John Williams – Olympic Fanfare
An evening pause: I think I’ve posted this previously, but I can’t find it, and so what. It’s worth listening to again.
Hat tip Danae.
Year: 2019
Oregon official who oppressed Christian bakers loses election
Update: One of my readers pointed out something I completely missed when I read the story below today: The story is from 2016, describing an election then, not recently. Thus, this isn’t recent news and does not indicate anything about the present state of politics in Oregon.
Essentially this is a “Never mind.”
Very good news: The Oregon labor official who used the law to put a Christian bakery out of business because they would not bake a gay wedding cake has lost a statewide election to a Republican.
In his bid for Secretary of State, Avakian promised a push for “progressive values” like wage equality and reproductive freedoms. His conservative opponent promised to adhere to the position’s basic, more traditional roles, like auditing public records and officiating elections.
In the end, the opponent, Dennis Richardson won 48% of the popular vote, beating Avakian by nearly 100,000 votes. The victory makes Richardson the first Republican to win a statewide office in Oregon since 2002.
Maybe Oregonians are finally getting a bit sick and tired of how the left is giving their state the reputation as a failing fascist state.
Nevada’s governor vetoes bill to void electoral college
Good news: Nevada’s Democratic governor has suprisingly vetoed a bill to that would have given all of Nevada’s electoral college votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote.
It appears he actually put the interests of his state and its citizens above Democratic partisan politics.
“After thoughtful deliberation, I have decided to veto Assembly Bill 186,” [Governor Steve] Sisolak said in a statement. “Once effective, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada’s electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose.”
This is a major blow to the effort by Democrats to void the electoral college, which would almost guarantee their victory in every future presidential election, due to their domination in high population states like California and New York.
Some related good news: Maine’s House today defeated a similar bill that had been approved by its Senate two weeks ago.
While the Senate vote fell largely on along party lines, with all Republicans and two Democrats opposing it, the House saw a more bipartisan rejection of the measure, after at least 20 lawmakers made speeches from the floor.
In other words, once they were made aware of the harmful nature of the bill to Maine’s interests, more Democrats, like Nevada’s governor, chose their state’s interests over national Democratic partisan politics.
Rover update: May 30, 2019
Summary: Curiosity confirms clay in the clay unit. Yutu-2 begins its sixth day on the far side of the Moon. Three other rovers move towards completion and launch.
For the updates in 2018 go here. For a full list of updates before February 8, 2018, go here.
Clouds over Gale Crater
Curiosity
For the overall context of Curiosity’s travels, see my March 2016 post, Pinpointing Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater.
Curiosity’s journey up the slopes of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater goes on! On the right is one of a number taken by the rover in the past week, showing water clouds drifting over Gale Crater.
These are likely water-ice clouds about 19 miles (31 kilometers) above the surface. They are also “noctilucent” clouds, meaning they are so high that they are still illuminated by the Sun, even when it’s night at Mars’ surface. Scientists can watch when light leaves the clouds and use this information to infer their altitude.
While these clouds teach us something about Martian weather, the big rover news this week was that the data obtained from the two drill holes taken in April show that the clay formation that Curiosity is presently traversing is definitely made of clay, and in fact the clay there has the highest concentration yet found by the rover.
This clay-enriched region, located on the side of lower Mount Sharp, stood out to NASA orbiters before Curiosity landed in 2012. Clay often forms in water, which is essential for life; Curiosity is exploring Mount Sharp to see if it had the conditions to support life billions of years ago. The rover’s mineralogy instrument, called CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy), provided the first analyses of rock samples drilled in the clay-bearing unit. CheMin also found very little hematite, an iron oxide mineral that was abundant just to the north, on Vera Rubin Ridge. [emphasis mine]
That two geological units adjacent to each other are so different is significant for geologists, because the difference points to two very different geological histories. The formation process for both the clay unit and Vera Rubin Ridge must have occurred at different times under very different conditions. Figuring out how that happened will be difficult, but once done it will tell us much about both Gale Crater and Mars itself.
With the success of their clay unit drilling campaign, the Curiosity science team has had the rover begin its trek back from the base of the cliff below Vera Rubin Ridge to its planned travel route up the mountain.
An updated description of that route was released by the Curiosity science team last week, while I was in Wales. Below is their image showing that route, with additional annotations by me and reduced to post here.
» Read more
Study shows Common Core hurt kids’ test scores
Our incompetent federal government: Researchers have found that since the adoption of Common Core during the Obama administration the test scores of children have dropped, not risen as promised.
Moreover, the decline appears directly related to Common Core itself.
Researchers the Obama administration funded to assist Common Core’s rollout recently found, to their surprise, that under Common Core U.S. student achievement has sunk. “Contrary to our expectation, we found that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards, and had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of NAEP composite scores,” the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) preliminary study said. “The size of these negative effects, however, was generally small.”
The study found not only lower student achievement since Common Core, but also performed data analysis suggesting students would have done better if Common Core had never existed. The achievement declines also grew worse over time, study coauthor Mengli Song told Chalkbeat, an education news website: “That’s a little troubling.”
The study looked at math and reading test scores for both 4th and 8th grade students, and found that, almost as soon as Common Core was adopted scores began dropping. In many cases the drop reversed an improving trend that had been on-going for decades. The graph on the right illustrates this starkly for 8th grade math scores. There are other graphs at the link that show the same thing.
Common Core was another power grab by the federal government. It was opposed by many local parents and teachers, partly because they saw its defects, and partly because they strongly believed that education is better left to local communities, the teacher in the classroom, and the parents of that teacher’s students.
Sadly, however, we live in a time that insists that all decisions must come from Washington, no matter how trivial, and despite the reality that Washington’s track record for the past half century is truly abysmal, in almost everything it has attempted to accomplish.
First movie of solar eclipse rediscovered
The first movie ever made of a solar eclipse, taken in 1900, has been rediscovered and restored.
The film was taken by British magician turned pioneering filmmaker Nevil Maskelyne on an expedition by the British Astronomical Association to North Carolina on 28 May, 1900. This was Maskelyne’s second attempt to capture a solar eclipse. In 1898 he travelled to India to photograph an eclipse where succeeded but the film can was stolen on his return journey home. It was not an easy feat to film. Maskelyne had to make a special telescopic adapter for his camera to capture the event. This is the only film by Maskelyne that we know to have survived.
I have embedded the movie below the fold.
» Read more
Russians say ISS threatened by debris from India’s anti-satellite test
According to one Russian official, data from the U.S. Air Force suggests that ISS now faces an increased risk from the debris produced from India’s anti-satellite test in March.
The probability that debris from an Indian satellite shot down earlier may puncture the International Space Station (ISS) has risen by 5%, Executive Director of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos for Manned Space Programs Sergei Krikalyov said on Wednesday.
“The Americans have carried out calculations on the probability of the station getting punctured because of more debris surfacing and being dispersed. There are numerical estimates raising the probability of a puncture by about 5%,” Krikalyov said at a session of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Council.
It is unclear what this means, since Krikalyov did not say what the estimated overall risk is now thought to be. Increasing a 1% risk by 5% is far less significant that increasing a 10% risk by 5%. In fact, without knowing what the overall risk is, this story is practically meaningless, and instead suggests there are political reasons for making this statement.
Hayabusa-2 successfully places reference target at man-made crater
Hayabusa-2 has successfully dropped a small reference target at the man-made crater on Ryugu, getting within 10 meters of the surface.
The image to the right is the last image taken by the spacecraft’s navigation camera during the operation. Unfortunately, the science team did not provide any further information, such as the height from which this image was taken, nor the scale of the features. Based on the sequence of images, it clearly occurred at the moment of closest approach.
I have tried to see if I could pinpoint the crater in the image by comparing it to the planning image post here. Unfortunately, I have been unable to identify comparable features.
Either way with the successful placement of the reference target on the surface, they can now begin planning the sample grab touch-and-go at this location.
Turkey releases jailed American citizen
Turkey yesterday released an American citizen and former NASA researcher whom they had arrested in 2016 during their effort to squelch a failed coup.
39-year-old Serkan Golge has been in Turkish custody since 2016 when he was arrested in the southern part of the country while on vacation. The arrest occurred in the midst of a failed coup attempt where thousands were detained on dubious evidence as suspicions swirled in the Turkish government. Golge was sentenced to five years on terrorism charges.
…Golge was accused of working with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government alleged was the mastermind behind the failed coup attempt. The only evidence authorities had against Golge was a $1 bill they found after searching his brother’s house. Turkish prosecutors alleged that Gülen would give blessed $1 bills to his followers.
Though the decision to release Golge was made by the Turkish courts, don’t be fooled. This was done for political reasons. It occurred only hours after Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan completed a phone conversation about trade and tariff issues. They apparently did not discuss Golge, but I am sure Erdoğan realized that getting Gloge released would make negotiations with Trump easier.
May 28, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts
» Read more
Yuja Wang – Mozart’s Turkish March
An evening pause: I don’t know the piece well enough to be sure, but I think that she is doing a lot of really amazing improvisation here. And make sure you look of admiration on the face of the musician behind her as he watches her play.
Hat tip Diane Wilson.
Netanyahu calls for new elections
Having failed to form a coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu has called for new elections, only seven weeks after his coalition of parties won the previous election.
Like all the Israeli news sources I’ve read, this one is also somewhat vague about the disagreement, which is between the orthodox parties and another smaller party within Netanyahu’s coalition.
At the heart of the impasse was the issue of drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students: Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman, without whom Netanyahu can’t form a coalition, refused to back down on the bill’s terms, while ultra-Orthodox parties claimed they have already yielded enough ground.
It appears the disagreement involves a new law related to the requirement that orthodox yeshiva students be liable for the military draft, as are all other Israeli citizens. Because of a deal made many decades ago by Ben-Gurion, those students had been exempted from the draft until just a few years ago. It seems the negotiations were either an attempt to expand their exemption again, or reduce it further. None of the stories I’ve read have been clear on this point.