Just in case Harry Reid might actually be listening, here is another round of Obamacare train wrecks.
Just in case Harry Reid might actually be listening, here is another round of Obamacare train wrecks.
Year: 2014
The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.
The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from a 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.
This article also explains why the couple has remained anonymous, as they fear the federal government is now going to step in and steal their find from them.
Despite IAU disapproval, the space company Uwingu has announced another private commercial naming project for the craters of Mars.
The war of space names continues: Despite the disapproval of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the space company Uwingu has announced another private commercial naming project for the craters of Mars.
Starting today (Feb. 26), anybody with an Internet connection and a few dollars to spare can give a moniker to one of the Red Planet’s 500,000 or so unnamed craters, as part of a mapping project run by the space-funding company Uwingu. “This is the first people’s map of Mars, where anybody can play,” said Uwingu CEO Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief who also heads the space agency’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. “It’s a very social thing.”
Sounds fun, and a clever way for this company to raise capital. Whether these names stick is an entirely different thing. Uwingu has as much right to assign names to objects as the IAU, but so far the IAU’s fake authority in this matter carries more weight.
An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.
An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.
As is typical for today’s leftwing political correct journalism, this reality is attributed not to communism but to vague generalities. North Korea is a “rogue state” or “North Korea stands alone as an unusually isolated nation, where residents live under a familial dictatorship,” statements that embarrassingly avoid the truth. The rulers of North Korea, like Cuba, refused to reject communist when the Soviet bloc fell in 1991 and have thus left their countries and the people trapped within them poor and bankrupt.
Aren’t you glad that today’s Democratic Party here in the United States considers leftwing dogma the height of progress and a goal worthy of emulation?
An investigation into the dangerous leak of water into a spacesuit during a spacesuit last July has found that NASA engineers had missed an earlier failure of the same suit.
An investigation into the dangerous leak of water into a spacesuit during a spacesuit last July has found that NASA engineers had missed an earlier failure of the same suit.
The leak had first happened in a spacewalk a week earlier, and engineers misdiagnosed the problem. In addition, it appears they didn’t look closely enough at it.
Meanwhile, the investigation has pinpointed the cause of the leak as a clogged filter, but still could not trace what caused that clog.
Using archived Kepler data combined with statistical modeling, scientists have proposed the discovery of another 715 exoplanets.
Using archived Kepler data combined with statistical modeling, scientists have proposed the discovery of another 715 exoplanets.
This announcement is neat, but despite the many news stories about it today, it should be taken with a grain of salt. What the scientists have really done is pinpoint 715 stars where further research is likely to produce good exoplanet results. It is not guaranteed, however, that a scientist looking at these stars will actually see an exoplanet.
Comment problem
The comment problem continues. I am sorry to say that even our temporary solution, where previously approved commenters would continue to be able to post, has not worked. At the moment I am periodically scanning the unapproved comments, most of which are spam, and manually approving valid comments as I find them. Please accept the possibility that if your comment has not yet appeared, it will do so eventually, but it might take a couple of days for this to happen. The good news is that new commenters will be able to post, though it will take time to get approved.
I apologize for this problem. Hopefully all will fixed in a couple of days.
“So we do live in a jackboot society.”
“So we do live in a jackboot society.”
The video, also below the fold, is long but worth watching to the end. It will send chills up your spine. You will also never want to visit Electra, Texas.
» Read more
Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.
Layers and layers of peer-review: Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.
Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers. …
Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.
The real story here is that many of these gibberish papers were peer-reviewed by actual scientists who are supposedly experts in their fields and should have spotted the fakery immediately. That they didn’t suggests another level of corruption. Either they don’t really bother to peer review the papers they are asked to peer review, or they knew what was going on and were part of the game.
That this kind of stuff happens repeatedly in many fields of science should make us all very skeptical of any controversial scientific claim that carries with it any political component. This doesn’t mean that all published material is fake, only that we must not take anything on faith. Controversial results had better be bomb-proof before we accept them willingly.
Harry Reid insists that “all” of the Obamacare horror stories “are untrue.”
Modern American intellectualism: Harry Reid insists in a speech on the Senate floor that the Obamacare horror stories being reported daily “are all untrue.”
He then attacks the sick patients themselves for telling these stories, calling them liars.
I call this modern American intellectualism because it jibs with the typical level of open-mindedness seen in modern intellectuals when it comes to climate science and any data that throws doubt on the theory of global warming.
Contempt for the law
As I am taking a break from sightseeing and visiting relatives here in Israel, I thought I’d answer a question raised by one of my regular readers, Patrick Ritchie, in a comment a few weeks ago.
Patrick had noticed what seemed a contradiction in my posts and asked me about it. First, he noted my disgust at university officials in South Carolina who were refusing to follow a law requiring them to teach students about the Constitution because they thought it “inconvenient.”
Patrick wrote, “In the post above you state, ‘It might inconvenient, and the law itself might be foolish, but it isn’t up the administrators to decide this. They should be fired.'”
He then cited an earlier post in which I celebrated the Connecticut gun owners who were refusing to register their weapons under that state’s new very oppressive and senseless gun control law. There I had written that “When the law has contempt for freedom, then the only answer is contempt for the law.”
Patrick then asked, “I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on how, in your mind, these two situations are different. More specifically: when (if ever) do you think it is OK for citizens to disregard or break the law?”
» Read more
Former IRS official Lois Lerner has been recalled to testify again before a House committee in regards to the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
Former IRS official Lois Lerner has been recalled to testify again before a House committee in regards to the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
She took the fifth in her first appearance, while also making a statement announcing her innocence. According to numerous experts, this statement voided her ability to take the fifth. There might or might not be fireworks on March 5, when she has been called to return, as she will likely do nothing but cite the fifth amendment in her answers. How the congressmen respond to her non-answers will be interesting.
A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.
A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.
This confirms my reasoning for banning such uncivil behavior here on Behind the Black. If we want to understand the issues the first thing we need to do is to make sure we are discussing the issues, reasonably, sanely, and politely. Strong words are okay, but they better be backed up with facts and solid reasoning.
Posted from Alon Shvut, West Bank, Israel, local time 1 pm.
A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted as strongly for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.
I wonder if this means anything: A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted big for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.
The Democrat in this district loudly ran in support of Obamacare. He not only lost bad, the Republican came with a hair of winning the most liberal urban areas in Norfolk City.
The most dangerous woman in DC.
A Florida judge has ruled that it is illegal to live completely off the grid.
Freedom dies: A Florida judge has ruled that it is illegal to live completely off the grid.
The judge stated that a woman, who has been trying to live without using any utilities, has to reconnect her water line, though she won’t be forced to use it. He also admitted that the law is outdated and should be changed. This quote however is revealing.
The widow and former real estate agent now has two choices. She can either restore her hookup to the water system by the end of March or appeal Eskin’s ruling to the courts. It is not known what action the city will take but city officials told Fernandez that they would be willing to let Speronis stay in her home if conditions are “sanitary.” At the hearing, Eskin noted that city officials have not actually been in Speronis’s home to make that determination.
It is so nice the government is “willing to let her stay in her home.”
Thugs.
A California couple finds a hoard of gold coins buried on a nearby trail estimated to be worth $10 million.
We should all be so lucky: A California couple finds a hoard of gold coins buried on a nearby trail estimated to be worth $10 million.
Eric Holder describes his belief that district attorneys don’t have to enforce any laws they disagree with.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: Eric Holder describes his belief that district attorneys don’t have to enforce any laws they disagree with.
Holder’s real goal? Make the law less inconvenient so he and others in power can wield more power over everyone else. That goal is also shared by Obama as well as a large percentage of the politicians in DC from both parties. See for example this article about a man I disagree with strongly on many issues but who I know is totally on my side on this issue.
To save fuel United Airlines is adding additional winglets to the wingtips of their airplanes.
To save fuel United Airlines is adding additional winglets to the wingtips of their airplanes.
The radical re-sculpting of traditional winglets adds a new tip below the upturned one that sharply curve backwards like a scimitar. That further reduces wingtip vortices that drag on the wingtips. Each traditional pair of winglets on the 737 cuts fuel consumption by 3.5% to 4% on flights of more than 1,000 nautical miles. The split scimitar upgrade—which costs $545,000, before discounts–will reduce fuel burn by up to 2% more, says United, which hopes to save up to $60 million a year because of the devices, once its fleet is outfitted.
Very smart. Expect to see these winglets appear on all commercial jets in short order.
The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a settlement from the college that tried to stop him.
The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a $50,000 settlement from the college that tried to stop him.
At the first link I had posted the video the student had taken of the event. It is worth watching again because it is so egregious. That he won so handily is a wonderful outcome.