“They have become the Mongol hordes.”
Link here.
Try to guess of whom we are speaking. Try. I will give you one hint: In this particular case it is not Islam, though trying to distinguish the difference is getting exceedingly difficult.
Year: 2015
A detailed look at the decision-making process behind ULA’s Vulcan
Link here. It does appear that the hiring of Tory Bruno as ULA’s CEO was the major factor. He seems willing to push the company to take somewhat bigger chances with new technology than it has done previously.
The Band – The Weight
An evening pause: This is truly a great performance, worth watching and listening to. I just wish it wasn’t so darkly lit.
Hat tip Danae.
Russia launches criminal investigation at Vostochny
The Russian government has launched a large-scale investigation into the disappearance of 300 million rubles ($6 million) at their new Vostochny spaceport.
The criminal case was opened on the charges of large-scale embezzlement, the interior department said. According to a pre-investigation check, an agreement was signed in October 2014 between the client represented by the state special construction company and a contractor on fulfilling contractual work for building roads as part of the Vostochny cosmodrome infrastructure development, the interior department said. “The client under the contract made an advance payment of 300 million rubles to the contractor. However, the contractor did not start work and did not return the advance payment,” the interior department said, adding the investigation was continuing.
It appears the Russian government is finally tightening the screws at what appears to be widespread corruption at Vostochny.
I suspect the real problem here is not that the contractor pocketed some money illegally, it is that the contractor pocketed too much money illegally. Had he simply skimmed off a bit off the top but made sure construction proceeded, Putin and his gang would have gladly looked the other way. They skim off enough of their own too y’know, on numerous other projects. Skimming off so much that the project isn’t even built, howver, is unacceptable!
FBI found to have routinely faked incriminating data
Does this make you feel safer? For more than two decades before 2000 the FBI’s forensic unit gave flawed and misleading testimony in almost every case in which its experts testified.
This study was launched after the Post reported that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to possibly hundreds of wrongful convictions for rape, murder, and other violent crimes, dating back at least to the 1970s. In 90 percent of the cases reviewed so far, forensic examiners evidently made statements beyond the bounds of proper science. There were no scientifically accepted standards for forensic testing, yet FBI experts routinely and almost unvaryingly testified, according to the Post,”to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work.” [emphasis in original]
But hey, let’s extend the spying authority of the National Security Agency, as is being pushed by Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), leader of the Republican Party. What could possibly go wrong?
Judge rules family should be destroyed for refusing to bake a cake
The state religion rules! A Oregon administrative law judge has recommended that a family should be fined $135,000 because the parents, who once ran a now shuttered baking business, refused to participate in a homosexual wedding by baking its cake.
Why did the Oregon judge stop there? The crime, of daring to disagree with the homosexual agenda, is so egregious that it seems to merit imprisonment. I think Oregon should maybe even consider concentration camps for these bigoted religious wackos who have the audacity to believe something different than the official state religion of liberalism. And how dare they think they have the right to feed and clothe their own children? We must take those children away immediately and put them in education camps so they can be raised properly!
Students vote to ban Chick-fil-A from Johns Hopkins campus
Fascists: In an 18-8 vote, the Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins has voted to ban Chick-fil-A from opening a franchise on campus because of the conservative opinion of its CEO towards same-sex marriage.
Most of the news reports on this story have focused on the reasons the students voted for the ban. Having such a restaurant on campus will cause students to experience “microaggressions” that will make them feel uncomfortable. We can’t have that!
I want to focus on the vote itself. That such a large majority of the student government body supports the idea that it is okay to squelch someone’s business merely because of a political disagreement speaks volumes about our future, and it is not good. These are the people that will be running society in a few years, and it is clear that they believe oppression and the use of force against their opponents is appropriate. The cultural norm for them is not to debate their opponents but to smash a boot into their face.
Based on this, if you think modern American culture is getting oppressive now, just wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Seismic data of Yellowstone has found a bigger second magma chamber
Geologists have mapped the existence of a second deeper and larger magma chamber under Yellowstone National Park.
Scientists had already known about a plume, which brings molten rock up from deep in the mantle to a region about 60 kilometers below the surface. And they had also imaged a shallow magma chamber about 10 kilometers below the surface, containing about 10,000 cubic kilometers of molten material. But now they have found a deeper one, 4.5 times larger, that sits between 20 and 50 kilometers below the surface. โThey found the missing link between the mantle plume and the shallow magma chamber,โ says Peter Cervelli, a geophysicist in Anchorage, Alaska, who works at the U.S. Geological Surveyโs Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
The discovery does not, on its own, increase the chance of an eruption, which is driven by an emptying of the shallow chamber. The last major eruption was 640,000 years ago, and today the threat of earthquakes is far more likely. But the deeper chamber does mean that the shallow chamber can be replenished again and again. โKnowing that you have this additional reservoir tells you you could have a much bigger volume erupt over a relatively short time scale,โ says co-author Victor Tsai, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The discovery, reported online today in Science, also confirms a long-suspected model for some volcanoes, in which a deep chamber of melted basalt, a dense iron- and magnesium-rich rock, feeds a shallower chamber containing a melted, lighter silicon-rich rock called a rhyolite.
Russia ends effort to build a nuclear-powered rocket engine
The competition cools down! The Russian government has decided to shut down its research project to build a nuclear rocket engine for interplanetary travel in space.
The article doesn’t give a reason, but I suspect Russia’s continuing economic problems is the source.
The idea of using nuclear power for propulsion in space has been around since the 1960s, and has shown great promise. It would provide far more power for less fuel than any existing engine. The U.S. unfortunately abandoned this research in the 1960s, partly because of the cut-backs after winning the space race and partly because of environmental protests that fear anything to do with nuclear. If the Russians had followed through, it would have given them an advantageous position in any competition to colonize the planets.
Ravel – Pavane pour une infante dรฉfunte
An evening pause: Serene and profound. Hat tip Danae.
Chinese scientists do genetic experiments with human embryos
What could possibly go wrong? A Chinese team of scientists have been experimenting with genetically manipulating the human embryo to see if they can prevent a genetic blood disorder.
The team attempted to modify the gene responsible for ฮฒ-thalassaemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder, using a gene-editing technique known as CRISPR/Cas9. The researchers say that their results reveal serious obstacles to using the method in medical applications. “I believe this is the first report of CRISPR/Cas9 applied to human pre-implantation embryos and as such the study is a landmark, as well as a cautionary tale,” says George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Their study should be a stern warning to any practitioner who thinks the technology is ready for testing to eradicate disease genes.”
They not only found the technique unreliable in curing the genetic disease, it also produced many more unpredicted mutations.
Gilda Radner – Miss Emily Litella
An evening pause: She died much too young.