Month: October 2013

Fresh impacts caused by Curiosity during landing

10:06 pm

impacts from Curiosity debris

The image on the right is a cropped close-up of a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image taken in early September that shows a fresh cluster of impacts, all smaller than six feet across. Nearby but not visible in this image are four larger craters about 12 to 15 feet in diameter. The impact cluster is located just northwest of Gale Crater and was not present in images taken before Curiosity’s arrival on Mars. The cluster is also in line with other impact craters produced by other debris dropped by Curiosity as it descended onto the Martian surface.

Scientists are at the moment unsure what spacecraft debris caused these impacts.

Assigning each of the impacts to specific pieces of hardware is a challenging puzzle, but it is thought that the four large craters were produced by two large tungsten weights that broke in half to make these four craters, or by pieces of the cruise stage, which was designed to break up in the atmosphere for planetary protection purposes, to kill any Earthly microbes.

The cluster imaged here adds to the mystery, and may have been produced by a piece of the cruise stage that traveled farther through the Martian atmosphere and was therefore more thoroughly fragmented by the time it crashed onto the surface.

Identifying the source of the debris is a challenging engineering problem that also has scientific interest. Knowing what caused the impacts and then studying how the surface was changed by them will tell geologists a great deal about the make up of that surface.

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A person on twitter has threatened both Ted Cruz and his family, posting his home address as well.

8:51 pm

Evil: A person on Twitter has threatened both Ted Cruz and his family, posting his home address as well.

A person identifying himself as Troy Gilmore Jr., posted on Twitter Friday morning: “Take down Ted Cruz, at his home” and listed Cruz’s home address in Houston. “What goes around comes around CRUZ!!” the person wrote.

The person has also done this several times this month, using threatening language each time.

This is a case of an unstable person making violent threats. However, it would be nice if members of the left stood up to condemn it. Sadly, I don’t expect that to happen.

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Extreme weather events in 2013 are at an all time low.

9:53 am

Another global warming prediction fails: Extreme weather events in 2013 are at an all time low.

There have been many forecasts in the news in recent years predicting more and more extreme weather-related events in the US, but for 2013 that prediction has been way off the mark. Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.

As I wrote back in April,

Global warming scientists have spent the past two decades telling us that we were all gonna die from increasing temperatures caused by the increase in CO2. Now that this prediction has proved false, they apparently are shifting gears. Instead, it is extreme events — big storms, long droughts, intense heatwaves — that are going to kill us.

But not only have they no evidence that the increase in CO2 will cause these extreme events, there is no evidence that more of these extreme events are even occurring.

In other words, these stories are mere political advocacy. They have nothing to do with science, but with propaganda, based on fantasy with the goal of trying to convince everyone that we are all gonna die if we don’t do exactly what these scientists say. [emphasis in original]

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New York doctors express their strong reluctance to participate in Obamacare.

9:37 am

Finding out what’s in it: New York doctors express their strong reluctance to participate in Obamacare.

Despite a much publicized rollout, many other doctors said they haven’t decided whether to become ObamaCare providers, because they haven’t been notified by insurers or the state about ­reimbursement rates. “I have not spoken with anyone who has made a decision to participate in the exchanges. We simply don’t have any information about which we can make a decision,” said Dr. Paul Orloff, president of the New York County Medical Society. “We have no idea what the reimbursements will be or what the claims-form process will entail.”

This is another problem for Obamacare: If doctors end up refusing to accept the insurance plans and go freelance, then the law cannot work.

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Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

9:15 am

Fail: Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

A week into its launch, the Maryland exchange had reportedly enrolled only 326 people. A week later, the number had improved to just a little over 1,000, and O’Malley told reporters it could be six weeks before the exchange website was working smoothly. “My sense of it is, probably for the next month or so, month and a half, we will be working out glitches in the portal,” he said.

Maryland was enthusiastic about Obamacare and attacked the problem from the beginning. The result is still pitiful. Even though you are required to get a health plan under Obamacare, you might have no way to do it before the deadline arrives next year.

Which is why the real conservatives in Congress had a shutdown battle: They want to repeal Obamacare, but were willing to offer a compromise whereby the mandate was delayed one year. Considering the problems Obamacare is having, what is so unreasonable about that?

And then there’s this: Insurance companies complain that the ObamaCare website is providing them faulty data, even with its low success rate in enrolling anyone.

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A long and detailed assessment of the present technical problems of the Obamacare exchange website.

9:41 pm

A long and detailed assessment of the present technical problems of the Obamacare exchange website.

It is worth the long read. The author appears to have asked the right questions of a lot of the right people, and appears to have approached the issue honestly. Key quote:

In a couple of ways, then, the severe user-interface problems at the front end of the federal exchange has actually had some advantages from CMS’s point of view, because by keeping enrollment volume low it has kept some other huge problems from becoming instantly uncontrollable.

But that low volume is mostly a very bad thing for Obamacare, of course, since the viability of the exchanges depends on a certain size and demographic mix which cannot be attained unless these problems are resolved very quickly. I couldn’t get enrollment numbers from any of the people I spoke with, but I was told that the uptake model that HHS built (using CBO projections) to predict how the exchanges would work made a low-end estimate that just under half a million people would enroll nationwide by October 31st, and that enrollment would then accelerate dramatically between November 15 and December 30th. The October 31 target, which was thought to be modest, now looks essentially impossible to reach, but their bigger worry is that period in November and December.

If the problems now plaguing the system are not resolved by mid-November and the flow of enrollments at that point looks like it does now, the prospects for the first year of the exchanges will be in very grave jeopardy.

As I said, read the whole thing. Whether you support or oppose Obamacare, this article appears to give an honest appraisal of the present situation, which is not good.

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Bankrupt Detroit has dumped the health insurance of all its retirees, forcing them into Obamacare.

4:46 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Bankrupt Detroit has dumped the health insurance of all its retirees, forcing them into Obamacare.

Effective Jan.1, retired city workers under age 65 will no longer receive full coverage from the state and will instead receive a $125 stipend to shop in Michigan’s health-care exchange under the newly-rolled out Affordable Care Act.

The stipend does not come close to paying for the cost of any insurance plan.

These were all government employees in a blue state in a very blue city. Thus, almost all of them were likely Democrats who voted for and strongly supported Obama. Well, they are now finding out what that support has gotten them. For one thing, just because they like their health plan they aren’t getting to keep it.

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Want to send your child to school with a lunch you prepared yourself? The federal government now forbids it, unless you get a doctor’s note.

4:39 pm

Want to send your child to school with a lunch you prepared yourself? The federal government now forbids it, unless you get a doctor’s note.

When I was a kid it was assumed your parents would provide you the lunch you liked. Today, every kid is fed by the federal school lunch program. And it appears that this federal program has decided that only it knows what is good for your child.

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Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.

3:59 pm

Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.

These examples are why I find most modern movies either boring, annoying, or stupid. They too often follow the same predictable action formula developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they too often require their main characters to act stupid, and they too often are based on ridiculous concepts that are so silly that even after typing randomly for one million years one million monkeys would find them unworthy.

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A recently discovered 1.8 million year old skull suggests that the multiple human species theorized by paleontologists were actually just one.

3:39 pm

The uncertainty of science: A recently discovered 1.8 million year old skull suggests that the multiple human species theorized by paleontologists were actually just one. More details here.

It is one of five early human skulls — four of which have jaws — found so far at the site, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, along with stone tools that hint at butchery and the bones of big, saber-toothed cats. Lead researcher David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, described the group as “the richest and most complete collection of indisputable early Homo remains from any one site.”

The skulls vary so much in appearance that under other circumstances, they might have been considered different species, said co-author Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich. “Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species,” he said. The researchers compared the variation in characteristics of the skulls and found that while their jaw, brow and skull shapes were distinct, their traits were all within the range of what could be expected among members of the same species.

I have always thought that paleontologists were too quick to name each new major find as a new species. Among all species there is always a wide variety of features. One person is tall. Another has a big forehead or head. This discovery reinforces this idea. The five skulls were all found in the same place, from the same group. Yet they were very different from each other.

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Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.

3:25 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.

Note this important point by the author of the post:

As with our last visit to the HealthCare.gov Facebook page, I’ve tried to avoid all ideological objectors and instead present only comments from people who seem to be genuinely trying to purchase insurance from the website.

As tea party and conservatives noted in 2009, Obamacare was putting the equivalent of the DMV in charge of the health insurance business. It appears that this prediction was right on the money. The comments are horrifying. No private business would dare operate a website this poorly designed.

I repeat: Obamacare was what the government shutdown was all about. The Republicans wanted to revise or repeal it, the Democrats refused to consider any changes at all. Which do you think was the better policy position for the American people?

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The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.

12:48 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.

In Congress the shutdown was a team effort, involving both parties. To pin the blame on one party is to reveal your partisanship.

But then, this really isn’t news. The major news networks have been unabashed Democratic Party operatives for years. This detail just provides another one of thousands of illustrations that prove it.

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A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service was clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown.

10:27 am

Working for the Democratic Party: A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service were clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown. Watch:

The man should be fired. But he won’t be. Obama’s outrage over such activities is pure theater. He actually likes what Jarvis did, as it wholly supports the agenda of the Democratic Party.

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Obamacare might well be imploding.

8:44 am

Obamacare might well be imploding.

In other words, the elites in Washington might have signed a corrupt budget deal, but meanwhile the cause of the shutdown, Obamacare, continues to show itself to be an abject failure, justifying the efforts of the more honest Republicans to try to stop it.

The Democrats endorsed this law again during the budget standoff. Had they be willing to even consider minor changes the shutdown could have been averted. Instead, they stood firm as a party, supporting this unworkable law, as it stands.

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The next test flight of a version of SpaceX’s Grasshopper could occur in New Mexico in December.

8:29 am

The next test flight of a version of SpaceX’s Grasshopper could occur in New Mexico in December.

The story says this test will be with Grasshopper, but I think that is a mistake. Unless SpaceX is using this name for all its vertical landing test vehicles, the company had said the test vehicle to fly in New Mexico would be a full scale Falcon 9 first stage, with nine Merlin engines, not one as has Grasshopper.

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Cygnus will be de-orbited one day early, on October 23.

8:24 am

Cygnus will be de-orbited one day early, on October 23.

At the same time, preparations move forward for the second Cygnus flight in December, which will be the first operational flight. This quote is interesting:

Neither Orbital nor the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority got locked out of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport as a result of the shutdown, meaning that preparations for the tentative December launch continued while more than 95 percent of NASA’s roughly 18,000 civil servants were on furlough.

Suggests again how unessential a good percentage of NASA’s employees really are. They might be great engineers, but they are apparently wasting their talents at NASA doing unnecessary make-work.

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The Senate budget deal that the House will vote on today includes some really nice pork.

4:48 pm

The Senate budget deal that the House will vote on today includes some really nice pork.

The bill includes extra funds to fix flooded roads in Colorado, a $3 million appropriation for a civil liberties oversight board and a one-time payment to the widow of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who died over the summer. It also includes a more than $2 billion increase in funding for construction on the lower Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky. Current law authorizes $775 million in spending for related projects, and the bill increases it to $2.918 billion.

The last appears to be a kickback to Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to get him to buy into this crap.

The bill also has this crap:

The legislation broadly re-opens the government through Jan. 15, and extends the ability of the government to borrow money through Feb. 7. It does so by allowing President Obama to waive the debt ceiling, a move that can be overridden by a resolution of disapproval by Congress that Obama could still veto. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Congress is now ceding this budgetary responsibility and power to the President, who will then rule by decree.

Update: The bill passed both houses of Congress and has now been signed by the President. Note that the only opposition came from Republicans, but even here the opposition was a minority. The Democrats strongly endorsed this bill, and for good reason. It gives them (and the Republicans who supported it) lots of pork and greater power for Obama. Americans meanwhile are screwed. The day of reckoning still looms.

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Chase Bank has told its business customers that there is now a limit on the amount that can be withdrawn from an account, while also banning all international wire transfers.

11:56 am

WTF? Chase Bank has told its business customers that they are placing a limit on the amount that can be withdrawn from an account, while also banning all international wire transfers.

If I had a Chase account, I would close it today, immediately, before these restrictions go into place.

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“Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts.”

9:03 am

A Democratic Congresswoman speaks her mind: “Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts.”

But don’t worry: I guarantee she will be re-elected forever. She is a black representative, in a black district. What matter that she appears to be as stupid as a brick, she’s black!

When your only criteria for voting for someone is their race, then you are the bigot. And sadly, this description appears to apply to too many blacks voters today.

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