The world’s oldest functioning light bulb: 110 years old
The world’s oldest functioning light bulb: 110 years old.
The world’s oldest functioning light bulb: 110 years old.
The world’s oldest functioning light bulb: 110 years old.
Though some progress has been made, the negotiations over the debt limit and the budget still appear deadlocked.
The pork goes on: The shuttle’s end has still left NASA with a half billion dollar pension bill.
The end of the Cedar Revolution: The terrorist group Hezbollah took over Lebanon’s government this week.
Getting away with murder: An internal probe today cleared five SWAT-raid officers in Arizona for the killing of ex-Marine Jose Guerena.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled today that the union law passed earlier this year is legal.
Europe has decided to shrink the design of the gigantic Extremely Large Telescope (yes, that’s really its name) by 13% to save money.
Don’t bet on it: A memo signed today by a senior NASA official marks the end of the Constellation program.
All this does is make the name change of the program-formerly-called-Constellation official. The pork continues nonetheless!
More southwest wildfires: A quickly growing fire at Carlsbad Caverns National Park has caused its closure.
At a press conference today at the 2011 meeting of the Solar Physics Division (SPD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, solar scientists predicted that not only will the next solar maximum in 2013 be the weakest in centuries, it is very likely that it will be followed by another long Maunder Minimum, a period of decades without sunspots. “The sun may be going into hiatus,” says Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network. You can read the press releases for this announcement here and here.
These conclusions are based on three lines of evidence:
Surprise, surprise! Obamacare doesn’t stop Medigap providers and AARP from discriminating against seniors with preexisting conditions, as had been promised.
This story is just more evidence that the law is a mess, it should never have been passed, and in the future our so-called lawmakers should read the goddamn legislation before they vote on it.
I should add that I think it a very big mistake for the government to forbid insurance companies from denying new coverage to sick individuals. If insurance companies are forced to accept everyone as a new customer, even those who are ill, why bother paying for insurance when you are healthy? Everyone can simply wait until they are sick, and then buy the coverage, thereby getting a lot of insurance for very little investment. The result: insurance companies go bankrupt, as the whole concept of insurance depends on a lot of healthy customers paying the cost, at a low rate, for those who are sick.
The Republican presidential candidates discussed the space program’s future at the New Hampshire debate last night.
A testbed for testing the robotic refueling of satellites will be installed on ISS on last shuttle flight.
This whole testbed is the brainchild of Frank Cepollina, the man behind all of the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions. Until recently it was doubtful there was room for this project on any shuttle mission. That he nonetheless managed to get it on the last flight is another testament to Cepollina’s incredible ability to get things done. And if the tests work on ISS, NASA will then consider launching operational systems for refueling several perfectly usable climate satellites now in orbit.
Two lawyers explain why Obamacare is losing in the courts.
SpaceX gets another launch contract for its Falcon 9.
Mexican drug cartels are using Arizona mountaintops and caves to spy on border.
The one cave shelter photo shown in this article looks almost exactly like the one we passed in one of our hikes in February near the border.
The asteroid Vesta is beginning to come into focus as the space probe Dawn approaches.
Unacceptable, from either party: A Tea Party blogger was roughed up by a Republican official at Indiana rally this weekend. With video.
Global greenhouse gas emissions have risen even faster during the past decade than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other international agencies. According to alarmist groups, this proves global warming is much worse than previously feared. The increase in emissions “should shock even the most jaded negotiators” at international climate talks currently taking place in Bonn, Germany, the UK Guardian reports. But there’s only one problem with this storyline; global temperatures have not increased at all during the past decade.
The evidence is powerful, straightforward, and damning. NASA satellite instruments precisely measuring global temperatures show absolutely no warming during the past the past 10 years. This is the case for the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, including the United States. This is the case for the Arctic, where the signs of human-caused global warming are supposed to be first and most powerfully felt. This is the case forglobal sea surface temperatures, which alarmists claim should be sucking up much of the predicted human-induced warming. This is the case for the planet as a whole.
If atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary driver of global temperatures, then where is all the global warming? We’re talking 10 years of higher-than-expected increases in greenhouse gases, yet 10 years of absolutely no warming. That’s 10 years of nada, nunca, nein, zero, and zilch. [emphasis mine]
Twelve of the world’s most beautiful lakes.
Obama to announce plans today to cut government waste.
Though I applaud any effort to reduce the federal government’s out-of-control spending, to me this paragraph suggested strongly how symbolic and superficial this announcement by Obama will be:
One of the campaign’s first steps will be targeting waste and duplication among federal websites. The administration will halt the creation of new websites, as well as shut down or consolidate one-fourth of the 2,000 government websites in the next few months.
For one thing, having an employee launch an extra website is hardly very costly, as you are already paying that employee’s salary. Will they be laying off these workers as well? I doubt it.
For another, shutting down websites is hardly a demonstration of transparency in government.
In North Carolina, government jobs untouched by the Great Recession.
An inspector general report this week slammed the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the Obama administration over his attempts to shut the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility.
In the two years that Gregory Jaczko has led the nation’s independent nuclear agency, his actions to delay, hide and kill work on a disputed dump for high-level radioactive waste have been called “bizarre,” `’unorthodox” and “illegal.” These harsh critiques haven’t come just from politicians who have strong views in favor of the Yucca Mountain waste site in Nevada. They’ve come from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s own scientists and a former agency chairman.
New satellite data shows that the atmosphere above Japan heated rapidly in the days before the March earthquake.
The [researchers] say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck. At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.
European lifting body entry spacecraft is about to get its final approval before construction.