Pat Metheny – So May It Secretly Begin
An evening pause: Hat tip Rex Ridenoure of Ecliptic Enterprises.
Year: 2020
Best Buy furloughs 51,000 workers because of Wuhan panic shutdown
The beatings will continue until morale improves: Best Buy yesterday announced that it is furloughing 51,000 workers because their stores have been shuttered by the government imposed lockdown over the Wuhan flu.
Best Buy announced Wednesday the tech chain will furlough roughly 51,000 hourly and part-time store employees nationwide beginning Sunday as the company grapples with the business impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to furloughing the workers, who include “nearly all part-time employees,” an unspecified amount of corporate staff members have volunteered to work reduced hours and, in turn, take pay cuts, while others have volunteered themselves for the temporary furloughs, Best Buy announced Wednesday.
The company will provide health benefits for three more months. No promises after that.
You know, if the company goes under, caused by the government-imposed shutdown, wouldn’t that be a kind of taking of property? And doesn’t the violate the fifth amendment of the Bill of Rights?
Oh, right, that doesn’t count anymore, according to the Democratic governor of New Jersey. I forgot.
JC Penny faces bankruptcy due to Wuhan panic
The beatings will continue until morale improves: J.C. Penny is now facing bankruptcy because it will unable to meet a due date on a loan because of store closures forced on it by state governors, panicking over the Wuhan flu.
Like many traditional retailers, J.C. Penney’s business has been under pressure in recent years amid declining store traffic and a shift toward digital outlets. The company’s struggles were compounded in recent weeks after the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of 850 J.C. Penney stores.
With turnaround plans temporarily shelved due to the pandemic, J.C. Penney executives are considering filing for bankruptcy, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. While the retailer has enough cash on hand to weather the store closures, bankruptcy protections would allow J.C. Penney to restructure its upcoming debt payments. The company owes nearly $4 billion in long-term debt.
The article did not say how many employees are presently out of work because of the shut down of JC Penny stores.
I think I will start posting these stories, as I see them. There are a lot, and they illustrate that the shut downs are hurting far more people than the Wuhan flu.
Trump bows to bureaucrats, unveils a never-ending 3-phase program to end shutdowns
The house arrests will continue indefinitely: Though the country’s fifty governors are in charge of the nationwide house arrest and the only ones who can really end it, President Trump today unveiled a 3-phrase program to use as a guide for ending those state shutdowns.
The new guidelines are aimed at easing restrictions in areas with low transmission of the coronavirus, while holding the line in harder-hit locations. They make clear that the return to normalcy will be a far longer process than Trump initially envisioned, with federal officials warning that some social distancing measures may need to remain in place through the end of the year to prevent a new outbreak.
Places with declining infections and strong testing would begin a three-phased gradual reopening of businesses and schools — each phase lasting at least 14 days — to ensure that infections don’t accelerate again.
In phase one, for instance, the plan recommends strict social distancing for all people in public. Gatherings larger than 10 people are to be avoided and nonessential travel is discouraged.
In phase two, people are encouraged to maximize social distancing where possible and limit gatherings to no more than 50 people unless precautionary measures are taken. Travel could resume.
Phase three envisions a return to normalcy for most Americans, with a focus on identification and isolation of any new infections.
Essentially Trump has accepted the rules demanded by the nation’s health bureaucrats. The Bill of Rights and Constitution, meant to protect private property, personal freedom, and religious practice, will continue to be suspended and against the law until these petty dictators decide otherwise.
And even when they declare we can go back to “normal,” they want a program to hunt down infected individuals and label them as “unclean” (my term but quite accurate) so that they won’t be able infect the clean. For those individuals, all rights will still be suspended, possibly forever.
Meanwhile, the numbers continue to suggest that the total deaths from this disease will end up comparable to a somewhat normal flu season. Some might then argue that these deaths are in addition to those flu deaths, but that is incorrect. Most flu deaths occur in older and already sick populations. The Wuhan virus targets these same populations. Someone who dies from one would have been just as likely this year to have died from the other. Thus, the overall mortality will probably not change significantly, if at all, in 2020.
We never shut down the country and suspended the Bill of Rights during past similar flu seasons. In fact, it would have been considered insane to do so. I think it is insane now, suggesting that the real epidemic sweeping across the global is mass hysteria, based on an irrational fear fueled by a partisan press and Democratic politicians who are focused solely on attacking Donald Trump and endlessly seeking ways to hurt him, even if it means putting millions of people out of work and bankrupting the economy.
Moreover, there is tentative evidence that suggests the shutdowns are irrelevant to the spread of the disease. Regardless, these shutdowns were never meant to stop it, only to give the health system breathing room so it would not be overwhelmed by too many patients. That has not happened, meaning that the shutdowns are now unnecessary.
It is time for them to end, now. And if the government won’t back down, then maybe it is time for Americans to tell them to go to hell and go back to work anyway, as suggested by Sarah Hoyt.
Ignore their plans. Their plans are not for our good. The goal is to have everyone out of the house and doing the most productive thing they can by May 1st.
May First (Yes, I know, stealing the commies holiday is grand) is now National Hit the Streets Day. If you can get out of the house and work, do so. Open your shop, serve coffee on our front lawn, I don’t care. Be outside. Do something productive. And if you can’t do something productive AT LEAST BE OUTSIDE. Out in the street. Out in the park. Both of which are paid for by your taxes, btw.
May 1st, get out. Wear SOMETHING yellow (Hong Kong, the gillets jeunes, which though not like us also are fighting attempts at tyranny.) Snek optional.
Because we’re Americans. They govern by the consent of the governed. We don’t need their consent to exercise our natural rights.
As she adds, “They can’t arrest everybody.”
Rover update: Curiosity heads downhill
Click for higher resolution.
[For the overall context of Curiosity’s travels, see my March 2016 post, Pinpointing Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater. For the updates in 2018 go here. For a full list of updates before February 8, 2018, go here.]
After finally reaching the top of the Greenheugh Pedimont (see both the March 4 and March 8, 2020 rover updates) and spending more than a month there, drilling one hole, getting samples, and taking a lot of photos, the Curiosity science team in the past week has finally sent the rover retreating back downhill, following the same route it used to climb uphill.
The panorama above was taken on April 10, 2020, and shows the last view looking south across that pedimont towards Mount Sharp, before that descent. As you can see, trying to traverse that terrain would have been very difficult, and probably very damaging to Curiosity’s wheels.
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Movie of OSIRIS-REx touch-and-go rehearsal
Click for movie.
The OSIRIS-REx science team yesterday released a short movie, compiled from thirty images taken during the April 14, 2020 rehearsal of the spacecraft’s planned August touch-and-go sample grab from the asteroid Bennu.
The rehearsal brought the spacecraft through the first two maneuvers of the sampling event to a point approximately 213 feet (65 meters) above the surface, before backing the spacecraft away. These images were recorded over a ten-minute span between the execution of the rehearsal’s “Checkpoint” burn, approximately 394 feet (120 meters) above the surface, and the completion of the back-away burn, which occurred approximately 213 feet (65 meters) above the surface. The spacecraft’s sampling arm – called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) – is visible in the central part of the frame, and the relatively clear, dark patch of Bennu’s sample site Nightingale is visible in the later images, at the top. The large, dark boulder that the spacecraft approaches during the sequence is 43 feet (13 meters) on its longest axis.
The image to the right is the last frame of the movie, as the spacecraft has begun its retreat. The smoother area of Nightingale is at the top.
Based on the video, it appears as if the spacecraft would have missed the Nightingale target site had the rehearsal continued to touchdown. This might not be so, however. And even if it is, the reason for the rehearsal is to allow engineers to refine the process to make it more accurate. We shall see what changes in the second rehearsal in about a month or so.
Rocket Lab steals Arianespace customer
Capitalism in space: It turns out that a new launch contract won by Rocket Lab this week was actually a payload that was originally going to fly on Arianespace’s Vega rocket.
What Tuesday’s announcement did not include was the fact that the Japanese company [Synspective] shuffled this launch from a Vega rocket onto Electron. The Vega rocket, which had its first failure in 15 launches last July, has yet to return to flight. The spaceport it launches from in French Guiana remains closed due to the coronavirus.
Synspective had signed a major agreement with Arianespace last year to launch what is hoped will become a 25-satellite constellation. It appears that because of the Vega rocket failure, along with its higher price, Rocket Lab is going to get that business instead. That Rocket Lab can provide Synspective a dedicated launch, to the orbit of its choice, also encouraged the switch.
The background of this deal suggests that Rocket Lab’s future is bright, assuming New Zealand and the United States are ever allowed to go back to normal as free and open countries.
Space Force hypes unspecified Russian anti-satellite test
Yesterday Space Force officials released a scathing press release condemning a so-called Russian anti-satellite test, calling it “a threat” while providing zero details about what the Russians actually did.
I saw the press release and realized it was nothing more than an effort by the new Space Force to justify its existence and to possibly encourage more funding from Congress. Until they release some details about the test itself, the story simply doesn’t merit coverage.
Our compliant and brainless media today however immediately jumped on the Washington swamp bandwagon with numerous stories reinforcing and supporting the Space Force lobbying effort. Here are a few examples:
- Breaking Defense: Raymond Rips Russian ASAT Test, Arms Control Hypocrisy
- SpacePolicyOnline: U.S. Space Command Tracking Russian ASAT Test
- The Verge: Russia conducts another test of its missile system to take out satellites
- Space News: U.S. Space Command blasts Russia for anti-satellite missile test
All of these articles buy into the Space Force agenda, with practically no skepticism. All provide lots of quotes from a variety of Washington “experts” backing the Space Force position, insisting that the Russians are evil and have now demonstrated a new capability that requires a big U.S. response. None provide any further detail about the test itself, meaning that no further information on it was available, and that their stories were nothing more than a xerox of that empty Space Force press release.
Only this story from C4ISRNET described the press release properly, giving no play to these so-called “experts” because any quotes they would provide were merely a transparent lobbying effort for the Space Force. Instead, the article provided this much needed background:
Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, said the test is likely of the Nudol, a ballistic-missile system capable of taking out satellites in low earth orbit. He warned not to overreact, as the system has been tested several times in recent years. According to the CSIS Aerospace Security Project’s Space Threat Assessment 2020, Russia conducted its seventh test of Nudol in December 2018.
As to why military leaders issued the statement, Weeden said it is “part of the DoD being more public about what’s going on in space, which is good. But it also seems the only thing they’re doing about it is using it to justify more U.S. spending on our own counterspace capabilities.” [emphasis mine]
In other words, this test is nothing unusual, and was being hyped by the Space Force in order to garner a bigger budget for the new agency.
Sadly, this is par for the course. Our entire society is presently shut down because medical “experts” in Washington and the mainstream leftist press did the same thing with COVID-19, hyping what was clearly nothing more than a new disease variation of the annual flu season so much that they convinced American public it was another Black Plague. The result: a new Great Depression, millions out of work, and the end of American freedom, all for the benefit of those Washington “experts” and that leftist press.
Astronomers claim to have discovered most powerful supernova ever
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have now calculated that a supernova that was spotted in 2016 was possibly the brightest ever detected, and might have been caused by the merger of two massive stars, each about sixty times as massive as the Sun.
SN 2016aps was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan- STARRS) Survey for Transients on February 22, 2016 with an apparent magnitude of 18. Also known as PS16aqy, the explosion occurred in a low-mass galaxy some 3.1 billion light-years from Earth.
University of Birmingham’s Dr. Matt Nicholl and colleagues believe SN 2016aps could be an example of an extremely rare ‘pulsational pair-instability’ supernova, possibly formed from two massive stars that merged before the explosion. Such an event so far only exists in theory and has never been confirmed through astronomical observations.
…The researchers observed SN 2016aps for two years, until it faded to 1% of its peak brightness. Using these measurements, they calculated the mass of the supernova was between 50 to 100 solar masses. Typically supernovae have masses of between 8 and 15 solar masses.
They theorize that the supernova became especially bright when the explosion collided with a gas shell that already surrounded both stars.
Lots of assumptions and guesswork here, based on a tiny amount of data. The biggest lack is that they don’t have any observations of the star (or stars) prior to the supernova, so any theory about what those stars were like is exactly that, a theory.
Katica Illényi – Once Upon a Time in the West
An evening pause: Music by Ennio Morricone, played on the theremin with the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hat tip Cotour.
Judge rules health dept must give names of all COVID-19 patients to police
The law is only for the little people: An Illinois judge has ruled that the county health department must give the full list of patients infected with the Wuhan virus to the police, immediately making void all federal and state privacy laws designed to protect our health records.
On Friday, McHenry County Judge Michael Chmiel entered a temporary restraining order mandating that the Health Department disclose to police the names of those actively infected with COVID-19.
…The Health Department refused to reveal the names, prosecutors stated in a news release. Health departments have typically cited privacy concern in withholding such information, specifically the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
What this also means is that if you have been infected with the Wuhan flu, you are now a second class citizen in McHenry County, subject to increased police surveillance and restrictions, regardless of your rights. And your health records are now out of your control, and being freely distributed to government officials.
This story is hardly an outlier. Government officials nationwide are now using the Wuhan flu as an excuse to make them immune from all laws, free to do anything they want in order to increase their power ad infinitum.
If Americans do not resist this abuse of power now, very soon we will not have even the hint of a free nation that we presently retain.
Baby Martian volcanoes
Click for full image.
Cool image time! I came across this strange feature shown on the right in my normal rummaging through the archive of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The photo, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, focuses on what they label a “cratered cone.”
The immediate thought is that this is a volcano cone, and the craters at its peak are not impact craters but calderas. In science however such a knee-jerk conclusion is always dangerous. For example, this might instead be a pedestal crater, where the surrounding terrain was worn away over eons, leaving the crater sitting high and dry.
It is therefore important to look deeper to determine what origin of this feature might be.
First, its location, as shown in the overview map below, provides us our first clue.
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