Author: Robert Zimmerman

Detroit today filed for bankruptcy, the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

2:54 pm

What a half-century of Democratic Party rule gets you: Detroit today filed for bankruptcy, the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

Though I personally dislike Democratic Party policies and think they accelerated this disaster, the real problem was a willingness of voters to accept the idea of one-party rule. Not once during those fifty-one years of continuous and disastrous Democratic Party rule did Detroit voters even once consider the idea of firing these guys to give someone else a shot at running the city.

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The New Black Panther Party is offering a $10,000 bounty for the capture and kidnapping of George Zimmerman.

11:22 am

The new brownshirts: The New Black Panther Party is offering a $10,000 bounty for the capture and kidnapping of George Zimmerman.

Watch the video at the link. (I was especially struck by the uniforms, which strongly reminded me of Nazi uniforms in the 1930s.) They are holding themselves above the law, with the right to kidnap and imprison anyone they happen to dislike or disagree with.

Update: A commenter has noted that this is not a new story. The Panthers offered this bounty back in March 2012, before Zimmerman was charged. I should note however that this really doesn’t change anything, as these thugs were still making themselves judge, jury, and executioners, and above the law.

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It appears that one of the four individuals whose tax records were illegally accessed for political reasons was tea party candidate Christine O’Donnell.

9:38 am

It appears that one of the four individuals whose tax records were illegally accessed for political reasons was Delaware senatorial Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell.

Investigators for Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, an influential Republican who serves on the Finance and Judiciary committees, have uncovered one key issue: a backdoor system in which state officials can access Americans’ private tax records in the name of investigating with little oversight or accountability. [emphasis mine]

Now isn’t that reassuring?

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A third federal court has ruled that Obama’s fake recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Broad violated the Constitution.

9:23 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: A third federal court has ruled that Obama’s fake recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Broad violated the Constitution.

The worst part of this violation by Obama and his cohorts is that, even after these rulings, the illegally appointed board has continued to issue regulations, ignoring the decisions of all the courts.

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Congresswoman Mary Edwards (D-Maryland) has proposed merging two NASA centers to save money.

9:13 am

Congresswoman Mary Edwards (D-Maryland) is proposing a merger of two NASA centers to save money.

The amendment would establish a Center Realignment and Closure Commission that would be given six months to evaluate “[c]onsolidating all rocket development and test activities of the Marshall Space Flight Center and Stennis Space Center in one location” and recommend a location promising the greatest cost savings. The commission would also be asked to look at “[r]elocating all operations of the Marshall Space Flight Center to both the Stennis Space Center and Johnson Space Center.”

Now this is interesting. The Marshall Space Flight Center has been looking for a reason to exist for decades, since the end of the Apollo program. Any smart private company would have shut it down long ago to save money.

But then, this is government. The article, hostile to the idea of eliminating any government facility, describes quite succinctly why NASA can’t build anything cheaply and why nothing in government ever shrinks. Our legislators don’t represent us, they represent the small number of employees at these specific government facilities.

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One of the world’s longest running experiments, now 69 years old, has finally captured on camera the fall of a drop of tar pitch.

9:02 am

One of the world’s longest running experiments, now 69 years old, has finally captured on camera the fall of a drop of tar pitch.

The Dublin pitch-drop experiment was set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin to demonstrate the high viscosity or low fluidity of pitch — also known as bitumen or asphalt — a material that appears to be solid at room temperature, but is in fact flowing, albeit extremely slowly.

Video below the fold.
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Astronomers have found evidence which suggests that most of the universe’s gold was created during the collision and merger of two neutron stars.

8:54 am

Astronomers have found evidence which suggests that most of the universe’s gold was created during the collision and merger of two neutron stars.

A binary of two neutron stars will eventually spiral into each other. When they do, scientists believe that their violent merger produces short gamma ray bursts (GRB). Observations of a short GRB burst in June found a lot of spectroscopic evidence of gold.

[T]he explosion had been responsible for the creation of a whole menagerie of heavy elements. They estimated that an equivalent of 1% of the sun’s matter was being flung out from the collision in a tail, and about 10 parts per million of that tail was made of gold.

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The harassment of conservative groups by the IRS was planned and run by officials in Washington, D.C., according to a retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday in the House.

10:09 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: The harassment of conservative groups by the IRS was planned and run by officials in Washington, D.C., according to a retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday in the House.

Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing.

It appears he is naming names. Thursday’s hearing should be quite interesting.

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Part of the gas cloud being ripped apart by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way have already swung past the black hole.

3:54 pm

Part of a gas cloud, being ripped apart by the super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, has already swung past the black hole.

“The ionised gas at the head of the cloud is now stretched over more than 150 light-hours (about 160 billion kilometres) at the pericentre of the orbit around the black hole, with the closest approach being about 25 light-hours (or a bit more than 25 billion kilometres)”, explains Stefan Gillessen from MPE, who led the observing team. “The pericentre approach however is not a singular event but rather a process that will be stretching over a period of at least one year.”

The black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), is more than 4 billion times the mass of our Sun, but emits very little energy for its size. (Most super massive black holes emit energy as they swallow the mass around them.) Astronomers are hoping that they will see some action when it eats this cloud sometime next year.

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The IRS now claims that the government official who willfully accessed confidential tax records illegally was not an IRS employee.

9:21 am

O goody: The IRS now claims that the government official who willfully accessed confidential tax records illegally was not an IRS employee.

How does this make anything better? Instead of an IRS official rummaging through confidential tax records for political purposes, they apparently let others in government do it directly.

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SpaceX has renegotiated its lease with the city of McGregor, Texas, in order to begin testing the Falcon Heavy rocket.

8:59 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has renegotiated its lease with the city of McGregor, Texas, in order to begin testing the Falcon Heavy rocket.

What I found stunning about this article is this quote:

The Falcon Heavy will have commercial, civil and national security applications, Ra said, adding that customers will pay $81 million to $135 million per launch, depending on the weight of the payload and the rocket’s destination. That is about twice the price of a Falcon 9 launch.

These prices for the Falcon Heavy are actually comparable or cheaper than that charged by most other rocket companies for geosynchronous launches. If SpaceX succeeds in doing this — launching Falcon Heavy at these prices — they will certainly open deep space to private enterprise. And even if their prices end up being twice this, those prices will still be anywhere from one fourth to less than a tenth of what it will cost NASA to launch its SLS rocket.

Which should make us all wonder: Why is anyone in Congress still voting to fund SLS?

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A survey shows that three quarters of all small businesses still plan to fire workers and cut hours in 2014 to avoid Obamacare, even though the Obama administration says it will not enforce the law unitl 2015.

2:39 pm

A survey shows that three quarters of all small businesses still plan to fire workers and cut hours in 2014 to avoid Obamacare, even though the Obama administration says it will not enforce the law unitl 2015.

This makes sense. The law is still the law, even if the Obama administration won’t enforce it. If a business doesn’t cut the hours or the number of its workers to avoid the Obamacare mandates, but then does not provide those mandates, its employees can then sue the business and likely win.

The result: Expect the economy to tank next year as this turkey of a law takes hold and chokes the life out of American enterprise.

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The Sun has a maximum and no one notices

10:43 am

On July 8 NOAA released its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle, covering the period of June 2013. As I do every month, this graph is posted below, with annotations to give it context.

After a brief period of renewed but weak activity during the last three months, the Sun’s sunspot production has once again plunged, dropping back to the levels generally seen for most of 2012.

As predicted by some solar scientists, the Sun seems to have produced a double-peaked maximum, though the second peak appears at this time to have been remarkably wimpy and brief. It is still possible, however, that this second peak is not over and that we might see another burst of renewed activity in the next month or so, based on the Sun’s past behavior during the ending stages of the previous solar maximum in 2001 and 2002. Nonetheless, from all appearances it looks like the Sun has shot its load and is in the process of winding down from a solar maximum peak that occurred back late 2011.

What is especially fascinating about this is that when that peak occurred in 2011, no one noticed!
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“We have had an enormous amount of death threats.”

8:50 am

Modern civility: “We have had an enormous amount of death threats.”

I think this story sums up the entire George Zimmerman case. An ordinary citizen kills a black man in self-defense — clearly proven in court — and because of this he and his family are now under constant fear for their lives.

In other words, the violent, racist thugs in this case are all on the Trayvon Martin side of the coin.

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SpaceX has successfully completed a full duration test firing of 9 upgraded Merlin engines.

8:33 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed a full duration test firing of 9 upgraded Merlin engines.

The full mission duration firing of the next generation Falcon 9 booster was completed on Sunday. The booster’s nine Merlin 1D engines fired for approximately three minutes, simulating what the booster may experience in flight before stage separation.

With this success, I suspect they are finally ready to begin their commercial launches. The first is presently scheduled for September 5.

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Treasury admitted today that the IRS tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were illegally disclosed to unnamed government officials.

8:43 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama Treasury Department admitted today that the IRS tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were illegally disclosed to unnamed government officials.

[O]f the four instances in which tax records were improperly accessed, three cases were determined to be “inadvertent.” “In the fourth case, we presented evidence of a willful unauthorized access to the Department of Justice, but the case was declined for prosecution,” Mr. George wrote. Of the three cases that the inspector general called “inadvertent” disclosures, Mr. George said his office referred one to Justice with a recommendation that no prosecution be brought. He said Justice officials agreed with his office’s assessment. No reason was given for Justice’s rejections of prosecutions.

I wonder why the Obama Justice Department declined to prosecute that fourth case, which was “willful” and thus very illegal.

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Doing the Grand Canyon Right

2:50 pm

The Tonto Plateau

The one thing about the Grand Canyon that attracts hikers is its intimidating nature. People feel challenged by its large size and depth, and want to prove to themselves that they can do it.

The irony of this to me is that it is that intimidating nature that generally causes most people the most problems. People worry about the climb out. They worry about the heat. They worry about the lack of water. And they worry about vastness around them.

All of these things — the climb, the heat, the lack of water, and the vastness — must be dealt with. Each has caused the death of many visitors. Each could kill you if you are not prepared. In fact, one or all of these factors are probably the primary causes behind all of the approximately 300 rescues that occur each year at the Grand Canyon.

Yet, none of these factors is actually the biggest obstacle for most people trying to climb in and out of the Canyon. Instead, it is the worry about these things that causes people the most difficulties.
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Orbital Sciences has issued an update on its Antares launch schedule, with the launch window now set for September 14-19.

12:24 pm

The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has issued an update on its Antares launch schedule, with the launch window for the Cygnus demonstration mission to ISS now set for September 14-19.

They announced this on July 10, but I am only now catching up. The launch could happen sooner, if there are delays to the launch of NASA’s LADEE moon probe. Right now the two launches are coordinated to have LADEE launch first.

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Sierra Nevada has completed its first tow tests of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle, now officially named “Eagle.”

8:12 am

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has completed its first tow tests of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle, now officially named “Eagle.”

These tests were merely to check out the craft’s landing systems, with it being pulled along the runway at 10 to 20 mph. Faster tests, followed by actual drop tests, are to follow.

The article has some great information about Dream Chaser itself.

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