Year: 2016

Millions opt out of Obamacare despite penalities

8:48 am

Finding out what’s in it: The White House last month admitted that millions of healthy Americans have decided it is cheaper to pay the Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance than pay for insurance that is too expensive and does them little good.

Because so many young and healthy people are doing the math and refusing to pay for a product they don’t need and costs them far more than it is worth, the insurance pool is, as predicted, increasingly made up of sick people only. Such a pool is not viable for the insurance companies, and guarantees that they will eventually go bankrupt.

But hey, Obama and the Democrats promised us all that Obamacare would lower costs and make everyone happy. They wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

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A detailed look at Trump’s positions

8:45 am

This link provides a very detailed but thorough summary of the political positions that Donald Trump has taken in the past year during his presidential campaign. Take a look, as it does a nice job of listing his stance on almost all the important issues that appear to concern Americans at this time. His conclusion is telling:

Except for immigration, foreign policy, and energy, all of Trump’s contemporary positions are more identifiable with liberal positions, which is not surprising, considering he has spent most of his life as a liberal Democrat. Now, if you’re a conservative and immigration is your number-one issue, you can still justify a vote for Donald Trump. But Ted Cruz is almost as good – promising to build a wall, oppose amnesty, and enforce the law – and he’s much better on just about every other issue.

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Washington state releasing convicts early by mistake since 2002

10:01 am

Government marches on: Because of a software error, Washington state has for more than 12 years released more than 3,000 convicted felons several months earlier than required by law

Two of those felons have now been charged with murders that occurred during the period when they should have been in prison.

Sounds stupid and bad eh? Well, it gets worse:

Even though the problem was discovered in 2012, the department repeatedly delayed fixing the software, until Gov. Jay Inslee says the problem finally came to his attention last month. He disclosed the problem to the media in a press conference shortly before Christmas. “That this problem was allowed to continue to exist for 13 years is deeply disappointing, it is totally unacceptable, and frankly, it is maddening,” Inslee says.

Hey, why should anyone be complaining? It takes time to fix software problems. And the work is hard! In fact, we should be grateful these government employees are now working to fix it.

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Leningrad Cowboys & the Red Army Choir – Sweet Home Alabama

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I can think of nothing more appropriate to begin the new year with than this performance. Nothing.

Hat tip hondo.

By the way, with the New Year I am in desperate need of more Evening Pause suggestions. If you’ve sent me suggestions in the past, you know the email address. If not, post a comment here saying that you have a suggestion (without mentioning what it is) and I will email you for it.

6 comments

2015’s 13 most ridiculous protests on college campuses

10:36 am

Link here.

Read it all and weep. I would also suggest that if you need to choose a university for your child, you should cross off Swarthmore University, the University of New Hampshire, Idaho State University, College of the Canyons (in Los Angeles), Western University (in London), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California-Los Angeles, Kansas University, North Carolina University, Scripps College (in California), the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Washington, the University of Ottawa (in Canada), the University of Georgia, Quinnipiac University, and the University of California-Merced.

Most of these are government colleges, which also means that as voters we should also be demanding that their government funding should cease, now, immediately, without any negotiation. They are not only failing to educate their students, the academics who run these colleges are actually teaching them very stupid and bad ideas. They should be forced to find some real work where they will be no longer be able to do society this harm.

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Seeds from archaeological site grow into extinct squash

10:18 am

Update: It appears the story below is bogus. (Hat tip Pzatchok.) It appears to be a combination of two different stories, one in which gardeners from the Miami Nation in Indiana donated old seeds to a research group, and the second where that same research group attempted to grow seeds found in a Kentucky cave, with poor results.

Original post:
Students who discovered some ancient seeds in a clay pot at an archaeological site in Canada successfully planted them to grow a previously extinct species of squash.

Not all the seeds grew, but enough did. Moreover, the new squash produced new seeds. This once extinct squash is no longer extinct. And according to the article is also tastes delicious!

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Recovered Falcon 9 first stage undamaged

9:57 am

Recovered Falcon 9 first stage

The competition heats up: In an Instagram post, Elon Musk has revealed that the Falcon 9 first stage that successfully landed vertically after launch is in its hanger and is essentially undamaged.

Elon Musk: “Falcon 9 back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral. No damage found, ready to fire again.”

Musk’s post included a higher resolution version of the picture on the right, showing a close-up of the stage near its top. This image reveals that, despite some minor paint damage and dirt, this section of the stage does appear whole and ready to go. Even the landing fins are folded and appear undamaged.

Musk’s post also suggests that the stage is ready for its first post-launch test firing, which underlines how unique this opportunity is. No one has ever had a functioning first stage available for testing after it had been launched and returned to Earth. Past assumptions (an important word) have always said that the stress of launch would damage it enough that it wouldn’t be cost effect to reuse it. SpaceX’s engineers now will have an opportunity to find out if that assumption was true or false. I strongly suspect they will find that this assumption was false, that it was used as a bugaboo by the small-minded to discourage just this kind of effort by SpaceX.

This article notes that Musk has previously said it costs $60 million to build the first stage, but only $200K to refuel it. Since SpaceX says it charges about $70 million per launch, that first stage is most of SpaceX’s cost for each launch. If the stage can reused later, the cost of later launches will thus plummet incredibly. Assume they can only reuse the stage once. Amortized over only two launches the cost is still cut by almost half. More importantly, the ability to reuse will be an incentive for them to build the stage right the first time, so that it can be reused multiple times.

I repeat: The importance of this breakthrough has not yet sunk in. It is going to change the entire aerospace industry and everything we do in space.

Update: I have corrected the post above, which originally incorrectly stated that the picture showed the stage near its base.

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