February 12, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Year: 2021
Abraham Lincoln – an annual tribute
An evening pause: On this, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I must once again honor his memory, most especially because the Marxist, anti-American bigots who are now running roughshod across our once free nation wish to cancel him by actually accusing the man who freed the slaves of being a racist.
And though he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.
The modern Democrats in Congress — and their supporters nationwide — might benefit by reading some history about Lincoln. Alas, I have no hope of this.
As I wrote for last year’s tribute,
Lincoln stood for freedom for all humans, the central heart of the American experiment. He was willing and did die for that stance. We should all be willing to do no less.
The video below shows probably every photograph ever taken of Lincoln, in chronological order. You can see him age and mature. You can also see a gaunt and serious man who appears to care deeply about whatever he does.
Today’s blacklisted American: New conservative organization at Illinois Tech blacklisted by students
They’re coming for you next: When a conservative student at the Illinois Institute of Technology proposed starting a chapter of the national conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) at the school, a slander campaign was immediately started by other students against both TPUSA and the student, forcing him to back down.
[After his proposal was put forth], classmates began to message his fraternity brothers, asking whether he was attempting to lead a “hate group” on campus. The conservative student said that this occurred on three separate occasions.
On January 27, the conservative student again presented to the student government — this time, to withdraw his proposal. The conservative student emphasized that he had no malicious intent in proposing a TPUSA chapter, but merely aimed to start a political discourse on campus. The conservative student apologized for proposing a TPUSA club and stated that he would consider forming a group under another national conservative organization.
Derek Rhea, the executive vice president of the Student Government Association commented that the “entire campus had been completely mobilized,” leading to a “huge movement on the opposing side” against the prospect of a TPUSA group at Illinois Tech. He applauded the conservative student for withdrawing his request to start a TPUSA chapter.
Senator Hannah-Lauren Moreno asked whether the conservative student was pressured into rescinding his request. The conservative student informed the student government that classmates began to wonder if he, his peers, and his fraternity brothers were “terrible people” for trying to start the club.
Following the January 27 student government meeting, the conservative student provided Campus Reform with screenshots, one of which appears to show a student rejoicing in an online message that “we managed to successfully cyber bully a student org to death.” [emphasis mine]
There is only one reason these partisan leftists (and that’s what they are) wanted to block a new TPUSA chapter. Unlike the moribund and largely uninteresting and dull Republican Party clubs, TPUSA has been very effective on campuses nationwide at countering leftwing hate and censorship while drawing to it large numbers of new students, teaching them that conservative values are about freedom and justice and equal treatment before the law, not the left’s slanderous lies of “white supremacy” and “hate.”
I highlighted the words of Rhea above because if he is telling the truth and a “huge movement” of students formed to blacklist this organization we are in very big trouble. This indicates that the next generation is truly all in with censorship and blacklisting, and will likely soon consider imprisoning anyone who disagrees as perfectly reasonable.
It is also possible that this guy is lying, and that the so-called “huge movement” was a handful of loudmouthed bullies, who have successfully learned how to use social media to intimidate everyone else. In this case Rhea is one of those bullies, and he is using his position as VP of the student government for that depraved purpose.
Either way, I guarantee that should this student return to propose a club linked to a different conservative organization, these same bullies will appear, making the same slanderous claims. They lie when they say they would accept other conservative organizations. They want them all banned, and play this game to make sure none ever appear.
Rover update: The rovers are coming! The rovers are coming!
With the imminent landing on Mars of both the American rover Perseverance only days away on February 18th followed by China’s rover in April, I think it time for a new rover update, not only providing my readers a review of the new landing sites but a look at the most recent travels of Curiosity on Mars and Yutu-2 on the Moon.
Curiosity
Click for full resolution image.
The panorama above, made from four images taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on February 12, 2021 (found here, here, here, and here), looks south to the base of Mount Sharp, now only a short distance away. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right show the area this panorama covers. The white line indicates Curiosity’s previous travels. The dotted red line in both images shows Curiosity’s planned route.
The two white dots on the overview map are the locations of the two recurring slope lineae along Curiosity’s route, with the plan to get reasonable close to the first and spend some time there studying it. These lineae are one of Mars’ most intriguing phenomenon, seasonal dark streaks that appear on slopes in the spring and fade by the fall. There are several theories attempting to explain their formation, most proposing the seepage of a brine from below ground, but none has been accepted yet with any enthusiasm.
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February 10, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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The Hindley Street Country Club – More than a feeling
An evening pause: Nice cover of Boston’s hit song.
Hat tip Saromaya.
The coming death of NASA’s Space Launch System
In the past week there have been a slew of stories that all suggest strongly that the political support for the NASA-built rocket dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS) is fading very quickly, and might soon be weak enough that the political class in Washington might finally have the courage to cancel it.
First, a group of eleven Democratic Party senators on February 3rd wrote a letter [pdf] to the Biden administration, begging it to continue the manned lunar program dubbed Artemis that the Trump administration had instigated.
What made that letter remarkable was that it made no mention of SLS at all. Instead, its focus was to encourage Biden to not abandon construction of the Artemis manned lunar lander, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS).
Until that moment it had always been assumed in political circles that if you continue Artemis it means you continue SLS. Artemis itself was conceived as a program to give that heavy-lift rocket a purpose. SLS had been mandated by Congress a decade ago when Obama cancelled Bush’s Ares heavy-lift rocket. The problem was that Congress had not proposed any mission for SLS, and thus Artemis was born to give it that mission.
That these Democrats were pushing Artemis but not SLS was politically significant. It meant that they no longer considered Artemis synonymous with SLS. The former could exist without the latter.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Disney fires actress for noting the Nazis killed Jews
They’re coming for you next: The Disney corporation yesterday fired conservative actress Gina Carano, who was starring in a Star Wars series, simply because she wrote a tweet describing the entirely truthful fact that the Nazis were able to kill the Jews because they had taught the public to hate them and thus agree with that round-up.
Her tweet is to the right. Not surprisingly, a Twitter mob soon formed demanded her blacklisting. How dare she remind people of the evils of oppression, bigotry, and the genocide of a people merely because of their race, religion, or creed? Since she has been an outspoken conservative who supports Trump, her blacklisting by these storm-troopers seemed entirely reasonable to Disney, and so they finally fired here. The statement from the Lucasfilm division of the company indicates the company’s outright ignorance and close-mindedness.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In other words, it is now unacceptable to retell the history of the Holocaust in order to avoid repeating it. In fact, Disney’s action here suggests the left wants another Holocaust, is using Hitler’s tactics quite openly, and thus must do whatever it can — with the help of big corporations like this — to silence and dehumanize anyone who opposes them. And isn’t this exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, as Carano so nicely illustrated in her tweet?
If Americans don’t fight back hard soon, worse is coming, and soon. Do you subscribe to Disney’s streaming service? Do you rent its movies? Do you watch Star Wars? If after this action you still do, you are then complicit in this blacklisting, and can count yourself as a willing accessory to the coming genocide.
Possible exoplanet detected in habitable zone around Alpha Centauri A?
The uncertainty of science: Scientists have detected faint evidence that suggests the existence of a Neptune-sized exoplanet circling the sunlike star Alpha Centauri A.
After analyzing 100 hours of data gathered by NEAR in May and June of 2019, the scientists detected a thermal fingerprint in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A. The signal potentially corresponds to a roughly Neptune-size world orbiting between 1 and 2 astronomical units (AU) from the star, study team members said. (One AU, the average Earth-sun distance, is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
But that planet has not yet been confirmed, so it remains a candidate for now.
This result is very uncertain at this moment, so we should constrain our enthusiasm. If true, however, it would signal the possibility of more exoplanets circling the stars of the nearest stellar system. Alpha Centauri is actually three stars, a binary of two sunlike stars circled at great distance by the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. Scientists already think there are exoplanets circling Proxima, with one about the size of Earth.
What makes this particular interesting, if true, is that the exoplanet was detected not by the slight wobble its gravity caused in the star, or by a transit across the face of the star, but by its own light. If the detection is real, this would be I think the first time that an exoplanet has been seen directly, even if that detection comprises a few tiny pixels of light.
Saudi government considering Moon and Mars missions
The new colonial movement: The Saudi government has established a commission for developing its own space program, with missions to either the Moon or/and Mars under consideration.
According to the chairman, only a few weeks separate the Commission from launching an entire branch centered on boosting and encouraging investment in the space field.
…More so, Prince Sultan predicted that the Kingdom, in two years’ time, will finish assembling an integrated crew with international space agencies. The team is expected to mount space exploration missions to Mars and the Moon.
Their stated goal is to help diversify their economy as well as inspire their citizens. Their unstated goal is a need to compete with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which already has a successful Mars orbiter (built in partnership with the U.S.)
Europa Clipper to fly on commercial rocket, not SLS
NASA managers have now decided unequivocally to not use SLS to launch Europa Clipper, and will instead choose a commercial rocket in about a year.
During a Feb. 10 presentation at a meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), leaders of the Europa Clipper project said the agency recently decided to consider only commercial launch vehicles for the mission, and no longer support a launch of the spacecraft on the SLS.
“We now have clarity on the launch vehicle path and launch date,” Robert Pappalardo, project scientist for Europa Clipper at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. That clarity came in the form of a Jan. 25 memo from NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office to “immediately cease efforts to maintain SLS compatibility” and move forward with a commercial launch vehicle, or CLV, he said.
Though this decision was expected following the approval of the most recent congressional budget for NASA, which contained language allowing NASA to abandon SLS if it thought it wise, this decision continues the string of recent stories that all point toward the eventually abandonment of SLS itself.
At the moment the rocket most likely to win the contract is the Falcon Heavy.
Josh Tanner – Decommissioned
An evening pause: A fun short horror film taking off from actual events on ISS.
Hat tip Roland.