Don McLean – American Pie
An evening pause: Performed live in 2011.
Hat tip Danae.
Year: 2015
Astronomers find exoplanet twin of Jupiter
Worlds without end: Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with the same mass as Jupiter orbiting its star in a very similar orbit.
Not only that, but:
The planet’s host, the solar twin HIP 11915, is not only similar in mass to the Sun, but is also about the same age. To further strengthen the similarities, the composition of the star is similar to the Sun’s. The chemical signature of our Sun may be partly marked by the presence of rocky planets in the Solar System, hinting at the possibility of rocky planets also around HIP 11915.
I immediately wonder if this star also has rocky inner planets.
Obamacare gives money to fake applicants
Finding out what’s in it: In a test of the Obamacare website, the GAO enrolled 11 fake applicants last year, five of whom were then automatically reinrolled this year, with several getting their health insurance subsidies raised.
HealthCare.gov does not appear to be set up to detect fraud, GAO audits and investigations chief Seto Bagdoyan said in prepared testimony for a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday. A copy was provided to The Associated Press. HealthCare.gov’s document-processing contractor “is not required to seek to detect fraud,” said Bagdoyan. “The contractor personnel involved in the document-verification process are not trained as fraud experts and do not perform antifraud duties.”
The Obama adminstration’s response? To paraphrase: Well, we don’t think a lot of fraud is going on, so we are not worried. Sounds like the negligent response of OPM officials when warned that they needed to improve their security system or their files would be hacked.
Then there is this, predicted by conservatives who warned us that creating Obamacare would be the equivalent of putting the DMV in charge of our healthcare:
GAO’s investigation also uncovered a problem that bedevils millions of real people dealing with the program’s new bureaucracy: confusing and inaccurate communication.
Investigators said their bogus enrollees received unclear correspondence that failed to identify the problems with their applications. “Rather than stating a message directly, correspondence instead was conditional or nonspecific, stating the applicant may be affected by something, and then leaving it to the applicant to parse through details to see if they were indeed affected,” said Bagdoyan.
The fake enrollees also got some perplexing instructions from HealthCare.gov. Eight of the 11 were asked to submit additional documentation to prove their citizenship and identity. But the list of suitable paperwork detailed documents for verifying income instead.
Obviously, this is proof we should vote for Democrats again, who imposed this law upon us. Then again, until we get different people running the Republican Party, it is unlikely it will make a difference.
Democratic fake skepticism, and Republican failure theater
Link here. Essentially, the writer is disgusted both by the fake skepticism of the Democrats, who are going to eventually back Obama’s cave-in deal to Iran, and the Republican’s failure theater, which abdicated their power to prevent that deal from being approved.
The vote is not in fact to be had; the vote of course already was had, two months ago, when Bob Corker [Republican] proposed the “compromise” that said that deal would become law automatically, subject to a negative vote by Congress, but Obama gets to veto that, meaning Obama only needs one third support in both bodies to carry the day.
This is an inversion of the usual scheme wherein it requires a two thirds positive vote to carry the day in his favor; a mere one third minority could have blocked him.
No more. A one-third minority now wins the day for him.
So the actual vote, the actual History, the important deed, passed by two months ago when few of us were paying attention.
The coming vote will be the performance of Failure Theater, debuting to a world hungry for some dramatic political entertainment; but plays are of course scripted, and thus, their conclusions are foreordained, and this particular bit of stagecraft was written and finalized months ago by Bob Corker, with every single Republican voting in favor of it, save one — Tom Cotton — who objected, and save another, Ted Cruz, who made himself absent.
I for one agree. Isn’t it interesting how the public, in the 2014 election, made it very clear that they wanted Obama’s agenda stopped, and in response most of these bastards in Congress, from both parties, have conspired to foil the will of the people.
First New Horizons fly-by images released
Many cool images! I will only post one, on the right, of the ice mountains seen at the southernmost edge of Tombauh Regio. More can be seen here.
Some quick facts revealed during today’s the press conference:
- They have gotten good data on Pluto’s atmosphere. Earlier data just before fly-by suggested that there are specific regions on the surface that have a lot of methane, but with different properties depending on location.
- They have found that the surface of Charon is active. It also looks like a weird Moon, cratered, with a dark mare region they have dubbed Mordor. Its cause however is not the same as the Moon. There are also a large sequence of troughs and cliffs that are unlike other planets. Some areas are very smooth, as they they have been repaved after cratering. And there is a canyon that is very very deep, 3 miles deep, that makes it relatively deeper than any other canyon in the solar system.
- Pluto’s moon Hydra is not spherical, and in fact looks like an asteroid.
- The white heart is now been named Tombaugh Regio after one of Pluto’s discoverers. In its southern extent there are mountains and strange pits. And this area has no impact craters, meaning this is a very young surface, less than 100 million years old. The mountains have to made of ice, which is essentially the only thing that can be bedrock at Pluto’s temperatures, based on what they think Pluto is composed of.
- The data shows repeatedly that a tiny planet can still have geological activity after billions of years, even without a giant gas giant nearby to produce tidal heating.
- They have named the giant whale-shaped dark region at the equator Cthulu Regio.
The data and images will be coming back from New Horizons for the next year, so the show is certainly not over.
Why the Jews are the canary in the coal mine
Link here.
This is a long article, but deeply thoughtful and well researched. Take the time to read it. It documents why the Jewish people have always been the target of tyrants. The reason is not what you think, ethnic hatred.
The Jews are like the canary in the coal mine, not because the Jews, like the canary, succumb to the poison before everyone else. It is because the enemies of liberty know that all humanism, all doctrines of liberty and sanctity of human life in Western Civilization come from the Jews; from Jewish sources and from Jewish thinkers. In order to put those ideas to rest, they have to eliminate the Jewish roots, the Jewish frames of reference and the Jews, whose very presence is a reminder that people have the God-given right to live in freedom and equality. The goal of Jew-bashing is the destruction of everyone’s freedom, and that is why everyone should take warning.
The author correctly documents this conclusion. And anyone who has spent any time reading the Old Testament of the Bible will also know that he is correct.
The wine-sipping butchers of Planned Parenthood
The title above is the headline for the article. It is also disgustingly accurate. When I watched the video yesterday I found it incredible to see Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, munch salad and sip wine as she nonchalantly discusses cutting up babies for body parts.
Worse, the effort of Planned Parenthood, the press, and Democratic politicians to excuse this or make believe it didn’t happen is appalling.
The video is below the fold. Watch it. It depicts the result of the slow corruption of American intellectual culture, which has been willing to make excuses for small evils so often in the past few decades that it no longer recognizes the worst form of evil when it stares them in the face.
» Read more
A geological tour of Comet 67P/C-G
The science team of Rosetta has released a detailed geological tour of the nucleus of Comet 67P/C-G.
If you own a pair of blue-red 3D glasses, you should definitely check out the link. The 3D images are especially cool.
First Vostochny launch expected before year’s end
The competition heats up: The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said today that he expects the first launch from their new spaceport in Vostochny to take place in December of this year.
Bond Girls – Korobushka
An evening pause: Hat tip to Willi Kusche.
“We are in lock with telemetry with the spacecraft!”
The quote above was a confirmation from mission control that New Horizons survived the fly-by and is functioning perfectly.
They are still confirming if everything is A-Okay, but so far everything appears to exactly that. People are very jubilant at mission control.
They got the signal early, at the very beginning of their window.
They have now confirmed that they have a healthy spacecraft, and that “They are outbound from Pluto.”
Pluto and Charon in false color
While waiting for word about how New Horizons has fared during its close fly-by of Pluto, the science team today released the false color images on the right of both Pluto and Charon to illustrate the complicated surface geology of both planetary bodies.
The new color images reveal that the “heart” of Pluto actually consists of two remarkably different-colored regions. In the false-color image, the heart consists of a western lobe shaped like an ice cream cone that appears peach color in this image. A mottled area on the right (east) side looks bluish. A mid-latitude band appears in shades ranging from pale blue through red. Even within the northern polar cap, in the upper part of the image, various shades of yellow-orange indicate subtle compositional differences. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.
The surface of Charon is viewed using the same exaggerated color. The red on the dark northern polar cap of Charon is attributed to hydrocarbon and other molecules, a class of chemical compounds called tholins. The mottled colors at lower latitudes point to the diversity of terrains on Charon. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.
Word on the spacecraft’s status will arrive at around 9 pm (eastern) tonight. Images and data will then follow, assuming all is well.