Implosion of the Marble Falls Bridge in Texas
An evening pause: The Marble Falls Bridge in Texas had been replaced and needed to be removed. This almost instantaneous demolition was accomplished on March 17, 2013.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Homeland Security has proposed a plan to scan the private emails of anyone connected with defense work.
What could go wrong? Homeland Security has proposed a plan to scan the private emails of anyone connected with defense work.
A congressional report, issued by Republicans in the House and Senate, says that Obamacare will increase healthcare costs by 200 percent.
A congressional report, issued by Republicans in the House and Senate, says that Obamacare will increase healthcare costs by 200 percent.
Though the report is partisan, it is worth reading because of the depth of the analysis as well as the range of its historical research. For example:
The report notes that a number of states have already imposed requirements on health coverage and the result has been fewer choices and higher premiums. In New York, for example, a 30-year-old male paid an average of $1,200 a year in annual premiums in 1993, but one month after the state passed Obamacare-like reforms, premiums soared to $3,240. At the time Washington state passed similar reforms, 19 insurance carriers wrote policies for state residents. Within six years, only two carriers remained in the state.
I was living in New York when the state legislature passed this early version of Obamacare and can attest to truth of the above facts. Costs doubled and insurance companies fled the state, reducing competition. I even wrote about an article about it. The evidence from these state efforts illustrates the likelihood that Obamacare will do the same, nationwide.
Curiosity is out of safe mode and will be resuming full science operations by next week.
Curiosity is out of safe mode and will be resuming full science operations by next week.
It is imperative that the engineers clear up these computer problems now, as communications with the rover will be limited in April because the sun will be in the way.
Transmissions from Earth to the orbiters [Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter] will be suspended while Mars and the sun are two degrees or less apart in the sky, from April 9 to 26, with restricted commanding during additional days before and after. Both orbiters will continue science observations on a reduced basis compared to usual operations. Both will receive and record data from the rovers. Odyssey will continue transmissions Earthward throughout April, although engineers anticipate some data dropouts, and the recorded data will be retransmitted later.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will go into a record-only mode on April 4. “For the entire conjunction period, we’ll just be storing data on board,” said Deputy Mission Manager Reid Thomas of JPL. He anticipates that the orbiter could have about 40 gigabits of data from its own science instruments and about 12 gigabits of data from Curiosity accumulated for sending to Earth around May 1.
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is approaching its fifth solar conjunction. Its team will send no commands between April 9 and April 26. The rover will continue science activities using a long-term set of commands to be sent beforehand.
Für Elise – Beethoven for Piano & Orchestra
An evening pause: Georgii Cherkin on the piano.
New results show that the effectiveness of a new malaria vaccine fades after a period of years.
New results show that the effectiveness of a new malaria vaccine fades after a period of years.
The vaccine is expensive, but its use does seem to reduce the number of children who get malaria. The problem thus will be to balance cost with effectiveness, which is never an easy thing to do.
An expedition financed by Jeff Bezos has recovered two Saturn 5 F-1 engines from the ocean bottom.
An expedition financed by Jeff Bezos has recovered two Apollo-era Saturn 5 F-1 engines from the ocean bottom.
ILS, the company that launches the Russian Proton rocket, has lowered its prices.
The competition heats up: ILS, the company that launches the Russian Proton rocket, has lowered its prices.
The reason they have given is that the insurance rates to use their rocket have risen due to the three Proton rocket failures in the past two years and that they want to offset that cost for their customers. I suspect a second reason is the price pressure that the Falcon 9 is placing on them.
After 35 years of travel, Voyager 1 has finally left the solar system.
After 35 years of travel, Voyager 1 has finally left the solar system.
There is still some dispute among scientists about this, but the evidence seems clear that the spacecraft has entered regions outside the influence of our solar system.
Update: Since this morning the scientists seem to be backtracking. They now claim that Voyager 1 has not left the solar system.
The Tuttles and AJ Lee – Endless Ocean
An evening pause:
Without a warrant New Jersey police raided the home of a firearms instructor, demanding the right to inventory his guns, after he posted a Facebook photo of his son holding a rifle.
Without a warrant New Jersey police raided the home of a firearms instructor, demanding the right to inventory his guns, prompted by a Facebook photo he had posted of his son holding a rifle.
The family’s trouble started Saturday night when Moore received an urgent text message from his wife. The Carneys Point Police Dept. and the New Jersey Dept. of Children and Families had raided their home. Moore immediately called [his attorney] Nappen and rushed home to find officers demanding to check his guns and his gun safe. Instead, he handed the cell phone to one of the officers – so they could speak with Nappen.
“If you have a warrant, you’re coming in,” Nappen told the officers. “If you don’t, then you’re not. That’s what privacy is all about.” With his attorney on speaker phone, Moore instructed the officers to leave his home. “I was told I was being unreasonable and that I was acting suspicious because I wouldn’t open my safe,” Moore wrote on the Delaware Open Carry website. “They told me they were going to get a search warrant. I told them to go ahead.”
It seems to me that police across the nation are becoming increasingly nonchalant about violating our Fourth Amendment right, which states quite bluntly, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”
A new model of the origin of asteroids suggests that in the beginning they weren’t rubble piles but “churning balls of mud.”
A new model of the origin of asteroids suggests that in the beginning they weren’t rubble piles but “churning balls of mud.”
The Democrat mayor of Philadelphia has demanded an investigation against a local magazine because he doesn’t like what they wrote.
Free speech according to Democrats: The Democrat mayor of Philadelphia has demanded an investigation against a local magazine because he doesn’t like what they published.
I ask the Commission consider specifically where Philadelphia Magazine and the writer, Bob Huber, are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and reckless endangerment to Philadelphia’s race relations probably caused by the essay’s unsubstantiated charges. While I fully recognize that constitutional protections afforded the press are intended to protect the media from censorship by the government, the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right, and notwithstanding the First Amendment, a publisher has a duty to the public to exercise its role in a responsible way. I ask the Commission to evaluate whether the “speech” employed in this essay is not the reckless equivalent of “shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater,” its prejudiced, fact-challenged generalizations an incitement to extreme reaction. [emphasis mine]
Under this Democratic mayor’s standards, anything that offended anyone could be banned. In fact, it would destroy all free speech. All any bully would need to do to silence his critics would be to complain about the inflammatory nature of their statements.
You can read his entire letter here. [pdf]
Having lost its earmarked government funding in 2011, the Pan-STARRS telescope has now replaced those funds with a private donation.
We don’t need no stinking government: Having lost its earmarked government funding in 2011, the Pan-STARRS telescope has now replaced those funds with a private donation.
I find it interesting that while the lost government funds equaled $10 million, they are now able to achieve essentially the same goals with a private donation of only $3 million. This suggests, not surprisingly, that there was a lot of extra pork in the government funds that the facility could manage without.
Out of Ideas, Governments Try a Bank Heist
A Chinese scientist who worked as a contractor for NASA was arrested yesterday on a plane about to leave for China.
A Chinese scientist who worked as a contractor for NASA was arrested yesterday on a plane about to leave for China.
Agents learned Friday that Jiang was to return to China on a one-way ticket Saturday, the affidavit said. He flew from Norfolk to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, where he boarded a plane bound for Beijing. Federal agents pulled him off the flight and searched his belongings. During what they called a “consensual encounter,” the agents asked Jiang what electronic media he had with him. He told an agent from the Department of Homeland Security that he had a cellphone, a memory stick, an external hard drive and a new computer.
But during the search, according to the affidavit, agents found an additional laptop, an old hard drive and a portable memory chip called a SIM card. He was arrested, and made his initial court appearance Monday.
It appears that the restrictions Congress placed on hiring foreign nationals had some merit. Moreover, it appears that the accusation by one congressman that NASA has been trying to circumvent those restrictions is true.
Another computer glitch has put Curiosity back in safe mode.
Another computer glitch has put Curiosity back in safe mode.
The problem this time appears to be different from the previous computer issue that shutdown Curiosity’s A computer. Since it occurred on the backup B computer now in use, however, it is a problem that cannot be taken lightly.
According to a federal report, businesses nationwide remain reluctant to hire because of Obamacare.
According to a federal report, businesses nationwide remain reluctant to hire because of Obamacare.
Earlier this month, the Fed released its latest “beige book” – a monthly report on economic conditions across the country. The book noted that employers across the country have “cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.”
And it is only going to get worse. Read the whole article. The new taxes imposed by Obamacare are going to crush the healthcare industry.
Sinead O’Connor – Thank You For Hearing Me
An evening pause: From a 1994 performance.
More fraud in climate science
Steve McIntyre, the man who had demonstrated that Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph was a fraud, has now demonstrated that the work of a group of climate scientists attempting to resurrect it is even more fraudulent. It seems that in order to recreate the illusion of warming in the past four hundred years, the scientists, led by geologist Shaun Marcott, changed the dates on a series of ocean cores in order to get the results they wanted.
McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years.
Most significantly, the scientists made no explanation for changing these dates. It is as if they wanted to hide this decline, y’know?
The chart on the right, by McIntyre, illustrates the fraud. The black line shows the temperature numbers of the ocean cores used by Marcott. The red line shows the temperature numbers, as originally published in the scientific literature, for these ocean cores.
The discrepancy here is so egregious that it screams at you. More important, as John Hinderaker says,
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