Ry Cooder – He’ll Have To Go – Live 1977
An evening pause:
Year: 2012
India’s government has okayed the launch of an unmanned probe to Mars.
The competition heats up: India’s government has okayed the launch of an unmanned probe to Mars.
A visual tour of the leftist paradise of Berkeley.
More weird than you can imagine: A surreal visual tour of the leftist paradise of Berkeley.
Making fire using only Ikea products
An evening pause: What to do when you don’t have matches and all that is left is the nearest Ikea store.
Attack of the Cookie Monsters.
Attack of the Cookie Monsters.
The sad part is that the author provides documentation for every single silly attack, none of which have the slightest significance in the greater scheme of our present-day problems, where we have a federal government going bankrupt and a Senate and President who routinely flout the law for political reasons.
More signs that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to enter interstellar space.
More signs that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to enter interstellar space.
For the last seven years, Voyager 1 has been exploring the outer layer of the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. In one day, on July 28, data from Voyager 1’s cosmic ray instrument showed the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system jumped by five percent. During the last half of that same day, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels.
A third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction. Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space. A preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month.
Based on this report, expect scientists to announce that Voyager 1 has left the solar system sometime before the end of the year.
Have astronomers found a future supernova?
A press release from the Carnegie Institute today described a recent paper by astronomers that might have identified a star in the Milky Way that might go supernova sometime in the future. The star QU Carinae, is a cataclysmic variable, a binary system in which material dumped from one star onto another periodically causes an outburst of X-rays.
I emailed Stella Kafka, the lead scientist of the research paper, to find out how far away QU Carinae is and how soon it might go supernova. She responded as follows:
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Archeologists are disputing the age of a jawbone found in a cave in England.
The uncertainty of science: Archeologists are disputing the age of a jawbone found in a cave in England.
Both sides of the debate agree that there is a lot riding on the outcome. “What is at stake is the entire [prehistory] of Neandertals and early modern humans in Europe,” Pettitt says. Apart from the Kents Cavern fossil and some 43,000- to 45,000-year-old teeth from Italy whose status as modern human or Neandertal is currently also debated, the oldest undisputed human fossils in Europe are about only 40,000 years old and come from a site in Romania. If modern humans really made it all the way to northwest Europe by 41,500 years ago or even earlier, it would mean that they entered Europe much earlier than once thought and also spread across the continent very rapidly. It would also increase the overlap between modern humans and the Neandertals, who already lived in Europe, and who went extinct sometime between 40,000 and 35,000 years ago. What’s more, such an overlap could make it more likely that Neandertals, who made sophisticated ornaments and tools in their last years, copied these techniques from modern humans rather than inventing them on their own.
Launching a beer can into space.
Launching a beer can into space. With video! More here.
Liberals are calling for the murder of a 6-year-old, star of youtube video entitled “6-Year-Old Gives 10 Reasons NOT to Vote for Obama!”
Leftwing civility: Liberals are calling for the murder of a 6-year-old, star of a youtube video entitled “6-Year-Old Gives 10 Reasons NOT to Vote for Obama!”
The video is cute, and hardly a reason to go ballistic, as apparently some of on the left have done.
When asked in a survey if they would discriminate against conservatives, the academic community freely admitted that it would gladly do so.
The tolerance of the left: When asked in a survey if they would discriminate against conservatives, the academic community freely admitted that they would gladly do so.
One question, according to the researchers, “asked whether, in choosing between two equally qualified job candidates for one job opening, they would be inclined to vote for the more liberal candidate (i.e., over the conservative).” More than a third of the respondents said they would discriminate against the conservative candidate. One respondent wrote in that if department members “could figure out who was a conservative, they would be sure not to hire them.”
Then there’s this:
Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers found that conservatives fear that revealing their political identity will have negative consequences. This is why New York University-based psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-described centrist, has compared the experience of being a conservative graduate student to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.
In 2011, Mr. Haidt addressed this very issue at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology — the same group that Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammer surveyed. Mr. Haidt’s talk, “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” caused a stir. The professor, whose new book “The Righteous Mind” examines the moral roots of our political positions, asked the nearly 1,000 academics and students in the room to raise their hands if they were liberals. Nearly 80 percent of the hands went up. When he asked whether there were any conservatives in the house, just three hands — 0.3 percent — went up.
This is “a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Mr. Haidt said.
What is horrifying to me is that this prejudiced behavior is taking place within our society’s supposingly most educated community., the place where thoughtful, rational debate is supposed to be cherished and honored. How can we have a just and fair-minded culture if our elite education system is home to this kind of close-minded and hateful bigotry?
A Chick-Fil-A was covered with graffiti last night reading “Tastes like Hate” in anticipation of the gay community’s “National Same-Sex Kiss Day.”
Leftwing civility: A Chick-Fil-A was covered with graffiti last night reading “Tastes like Hate,” in anticipation of the gay community’s “National Same-Sex Kiss Day.”
As the lead commenter for this article noted
As a gay man I want to say sorry for what “my” people have done. Im so ashamed of being gay for the first time in my life. This is getting out of control. These gays are giving me a bad name. Not everyone is gonna like or except gays. Hell we dont like alot of straight people. We all have our own opinion. Like I told everyone, if they dont like your opinions then dont eat at Chick-Fil-A. Eat at KFG or churches. Again Im sorry for what the gay community is doing. They should all be ashamed of themselves….