An evening pause: Good avant-garde music that was actually a hit song in 1981. Listen and watch close and you will catch hints of the naive and anti-American anti-nuke movement of the early 1980s.
The music is still haunting, has a touch of humor, and is definitely worth hearing.
Racists! Against the advice of almost every farm organization the USDA is proceeding with regulations that will require farmers to individually tag every chicken and cow.
Fidelis Hegngi, a senior staff veterinarian at USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, also has his doubts. “To really truly have something like tagging work on poultry you would need to have something absolute because birds move a lot, if you don’t have something absolute, it’s not going to work. … I don’t think the technology is there yet to really implement the bird ID to be fully, fully functional,” Mr. Hegngi said. Government officials have not said whether they would check animals for identification at traffic stops.
Ms. Bergener has a simple solution to the poultry police: “I’m going to do selective passive resistance,” she said. “I’m not tagging.” …
According to the letter to OMB, the USDA’s disconnect with farmers does not stop at rules for poultry. The USDA estimates a rancher’s cost to identify cattle at 18 cents a head, but the letter cites a study from North Dakota State University that places the actual cost of cow citizenship at $20 a head.
Nowhere is it explained why the USDA is demanding such stringent ID requirements of farmers, other than to make their lives difficult and to increase the petty power of the Washington bureaucracy.
In other words, for the Obama administration it all can be summarized like this: “Voter ID bad! Chicken ID good!”
The new colonial movement: Poland today was accepted as a member of the European Space Agency.
Leftwing civility: “There’s this reign of terror going on in the Republican Party.”
The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has decided to waive the work requirements under the 1996 welfare reform law, even though the law does not give the executive branch that right.
An new material has claimed the record as the world’s lightest solid.
Developed by a team from the Technical University of Hamburg and Germany’s University of Kiel, the material is composed of 99.99 percent air, along with a three-dimensional network of porous carbon nanotubes that were grown into each other. Aerographite has a density of less than 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter, which allows it be compressed by a factor of 1,000, then subsequently spring back to its original state. Despite its extremely low density, it is black and optically-opaque in appearance. By contrast, the density of metallic microlattice sits at 0.9 mg per cubic centimeter.
Another psychologist has resigned amid questions over the validity of his research.
This and other recent cases (here, here, here, here, here, here) are more evidence that the peer review process in some fields is badly broken, that the reviewers are too often not doing the reviewing they are supposed to, and in some cases might very well be participating in scientific fraud themselves.
Chicken Little report: The Sun has emitted a big flare, and a coronal mass ejection from this is expected to hit the Earth on Saturday.
There will be some gnashing of teeth about this flare, but in truth, this sentence says it all:
The radiation storm, in progress, ranks “S1” on NOAA space weather scales, which means it poses no serious threat to satellites or astronauts.
Researchers have concluded that the dust on the Moon’s surface might pose serious health risks for lunar colonists.
At least 80 House Republicans have signed a letter demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) block any further funding of Obamacare.
This story illustrates two things. First, the House Republican leadership has been timid about using its power to block the implementation of Obamacare, even though the public clearly wants it blocked. Second, that about a third of the House Republican membership has already signed the letter, with more signatures expected, suggests that the bulk of the Republican Party is not as timid as their leadership. Moreover, I expect the November election to significantly strengthen this fiscally conservative trend.
Thus, it will not surprise me if we see some very radical budget cuts in the next Congress.
It seems that more than one experiment was never turned on while on ISS this past month, and an investigation has begun as to why.
The Virginia spaceport at Wallops Island is on schedule later this month to hand control of its launchpad over to Orbital Sciences so it can begin ground tests of its Antares rocket.
The irony of this press release story is that Orbital has actually been running things, as it took over prepping the launchpad last year when the spaceport was unable to handle it.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has successfully completed testing of the nose landing gear for its Dream Chaser manned reusable spacecraft.
Racists! Five Democrats joined 239 Republicans as the House today voted to repeal Obamacare 244-185.
Repeal it! With each new estimate, the cost of Obamacare has risen. See the chart below the fold.
Obama’s initial cost estimate was $900 billion for ten years. The most recent CBO estimate is $2.6 trillion. And we all know that even this number is a lie.
» Read more
News you can use: The Internet Cat Video Film Festival.
Scientists find out what makes a stinky rock stink.
The competition heats up: From Virgin Galactic come two announcements today:
The second is really the big news, especially as it appears they already have some customers.
LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (225 kilograms) to orbit for prices below $10 million. The rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic’s proven WhiteKnightTwo, the uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry SpaceShipTwo aloft to begin her suborbital missions. Thanks to the extreme flexibility of air launch, Virgin Galactic’s customers will enjoy reduced infrastructure costs in addition to the wide range of possible launch locations tailored to individual mission requirements and weather conditions. Branson and other senior executives announced that work has already begun on the vehicle.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered a fifth moon orbiting Pluto.
Five moons, eh? That’s pretty good for something that isn’t supposed to be a planet.
The day of reckoning looms: Another California city, San Bernardino, has decided to declare bankruptcy.
Orwell would be proud: India is in the process of biometrically identifying every one of it 1.2 billion citizens.
Turn, turn, turn: Cassini has now seen the beginnings of a vortex over Titan’s south pole, the first sign that winter is coming to the planet’s southern hemisphere.
