Author: Robert Zimmerman

For as yet unexplained reasons, scientists have been finding isolated colonies of little brown bats — once the most common bat species in the region and the hardest hit by white nose syndrome — surviving and healthy.

2:42 pm

Hope for North America’s bats: For as yet unexplained reasons, scientists have been finding isolated colonies of little brown bats — once the most common bat species in the region and the hardest hit by white nose syndrome — surviving and healthy.

In Vermont, biologists have identified 15 colonies in the western part of the state where the numbers of little brown bats, while still far fewer than before white nose appeared, are surviving, said Vermont Fish and Wildlife Biologist Scott Darling. “We visited each and every one of those colonies and to some degree, much to our surprise, they seem to be healthy,” Darling said. “It begged the question, ‘Why are you the lucky ones?'”

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First Earth-sized planets found

11:20 am

Big news: The first Earth-sized planets have been found by Kepler.

The two planets, dubbed Kepler-20e and 20f, are the smallest planets found to date. They have diameters of 6,900 miles and 8,200 miles – equivalent to 0.87 times Earth (slightly smaller than Venus) and 1.03 times Earth. These worlds are expected to have rocky compositions, so their masses should be less than 1.7 and 3 times Earth’s.

Both worlds circle Kepler-20: a G-type star slightly cooler than the Sun and located 950 light-years from Earth. (It would take the space shuttle 36 million years to travel to Kepler-20.) Kepler-20e orbits every 6.1 days at a distance of 4.7 million miles. Kepler-20f orbits every 19.6 days at a distance of 10.3 million miles. Due to their tight orbits, they are heated to temperatures of 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and 800 degrees F.

Once again, this is only the beginning. The announcement of an Earth in the habitable zone is only a matter of months away.

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FBI sees drop in violent and property crimes in every region of the U.S.

10:24 pm

Some good news: The FBI is reporting a drop in violent and property crimes in every region of the U.S for the first half of 2011.

As the report above notes, this drop has occurred during “tough economic times,” illustrating once again that the leftwing claim that “tough economic times” causes violence and crime is dead wrong. If a society knows the difference between right and wrong while respecting property rights, poverty by itself will not lead to crime. What will lead to crime is a rejection of these values, which not only promotes bad behavior (stealing and violence) but also leads to more poverty and the collapse of society.

With this in mind it is therefore interesting to reflect on many of the actions and ideas of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Is this what we really want for America?

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Why Are Indian Reservations So Poor?

7:45 pm

Why are Indian reservations so poor? (Link fixed. Sorry.)

The vast majority of land on reservations is held communally. That means residents can’t get clear title to the land where their home sits, one reason for the abundance of mobile homes on reservations. This makes it hard for Native Americans to establish credit and borrow money to improve their homes because they can’t use the land as collateral–and investing in something you don’t own makes little sense, anyway.
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“Markets haven’t been allowed to operate in reserve lands,” says [Manny Jules, a former chief of the Kamloops Indian band in British Columbia]. “We’ve been legislated out of the economy. When you don’t have individual property rights, you can’t build, you can’t be bonded, you can’t pass on wealth. A lot of small businesses never get started because people can’t leverage property [to raise funds].

Hat tip Ace of Spades.

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Five ridiculous gun myths promoted by movies

10:40 am

Five ridiculous gun myths promoted by movies. I like this one:

It’s an old joke by now that nobody runs out of bullets in action movies (unless it’s suddenly convenient to the plot, that is). Hollywood shows some restraint with revolvers–usually no more than 10 or 11 shots per six-shot cylinder–but damn, do they go hog-wild with anything that fires full-auto. So much so that that most of us have wound up with an utterly ridiculous concept of how those guns work. They’re seriously depicting these things firing a hundred times more bullets than they can actually hold.

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Former astronaut John Grunsfeld is to take over NASA’s science post from Ed Weiler

9:43 am

Excellent choice: Former astronaut John Grunsfeld has been picked to take over NASA’s chief science post from Ed Weiler.

Not only is Grunsfeld an excellent choice, his experience as an astronaut repairing Hubble will help improve relations between the science and manned space programs. In the past, scientists have often argued against manned space, trying to get that money for their unmanned research probes. Instead, when manned space got cut, so did science, and no one won. Grunsfeld’s leadership I think will forestall these short-sighted complaints.

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The astonishing collapse of MF Global

7:41 pm

The astonishing collapse of MF Global.

The failure of broker MF Global is a unique event in the annals of American corporate history: To my knowledge, it’s the first time a CEO singlehandedly bankrupted his firm through actions that the board of directors was not only knowledgeable of, but had indeed expressly sanctioned. “That takes some talent!” quipped Roderick Hills, a former chairman of the SEC.

The article is long, detailed, and thorough. It describes a deep corruption that should chill the spine of anyone who has money in the investment world.

I must note that I do not advocate more regulations to eliminate this corruption. Such regulations never work. Take for example this quote from the article, describing the accounting systems that are required by law to prevent a client’s funds from being misused:

As noted above, it’s a major part of the CEO’s job to put the proper systems in place. In fact, regulations implemented through Sarbanes-Oxley — a bill that Corzine co-wrote while he was a senator — require that the CEO and CFO sign off on the effectiveness of the controls over financial reporting. … If those proper “controls and procedures” were in place, a breach of segregated client funds should have set off loud, blaring, obnoxious alarms that would have alerted management to that breach.

In the case of Jon Corzine and MF Global, those controls were obviously not in place, and thus the Sarbanes-Oxley bill wasn’t worth the paper that Corzine used to write the bill.

Rather than more regulations, what works is very simple and can be summed by two words: “Buyer beware.” Investors (as well as voters considering the political ambitions of Corzine and his friends) have to be more skeptical of whom they put their trust in. You have to protect yourself. You can’t ask others to do it for you.

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Deficit may be biggest threat to ObamaCare

9:32 am

Well duh! Deficit may be biggest threat to ObamaCare.

I always opposed ObamaCare because I oppose the use of government to run our lives. But putting that minor point aside, it made absolutely no sense for the government to add this entitlement to the nation’s balance sheet at a time when that balance sheet is so completely in the red. The only time these kinds of government programs can possible work (if ever) is when there is lots of spare cash in the bank, something we definitely don’t have right now.

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The Great Spending Betrayal

9:16 am

The great spending betrayal.

Over Friday and Saturday, 61% of House Republicans and 34% of Senate Republicans voted for the omnibus megabus bill. In doing so, not only did they violate their pledge pertaining to bundled (1200-page) bills and the 72-hour layover rule and agree to fund Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, the PLO and the UN; they actually agreed to spend almost $9 billion more than last year. Overall, budget authority will be $33 billion higher than the House budget, while appropriations for non-defense spending will be $45 billion more. One of the members who voted in the affirmative even agreed that he had voted for a “crap sandwich.”

One reason the budget is still growing is that two-thirds of the government is still controlled by the spendthrift Democratic Party. A second reason is that there are too many wimpy Republicans willing to compromise with these spendthrifts.

Which is why we have elections. 2012 should help fix this problem.

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