Finding out what’s in it: The CEO of a major health insurance company warned that rates will likely go up 20% to 100% next year because of Obamacare.
Someone’s lying: One week before the sequester cuts took effect, the TSA issued a $50 million contract for new uniforms.
I find these quotes from the article most interesting:
The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA employee over the course of the year.
…
The TSA provides uniforms to new employees, but requires its employees to buy their own replacements. “You will be measured for your new uniforms at your first orientation session,” the fact sheet says. “TSA will provide your initial uniform issue consisting of 3 long sleeve shirts, 3 short sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of trousers, 2 ties, and one belt, sweater, socks, and jacket.”
$1,000 per uniform? And only for first time employees? At a time Janet Napolitano is claiming they will be forced to lay off workers because of sequestration? As I said, someone is lying. Or they are so incompetent words fail me.
Curiosity is easing out of safe mode as engineers switch computers.
Stating the obvious to the press: “Investigate them.”
It is that time again! Today, March 4, NOAA released its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle, covering the period of February 2013. As I do every month, I am posting this latest graph, with annotations to give it context, below the fold.
Once again, the Sun has shown a complete inability to produce sunspots, at the very moment it had been predicted to be rising towards its maximum in the sunspot cycle. The numbers in February plunged from the tepid rise we saw in January to below the crash we saw in December. Right now, when the Sun is supposed to peaking, it is instead producing sunspots in numbers as low as seen in 2011, at the very end of the last solar minimum.
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Finding out what’s in it: A new poll finds that support for Obamacare continues to drop.
The day of reckoning looms: The true national debt.
Depending on what you include, the number could be as high as $31 trillion, twice what is normally mentioned. Worse, I’ve read other reports that suggest that even this number is low.
But don’t worry! Homeland Security has got us covered with its new fleet of armored vehicles!
With friends like this, who needs enemies? Republican John Boehner, Speaker of the House, agrees to consider any gun control bill passed by the Senate.
Why do they need them? Homeland Security has purchased almost 3000 armored vehicles and has had them retrofitted for use on the American streets.
New research concludes that it was a static electric spark that set fire to the Hindenberg in 1937.
A newly discovered asteroid will pass within the Moon’s orbit on Wednesday.
2013EC, as the asteroid has been named, is estimated to be between 30 to 60 feet in diameter.
Another chance at killing Obamacare in the Supreme Court?
More reporters admit to being threatened by the White House.
What is shameful about this is how willing these reporters — some of whom are quite powerful — to tolerate this abusive, intolerant, and even oppressive behavior from this White House. Imagine if an official in the Bush White House had done the same? Would these same reporters have simply shrugged their shoulders and made believe it didn’t matter? Not on your life.
In other words, these mainstream reporters are nothing more than boot-licking lackeys for Obama and the Democratic Party. They will tolerate any abuse in order to support their liberal policies and to remain their friends.
An evening pause: Though I posted this as an evening pause back in September 2011, when I heard it again on the radio last week I thought, man, that song is good. Absolutely worthwhile seeing it again, performed live.
We are doomed, but not because of the sequester, but because of how meaningless it is compared to the scale of the debt.
Pushback: A major manufacturer of gun magazines says it will leave Colorado if the state legislature passes a law banning high capacity magazines.
This same stupid law, pushed by the Democrats, would also outlaw the most popular form of shotgun used by hunters. I wonder what those citizens might say about it.
The censoring of Google maps, by Google and governments.
This is a complex issue, described in great detail by the article. Very much worth reading.
Dragon has successfully berthed with ISS.
The naysayers will focus on the thruster problems on Friday. The yaysayers will focus on the fix and berthing today. The bottom line, however, is that this mission once again proves that SpaceX is a real player in the space business. Every other company has to match its achievements, most especially in price. The result will be the eventually lowering in the cost to low Earth orbit, which will then make all things possible.
And in fact, we are already seeing this, with the appearance of many new private companies or organizations, proposing all sorts of new space efforts, such as mining asteroids or sending people to Mars. The lower cost allows dreamers to consider their wild new ideas more doable. And they then go ahead and try to do it.
The competition heats up: After reviewing the results from the Antares hot fire on February 22, Orbital Sciences is now planning the first launch of the Antares rocket in April.
SpaceX has been given the go-ahead to have the Dragon capsule rendezvous with ISS on Sunday.
Pigs fly! An environmental report by the Obama administration has admitted that the Keystone oil pipeline would do little environmental damage.
Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration today released more than 700 pages of new regulations to implement parts of Obamacare.
Won’t it be nice to have to deal with the equivalent of the Motor Vehicle Administration whenever you have to see your doctor in the future?
To me, the most irritating thing about this might not be the law itself, but having to hear people who voted for Obama complain about it. And they will complain. Everyone will. I guarantee it.
Gasp! The Democratically controlled Senate is about to mark up its first budget in four years!
It appears that sequestration and the expiration at the end of this month of the most recent continuing resolution is finally forcing the Democrats to act responsibly and actually do their job. If (and that’s a very big word) the Republicans stand firm in the House, they might be able to force the Democrats in the Senate to write a reasonable budget. For one thing, if a real budget is passed instead of the continuing resolutions we’ve been stuck with for the past four years — because of the Senate’s refusal to pass a budget — we might finally be able to stop paying for Obama’s so-called onetime 2009 stimulus bill, year after year after year.
Pushback: The boycott by gun and ammo manufacturers of anti-gun states has now grown to over 100.
An evening pause: Considering the house of cards we presently live in, how about a profile on the creator of the world’s largest house of cards.
SpaceX has announced that they now have all of Dragon’s thrusters operating and are go for docking with ISS.
They have not announced when the docking will occur, but with the solar panels operating the capsule can function in orbit for a considerable time, giving them breathing room. And time will be necessary as both NASA and the Russians are nervous about letting any spacecraft approach ISS and will want a good number of tests to make sure all is well. The Russians are especially nervous, since they had the unfortunate experience of several collisions when they operated their space station Mir.
Dragon’s docking with ISS will not happen on Saturday as originally scheduled due to the problems with the capsule’s thrusters.
Corrupt memory in Curiosity’s A computer system has forced engineers to switch to the rover’s back-up computer.
The problem came to light Wednesday morning on Mars when flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., noticed what appeared to be memory corruption in the computer’s solid-state memory system. The flight software was not recording new data or playing back data already recorded. Instead, it was only sending back real-time telemetry. Later in the day, during a communications session using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, telemetry from Curiosity indicated the corrupted memory was still present. In addition, Cook said, flight controllers saw the computer had not completed several pre-planned activities.
At that point, the computer was expected to put itself to sleep for an hour or so and then to wake up for a communications session with NASA’s Odyssey orbiter. “It was after that second overflight that we got some more information saying hey, the memory is still corrupted and oh by the way, I didn’t go to sleep when I was supposed to, I stayed awake,” Cook said.
The next communications session came late Wednesday night Earth time, between 10:30 p.m. and midnight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover’s computer was still awake and engineers decided to switch over to the B-side system.
The engineers suspect the problem was caused by a cosmic ray hit, and can be fixed by rebooting the computer.
