SpaceX has successfully tested an upgraded version of its Merlin rocket engine. Video at the link.
More fraud in the social psychology field: A psychologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam has resigned for faking data, with two of his papers now retracted.
[Dirk] Smeesters conceded to employing the so-called “blue-dot technique,” in which subjects who have apparently not read study instructions carefully are identified and excluded from analysis if it helps bolster the outcome. According to the report, Smeesters said this type of massaging was nothing out of the ordinary. He “repeatedly indicates that the culture in his field and his department is such that he does not feel personally responsible, and is convinced that in the area of marketing and (to a lesser extent) social psychology, many consciously leave out data to reach significance without saying so.”
But the university panel goes on to say that it can’t determine whether the numbers Smeesters says he massaged existed at all. He could not supply raw data for the three problematic experiments; they had been stored on a computer at his home that had crashed in September 2011 and whose data his brother-in-law had assured him were irretrievable. In addition, the “paper-and-pencil data” had also been lost when Smeesters moved house. The panel says it cannot establish Smeesters committed fraud, but says he is responsible for the loss of the raw data and their massaging.
That Smeesters considers it perfectly okay to manipulate data to strengthen his conclusions tells us how little he knows about science. That he considers this “common in his field” suggests that we should probably not pay much attention to almost anything published in the field of social psychology, especially considering last year’s scandal.
As the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, it’s worth reviewing the American public’s response to it across the 27 months since Obama signed it into law. Over that span, from March 2010 through a poll released this morning, Rasmussen has conducted 98 polls of likely voters. All 98 times, support for repeal has outpaced opposition to repeal. Across 98 contests, Obamacare has gone 0 and 98.
What amazes me is how completely oblivious the Democratic Party has been to these polls. Despite the public’s clear and passionate opposition to this law the Democrats have continued to act as if they believe the law will win them votes.
And they call this journalism? NBC has once again been caught deceptively editing videtape material, and this time it might be used by Jerry Sandusky’s lawyers to get him a mistrial.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Because a TSA agent failed to notice his metal detector was unplugged, hundreds of passengers at JFK Airport in New York had to go back and be rescreened, including those already on two planes on the runway, causing hours of delays.
Public schools at their best: Not only will the North Carolina high school teacher who thought it is a crime to criticize the president and threatened students for doing so keep her job, the student who exposed her ignorance is being harassed by the school.
A Dallas cop arrests a motorcyclist on a false made-up charge in order to confiscate his helmet camera. Video below the fold. The action starts at 2:45 and the arrest occurs at 6:30.
The sheriff’s department has begun an internal investigation. What investigation is needed? One look at this video should settle everything: This cop should be fired. As noted by a former Dallas prosecutor,
“Well, I think in this particular case, you did need a warrant to get that piece of evidence,” Toby Shook, a former Dallas prosecutor, told the station. He added later, “The Constitution wins out over frustration every time.”
A human-powered helicopter was successfully flown for 50 seconds on June 21, setting a new world record. Video below the fold.
This effort is an attempt to win the $250,000 AHS Sikorsky Prize, which requires a human-powered helicopter to fly for one minute at a height of three meters. The prize was first announced in 1980, and has remained unclaimed for the past 32 years.
» Read more
The second phase of NASA’s robotic refueling demo on ISS has successfully proven that a robot can remove a satellite fuel cap not designed for refueling.
The fuel cap design is a duplicate of that used by several climate research satellites presently in orbit. These satellites were not designed to be refueled, but if they could be refueled, their usefulness in orbit could be doubled, even tripled. This test is intended to demonstrate that a robot could refuel them.
The last phase of this robotic demo will take place in August, when the robots will attempt to pump a simulated fuel into the demo satellite.
China’s astronauts successfully undocked, backed away from their space station, and then completed a manual docking early today.
An evening pause: More information about this video here. They note that “The dancers in Syria are blurred for their safety.”
China isn’t only going up: A three man crew took a Chinese submersible to a depth of 22,800 feet in the Mariana Trench earlier this week, the record for that nation.
An interesting question: What if Walmart sold 2,500 guns illegally, walked them into Mexico, and hid the documentation from Congress?
Charting the relative economic strength of the world’s most powerful countries over the past 2000 years.
The article cites 1800 and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as a key moment in this history. I would also note that 1800 is about the time that freedom and Adam Smith’s ideas of economic liberty took hold in both North American and Europe.
NBC News struggles with a significant ratings decline.
Beyond “Today,” which is down about 4 percent in total viewers and about 9 percent in that 25-54 age group, “NBC Nightly News” has declined about 11 percent among those 25-54. Its main rival, ABC’s “World News,” also is down about 8 percent. (CBS’s newscast is up 1 percent.) On Sundays, “Meet the Press” is still the most watched show, but its lead over the second place “Face the Nation” on CBS has shrunk to just 2 percent in total viewers, while “Nation” is now ahead in the 25-54 group. And NBC’s effort to start a newsmagazine, “Rock Center,” led by its chief anchor, Brian Williams, has been greeted with some of the lowest ratings in prime time.
The article cites “talent transitions, weakness in prime time and late night programming, and changes in consumer behaviors” as reasons for this decline. I suggest it might be a loss of creditability. When you fake the news, get caught, and then refuse to clean house, the audience will desert you for more trustworthy sources.
A Dad’s secret high school graduation present to his daughter — that took thirteen years to make.
What comes through in the Moody’s assessment [the credit-rating downgrade of 15 banks] and in any review of their returns on equity is that banks have lost significant ability to generate earnings to offset the inevitable losses. The lost earnings power is surely due in part to reduced leverage, which helps protects taxpayers.
But 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank and countless other federal efforts to put sand in the financial gears are also taking their toll. The Obama tax and regulatory frenzy, of which Dodd-Frank is a part, weighs on economic growth. Those are our words, not Moody’s, but the rating agency does note that the abysmal economic environment is a drag on ratings for everyone.
The Obama campaign demanded photo IDs from anyone who wanted to attend a recent rally in Ohio.
Racists! It is very obvious the Obama campaign is trying to suppress the political activity of minorities by this clearly bigoted act.
NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.
NASA officials have been warning since last year that work on Orion would be slowed to keep pace with the development of SLS and its launch infrastructure. The agency has proposed trimming Orion’s $1.2 billion budget back to $1 billion for 2013. With the high-altitude abort test facing at least a budget-driven delay, the Langley team has proposed conducting one or more less-expensive tests in its place. Ortiz said conducting a hot-fire test in 2015 or 2016 would “keep the [launch abort system] project moving forward and help alleviate risk.”
I predict that Dragon will not only test its launch abort system first, it will have humans flying on it before Orion. And Dragon will do this for a fraction of the total cost that Orion and SLS spend per year. I also predict that when Dragon does this, Congress will finally begin noticing this disparity, and SLS will die unlaunched.
Forbidden by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.
“It took 60 people two days to complete a work project that could have been done in two hours with the appropriate equipment,” Barnes said. “We have a lot more work that needs to be done up there, but we don’t have the permits from the forest service to go back.”
For reasons that only bureaucrats understand, the Forest Service decided that the use of heavy equipment like a bulldozer is more harmful to nature than 60 people with shovels, even though in the end the work done is exactly the same, and that this same work was done repeatedly in the past by heavy equipment.
An evening pause: The group is called Passacaglia. The music is by Nicolas Chedeville (previously attributed to Vivaldi). The players are Annabel Knight (recorder), Reiko Ichise (viola da gamba), Robin Bigwood (harpsichord).
Glass jewellery believed to have been made by Roman craftsmen has been found in an ancient tomb in Japan.
The mystery for archeologists and historians now is this: How did this Roman jewelry get there?
The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report. Instead,
In addition, the IPCC has decided “to impose gender and geographical quotas on IPCC membership,” rather than simple pick the best scientists.
And climate scientists wonder why the public no longer believes anything they say.
The day of reckoning looms: The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013, not 2020 as claimed.
In 2010, Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary projected that this interest income would keep the trust fund growing in real value through 2020. The 2011 projections moved this date to 2018, and the recently released 2012 projections pushed the date to 2012, meaning that the trust fund will start declining in real value next year. After 2013, the trust fund is projected to decline by greater amounts each year until becoming exhausted in 2033.
The first complete view of Earth as a globe — looking down from above the north pole.
An asteroid that was discovered only four days before it flew by the Earth on June 14 has turned out to be much bigger than first thought.
This particular asteroid may not have been a danger, but much of the concern was rooted in the late warning of its detection — 2012 LZ1 was spotted only four days before closest approach. One of the reasons for its late discovery is because it was detected in Southern Hemisphere skies, part of the world were we have few asteroid-watching programs. If it had been on a collision course with Earth, a few days notice is no time at all.
So, in the aftermath of the flyby, astronomers at the famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used radar to image the interplanetary interloper (pictured top). What they uncovered was a surprise: Asteroid 2012 LZ1 is actually bigger than thought… in fact, it is quite a lot bigger. 2012 LZ1 is one kilometer wide (0.62 miles), double the initial estimate.
An evening pause: This is something every visitor to New York should try to do. The first time I did it was back in the mid-1970s during my college days. It was around 2 am in the morning when we started from Brooklyn. We crossed to Manhattan, had a meal at a 24 hour Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, then walked back, watching the sunrise over Brooklyn.
The Senate has passed that pork-filled farm bill, with 16 Republicans and 46 Democrats voting for it.
The link above provides a list of Republican porkers.
Hopefully, this bill will die in the House.
