Mike Oldfield – The Bell
An evening pause:
Year: 2014
Going back to the Canyon
The black dot in the upper left is a condor.
As we did last year Diane and I are heading back to the Grand Canyon today. We will hike down to Phantom Ranch on Tuesday and return on Thursday, with one day at the bottom to do additional hiking. We then head to Grand Canyon Caverns to participate in a dig project there trying to find additional virgin passage. (When we were there last year we broke into approximately 250 feet of previously unknown passage.)
Obviously, posting will be impossible while we are in the Canyon. I should be able to post on the other days, though not as frequently as normal.
The Evening Pause, however, will appear each night this week, with thanks to my readers for helping me find some really interesting videos.
More destroyed evidence at the IRS
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS now reports that as many as 20 individuals under investigation for the agency’s harassment of Obama’s political opponents have had computer crashes, losing their emails.
IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20,” and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up somewhere.
The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner’s technical adviser Justin Lowe, and Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens.
But hey, Lois Lerner says she did nothing wrong!
A question for Israel’s critics?
The article begins quite bluntly:
In light of the murderous actions and intentions of Hamas, what would you like Israel to do?
I wholeheartedly concur that the death of even one unarmed civilian is tragic, let alone the death of scores or of hundreds. And I affirm without hesitation that Arab blood is as precious as Jewish blood.
That being said, since Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction, since Hamas initiated the recent hostilities, since Hamas rejected cease fire offers, since Hamas is using civilians, including women and children, as human shields, and since Hamas is actively attempting to infiltrate Israel and murder, kidnap, and maim its people, what do you suggest that Israel does?
Read it all. It is an honest appraisal of the situation.
Was Yutu stopped by rough ground?
One of the designers of the Chinese lunar rover Yutu said in a news interview today that the rocky nature of the Moon’s surface, far rougher than expected, was what caused it to stall.
The rover was tested in Beijing, Shanghai and the desert in northwestern China before its launch, but the terrain of the landing site proved to be much more rugged than expected, said Zhang Yuhua, deputy chief designer of the lunar probe system for the Chang’e-3 mission. “It is almost like a gravel field.”
Data from foreign researchers projected that there would be four stones, each above 20 cm, on average every 100 square meters, but the quantity and size of the stones that Yutu has encountered has far exceeded this expectation, Zhang said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua. “Experts’ initial judgement for the abnormality of Yutu was that the rover was ‘wounded’ by colliding with stones while moving,” she said. [emphasis mine]
The implication of the highlighted quote is that it isn’t their fault, it was the fault of those evil Americans and Russians who incorrectly estimated the roughness of the ground. This article also doesn’t fit the information released when Yutu first stalled, where they explained that their problem was partly an inability to retract equipment in preparation for lunar night. While this story could be true, it isn’t the whole story.
Lerner’s pension defunded
Pushback: When the House voted to slash the IRS budget last week, they also included a provision to defund Lois Lerner’s pension as long as she is in contempt of Congress.
The article above is an op-ed, so it doesn’t go into details and could have the facts wrong. Nonetheless, if true it puts a great deal of pressure on Lerner to spill the beans.
Looking Forward
In the past week there must have been a hundred stories written celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Here’s just a small sampling:
- Moon landing 45 years ago brought us together
- 45th Anniversary of The Flight of the Eagle
- The excitement of Apollo 11 lingers in Pensacola area
- Apollo 11 anniversary: The day America landed on the moon
- From the Earth to the Moon to the Earth
- ‘ONE GIANT LEAP’ Apollo 11’s historic trip to the moon marks its 45th anniversary
These articles try to cover the topic from all angles. Some looked at the wonders of the achievement. Others extolled the newspaper’s local community and their contribution. Some used the event to demand the U.S. do it again.
None of this interests me much. Though I passionately want humans, preferable Americans, back on the Moon exploring and settling it, this fetish with celebrating Apollo is to me becoming quite tiresome.
» Read more
The 707 turns 60
The sixtieth anniversary of Boeing’s 707 passenger jet and how it changed aviation history.
The pictures are cool, but read it for the history. Sixty years ago the ability of ordinary citizens to span the globe quickly and easily suddenly became possible, and that ability has changed the world.
Monty Python – Mafia
An evening pause: The first half captures perfectly the determination, courage, and willingness to fight for freedom of most of my baby boom generation. The second half for some reason reminds me of the IRS.
Half a billion dollars spent by Bezos in space
The competition heats up: It is now estimated that Jeff Bezos has invested approximately half a billion dollars in his space start up Blue Origin.
He won’t go broke, however, since it is also estimated that his net worth is about $27 billion.
More harrassment of opponents by the Obama administration
How the Obama Justice Department strong-arms banks to harass legal businesses it doesn’t like.
A Justice Department fraud prevention program came under fire Thursday for allegedly morphing into actively pressuring banks to deny financial services to businesses for political reasons.
Operation Choke Point functions as a partnership between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and various other federal agencies which deal with bank regulations, specifically the Treasury and the SEC. The objective of the project is to choke-off fraudulent businesses from accessing financial services, in an effort to protect consumers.
The controversy, however, is over allegations that the DOJ is pressuring financial institutions to decline doing business with so-called “high risk” industries which line up squarely against the political leanings of the current administration. These businesses include ammunition sales, payday loans, pornography, fireworks companies, and others—24 industries in total, as listed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Much of the news today and yesterday has been about the Malaysian plane shot down over the Ukraine. Though Obama’s response was pitiful, I find this story above much more significant as it illustrates bluntly this administration’s strong misuse of power for political ends.
Caves on the Moon!
Scientists have now identified more than 200 cave pits on the Moon.
The pits range in size from about 5 meters (~5 yards) across to more than 900 meters (~984 yards) in diameter, and three of them were first identified using images from the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft. Hundreds more were found using a new computer algorithm that automatically scanned thousands of high-resolution images of the lunar surface from LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera (NAC).
This work is essentially the same as that done by James Fincannon and I back in 2011 (see links here, here, here, and here) but with much greater thoroughness.