Archeologists have now found the earliest evidence of chocolate in Utah, suggesting that trade with the tropics was going on as early as 800 AD.
Since there still are some uncertainties about the evidence, there are still doubts about the trade.
A dozen sheriffs, all in Missouri, have told the Obama administration that they will not enforce any regulations that violate the second amendment.
I like this quote from the letter of one sheriff:
It appears to me and many Americans that there is a genuine desire on the part of your administration to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law abiding American citizens in the interest of curbing gun violence in our nation. Any attempt to restrict these Second Amendment rights through executive order is unconstitutional and tantamount to an all-out assault on the United States Constitution.
Modern free speech: A nine-year-old in Scotland who forced changes in her school lunches with her blog has been silenced.
Read the entire post. The uproar has caused the local council to back off its ban, and the kid is posting again.
After a short delay due to software issues, the satellite servicing demo on ISS has begun.
The actual refueling is scheduled to take place late Thursday.
The plans and proposed launch schedule of the new asteroid mining company, Deep Space Industries.
They aim to do their work using cubesats, which will keep everything cheap and simple, with the first launches by 2015, and the first sample return missions by 2016. Their new manufacturing technology appears to be a variation of 3D printing, though the descriptions so far released remain vague on details.
We should have even more information later today, after their press conference, aired live on youtube here at 1 pm (eastern).
A NASA engineering team is restarting the agency’s 1960s research into nuclear powered engines for deep space missions.
If completed and put into use, these engines could easily revolutionize the exploration of the solar system. Forgive me, however, if I remain skeptical, not because I lack faith in the technology but because I lack faith in NASA’s ability to finish anything.
Crash! Boom! A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.
If the bar [of gas] is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the [star’s] outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12 500 years later.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has published an updated schedule for its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.
Key dates:
February: Hotfire test of the Antares first stage.
March: First test flight of Antares.
May/June: First test flight of Cygnus, on Antares, docking with ISS.
Third quarter 2013: First operational flight of Cygnus to ISS.
An evening pause: Performed live by the Canadian Brass.
Even as the Kepler mission struggles to survive, the science team has released its entire database of exoplanet candidates to the public.
The competition heats up: Another asteroid mining company will announce its plans tomorrow, Tuesday.
As I mentioned earlier today, it is important to maintain a skeptical attitude to each of these new commercial space companies, even as we cheer them on enthusiastically. For example, I am very curious how this company has come through with a “breakthrough process for manufacturing in space.” What could this be, and why has no one thought of it before?
Finding out what’s in it: Electronic medical records — required by Obamacare — are costing doctors time while taking them away from their patients.
Probably the biggest problem with electronic records is simply that it requires the physician to input all notes and orders, rather than dictate them. As a result, as my bride puts it, “they’ve taken the highest paid person in the department and turned him/her into a data entry clerk”. On average, she and her colleagues spend more time per patient wading through drop-down menus, clicking boxes and filling in required but utterly irrelevant information than they do at the bedside, actually treating the patient. In short, it’s her experience that they see fewer patients per shift than they did previously, and spend less time with each one, now that they are required to sit down at a computer after seeing each patient and jumping through hoops to place orders instead of, as previously, simply telling the nurse what is needed and then moving on to the next patient. [emphasis mine]
Have you noticed in your recent visits to the doctor how the doctor seems to be spending his entire visit with you staring at his laptop, typing continuously as you talked? I have. Say goodbye to simplicity in the medical field. The future shall be complex bureaucracy and less medical treatment.
