’s youtube channel here.
The National Science Foundation has declined until 2020 to commit to funding a giant American-built ground-based telescope
Bad news for American astronomy: The National Science Foundation has declined until 2020 to commit to any funding for either one of the two giant American-built ground-based telescopes.
For nearly a decade now, two university consortia in the United States have been in a race to build two ground-based telescopes that would be several times bigger than today’s biggest optical telescope. One group—led by the University of California—plans to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii. The other team—led by Carnegie Observatories, the University of Arizona, and other institutions—is developing a 28-meter behemoth named the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which would be built in Chile. Over the past few years, both teams have raised tens of millions of dollars toward the billion-dollar-plus projects in the hope that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) would come up with the balance.
But now, it turns out, neither project has a chance of receiving any significant funding from NSF for at least another decade. In a solicitation posted by NSF last week, the agency indicated that it does not expect to fund the building of any giant segmented mirror telescopes—that is, TMT or GMT—until the beginning of the 2020s. According to the solicitation, all that NSF can provide right now is $1.25 million over 5 years for the development of a public-private partnership plan that could eventually lead to the building of a large telescope, should NSF be in a position to fund such a telescope sometime in the next decade.
I suspect the NSF’s unwillingness to fund this project at this time is directly related to the budget crisis in Washington. Though the NSF got slightly more money in 2012 than in 2011, that money is all accounted for by other projects. There is no margin for anything new that will be as expensive (in the billions) as these giant telescopes will be.
The Quadrantids meteor shower on tonight
The Quadrantids meteor shower is on for tonight.
The United States closed 2011 with a record $15.22 trillion Debt that was officially 100.3% of GDP and only $14 billion from breaching the debt ceiling
Meanwhile, in real news: The United States closed 2011 with a record $15.22 trillion debt that was officially 100.3% of GDP and only $14 billion from breaching the debt ceiling passed by Congress only five months before.
Iowa caucus results
If you are obsessed with politics and have a need to know immediately the results in Iowa, go here.
FYI, at 7:36 pm (Mountain time) Romney and Santorum were tied.
Robert Goulet – If ever I would leave you
An evening pause: From the Broadway musical, Richard Rogers’ Camelot.
Space exploration and the unexpected consequences of government decisions
On Thursday, December 15, 2011, NASA management announced what seemed at first glance to be a very boring managerial decision. Future contracts with any aerospace company to launch astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) will follow the same contractual arrangements used by NASA and SpaceX and Orbital Sciences for supplying cargo to the space station.
As boring that sounds, this is probably the most important decision NASA managers have made since the 1960s. Not only will this contractual approach lower the cost and accelerate the speed of developing a new generation of manned spaceships, it will transfer control of space exploration from NASA — an overweight and bloated government agency — to the free and competitive open market.
To me, however, the decision illustrates a number of unexpected consequences, none of which have been noted by anyone in the discussions that followed NASA’s announcement back in mid-December.
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